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Written by Kaunain Sheriff M | New Delhi | Updated: October 25, 2020 7:14:37 amThe Indian Express investigation, China is Watching, was published in September.

Referring to revelations in a series of investigative reports by The Indian Express and other global publications on how a private technology firm in Shenzhen, with links to the Chinese government and Communist Party of China (CPC) uses big data tools for hybrid warfare, a top US Security official has said that the Chinese foreign ministry handles a United Front, which includes powerful tech firms that gather intelligence to influence private citizens overseas.

Pointing to the database of Zhenhua Data, which targets individuals and institutions in politics, government, business, technology, media, and civil society, US Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger has said that the CPC is compiling digital dossiers on millions of foreign citizens around the world, with the aid of new tools of digital surveillance.

Pottinger made the remarks from White House on Thursday during a video conference hosted by Policy Exchange in London.

The Indian Express, using big-data tools, investigated metadata from Zhenhuas operations to extract Indian entities from the massive dump of log files that constituted what the company called Overseas Key Information Database (OKIDB). The investigation, published in September, had revealed the firm is monitoring over 10,000 Indian individuals, including President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and their families.

The exposure last month of a Chinese database on at least 2.4 million people around the world, including many of us on this call, speaks to the Partys (CPCs) sheer ambition to wed traditional Leninist techniques with powerful new tools of digital surveillance, Pottinger said.

He claimed Chinas United Front Work system is handled by the countrys foreign ministry and gathers intelligence about, and works to influence, private citizens overseas. He said, The focus is on foreign elites and the organizations they run. Think of a United Front worker as a cross between an intelligence collector, a propagandist, and a psychologist.

Pottinger said while Zhenhua isnt a particularly large or sophisticated actor in the United Front world, it may even be acting opportunistically, because it thinks the Party will reward it.

He said, Far more powerful tech firms, including famous Chinese app developers, play a much bigger role in this kind of work. The dossiers Zhenhua is compiling include people in virtually every country, no matter how small. They include members of royal families and members of Parliament, judges and clerks, tech mavens and budding entrepreneurs, four-star admirals and crew members of warships, professors and think-tankers, and national and local officials. They also include children, who are fair game under Beijings rules of political warfare. No one is too prominent or too obscure.

Pottinger said the United Front Work is a serious business, and the focus is on foreign elites and organisations they run. He said, the United Front Work Department alone has four times as many cadres as the US State Department has foreign-service officers.the United Front gathers intelligence about, and works to influence, private citizens overseas.

Read The Indian Express investigative series China is Watching

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China govt uses United Front to gather intel on citizens abroad, says US dy NSA - The Indian Express

We live in a world of a beehive of online activities, with many individuals happily sharing their private information on the Internet. Unfortunately, Uncle Sam is constantly looking over your shoulder. Unknown to most people, a lot of data is collected via the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) PRISM surveillance program. Once youre the target, a massive amount of data about you can be collected and forwarded to the government. Whenever the government is caught with its hands in the privacy jar, two platitudes are always given: If you have not done something wrong, youve nothing to hide, and you have to trust the government it has your best interests at heart.

Basically, the governments nothing-to-hide notion implies that its only criminals who may want to hide. But is that true? Besides, we all have something that we want to hide. Just ask anybody to show you their credit card bill or even their emails what would be the response?

If theres nothing that should be hidden and you can trust the government with your data, think about this scenario: What will happen if someone gains access into the governments database? Since you are here, we assume you are one of those folks who want to escape NSA spying. If so, it is time for you to be smart and be a ghost!

Online activities should be private, but unfortunately, thats not the case. In 2013, the NSA outlined how data can be collected via the PRISM program. The technology is merely based on the optical fiber wiretaps. PRISM is meant to track the activities of potential foreign terrorists. Just like in criminal investigations, the NSA is probably not intentionally spying on you, but the fact that they can when they want to is a breach of privacy.

There are several ways you stay out of the omnipresent eyes of the government and the NSAs PRISM. Below are some simple measures to minimize the likelihood of the NSA PRISM program monitoring your Internet activities.

