Daily Archives: October 8, 2014

NSA Digging Fiber Optic Cable to my House
These look like construction workers but are actually agents of the United States National Security Agency. The high tech surveillance equipment they are burying is causing bees and birds to...

By: Garth Kiser

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NSA Digging Fiber Optic Cable to my House - Video

NSA looks to IT to lock down systems, protect privacy

The National Security Agency spent about $30 million and devoted 300 people to compliance efforts in 2013, according to the Oct. 7 report of the agency's Civil Liberties and Privacy Office.

The recent report covers signals intelligence collection for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence authorized under Executive Order 12333, and specifically the rights of U.S. persons whose data is caught up in the NSA dragnet. The NSA uses a mix of training, compliance procedures, and compartmentalization of activities as part of overall efforts to minimize exposure of data on U.S. persons to unauthorized use. From an IT perspective, NSA efforts address data privacy and insider threat concerns. The NSA is researching in an area called Private Information Retrieval with the goal of improving "data security and privacy protection by cryptographically preventing unauthorized users from accessing protected data," per the report. The research taps commercial technology to secure the computing environment, validate program activity, secure searches, and minimize harm when adverse activity is detected.

The CLPO was established in Jan. 2014 to "ensure that civil liberties and privacy protection considerations are integrated into NSA's mission activities."

Scott Belcher, president and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, was named CEO of the Telecommunications Industry Association. He will step into the newly created post Nov. 9.

Belcher's diverse management experience spans 25 years and covers both public- and private-sector roles -- including a seven year term with ITS America, four years as executive vice president and general counsel for the National Academy of Public Administration and five years as managing director for environmental affairs and associate general counsel for the Air Transport Association, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Customs and Border Protection has added a new automated broker's interface query capability to its automated commercial environment, which allows international shippers to request cargo, manifest and entry record status information on file in the ACE system. The query capability, said the agency, will be available on Oct. 18 for ABI filers.

According to CBP, the capabilities the new cargo query will provide include processing status for an ACE cargo release entry, cargo manifest details and other key shipping data. The agency has set Oct. 1, 2015, as the deadline for mandatory use of ACE for all electronic filings in its cargo processing system.

Social media giant Twitter sued the U.S. government on Oct. 7, alleging that restrictions on disclosures of the scope of government surveillance of Twitter users are unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, filed in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleged that "the U.S. government engages in extensive but incomplete speech about the scope of its national security surveillance activities as they pertain to U.S. communications providers, while at the same time prohibiting service providers such as Twitter from providing their own."

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NSA IT, a better interface for CBP, data worries and more

PALO ALTO -- A leading Senate critic of online surveillance wants the government to stop widespread spying on phone calls, texts and emails, saying the "digital dragnet" doesn't make the country safer, and only hurts the U.S. economy.

"When the actions of a foreign government threaten red-white-and-blue jobs, Washington gets up at arms. But, even today, almost no one in Washington is talking about how overly broad surveillance is hurting the U.S. economy," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in remarks prepared for a Senate Finance Committee event in Palo Alto, California on Wednesday.

Wyden convened the roundtable, which also includes Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and top corporate attorneys from Facebook and Microsoft, to discuss the economic fallout from the surveillance programs revealed last year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Tech executives and industry experts warned those revelations would hurt Silicon Valley companies by making consumers and business customers fearful that U.S. companies can't protect sensitive data from government prying. Some analysts estimated last year that U.S. tech companies could lose tens of billions of dollars in sales, particularly after European firms began marketing themselves as being more secure than U.S. competitors -- or less vulnerable to legal demands from the U.S. government.

"We're going to end up breaking the Internet," Google's Schmidt said in his opening remarks, complaining that U.S. programs have prompted some foreign governments to talk about requiring Internet data and services to be housed within their own countries. He said Germany and other nations have lost trust in America, "and it's affecting our industry very strongly."

Most of the reported impact, to date, has been anecdotal. A few companies, including Cisco and Qualcomm, have said they believe they lost some deals in China and other emerging markets because of concerns about U.S. spying. Tech startups and telecommunications companies in France and Switzerland have claimed an increase in sales to customers who are wary of U.S. providers.

It's difficult to quantify the losses because "companies don't always know about the deals that they weren't invited to be a part of," said Daniel Castro, a senior analyst at the nonprofit Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Castro estimated last year that losses to U.S. tech companies could amount to $35 billion by 2016. He said this week he believes his estimate is still valid.

Wyden has called for strict controls on the NSA and has complained that a pending reform bill, authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., doesn't go far enough to restrict so-called "back-door" or warrantless searches of emails and online communications by Americans. The Obama administration has endorsed the Leahy bill, while defending government surveillance programs as narrowly defined and necessary for tracking foreign terrorist suspects. Wyden is backing a separate bill that would increase the authority of the government's new Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

A coalition of leading online companies including Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are urging Congress to pass reform. The companies say they've also taken steps to beef up their own security measures, through encryption and other methods intended to rebuff snooping by individual hackers or government agencies.

That's put Silicon Valley at odds with federal authorities. Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced last month that he is leaving the Justice Department, has complained that recent encryption moves by Apple and Google could hinder vital law enforcement investigations.

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NSA tech spying hurts economy, senator says

PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) A leading Senate critic of online surveillance wants the government to stop widespread spying on phone calls, texts and emails, saying the "digital dragnet" doesn't make the country safer, and only hurts the U.S. economy.

"When the actions of a foreign government threaten red-white-and-blue jobs, Washington gets up at arms. But, even today, almost no one in Washington is talking about how overly broad surveillance is hurting the U.S. economy," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in remarks prepared for a Senate Finance Committee event in Palo Alto, California on Wednesday.

