Archive for the ‘NSA’ Category

A Review of "Behind the Enigma" by John Ferris – Foreign Affairs

Given that until recently the British government refused to acknowledge the existence of its World War IIera code-breaking organization, this informative official history of the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, one of the United Kingdoms leading intelligence agencies, is remarkable. Ferriss narrative takes on the breaking of the Nazis' Enigma code at Bletchley Park during World War II and the efforts to replicate that achievement during the Cold War. GCHQ now plays a major role in all areas of cybersecurity. Its activities, along with those of the U.S. National Security Agency, were compromised when a former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, revealed them in 2013. Ferriss account avoids sensationalism. It provides a careful judgment of Bletchley Parks impact, points to how signals intelligence during the Cold War usefully illuminated the lower levels of the Soviet system, and shows GCHQs operational importance to the conduct of colonial and postcolonial conflicts, including the 1982 Falklands War.

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A Review of "Behind the Enigma" by John Ferris - Foreign Affairs

Surveillance: Types, Uses, and Abuses – The Great Courses Daily News

By Paul Rosenzweig, The George Washington University Law School

Generally, surveillance comes in three basic forms. First, there is physical surveillance, dating from the times of Alexander the Great and earlier, up to the Stasi State in post-World War II East Germany and to today. This is the traditional form of scrutiny that has always been the province of spies and intruders.

This is a transcript from the video series The Surveillance State: Big Data, Freedom, and You. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

When one thinks of physical surveillance, the first image that comes to our mind is that of an eavesdropper.

An eavesdropper could, for example, hear a conversation. Or, if he looks in a window, become a Peeping Tom, and see the subject of his surveillance. One could even contemplate surveillance of smellslike, say, the scent of burning cannabis.

As the nature of our physical environment changed, physical surveillance also evolved. The telegraph became a way to rapidly transmit messages around the globe, and governments began exploring ways to intercept those messages.

American electronic surveillance really came of age during the Cold War. It is said that for years, the CIA ran a joint electronic surveillance operation with the Chinese, in the western deserts of China, to monitor Soviet missile launches.

In the mid-1970s, the National Security Agency (NSA) conducted two programs involving electronic interceptions that have, since, proven quite controversial.

One of them, code-named SHAMROCK, involved U.S. communications companies giving the NSA access to all of the international cable traffic passing through their companies facilities. The second program, known as MINARET, created a watch list of U.S. persons whose communications were to be monitored.

To the above traditional forms of surveillance, we must add a third: the collection, and analysis, of personally identifiable data and information about individuals.

Dataveillance is an inevitable product of our increasing reliance on the Internet and global communications systems. As the available storehouse of data has grown, so have governmental and commercial efforts to use this data for their own purposes.

To further frame the context, lets take a look at two surveillance exercises.

Learn more about surveillance in America.

The key to finding Osama bin Laden came from tracking, one of his couriers: Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan. To track him, the CIA initially used sophisticated geo-location technology that helped pinpoint his cell phone location.

That allowed the CIA to determine the exact type of car that al-Kuwaiti droveit was a white SUV. Using physical and electronic surveillance, the CIA began tracking the vehicle. One day, a satellite captured images of the SUV pulling into a large concrete compound in Abbottabad. Agents used aerial surveillance to keep watch.

The residents of the Abbottabad compound were also extremely cautious. They burned their trashprobably to frustrate a search of that trash that might have yielded DNA samples of the residents.

The United States also learned that the compound lacked a phone or an Internet connection. Again, why? Almost certainly because the residents understood that phone and Internet communications could be tracked, traced, and intercepted.

It was observed that a man, who lived on the third floor, never left. He stayed inside the compound, and underneath a canopy, frustrating overhead surveillance by satellite.

In addition to satellites, the government flew an advanced stealth drone, the RQ-170, over Pakistan to eavesdrop on electronic transmissions from the compound.

The CIA made any number of efforts to identify this man. They tried to collect sewage from the compound to identify fecal matter and run a DNA analysis, but as the sewage contained the effluence of other houses, they couldnt isolate a good sample.

At one point, the CIA got a Pakistani doctor to pretend he was conducting a vaccination program. Nurses tried to get inside the compound and vaccinate the children, which would have allowed them to get a DNA sample, but again without success. To get a closer look, CIA spies also moved into a house on the property next door.