One of the surest ways of beating the NSAs PRISM surveillance trap is by encrypting your Internet traffic. Its simply that all the encrypted data is useless to the PRISM program without the decryption key. Your conversations may not be private unless you encrypt. First, you can encrypt the hard drive and all the existing files. All the data stored on the cloud should be encrypted before being submitted to Internet service providers. The last thing you want is entirely trusting Google, Microsoft, or Apple to encrypt data for you. As an individual, avoid storing unencrypted personal data in clouds like OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive.

Using a good VPN will help keep the NSA from sniffing around your personal space and your business. A VPN merely helps establish a private network thats private to the Internet and allows you to surf anonymously (although there are many caveats here). It conceals the user identity by masking the devices IP address and then directing traffic via VPN servers in a location that you may choose.

However, a VPN should not be just a VPN but should be a VPN that doesnt keep logs. A VPN without logs means that the VPN provider cannot reveal your identity even if it gets a court order. Thats because it wont be recording any of your web activities details in the first place. Moreover, a VPN will ensure that you easily bypass Internet restrictions, as well as getting access to blocked websites.

Each time you visit a new site, a trail of footprints are left behind that can tell so much about you. Most advertising networks use those digital footprints for targeted ads, meaning that the NSA is most probably watching every keystroke you make.

Therefore, to ensure that you block web tracking, simply visit your browsers settings and then disable third-party cookies so that they do not load on the current web page.

Secondly, you need to privately search the web by activating private incognito mode in the browser. Alternatively, you can opt to use browser extensions like Ghostery that prevent ad agencies and search engines from tracking web pages.

Furthermore, you can disable JavaScript from the browser setting to help avoid web tracking. And masking your IP address via a VPN is another excellent way of staying out of the radar of tracking cookies.

Sometimes connecting to free hotspots can prove to be a channel through which someone can access your device. However, wandering from the library to the coffee shop and the free caf down the street can provide a security protection layer. Why? Because your IP address keeps on varying by location. However, you should be very careful about such hotspots as they are the real hotspots of malware invasion.

After doing everything right, youll also want to tie all your encrypted services with hard-to-crack passwords. You need to find the best password manager and then create your unique password.

The NSA can tap into all cellular networks across the globe. Therefore, theres every reason to protect your communications. Your instant messaging services can be protected from the NSA surveillance program using an Off-the-Record (OTR) chat extension. It helps in encrypting all messages on IM networks.

Another reigning king for anonymous browsing is the Onion Router (TOR). It allows you to browse anonymously as it conceals user identity by encrypting and bouncing communications over a plethora of servers. Therefore, it makes it difficult for spy agencies to trace the traffic source or the recipient easily. All they see is traffic originating from a plethora of random nodes and not your PC.

Ultimately, keeping off the NSAs PRISM is not a walk in the park. While all these tips do not mean that youre entirely PRISM-proof, theyll minimize the risk of NSA snooping on your online activities. You just have to pray that you dont give them enough evidence to suspect you because then all privacy bets are off.

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Home Articles PRISM and privacy: Ways to avoid being spied on by the government

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PRISM and privacy: Ways to avoid being spied on by the government - TechGenix

In a long (long) portrait dedicated to the NSA and US Cyber Command boss General Paul Nakasone, Wired revealed that in two years, it authorized more cyber attacks than before. NSA since its inception.

The NSA has long monitored and spied on its targets abroad. Wired describes how he did not initiate what would become his cyber command responsible for defending American systems and attacking his adversaries and enemies until 2009. Russia had indeed entered its classified computer network and disconnected from the Internet, possibly via a broken USB key.

Nakasone was then appointed as the head of a group nicknamed the Four Horsemen (four horsemen including a woman), who were responsible for explaining what the NSAs Cyberdefense Division would be, but raising it from 100 to 2000 Also for cyber fighters.

Unlike France, which refuses to attribute the attacks that identify the countries launching them and does not officially recognize its offensive computer warfare (LIO) operations, Nakasone was convinced that it It was necessary to communicate. Wanting to leave the private sector to join their units, not only to gain more resources and powers from the authorities, but to create hackers, and finally to demonstrate their expertise to reject their rivals.

Launched in 2010, USCYBERCOM today has more than 6,000 cyber-fighters, in addition to 38,000 and 20,000 private intelligence contractors working for the NSA.