Wyden convened the roundtable, which also includes Google Inc. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and top corporate attorneys from Facebook and Microsoft, to discuss the economic fallout from the surveillance programs revealed last year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Tech executives and industry experts warned those revelations would hurt Silicon Valley companies by making consumers and business customers fearful that U.S. companies can't protect sensitive data from government prying. Some analysts estimated last year that U.S. tech companies could lose tens of billions of dollars in sales, particularly after European firms began marketing themselves as being more secure than U.S. competitors or less vulnerable to legal demands from the U.S. government.

Most of the reported impact, to date, has been anecdotal. A few companies, including Cisco and Qualcomm, have said they believe they lost some deals in China and other emerging markets because of concerns about U.S. spying. Tech startups and telecommunications companies in France and Switzerland have claimed an increase in sales to customers who are wary of U.S. providers.

It's difficult to quantify the losses because "companies don't always know about the deals that they weren't invited to be a part of," said Daniel Castro, a senior analyst at the nonprofit Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Castro estimated last year that losses to U.S. tech companies could amount to $35 billion by 2016. He said this week he believes his estimate is still valid.

Wyden has called for strict controls on the NSA and has complained that a pending reform bill, authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., doesn't go far enough to restrict so-called "back-door" or warrantless searches of emails and online communications by Americans. The Obama administration has endorsed the Leahy bill, while defending government surveillance programs as narrowly defined and necessary for tracking foreign terrorist suspects. Wyden is backing a separate bill that would increase the authority of the government's new Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

A coalition of leading online companies including Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are urging Congress to pass reform. The companies say they've also taken steps to beef up their own security measures, through encryption and other methods intended to rebuff snooping by individual hackers or government agencies.

That's put Silicon Valley at odds with federal authorities. Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced last month that he is leaving the Justice Department, has complained that recent encryption moves by Apple and Google could hinder vital law enforcement investigations.

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NSA Tech Spying Hurts Economy: Sen. Wyden

The Office of the National Security Adviser has called for stronger media collaboration between the media and security agencies in the ongoing counter terrorism operation in the country.

The Special Adviser to the National Security Adviser on Economic Matters, Prof. Soji, Adelaja, made the comment while representing the NSA, Sambo Dasuki, at a three-day seminar entitled Security/Media Relations in Crisis Management which held under the chairmanship of the a former Chief of Defence Staff, and Chairman of Sure-P, Gen. Martin-Luther Agwa,i in Abuja on Wednesday.

The seminar was attended by the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen Keneth Minmah, the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Usman Jibrin, Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Adesola Amosun, representatives of heads of all security and paramilitary agencies in the country.

Adelaja said the media had critical role to play in the current security challenges facing the country.

He said it was important for the media to give priority attention to need to avoid misinforming the public and promote the general interest of the people and the country.

He added that the media should take into cognisance the fact that the terrorists would always exploit the media as an instrument to communicate to the people in a bid to target the nations unity.

He said, The NSA is very excited that this meeting of the minds is happening right here is Abuja at a very critical time in the history of our nation. We know for a fact that this is a time when we are facing very significant security challenges and the media has a tremendous responsibility to discharge during this period.

We know for a fact that terrorists, part of their strategy is actually to leverage the media in communicating with the people. It is very very important that the media is diligent in its work, decipher facts from misinformation, understanding the role that they have in balancing the interest of the people, the interest of government and of course recognising that the insurgents are seeking to tear at the heart of what holds our country together.

Adelaja said while the media had done very well more was expected from them.

The media in Nigeria has done a very god job today but much more could be done. We are all learning, this issue of the insurgency is so new to us. In fact it is so new to the world. So it extremely important that we learn fast, we should understand our roles and responsibilities, not only as pressmen, media men but as citizens as we carry out our duties in informing the Nigerian people, he said.

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NSA seeks media support in counter-terrorism operations

Internet Security Threat Report 2014

You have nothing to fear from the NSA: that is unless you're from outside the United States, or you arouse the agency's suspicion by chatting to Al Qaeda. "Try not to do that," was the advice given.

The warnings come from former NSA chief General Keith Alexander, who told delegates at a security conference that the National Security Agency's activities, as described by ex-NSA sysadmin and secret-doc-leaker Edward Snowden, are just the agency doing its job.

In a speech delivered to the MIRCon 2014 conference in Washington, Alexander made no apology for the phone call metadata siphoned by the business record FISA programme run by the NSA, including data collected on Five Eyes and European allies. Such collection is part and parcel of spycraft, and in line with the agency's stated mission, he said.

"Our data's in there (NSA databases), my data's in there. If I talk to an Al Qaeda operative, the chances of my data being looked at is really good, so I try not to do that. If you don't want to you shouldn't either," he told MIRcon delegates.

"It doesn't mean that we didn't collect on key leaders around the world," he said, before referencing a hypothetical question he once asked of allied countries that indicated each spied on one another, regardless of diplomatic position.

"Nations act in nations' best interest ... we at times want to make sure a war doesn't break out [and] it is important that our political, military leaders know what is going on."

He added pointedly: "Somebody has to be in charge".

The NSA pulled about 180 numbers a year from FISA records, which Alexander said was critical to "connecting the dots" and was an act that had been "100 per cent" audited since the Snowden leaks, without fault.

To shore up his argument, he recapped the US's scuppering of a 2009 terrorist attack on the New York subway and the arrest of lead suspect Najibullah Zazi, who appeared through his phone records to have coordinated the bombing. The FBI swooped on Zazi as he transited the country based on FISA intel, Alexander said.

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Chatting to Al Qaeda? Try not to do that Ex spy chief defends post-Snowden NSA