Tag: Edward Snowden

Snowden wants to come in from the cold

Posted on March 4, 2015 by - News

snowdenUS spy agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is apparently negotiating a return to the US.
A Russian lawyer for Edward Snowden said the man who the US wanted to give the death penalty for leaking details of its spy schemes was working with American and German lawyers to return home.

Anatoly Kucherena, who has links to the Kremlin, was speaking at a news conference to present a book he has written about his client. Moscow granted Snowden asylum in 2013, which hacked off the US government no end. Apparently they had just found a nice out of the way place to dump his body after they “took him for a walk.”

“I won’t keep it secret that he … wants to return back home. And we are doing everything possible now to solve this issue. There is a group of U.S. lawyers, there is also a group of German lawyers and I’m dealing with it on the Russian side,” Kucherena said.

The United States wants Snowden to stand trial for leaking extensive secrets of electronic surveillance programs by the National Security Agency. Russia has repeatedly refused to extradite him.

Snowden has said in the past he would like to return home if he was assured he would be given a fair trial.

It is not clear what Snowden would get out of a return home. The US government still wants his blood and the only thing the US has promised so far is that it will not judicially murder him for treason.

Russian weather might be motivating Snowden to return, but being locked up and forgotten in a US jail must be a lot worse.

New Snowden documents released

Posted on January 19, 2015 by - News

Edward_SnowdenJacob Appelbaum and Laura Poitras have just published another massive collection of classified records obtained by Edward Snowden.

Many of them, published on Der Spiegel , show that the National Security Agency and its allies are methodically preparing for future wars carried out over the internet.

Der Spiegel reports that the intelligence agencies are working towards the ability to infiltrate and disable computer networks — potentially giving them the ability to disrupt critical utilities and other infrastructure.

The NSA and GCHQ think they’re so far ahead of everyone else, they’re making jokes about it.
One of the major themes from the new documents involves the ability of Five Eyes intelligence agencies to exploit the methods of its adversaries — efforts to “steal their tools, tradecraft, targets, and take.” The NSA calls this impressive capability “fourth party collection” which sounds like a 1970’s prog rock band.

NSA and GCHQ have cracked jokes about it in top-secret slide decks. In an NSA presentation titled “fourth party opportunities,” the first slide references Daniel Day-Lewis’ “I drink your milkshake” monologue from the 2007 film There Will Be Blood.  Der Spiegel says that a NSA unit traced an attack on the Department of Defence back to China and covertly listen in on future Chinese spying efforts, including one digital infiltration of the United Nations.

GCHQ can exploit “leaky mobile apps” using a tool called “BADASS.” In it, the spy agency walks through its ability to glean personal information from metadata sent between users’ devices and mobile ad networks and analytics firms.

This is data that’s not supposed to contain personally identifiable information. Several slides are titled “Abusing BADASS for Fun and Profit.” One slide boasts: “We know how bad you are at Angry Birds.”

Der Spiegel commented: “It’s absurd: as they are busy spying, the spies are spied on by other spies. In response, they routinely seek to cover their tracks or to lay fake ones instead.”

ISPs sue the spooks over network spying

Posted on July 3, 2014 by - News

snowdenISPs from the US, UK, Netherlands and South Korea with campaigners Privacy International are to sue UK spooks GCHQ for attacking their networks.

According to the BBC, it is the first time that GCHQ has faced such action and is based on allegations about government snooping made by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

What appears to have got the ISP’s goat is attacks which were outlined in a series of articles in Der Spiegel.  They claim that the Intercept, were illegal and “undermine the goodwill the organisations rely on”.

They say that Belgian telecommunications company Belgacom was targeted by GCHQ and infected with malware to gain access to network infrastructure

GCHQ and the US National Security Agency, where Snowden worked, had a range of network exploitation and intrusion capabilities, including technique that injected data into existing data streams to create connections that will enable the targeted infection of users,

The ISPs claim that the intelligence agencies used an automated system, codenamed Turbine, that allowed them to scale up network implants

German internet exchange points were targeted, allowing agencies to spy on all internet traffic coming through those nodes.

Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, said that the widespread attacks on providers and collectives undermine the trust everyone put on the internet and greatly endangers the world’s most powerful tool for democracy and free expression.

The ISPs involved in the action are UK-based GreenNet, Riseup (US), Greenhost (Netherlands), Mango (Zimbabwe), Jinbonet (South Korea), May First/People Link (US)and the Chaos Computer Club (Germany).

GCHQ insists that all its work was conducted in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that its activities were “authorised, necessary and proportionate.”