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(CIRCA) As his presidency drew to a close, Barack Obamas top aides routinely reviewed intelligence reports gleaned from the National Security Agencys incidental intercepts of Americans abroad, taking advantage of rules their boss relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats, Circa has learned.

Dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures. Sometimes the Americans names were officially unmasked; other times they were so specifically described in the reports that their identities were readily discernible. Among those cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA-based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were Obamas national security adviser Susan Rice, his CIA Director John Brennan and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Some intercepted communications from November to January involved Trump transition figures or foreign figures perceptions of the incoming president and his administration. Intercepts involving congressional figures also have been unmasked occasionally for some time.

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Obama let NSA intercepts get into political hands - WND.com

Republicans charged Tuesday that Democrats are blocking the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russia from moving forward by refusing to sign a letter that would officially invite FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers back before the committee for closed-door testimony.

Republicans have made clear they want that testimony before hearing from others, and say it will allow the committee to be as informed as possible when interviewing future witnesses.

Committee member Rep. Peter King, R-NY, verified the information about the letter that was described to the Washington Examiner by a source close to the committee who requested anonymity.

"My understanding is that Devin [Nunes] or the general counsel for the Republican side prepared a letter to Director Comey and Director Rogers asking them to testify at a closed session, and that thus far, the Democrats have not signed it," King said.

"The purpose of the closed session is to start getting answers to many of the questions that Director Comey could not answer at the public hearing because of the ongoing investigation. To me, if Democrats want answers to their questions, this is one way to get them. So I'm surprised they're not agreeing to this right away," King added.

A Democratic committee aide replied by accusing Republicans of trying to eliminate the open hearing entirely.

"Republicans wanted to do the closed hearing in lieu of the open hearing they were hoping to schedule it at the exact same time as the open hearing, even though all the witnesses [Brennan, Clapper and Yates] were prepared to testify," the aide said. "We would welcome hearing from Directors Comey and Rogers again just not instead of the open hearing."

The delay in setting up the closed hearing also means that the testimony volunteered by four persons related to Trump campaign Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Roger Stone, and son-in-law Jared Kushner is on hold indefinitely, as the committee wants to have the closed session first.

Comey and Rogers have already given their open testimony to the committee. But just two days later, Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., made his bombshell revelations in which he claimed to have reviewed raw intelligence documents that allegedly show members of the Trump transition team being caught up and named in legal surveillance of foreign nationals. Nunes also briefed the White House on his findings, a move which was controversial enough at the time, but has grown even more so in recent days.

Also from the Washington Examiner

At least three former Trump administration officials have reportedly said they never signed the president's ethics pledge.

03/29/17 5:49 PM

Last Friday, Nunes announced the committee was cancelling the already-planned second open hearing which would have included former National Intelligence Director James Clapper and former acting US Attorney General Sally Yates. "We are asking Mr. Comey and Mr. Rogers to come back in. And until we can get them in in a closed session, it's not going to be worth it to have the open session," he said.

Democrats blasted the decision at the time. "What's really involved here is the cancellation of this open hearing and the rest is designed to distract," said ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Democrats said they were skeptical that Nunes' revelations might have been coordinated by the White House. That speculation intensified this week after CNN reported Nunes had been on the White House grounds to meet the source for the documents behind his claims.

Nunes explained the episode in an interview with CNN by saying his White House visit was a fairly common happening, and that the information he needed to view could only be done so at places with the correct computer security and clearances, which was available at the White House.

Numerous Democrats have called for Nunes to step away from the investigation, but thus far he has refused to do so.

Also from the Washington Examiner

The first lady was also present and insisted on her husband's attendance, he quipped during his remarks.

03/29/17 5:16 PM

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GOP accuses Democrats of blocking closed FBI, NSA testimony on Russia - Washington Examiner

If youve ever wondered whether the National Security Agency (NSA) is monitoring your internet activity at any given moment, theres now an app for that.

A Canadian project by Internet Exchange Maps, called IXmaps, tracks the internet exchange points your information passes through. These points are buildings where your information passes along a wire and can be collected by the NSA.

Yes, a physical wire. Though we generally think of the internet as a cloud, all of our data travels along large wires and data points before it gets to its destination. Since our data travels through these wirescalled traceroutesits much easier for the NSA to intercept, track, and store it for whatever means the agency finds necessary. Its highly likely the NSA has listening posts at traceroute-connected buildings in New York and Utah.

IXmaps allows you to see if your web traffic passes through one of these suspected listening posts.

Screengrab via IXmaps

Per the U.S. Constitution, U.S. citizens are granted a certain amount of internet privacy. These rights protect citizens from the tyrannical seizure of information collections from internet data. Whether or not those rights are acknowledged in NSA tracking is a different story, though, given the documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

For non-U.S. citizens, though, theres absolutely no protection and no boundaries for what the NSA can collect. IXmaps is a Canadian project, originally created to help Canadian citizens map their internet data. The Canadian constitution provides similar privacy protections to its citizens.

For financial and political reasons, many Canadian internet routes pass across the border into the U.S.a phenomenon known as boomerang routingbefore going back into Canada to its original destination. Since Canadian citizens have no privacy rights in the U.S., their data is often collected and stored without question.