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How the NSA built its offensive computer warfare unit - The Market Mail

There are "several other" countries beyond Russia and Iran who have interfered with the upcoming election, National Secuirty Advisor Robert O'Brien said Wednesday.

"As you know, it's not just Russia and Iran," O'Brien said on Fox News' "Fox &Friends." "It's China, and there are several other countries we have not yet gone public on. We're taking major steps to protect the elections."

O'Brien said that he's held White House meetings with the National Security Council and that the Department of Homeland Security is working with secretaries of state across the country. He added that the Iowa National Guardis using its "terrific cyber unit"to detect interference in the state.

"Across the country, we're making big efforts to make sure our election infrastructure's hardened and that people know their votes are going to be counted," he said.

Meanwhile, it should come as no surprise that Iran or Russia would try to interfere in the election, he said.

Iran has been cut off from the "jackpot they received '' when they signedthe multi-nation nuclear dealbecause President Donald Trump pulled the United States out in 2018, said O'Brien, adding that Iran doesn't like the fact that Israel has been making peace with Arab nations.

"The same thing with Russia," said O'Brien. "The president's been tougher on Russia than any administration since Ronald Reagan. We see that they're out on Twitter and various places with disinformation. You can see the same thing with China."

The administration also is working through the Department of Homeland Security to ensure secure elections, said O'Brien.

"The good news is we're so decentralized, 95% of the ballots that are cast have some sort of paper analog so that they can be audited," he said. "It's very difficult for an adversary to actually change the outcomes of the elections, and we've been doing everything we can to make sure that's the case on Election Day."

The topics for Thursday night's debate, meanwhile, don't include items on foreign policy, but O'Brien said he wants to focus on what Trump has done, particularly concerning peace in the Middle East.

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NSA O'Brien: 'Several Other' Countries Interfering in Election - Newsmax

The National Security Agency said it is redefining the academic path to jobs in cybersecurity with a new program offering minority students interested in the field access to paid internships and training facilities.

The Cybersecurity Education Diversity InitiativeCEDImakes officials and resources such as virtual cyber ranges available to minority-serving institutions through NSAs National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity, according to a press release on Thursday. The Office of Industrial Policys Small Business Program and the Mentor Protg Program at the Defense Department would participate, and students can receive stipends for working with companies in their geographic areas, the release said.

This partnership is a revolutionary approach to developing the cybersecurity workforce of the future, said Diane M. Janosek, the commandant of NSAs National Cryptologic School, which houses the NCAE-C program. CEDI is the future model for developing well-qualified and trained cybersecurity professionals across all industrial sectors, in all 50 states. Thank you DoDs Office of Small Business Programs for creatively addressing the critical need for cybersecurity professionals in the Defense Industrial Base.

Tapping Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other minority-serving institutions to fill what is now hundreds of thousands of related vacancies makes sense to politicians and cybersecurity officials, alike.

During a town hall event Thursday, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said the availability of cybersecurity jobs provides an opportunity for young Black voters to start generating wealth. He touted his efforts while serving as vice president during the Obama administration, which included the announcement of a $25 million grant for cybersecurity education at HBCUs.

That will enable those schools to produce young Black women and men who are going to go into a field of the future that's burgeoning; cybersecurity, he said. And that's what's going to help a great deal.

Biden said he plans to put another $70 billion toward HBCUs, if elected. Simultaneously, in a separate town hall, President Donald Trump also emphasized his commitment to HBCUs.

But there are also cybersecurity benefits to be had from making the industry more diverse, according to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs.

Theres an advantage of U.S.-centric cybersecurity defense against what is generally adversaries that are fairly homogeneous, he said this summer. We have a distinct advantage in diversifying our workforce and having a more inclusive environment. Thats going to give us perspectives our adversaries dont have. I think innately the American experience can set us up for greater success in the cybersecurity game.

Eight minority-serving institutions have already received grants to build their capacity, according to a factsheet on the initiative. The document lists participating NCAE-C institutions, including those from regions around the country, and provides contact information for learning about the application process.

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NSA Launches Diversity Initiative to Grow Bench of Job-Ready Cybersecurity Talent - Nextgov