Citizenfour: Inside Story of NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Captured in New Film by Laura Poitras – Video


Citizenfour: Inside Story of NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Captured in New Film by Laura Poitras
http://democracynow.org - "At this stage I can offer nothing more than my word. I am a senior government employee in the intelligence community. I hope you understand that contacting you is...

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Citizenfour: Inside Story of NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Captured in New Film by Laura Poitras - Video

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Pro-Privacy Senator Wyden on Fighting the NSA From Inside the System

Senator Ron Wyden thought he knew what was going on.

The Democrat from Oregon, who has served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence since 2001, thought he knew the nature of the National Security Agencys surveillance activities. As a committee member with a classified clearance, he received regular briefings to conduct oversight.

But when the The New York Times broke the story in late 2005 that the spy agency was engaging in warrantless wiretapping, Wyden was as surprised as the rest of us.

He was surprised again when, six months later, USA Today published a different story revealing for the first time that the NSA was secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, records that US telecoms were willingly handing over without a warrant. Two of the three identified telecoms denied the allegations, and the story quickly died. But its ghost lingered on, neither fully confirmed nor denied, haunting Wyden. It took another seven years for a document leaked in 2013 by Edward Snowden to end the speculation and finally confirm that the bulk-collection phone records program existed.

Wyden doesnt want to say when exactly he learned of the phone records program but says The New York Times story and the USA Today [piece] were both real wakeup calls. Speaking to WIRED during a recent visit to the Bay Area, he adds that it was very frustrating to have to wait seven years after the USA Today story broke for details of the program to come out.

Wyden has spent a lot of time biting his lip since those early revelations, unable to disclose what he knows but going as far as he could to drop hints over the years. In 2011, two years before the Snowden leaks, he warned fellow lawmakers that the government had devised secret interpretations of the Patriot Act to legally justify its surveillanceinterpretations dramatically different from how the public understood the law should be interpreted. Then in July 2013, as the first Snowden documents were leaking, he warned again that the public was seeing just the tip of a larger iceberg and that lawmakers were being misled by intelligence officials about their activities.

The senator hedged when asked by WIRED if the Snowden revelations have now fully exposed the iceberg, or if were still just seeing the tip. All he would say was that there are things that even he remains ignorant aboutsuch as the ways in which the government is using Executive Order 12333 to conduct overseas data collection without court oversight.

Wyden is gearing up for a battle on Capitol Hill to reform the Patriot Act, particularly Section 215, which the NSA used to authorize and justify its phone records collection program. This and other portions of the law, passed in the wake of 9/11,expire in June and are up for re-authorization.

Wyden spoke with WIRED about the difficulty of keeping mum over the years on classified matters; about his public showdown with intelligence chief James Clapper over the NSAs data collection on Americans; and about the governments use of zero-day exploits, a practice that undermines the Obama administrations assertions about the importance of securing the nations critical infrastructure systems. But one question he wouldnt answerabout allegations that US telecoms have been helping the NSA undermine foreign networks.

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Pro-Privacy Senator Wyden on Fighting the NSA From Inside the System

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NSA director speaks about private, government partnerships

By Meg Mirshak

The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle (MCT)

Published: October 24, 2014

The director of the National Security Agency said Thursday that the nations security rests on breaking down barriers between private and government sectors specializing in cyber defense.

Adm. Michael Rogers, also the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said the government alone cant protect the nations cyber infrastructure. Private industries must share their innovations, breakthroughs, needs and challenges with the NSA, and vice versa, he said.

Another challenge for us is, traditionally, in our structure as a nation, we have tried to very strongly differentiate between what is a private sector function, what is a governmental function and what is a function that really falls under national security. I would argue cyber crosses all three of those lines, Rogers said.

Rogers was the keynote speaker at the Cyber Education Summit at Georgia Regents University. More than 500 military leaders, educators, industry representatives and others convened at the J. Harold Harrison Education Commons Building.

The event aimed to educate university leaders and the community on the need for developing innovative partnerships and curriculums in cyber fields to educate the future workforce.

U.S. Cyber Command is assembling a 6,200-person workforce, some of whom will be located at Fort Gordon, where the Army Cyber Command is relocating its headquarters from the Washington, D.C., area. Fort Gordon also houses an NSA facility that employs thousands of cyber intelligence workers.

The growing workforce demands improvements to educational initiatives, Rogers said. Cyber training needs to begin in elementary and high school to ready students for post-secondary degrees.

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NSA director speaks about private, government partnerships

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Why the NSA is breaking our encryption — and why we should care | Matthew Green | TEDxMidAtlantic – Video


Why the NSA is breaking our encryption -- and why we should care | Matthew Green | TEDxMidAtlantic
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Encryption dates back to the Founding Fathers and the Bill of Rights. Now, the United States National...

