NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data, secret files reveal

The Guardian ^ | June 5 2013 | Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill

[Hojczyk]

• Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Facebook and Apple

• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," one said.

An Apple spokesman said it had "never heard" of PRISM.

[coydog]

Les sanglots longs / des violons / de l’automne /Blessent mon coeur / d’une langueur / monotone

If you’re up on your WW2 history, you know the rest. Funny what date it is today...

[43north]

So they can read my keyboard strokes as I type and tell how many times I call my wife and kids on my Verizon cellphone but they can’t keep two Chechens from blowing up the Boston Marathon or a nutjob jihadist Army shrink from killing American soldiers?

What kind of incompetent arseholes are working for the NSA?

[Flag_This]

"What kind of incompetent arseholes are working for the NSA?"

They're only incompetent if you assume they are working for our benefit.

[PieterCasparzen]

The Clapper Caper

From thehill.com... (his head was down from what I saw of the video - looked very concerned about what he was saying and there was a "pregnant pause")...

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" committee member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper during the March 12 hearing.

In response, Clapper replied quickly: "No, sir."

"There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect [intelligence on Americans], but not wittingly," the U.S. intelligence chief told Wyden and the rest of the committee.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/304009-clapper-denied-nsa-surveillance-in-us-weeks-before-verizon-tracking-program-began-#ixzz2VV8kTT5L

More from this Guardian article...



The act also gives the director of national intelligence and the attorney general power to permit obtaining intelligence information, and indemnifies internet companies against any actions arising as a result of co-operating with authorities' requests.

In short, where previously the NSA needed individual authorisations, and confirmation that all parties were outside the USA, they now need only reasonable suspicion that one of the parties was outside the country at the time of the records were collected by the NSA.

The document also shows the FBI acts as an intermediary between other agencies and the tech companies, and stresses its reliance on the participation of US internet firms, claiming "access is 100% dependent on ISP provisioning".

In the document, the NSA hails the PRISM program as "one of the most valuable, unique and productive accesses for NSA".

It boasts of what it calls "strong growth" in its use of the PRISM program to obtain communications. The document highlights the number of obtained communications increased in 2012 by 248% for Skype – leading the notes to remark there was "exponential growth in Skype reporting; looks like the word is getting out about our capability against Skype". There was also a 131% increase in requests for Facebook data, and 63% for Google.

[21twelve]

“... but they can’t keep two Chechens from blowing up the Boston Marathon...”

There is so much data out there that it is pretty tough to figure out something before hand. But, to me it was pretty amazing how quickly they had names to go with the blurry faces caught on video cameras, and the wide net they cast over their associates. It takes some type of event to get them to start looking at all of the person(s) data to put a case against them.

I wonder when a PayPal donation to Sarah Palin or the NRA will start the data search. Or a post on FreeRepu..... excuse me - there’s a knock at my door.

[bgill]

What kind of incompetent arseholes are working for the NSA?

muslim brotherhood kind.

[Piranha]

People are forgetting that this government has identified Tea Partiers, gun control advocates and other conservatives as “terrorists”. When we read that the phone spying efforts were aimed at rooting out terrorists and their networks, I do not think that the government thinks that “terrorist” means what we think it means. I think that they wanted to monitor US calling patterns to identify conservatives and their allies.

[Grampa Dave]

“Remember Echelon?”

Below is a little primer on Echelon for those who have forgotten, never knew or never cared about Echelon:

A short history of Echelon, the grandparent of Prism:
http://echelononline.free.fr/documents/dc/inside_echelon.htm

The world’s most secret electronic surveillance system has its main origin in the conflicts of the Second World War. In a deeper sense, it results from the invention of radio and the fundamental nature of telecommunications. The creation of radio permitted governments and other communicators to pass messages to receivers over transcontinental distances. But there was a penalty - anyone else could listen in. Previously, written messages were physically secure (unless the courier carrying them was ambushed, or a spy compromised communications). The invention of radio thus created a new importance for cryptography, the art and science of making secret codes. It also led to the business of signals intelligence, now an industrial scale activity.

