Daily Archives: May 13, 2014

May 12, 2014 12:59pm

The U.S. government kill[s] people based on metadata, but it doesnt do that with the trove of information collected on American communications, according to former head of the National Security Agency Gen. Michael Hayden.

Hayden made the remark after saying he agreed with the idea that metadata the information collected by the NSA about phone calls and other communications that does not include content can tell the government everything about anyone its targeting for surveillance, often making the actual content of the communication unnecessary.

[That] description is absolutely correct. We kill people based on metadata. But thats not what we do with this metadata, said Hayden, apparently referring to domestic metadata collection. Its really important to understand the program in its entirety. Not the potentiality of the program, but how the program is actually conducted.

So NSA gets phone records, gets them from the telephone company, been getting them since October of 2001 from one authority or another, puts them in a lockbox and under very strict limitations can access the lockbox, Hayden said and then described a hypothetical situation in which a number connected to a terrorist could be run against the metadata already collected to help investigators find additional leads in the name of national security.

What it cannot do are all those things that allows someone to create your social network, your social interactions, your patterns of behavior. One could make the argument that could be useful, [or] that could be illegal, but its not done, he said. In this debate, its important to distinguish what might be done with what is being done.

Hayden, who served as NSA head from 1999 to 2005 followed by a stint running the CIA from 2006 to 2009, made the remarks early last month while discussing the NSAs mass domestic and foreign surveillance programs at Johns Hopkins Universitys Foreign Affairs Symposium.

David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who was Haydens foil in the discussion, this weekend wrote in the New York Review of Books that Haydens remarks were evidence that arguments from government officials that there is little threat to privacy from metadata collection is misleading. In the April discussion, Cole noted President Barack Obamas remarks to reporters last June, as media reports based on leaks by from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden were just beginning, in which he said, Nobody is listening to your telephone calls.

They are not looking at peoples names, theyre not looking at content, Obama said then. But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism.

Six months later, an expert review panel set up by the White House recommended the government cease the mass collection of metadata on Americans.

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Ex-NSA Chief: 'We Kill People Based on Metadata'

The agency intercepts devices and installs software that gives them access, an upcoming book says

Allegations that the NSA installed surveillance tools in U.S.-made network equipment, if true, could mean enterprises have more to worry about than just government spying.

While the U.S. government warned router buyers that the Chinese government might spy on them through networking gear made in China, the U.S. National Security Agency was doing that very thing, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper Monday.

The NSA physically intercepted routers, servers and other network equipment and installed surveillance tools before slapping on a factory seal and sending the products on to their destinations, according to the report, which is extracted from an upcoming book by Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who last year helped expose sensitive documents uncovered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

With the tools it installs, the NSA can gain access to entire internal networks, the story said. For example, in a report on its use of the technology, the NSA said an embedded beacon was able to call back to the agency and "provided us access to further exploit the device and survey the network," Greenwald wrote.

The new charge vastly expands the scope of alleged NSA spying beyond the interception of traffic across the Internet, said Ranga Krishnan, a technology fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. As an example, he pointed to reports from the Snowden documents that the NSA had tapped into Google's own fiber network among its data centers, where the company hadn't encrypted the traffic at all.

"That's how most organizations function," Krishnan said. "So once you're within the company's router, you have access to all that data that's unencrypted."

In addition, any security hole that a government installs could open up the network to attacks by others, he added.

"If you have made something vulnerable ... somebody else could discover that and very well use it," Krishnan said.

The House Intelligence Committee and other arms of the U.S. government have warned for years that networking equipment from vendors in China, namely Huawei Technologies and ZTE, poses a threat to U.S. service providers because of possible links between those companies and the Chinese government.

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Reported NSA backdoors might open up networks to more threats

hide captionGlenn Greenwald in April, arriving in the U.S. for the first time since documents were disclosed to him by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.

Glenn Greenwald in April, arriving in the U.S. for the first time since documents were disclosed to him by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.

Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who helped to break stories about mass surveillance in the United States, is making more revelations in a new book coming out Tuesday.

In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition, Greenwald says one of the more "shocking" things he's found is that the National Security Agency physically intercepted shipments of computer hardware, like routers, switches and servers, to outfit them with surveillance equipment.

Once they were done, they repackaged the hardware with "factory sealing" and sent it on its way to unsuspecting companies.

Greenwald says that for years, the United States has been warning global companies about buying Chinese products because they could be outfitted with surveillance hardware. This revelation, Greenwald says, exposes "an extreme form of gross hypocrisy" on the part of the U.S. government.

Of course, all of this reporting is rooted in a massive cache of classified documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Greenwald, along with reporters from The Guardian and The Washington Post, have used those documents to provide details on the NSA's use of mass surveillance. The reporting has led to congressional hearings, sweeping reports and an effort from President Obama to rein in some of the NSA's ability to collect metadata on the phone calls of all Americans.

Greenwald says no one disputes that the NSA should be trying to intercept communications sent by al-Qaida and its affiliates, but that the system has grown too powerful.

The problem, he tells Steve Inskeep, is that "a system has been built without our knowledge that has incredible dangers embedded within and very few controls."

One example Greenwald writes about in his book, No Place to Hide, is about the NSA trying to make sure it could tap into conversations that were originating from airplanes.

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Glenn Greenwald: NSA Believes It Should Be Able To Monitor All Communication

hide captionPresident George Bush examines the devastation at the Pentagon with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 12, 2001, a day after a hijacked airliner slammed into the building.

President George Bush examines the devastation at the Pentagon with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 12, 2001, a day after a hijacked airliner slammed into the building.

When stories began to emerge about the U.S. government's massive surveillance of Americans' phone and Internet communications, it was no surprise to a group of analysts who had left the National Security Agency soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. Those analysts, who'd worked on systems to detect terrorist threats, left in part because they saw the NSA embarking on a surveillance program they regarded as unconstitutional and unnecessary.

Two of those analysts, Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe, are interviewed in a Frontline documentary called United States of Secrets, which airs Tuesday night.

Binney was a cryptomathematician who worked as technical director of the NSA's World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group.

Wiebe was a senior analyst who was awarded the NSA's Meritorious Civilian Service Award, the agency's second-highest honor.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Binney led a team that created a program called "Thin Thread," which could gather and analyze enormous amounts of Internet and telephone traffic and encrypt the identities of people in the U.S. so their privacy was protected.

Both Binney and Wiebe left the agency in 2001 after working there for decades and have publicly criticized the course the NSA has taken. Both were also eventually targeted in a leak investigation by the FBI that led to their homes being raided. After they left the NSA, they joined others in filing a complaint with the inspector general of the Defense Department about the agency's use of private contractors to develop a surveillance system the analysts regarded as expensive, ineffective and abusive of citizens' constitutional rights.

Binney, Wiebe and the documentary's director, Michael Kirk, spoke with Fresh Air's Dave Davies.

On the legality of the Bush White House approving new NSA measures after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks

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'Frontline' Doc Explores How Sept. 11 Created Today's NSA