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Why the NSA is breaking our encryption -- and why we should care | Matthew Green | TEDxMidAtlantic - Video

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NSA: Samsung Knox Devices Safe for Classified Info

Several Galaxy devices (and the Boeing Black phone) received NSA approval to carry classified information.

A number of Samsung mobile devices have been cleared by the National Security Agency for use by U.S. government officials.

The Galaxy S5, S4, Note 4, and Note 3 smartphones, plus the Note 10.1 tablet, among others, received NSA approval to carry classified information, provided they are running Samsung's secure Knox enterprise suite.

Boeing's self-destructing Black smartphone (not to be confused with the Blackphone) also made the list.

"The inclusion of Samsung mobile devices on the ... list proves the unmatched security of Samsung Galaxy Devices supported by the Knox platform," CEO JK Shin said in a statement. "At Samsung, we continue to address today's increasingly complex security challenges, and are committed to delivering the most reliable mobile platform satisfying the needs of professionals in all industries."

Samsung Knox, introduced last year, provides Samsung devices with a corporate controlled "container," much like BlackBerry Balance. The Department of Defense approved Knox in May 2013, and Samsung struck a deal with mobile security firm Lookout last September to bolster the security of Android devices running Knox.

By December, however, researchers found a "critical vulnerability" in Knox, which they said could enable "easy interception of data communications." The following month, Samsung said the researchers "did not identify a flaw or bug in Samsung Knox or Android, [but] a classic Man in the Middle (MitM) attack, which is possible at any point on the network to see unencrypted application data."

In May, Samsung released its Galaxy S5 smartphone with Knox 2.0; the update includes an improved user experience and new tools for SMBs.

The next month, five Knox-installed Galaxy phones and tablets received approval from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency.

Such approvals are increasingly necessary in a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) environment. Gone are the days when people had a BlackBerry for work and an iPhone or other smartphone for personal use. People don't want to carry two gadgets around, so IT departments have had to add support for more popular devices. In industries that deal with classified or sensitive information - from banking to the military - super-secure services like Knox are intended to avoid data leaks and prying eyes.

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NSA: Samsung Knox Devices Safe for Classified Info

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NSA CTO's moonlighting gig ends

Cybersecurity

Former NSA Director Keith Alexander has ended a private-sector collaboration with NSA CTO Patrick Dowd after conflict-of-interest questions were raised.

Former National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander has canceled a cybersecurity consulting agreement his firm had with the current NSA CTO after current and former intelligence officials raised questions about a possible conflict of interest.

Reuters reported the development on Oct. 21. The news wire had first revealed the relationship between NSA CTO Patrick Dowd and Alexanders firm, IronNet Cybersecurity, in an Oct. 17 report, at which time the NSA said it was reviewing the matter. Alexander, a retired Army general, stepped down as dual head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command in March.

Dowd had agreed to work as many as 20 hours per work for Alexanders firm, a deal that top NSA managers had approved. But a few days after the agreement was made public, Alexander pulled the plug on it. While we understand we did everything right," he told Reuters, "I think there's still enough issues out there that create problems for Dr. Dowd, for NSA, for my company.

Dowds prospective moonlighting for IronNet Cybersecurity turned heads on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which had asked for a copy of the NSAs internal review of the matter, Reuters reported.

A spokesperson for IronNet said the retired general was unavailable for comment. An NSA spokesperson declined to elaborate on an Oct. 17 statement saying the agency was reviewing the matter.

Alexander is the only cybersecurity specialist listed on IronNets website, which describes the Washington, D.C.-based firm as having a top-notch contract support team.

Alexanders aggressive move into the private sector raised eyebrows in a town well accustomed to the sharp swivel of the revolving door. Bloomberg News reported in June that Alexander was offering his cyber consulting services to financial firms for up to $1 million per month.

The nixed Alexander-Dowd collaboration is not the only NSA conflict-of-interest story to surface in recent weeks. The husband of Director of Signals Intelligence Teresa Shea works for a contractor that is likely seeking or already doing business with the NSA, BuzzFeed has reported.

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NSA CTO's moonlighting gig ends

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After review, NSAs CTO can no longer work part-time for agencys former chief

The private company at issue IronNet Cybersecuritywas founded by Alexander, who ran the spy agency from August 2005 until March 2014. IronNet Cybersecurity offers protection services to banks for up to $1 million per month. Patrick Dowd, the NSA's current chief technology officer, had been working with Alexander's private venture for up to 20 hours per week.

Reuters reported Tuesdaythat the deal was over."While we understand we did everything right, I think there's still enough issues out there that create problems for Dr. Dowd, for NSA, for my company," Alexander said.

It's the second potential conflict of interest surrounding the former spy chief this month. Newly released documents show that during his tenure as director, Alexander personally had thousands of dollars invested in obscure technology companies that could have financially benefited as a result of his actions running the NSA, sincethe spy agency is involved in electronic surveillance, code busting, andcomputer protection and intrusion, among other things.

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After review, NSAs CTO can no longer work part-time for agencys former chief

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