Dutch newspaper reports NSA infected more than 50,000 networks with malware globally

NSA spreading malware to further goals for more power

By Steve Ragan
CSO Online
November 25, 2013

Over the weekend, NRC Handelsblad, a Dutch newspaper, reported that the NSA has infected more than 50,000 networks with malware globally. This report was followed by one in the New York Times, detailing the lengths the NSA is willing to go to in order to obtain more power.

On Saturday, the NRC published a heavily redacted slide, taken from information released by Edward Snowden, that shows the scope of the NSA's Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) efforts. According to slide, more than 50,000 networks worldwide are infected with the agency's malware. However, given that the slide dates to 2012, it's possible that the numbers are actually higher.

Additional proof that the data in the slide is legitimate, the NRC said, comes from the reports earlier this summer when Belgacom announced that the GCHQ (the British partner of the NSA) has infected their network and installed malware. The GCHQ was able to do this by infecting the systems used by employees as they visited a fake LinkedIn page.

According to the NRC report, supporting claims from the Washington Post as well as reports from Foreign Policy, the NSA's malware campaign was assigned to TAO (Tailored Access Operations), a department within the agency that employs more than 1,000 hackers. According to the Washington Post, CNE-operations such as the ones recently confirmed have been going on since 1998.

The NSA declined to comment on the NRC's story, or questions related to the redacted slide. Experts who have speculated on the story say that based on the numbers and the data within the slide, it appears that the NSA is targeting Telcos, banks, and ISPs.

As news of the NSA's malware operations spread, the New York Times published a report outlining the NSA's plans to expand its authority with a rapid pace. Like the slides published by NRC, the data in the Times' report comes form 2012, and detail a four-year plan to update and increase their intelligence gathering operations by intercepting foreign and domestic communications.

According to the document, the NSA plans to defeat the cybersecurity practices of adversaries in order to acquire the data the agency needs from "anyone, anytime, anywhere."

Days before the story broke in the Times, the Center for Democracy & Technology, delivered a letter to Congress that called for reforms to U.S. intelligence surveillance practices. The letter, signed by organizations representing a wide range of stakeholders, noted that both the civil society and tech companies have come together to oppose bulk collection of private communications and data.

"Recent disclosures regarding intelligence surveillance activity raise important concerns about the privacy and security of communications. This surveillance has already eroded trust that is essential to the free flow of information and to the exercise of human rights and civil liberties both in the United States and around the world," the letter said.

Source: 

http://www.csoonline.com/article/743710/nsa-spreading-malware-to-further-goals-for-more-power

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Who are the Real Terrorists?

Latest Snowden leak reveals NSA’s goal to continually expand surveillance abilities

Russian Times
November 23, 2013

In a mission statement last year the US National Security Agency described how it would continue to expand its power and assert itself as the global leader in clandestine surveillance, according to a new report based on the Edward Snowden leaks.

The five-page document brought to light Friday by the New York Times reveals the intelligence agency’s intention to “aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.” The spy agency sought the ability to trace “anyone, anywhere, anytime,” according to its 2012 mission statement.

Dated February 2012, the memo was written after PRISM and many of the other programs that have since outraged the public were implemented. It describes a four-year plan to push the NSA past its current status and into “the golden age of SIGINT,” code for signals intelligence.

“The interpretation and guidelines for applying our authorities, and in some cases the authorities themselves, have not kept pace with the complexity of the technology and target environments, or the operational expectations levied on NSA’s mission.”

The document, given the name “SIGINT Strategy 2012-2016,” falls short of explaining exactly how it would go about assuming more power, but does make clear that the so-called “culture of compliance” would not give up any concessions. The paper indicates NSA leaders communicated the need for more power in order to effectively carry out its duties.

NSA officials did note their plan to subvert cyber-security techniques so intelligence analysts are able to extract information on “anyone, anytime, anywhere.” Using both technical and human intelligence gathering methods, the mission statement sought to “revolutionize” data collection by influencing “the global commercial encryption market through commercial relationships” with more foreign partners.