It has been reported that this surveillance operation cost so much money that the CIA had to ask for supplemental funding from Congressfunding that it, of course, received.

In short, during the hunt for bin Laden, the United States employed physical and electronic surveillance and sophisticated data analysis. The result, from an intelligence standpoint, was a success.

By now, most Americans are pretty familiar with the long lines, thorough pat-downs, and X-ray inspections that are part of the process.

But that physical screening comes at the back end of a process that begins much earlier when you first make a reservation to fly. The Transportation Security Administrations (TSAs) security directives require airline passengers to present identification when they make a reservation.

Later, if youre selected for secondary screening, you and your bags will be taken out of line for additional scrutiny. And why is it that we ask for a passengers name along with gender and date of birth?

Learn more about hacking and surveillance.

The reason is because that data is used for a form of dataveillance-screening, known as Secure Flight. Your name and date of birth are checked against a terrorist screening database.

Screenings include flights that overfly but dont land in the continental U.S. This was a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, created by the Congress and the president after the September 2001 terror attacks to identify security lapses, and ways to strengthen U.S. defenses.

The Secure Flight program has not, so far as is publicly known, ever actually spotted a terrorist.

There are ways one might legally challenge this kind of surveillance. In 2006, a traveler named John Gilmore challenged the TSAs identification requirement. He asserted that he had a right to travel and that his right to travel included the right to do so anonymously without providing identification.

The federal Ninth Circuit court of appeals agreed, provisionally, that he had a right to travel. But, it said that if he wanted to travel by air, then Gilmore was consenting to the requirement that he provide identification before boarding the plane. If he didnt want to do that, he was free to travel by some other means.

The story doesnt end there, however. For years, ten U.S. citizens were unable to fly to, or from, the United Statesor even over American airspacebecause they were on the governments top-secret No Fly List.

They were never told why theyd made to the list, they didnt have much chance of getting off of it, either. In June 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of a disabled Marine veteran named Ayman Latif, who was living in Egypt, and the nine others.

Latif won the case. The court concluded that he did have a right to challenge his inclusion on the no-fly list, and was entitled to a process by which he could seek to be removed from it.

It didnt help the governments case that Latif had probably been put on the list by mistake, and should have been removed long before his lawsuit came to court.

The above polar cases bring us full circle to a set of concepts that we need to think about: the balance between transparency and effectiveness.

Some of the physical and traditional forms of surveillance include eavesdropping, looking at the object, or prying over someone, and using smell to do surveillance.

The CIA used drones, satellites, and physical surveillance in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Dataveillance is a type of surveillance that includes the collection, and analysis, of personally identifiable data and information about individuals.

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Surveillance: Types, Uses, and Abuses - The Great Courses Daily News

Freezing Weather Creates Crisis in Reality Winner’s Texas Prison – The Intercept

As millions of people across Texas suffered from power and water outages during extreme cold from a winter storm this week, women at the federal prison in Fort Worth where National Security Agency whistleblower Reality Winner is imprisoned faced alarming conditions. The detained women were forced to literally take matters into their own hands in a disgusting way.

Winner told family and a friend that incarcerated women at her prison took one for the team and used their hands to scoop feces from overflowing toilets that hadnt been flushed due to the prolonged water outage.

Reality told me that the toilets stopped working because there wasnt any water and things got disgusting really fast.

Reality told me that the toilets stopped working because there wasnt any water and things got disgusting really fast, said Brittany Winner, who spoke with her sister Reality by video chat. Some inmates put on rubber gloves to scoop out the shit and throw it away to get rid of it because of the smell.

Many of the women, like Winner, are at Federal Medical Center Carswell because they have chronic medical needs that the prison, a medical detention center, is tasked with treating. But the toilet incident was one of several unsanitary and unhealthy hardships that the women endured, according to advocates and a detailed press report, during a week of extreme weather that has left dozens dead nationwide. While the frigid prison was dealing with internal temperatures so cold that one incarcerated woman told a local reporter that her hands were blue and shaking, it was also still contending with an ongoing Covid-19 outbreak that has already taken the lives of six women incarcerated there.