Although the largest surveillance network is run by the US NSA, it is far from alone. Russia, China, France and other nations operate worldwide networks. Dozens of advanced nations use sigint as a key source of intelligence. Even smaller European nations such as Denmark, the Netherlands or Switzerland have recently constructed small, Echelon-like stations to obtain and process intelligence by eavesdropping on civil satellite communications.

During the 20th century, governments realised the importance of effective secret codes. But they were often far from successful. During the Second World War, huge allied codebreaking establishments in Britain and America analysed and read hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese signals. What they did and how they did it remained a cloely-guarded secret for decades afterwards. In the intervening period, the US and British sigint agencies, NSA and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) constructed their worldwide listening network.

The system was established under a secret 1947 “UKUSA Agreement,” which brought together the British and American systems, personnel and stations. To this was soon joined the networks of three British commonwealth countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Later, other countries including Norway, Denmark, Germany and Turkey signed secret sigint agreements with the United States and became “third parties” participants in the UKUSA network.

Besides integrating their stations, each country appoints senior officials to work as liaison staff at the others’ headquarters. The United States operates a Special US Liaison Office (SUSLO) in London and Cheltenham, while a SUKLO official from GCHQ has his own suite of offices inside NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, between Washington and Baltimore.

Under the UKUSA agreement, the five main English-speaking countries took responsibility for overseeing surveillance in different parts of the globe . Britain’s zone included Africa and Europe, east to the Ural Mountains of the former USSR; Canada covered northern latitudes and polar regions; Australia covered Oceania. The agreement prescribed common procedures, targets, equipment and methods that the sigint agencies would use.

Among them were international regulations for sigint security , which required that before anyone was admitted to knowledge of the arrangements for obtaining and handling sigint, they must first undertake a lifelong commitment to secrecy.

Every individual joining a UKUSA sigint organisation must be “indoctrinated” and, often “re-indoctrinated” each time they are admitted to knowledge of a specific project. They are told only what they “need to know”, and that the need for total secrecy about their work “never ceases”.

[TBP]

During the Second World War, huge allied codebreaking establishments in Britain and America analysed and read hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese signals.

And Spain used to send deliberate mistranslations of Anglo-American communications to Germany.

[TBP]

Maybe it’s not incompetence.

[TBP]

It looks like The Clapper committed perjury.

[roamer_1]

Remember Echelon?

Ain't it funny how stuff that was considered 'tinfoil hat' a decade ago is now mainstream?

...And folks just take it in stride... The frog is boiled.

[Grampa Dave]

“Spain used to send deliberate mistranslations of Anglo-American communications to Germany”

Thanks, I love the often undocumented history of the counter espionage actions.

[TBP]

One example:

When the Allies were going to meet at Casablanca (in Morocco, well within the range of German bombers), Franco sent it to Berlin as “Casa Blanca” which would be the White House. They didn’t have that kind of range.

[Grampa Dave]

“I wonder when a PayPal donation to Sarah Palin or the NRA will start the data search. Or a post on FreeRepu..... excuse me - there’s a knock at my door.”

Probably as soon as you enter the data via your keyboard.

I donate monthly to FR, and I have donated to the Swift Boat Vets, Sarah, NRA and others hated by the left wing fascists.

We know this really paranoid guy, and he believes that by not paying his bills electronically he escapes any surveillance.

I asked him if he got a monthly summary from his bank, and he said, “Yes”.

Then I asked him if that was a hand written summary with no electronics used like a spread sheet. He stopped eating his dinner with that reality call.

[Grampa Dave]

I know that the OSS did tricks like below. I didn’t realize we had friends in Spain who helped us with missinfo.

When the Allies were going to meet at Casablanca (in Morocco, well within the range of German bombers), Franco sent it to Berlin as “Casa Blanca” which would be the White House. They didn’t have that kind of range.