IXmaps recently went public again after undergoing a redesign, and its working to expand its maps to across the globe, but that depends on individuals tracking and submitting their own traceroutes to the database.

H/T Motherboard

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Here's how to tell if your web traffic travels through an NSA listening point - The Daily Dot

March 28, 2017

The spokesman for House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes says Tuesdays close door session with FBI Director James Comey is cancelled

(WASHINGTON, DC) The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee will not hold on Tuesday a closed briefing with the directors of the FBI and National Security Agency, a spokesman for the committee's Republican chairman said on Monday.

Representative Devin Nunes, the committee's chairman, last week said he cancelled a public hearing on the committee's investigation of Russian influence on the 2016 election because it was necessary to hold the closed session with Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers.

"Director Comey and Adm. Rogers could not come in tomorrow as wed hoped, so the Committee will continue to try to schedule a time when they can meet with us in closed session," Jack Langer, a spokesman for Nunes, said in a statement.

CNN reports that though Mr. Nunes cancelled the Tuesday close door meeting, he still plans to hold a private briefings with FBI Director James B. Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rodgers in the near future.

Reuters copy, TRUNEWS contribution

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Closed House intel hearing with Comey and NSA cancelled - TRUNEWS

Debate and discourse around WikiLeaks announcement about a series of leaks from the CIA continue unabated.Codenamed "Vault 7," WikiLeaks claims this is the largest classified information leak to have come from the CIA to date.Added to that, only one percent of documents have been made public so far.

From the leaked documents its become clear that the CIA has created its own internal hacking capabilities to rival that of the NSA.It may be more tactical than strategic --but with exploit sets including Android, IoS, Samsung TVs, Linux, Mac, zero day attacks and more, it could certainly give the NSA a run for its money.

Whats particularly interesting is the sheer enormity of the resources invested by the CIA.WikiLeaks reports:

"By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division [...] had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other 'weaponized' malware. Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its 'own NSA' with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified."

Whats the target?

The answer is simple -- pretty much everything that connects to the Internet. Of all the tools uncovered by WikiLeaks, Fine Dining is the one thats grabbed my attention. The name sounds like a tasty supper, but it isnt; in fact, its rather more sinister than that.It aims to provide CIA field agents who already have insider access to a target organization with hacked versions of well-known apps that they can run as a decoy, to act as a cover for data-sniffing tools that run in the background at the same time.Why is this important?Because it shows that the agency is capable of breaking into a range of devices including smartphones, TVs and chat apps and tampering with their security libraries to bypass the encryption.

Surely this makes us more secure, not less?

Not really... it simply means the attack surface from compromised phones and systems has increased exponentially --not only the CIA but also cybercriminals and other motivated entities. I readily accept that an intelligence agency is gathering intel -- and kudos to them for working to catch up with the times and investing in the right areas.What is concerning is that these toolsets are proliferating, increasingly used by governments to monitor citizens, and that more aggressive and invasive variations will result from either a release of the sources or even from clues in these documents.

The average user has no way to know if they're compromised, and even sophisticated users need to expend some effort to know. More technical details may come, but, for now, how do you know if the CIA is watching you?You don't. And to be fair it is not only the CIA you need to be worried about. All major world governments are after the bad guys for obvious reasons and their citizens for not so obvious reasons.

The silver lining?

The fact that Julian Assange has publicly stated that Wikileaks will share exploit details with the impacted vendors is a positive step (even though he has since issued demands to be met first). However, in a recent Twitter tweet survey 57 percent of the participants (out of about 52.5 thousand participants) agreed that Wikileaks should work directly with the tech vendors. The gist of Wikileaks conditions, while unclear, point to their desire to secure a 90-day deadline for vulnerability disclosure and patching.

However, whatever the reason is behind Mr Assanges demands, this prolongs the existence of unaddressed security issues that expose both businesses and individuals. If the goal is to ensure resolution of the issues found in the leaked documents, it might be better to go public with his demands and pressure the vendors that way.

Whats the impact?

On the public policy front, this Wikileak points to the increasing erosion of public safety. Despite having these tools at hand, world governments (US, UK, Germany) continue to push for encryption back doors. Equation Groups leak (NSA) late 2016 and this latest CIA leak once again prove all organizations have their OpSec issues.Backdoors, once discovered, work just as well for foreign spies, cyber-criminals and script kiddies.

Vigilance remains the default position

Todays reality is that we are being hacked and are subject to surveillance by legitimate and illegitimate entities.Their tool sets are improving, and policy makers are doing little to provide protection. We cant control most external factors, but we can mature our security awareness. For example, on the business side the traditional program content could be extended to cover employees personal technology decisions.Ultimately all users should be aware of some security awareness basis:

Finally, for allof us, this means a little paranoia goes a long way... people with situational awareness improve a companys security baseline and protect their personal privacy, implicitly decreasing the attack surface with better security decisions --- overall it is a win-win situation, for individuals and the companies they support.

In short, whoever you are, at least put up a little fight before you become a statistic.

Efe Orhun, CISSP, managing partner of Derivative Technology.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Future plc Publication. All rights reserved.

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CIA's internal hacking tools rival those of the NSA - BetaNews