In a statement, the Bureau of Prisons said interruptions to service were minor. Similar to many of those in the surrounding community and across the state of Texas dealing with heat and water issues during the recent winter storm, the Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswellexperienced minor power, heat, and hot water issues that affected the main supply channels, Emery Nelson, a bureau public affairs official, said in an email. However, back-up systems were in place and FMC Carswell maintained power, heat, and hot water until the main supply issues were resolved.Nelson also said incarceratedpeople at Carswell had access to potable water with no disruptions or shortages, to include hot water for showers, and the ability to flush toilets.

A report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram this week said that the medical portion of the prison the hospital facilities appeared to maintain heat, but the newspaper also collected accounts from the housing units that matched thosegiven by Winners advocates: shortages of hot water, loss of heat, and issues with waste management.

Sufferingwas widespread across Texas, where local authorities have raised alarm over people so desperate for warmth that they used cars and charcoal grills to heat their homes and suffered carbon monoxide poisoning. To Winners advocates, the crisis inside the prison felt like the latest unjust blow for an incarcerated person who, like many across the United Statess sprawling prison system, could have been released to home confinement long ago when the government made a halfhearted effort to reduce the federal prison population in the early days of the pandemic. Prosecutors involved in Winners case opposed the policy and successfully argued to keep the whistleblower behind bars, where she eventually was infected withCovid-19.

These women theyre trapped, Realitys mother, Billie Winner-Davis, said of the sub-freezing temperatures in Fort Worth this week. They cant escape this. They cant do something to better their situation at all.

Winners family and friends first heard from the whistleblower about winter storm conditions in her prison on Monday, when she told them that water had been intermittently off since Saturday afternoon. This meant the women detained inside not only couldnt flush toilets, but that they also couldnt wash their hands or drink from water fountains, Winner told them.

She was so dehydrated and so thirsty, Winners friend and advocate Wendy Meer Collins said. Collins added that Winner was so desperate to shower that she had given herself what she called a birdbath using ice cubes from a machine.

In addition to the water shortages, the furnace appeared to be off or insufficiently functioning for much of the week, even though the prison appeared to mostly maintain power, according to Winners advocates and the report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which said women put socks on their hands and guards wore winter coats and hats indoors to stay warm. The Bureau of Prisons said there was a maintenance period in the prison and that internal temperatures were monitored but did not specify what needed to be maintained nor when it wasfixed.

During the days of sub-freezing temperatures, women at FMC Carswell needed to walk in ice and snow outdoors to go to the cafeteria to get meals, according to Winner-Davis and Collins. The women dont even have the option to huddle together to stay warm, Collins said, as Winner has been punished in the past for hugging a fellow incarcerated person in violation of the prisons unauthorized contact policy. (Despite saying that the prison had maintained heat, the Bureau of Prisons also told The Intercept that it distributed extra blankets to incarcerated women.)

By the time Winner spoke to her mother on Thursday morning, she told her that heat had been recently restored in their building.

The miserable week inside the cold prison spurred a new round of calls for relief from supporters who back the year-old clemency campaign for Winner, their eyes now on the new administration.

Winner, who blew the whistle on threats to election security, is currently serving the longest prison sentence of its kind under the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law used in recent years to send journalists sources to prison, even as comparable defendants have simply gotten probation for mishandling classified information.

The government itself acknowledges that Winners intent was to send the document she leaked to journalists and therefore warn the American public, rather than use it for personal gain. The NSA report detailed phishing attacks by Russian military intelligence on local U.S. election officials and was published in a June 2017 article by The Intercept. (The Press Freedom Defense Fund, another First Look Media company, supportedWinners legal defense.)

Her clemency campaign has drawn a diverse array of political supporters, including the President George W. Bush-era secrecy czar responsible for overseeing classification procedures, who wrote an op-ed calling for Winner to be Bidens first pardon, as well as a prominent congressional Libertarian who said using the Espionage Act to prosecute her was unjust and abusive.

Winner was the first national security whistleblower prosecuted by the last administration, and Collins believes that a Democratic White House, whose voters are motivated by issues of election integrity and security, should signal a clear break with the 45th presidency and allow Winner to go home.

This is Trumps political prisoner, and its time to let her out, Collins said. Shes served more time than she ever should have anyway.

