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The NSA cyberwarfare program, called MonsterMind, uses software to look for traffic patterns indicating possible foreign cyberattacks, according to Snowden, quoted in a lengthy profile in Wired. MonsterMind could automatically block a cyberattack from entering the U.S., then retaliate against the attackers, according to the Wired story. Snowden, when he was working as an NSA contractor, was concerned that MonsterMind could lead to misdirected counterattacks. "These attacks can be spoofed," he told Wired. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting...

The U.S. Department of Defense did not receive personal data on users of Internet privacy service Tor through a government-funded project to detect vulnerabilities, a Defense spokeswoman told Reuters on Tuesday. "This particular project was focused on identifying vulnerabilities in Tor, not to collect data that would reveal personal identities of users," said Defense Department spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Valerie Henderson, adding that the National Security Agency also did not receive data. The project was conducted by two researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute with funding from the Defense Department.

NEW YORK — Heaps of baby photos, fitness selfies, medical records and resumes are among thousands of private communications scooped up and stored by NSA spy programs. That’s according to new disclosures based on documents Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, gave to The Washington Post — disclosures that show just how easy it is for Americans’ private conversations to be swept into the spy agency’s traps. Snowden provided the Post with what it said were 160,000 intercepted conversations, including e-mails, instant messages, photographs, social network posts and other documents. The trove included messages exchanged from 2009 through...

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post. Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

The National Security Agency is making an ironic excuse for why it can’t stop deleting data evidence that could be used against it, despite receiving multiple court orders to stop – it doesn’t know how. Technology focused privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which currently has a case pending against NSA alleging the agency illegally intercepted client data, discovered through a Justice Department email slip-up last week that the agency was deleting evidence it had already been ordered to keep by multiple courts. After failing to comply with an order to retain data collected under both executive authority and Foreign Intelligence...

A federal judge has ordered the government to stop destroying National Security Agency surveillance records that could be used to challenge the legality of its spying programs in court. U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White’s ruling came at the request of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is in the midst of a case challenging NSA’s ability to surveil foreign citizen’s U.S.-based email and social media accounts. According to the EFF, the signals intelligence agency and the Department of Justice were knowingly destroying key evidence in the case by purposefully misinterpreting earlier preservation orders by multiple courts,

The head of the FBI says he understands why people worry about the scope of the government's powers, and in fact, he agrees with them. “I believe people should be suspicious of government power. I am,” Director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning. “I think this country was founded by people who were worried about government power so they divided it among three branches,” he added. In the months since Edward Snowden leaked documents detailing the country’s intelligence programs, Comey said that “it’s hard for me, sometimes, to find the space and time to talk about...

Thursday in an interview conducted at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg talked about their views of the First Amendment. Moderator Marvin Kalb questioned Scalia about whether the NSA wiretapping cloud be conceivably be in violation of the Constitution: Justice Antonin Scalia said, "No because it's not absolute. As Ruth has said there are very few freedoms that are absolute. I mean your person is protected by the Fourth Amendment but as I pointed out when you board a plane someone can pass his hands all over your body that's a terrible...

Federal systems remained vulnerable to hackers even after researchers identified the bug. Google knew about a critical flaw in Internet security, but it didn't alert anyone in the government. Neel Mehta, a Google engineer, first discovered "Heartbleed"—a bug that undermines the widely used encryption technology OpenSSL—some time in March. A team at the Finnish security firm Codenomicon discovered the flaw around the same time. Google was able to patch most of its services—such as email, search, and YouTube—before the companies publicized the bug on April 7. The researchers also notified a handful of other companies about the bug before going...

Only a fraction of the NSA's spying activities has been revealed to the public, claims German journalist Holger Stark in his new book. In an interview, he tells DW more about how the "surveillance matrix" functions. DW: You were one of the first people with access to the Snowden documents, some of which were classified as strictly confidential. What shocked you the most when reading them? Holger Stark: I was particularly fascinated by how early the NSA categorized the Internet as a medium for full-scale monitoring. There was a passage in the documents of former NSA chief Kenneth Minihan from...

US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications. The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases. Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time the use of this legal authority to search for data related to “US persons”.

Mark Zuckerberg lashed out at the government for its surveillance practices in a rant today on his Facebook page. “When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.,” Zuckerberg wrote. Zuckerberg and other major tech CEOs have called on the Obama administration to be more transparent about spying efforts. The Facebook co-founder, 29, said he vented about his concerns in a phone call to the president. “The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they’re doing,...

The latest report from the top-secret documents that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden made off with describes the agency's efforts to infect and monitor PCs much in the way ordinary hackers do. The methods aren't particularly original, but the scale of the operations is huge. Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald reported on the revelations in great detail, but the takeaway is fairly straightforward. The NSA is employing hacking tools that will sound familiar to anyone in the security field: browser exploits, man-in-the-middle attacks and plain old spam....

As part of its efforts to install malware on “millions” of computers worldwide, the National Security Agency impersonated Facebook to trick targets into downloading malicious code. “In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive,” reports The Intercept in its latest expose based on top-secret documents obtained by Edward Snowden. “[The NSA] has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take snapshots...

Last week, a little noticed clash took place on Capitol Hill involving the fundamental values underlying the First Amendment. The issue was the lawfulness of publishing the secrets that were given to reporters by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. The disputants were Cong. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and FBI Director James Comey. Rogers is the chief congressional apologist for the massive NSA spying apparatus. He is the current chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and in that capacity, he is one of the dozen members of Congress from both houses who were privy to much...

The National Security Agency "probably" collects phone records of members of Congress and their staffs, a senior Justice Department official conceded Tuesday. Deputy Attorney General James Cole buckled under questioning from multiple lawmakers during a House Judiciary Committee hearing reviewing proposals to reform the NSA's surveillance activity.

When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spy agencies have plotted how to lurk in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and other personal information, according to secret British intelligence documents. In their globe-spanning surveillance for terrorism suspects and other targets, the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have been trying to exploit a basic byproduct of modern telecommunications: With each new generation of mobile phone technology, ever greater amounts of personal data pour onto networks where spies can pick it up....

The NSA and its British counterpart are tapping popular smartphone apps such as Angry Birds to peek into the tremendous amounts of very personal data those bits of software collect -- including age, location, sex and even sexual preferences, according to new reports from the New York Times and The Guardian. Citing confidential documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the reports detail efforts to supplement data collection from cell phone carriers and smartphones by tapping into “leaky” apps themselves. “Some apps, the documents state, can share users' most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in...

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of "leaky" smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users' private information across the internet, according to top secret documents. The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users' most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences...

The White House on Thursday disputed the findings of an independent review board that said the National Security Agency’s mass data collection program is illegal and should be ended, indicating the administration would not be taking that advice. “We simply disagree with the board’s analysis on the legality of the program,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. He was responding to a scathing report from The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which said the program ran afoul of the law on several fronts. “The … bulk telephone records program lacks a viable legal foundation,” the board’s report...