This memo surfaces as a number of US lawmakers have announced their support for bills that would curb the NSA’s power and possibly grant the agency less funding. Amid allegations that the NSA monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, the international community has decried the NSA’s activity, with a number of nations vowing to reconsider their relations with the US.

Yet senior intelligence officials who spoke to the Times about the mission statement said its goals were plain and reasonable. One source pointed to the legal stipulation requiring the NSA, if it had been monitoring a terrorism suspect overseas, to seek legal approval in order to continue surveillance if that suspect enters the US.

“NSA’s SIGINT strategy is designed to guide investments in future capabilities and close gaps in current capabilities,” the agency said in a statement released in response to the mission statement’s publication. “In an ever-changing technology and telecommunications environment, NSA tries to get in front of the issues to better fulfill the foreign-intelligence requirements of the US government.”

To meet such requirements, the NSA notes that it hopes to rely less on installing so-called back door policies on messaging services like Google and Facebook. Instead, one of its goals is to “continue to invest in the industrial base and drive the state of the art for high performance computing to maintain pre-eminent cryptanalytic capability for the nation.”

Instead of tapering off, as the public and some lawmakers have hoped, intelligence officials make it clear they intended to “identify new access, collection and exploitation methods by leveraging global business trends in data and communication services.”

Source:
http://on.rt.com/6cf2x0
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Trans-Pacific Partnership Threatens a Regime of Corporate Global Governance

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), branded as a trade agreement and negotiated in unprecedented secrecy, is actually an enforceable transfer of sovereignty from nations and their people to foreign corporations.

As of December 2012, eleven countries were involved—Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States—with the possibility of more joining in the future due to inclusion of an unusual “docking agreement.”

While the public, US Congress, and the press are locked out, 600 corporate advisors are meeting with officials of signatory governments behind closed doors to complete text for the world’s biggest multinational trade agreement, which aims to penalize countries that protect their workers, consumers, or environment.

Leaked text from the thirty-chapter agreement has revealed that negotiators have already agreed to many radical terms, granting expansive new rights and privileges for foreign investors and their enforcement through extrajudicial “investor-state” tribunals. Through these, corporations would be given special authority to dispute laws, regulations, and court decisions. Foreign firms could extract unlimited amounts of taxpayer money as compensation for “financial damages” to “expected future profits” caused by efforts to protect domestic finance, health, labor, environment, land use, and other laws they claim undermine their new TPP privileges.

There is almost no progressive movement or campaign whose goals are not threatened, as vast swaths of public-interest policy achieved through decades of struggle are targeted. Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, reported that once this top-secret TPP is agreed to, its rules will be set in stone. No rule can be changed without all countries’ consent to amend the agreement. People of the world will be locked into corporate domination.

Sources:
Kevin Zeese, “Obama’s ‘Employment Creation’ Program: Massive Outsourcing of American Jobs,” Global Research, September 10, 2012,http://www.globalresearch.ca/obamas-employment-creation-program-massive-outsourcing-of-american-jobs/5304005.

Lori Wallach, “Breaking ’08 Pledge, Leaked Trade Doc Shows Obama Wants to Help Corporations Avoid Regulations,” Democracy Now!, June 14, 2012,http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/14/breaking_08_pledge_leaked_trade_doc.

Andrew Gavin Marshall, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership: This Is What Corporate Governance Looks Like,” Truthout, November 20, 2012, http://truth-out.org/news/item/12857-the-trans-pacific-partnership-this-is-what-corporate-governance-looks-like.

Lori Wallach, “Can a ‘Dracula Strategy’ Bring Trans-Pacific Partnership into the Sunlight?,” Yes! Magazine, November 21, 2012, http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/can-dracula-strategy-bring-trans-pacific-partnership-into-sunlight.

Student Researcher: Kyndace Safa (College of Marin) 
Community Researcher: Tricia Boreta 
Faculty Evaluators: Susan Rahman (College of Marin); Andy Lee Roth (Sonoma State University)

http://www.projectcensored.org/3-trans-pacific-partnership-threatens-regime-corporate-global-governance/ 
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