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Freezing Weather Creates Crisis in Reality Winner's Texas Prison - The Intercept

Cruising in Northumberland, Pennsylvania – Gays-Cruising.com

If you are gay and you want to practise cruising and to have casual NSA encounters in public places in Northumberland in an anonymous way, here you can find spots such as beaches, parks, forests and other spaces next to urban areas, as well as every kind of public toilets and rest areas of highways where you can practise cruising in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.

Below we show a Northumberland cruising map with all cruising areas and spots that shared our gay community. Click on the map markers for details of each spot.

In the tab for each zone you will find a location map with directions to the place: driving, walking, public transport or bike. You can vote the area and leave a comment for the rest of the community guys know your opinion, and if you want people to know you're in the area, do not hesitate to check in.

To avoid sexually transmitted diseases, always use a condom. When finished, remember to collect everything (condom wrappers, tissues, etc.) and leave the environment clean.

In many cruising areas there are malicious people who take the opportunity to steal valuables. Therefore, when you go to practise cruising, try not to carry money, jewelry, etc., and if possible try to be accompanied.

Not everyone in cruising areas is looking for the same thing as you. If they tell you NO, respect and do not disturb, just as you'd like to be respected.

Remember that it is totally forbidden to have sex with children under 18. Before you do anything, check that the person you're flirting with is of legal age.

If at any time while you practice cruising you suffer some form of aggression, intimidation, theft or extortion, report it to the local authorities. Therefore, it is always good to get some information about your cruisingmate: name, description, license plate, etc.

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Cruising in Northumberland, Pennsylvania - Gays-Cruising.com

Smartphone: To prevent being tracked, here are 5 essential tips from the NSA – Sprout Wired

When it comes to clarity, the advice of the NSA, the US intelligence agency, is official. The latter has published a series of recommendations on its site, warning against the risks associated with the location of smartphones, tablets and computers. Initially for their agents, these advice can be applied to everyone.

Location data is transmitted continuously

The simple fact of turning on your mobile device exposes your location data, recalls the NSA. And ISPs who collect it can pass it on, and in some cases even sell this data.

Simply connecting to a cellular network can allow someone with the necessary equipment to track you. Wi-Fi access points and Bluetooth sensors can also be used to track a persons activities.

Geolocation data can be extremely valuable and must be protected, the NSA says. They can reveal details about the number of users in a location, user and supply movements, daily routines (user and organization), and uncover otherwise unknown associations between users and locations.

Tip: Turn off location in settings.

Closing the location is not enough

The NSA then specifies that disabling the location option on your phone does not guarantee that you will be immune to any tracking.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that turning off location services on a mobile device does not turn off GPS, and does not significantly reduce the risk of location risk, the agency explains. Disabling location services only limits access to GPS and location data by applications .

Tip: Use a virtual private network (VPN) to help hide your location.

Your smartphone can track you even without mobile data

When mobile data is cut, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices can be carried to track. And the option to turn off Bluetooth does not always guarantee that this is indeed the case, warns the NSA.

And even if you turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, location data can be saved and transmitted once turned back on.

Tip: Turn off all wireless connections, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, when youre not using them.

Risk is not limited to mobile devices

Smartphones, tablets, and laptops are not the only ones that can provide location data.

Smart watches, fitness bracelets, as well as all connected objects, such as those related to the home (alarms, thermostat, connected lamps, etc.) are likely to share information related to your location.

And securing them is not always easy, most of these items do not offer the option of muting the location. In addition, most automatically store this data in the cloud.

Tip: Only use linked items after taking into account the inherent risks related to your privacy.

Applications and social networks present risks

Even if they are verified and downloaded through an official platform (AppStore, Google Play ), some applications can collect information, collect and reveal a persons location Can.

Many applications ask for permission to collect data that is not necessary for their operation.

Similarly, social networks are a major risk, especially if many possible settings are not properly configured. Pictures posted on these may contain metadata that may allow anyone to locate the location where they were taken. And the photos themselves may indicate something.

Tip: Give the application as few permissions as possible, and be careful what you share on social media.

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Smartphone: To prevent being tracked, here are 5 essential tips from the NSA - Sprout Wired