Surveillance

NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives

February 18, 2015 Joseph Menn, www.reuters.com Educate! NSA, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives. That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations. Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria.

‘Privacy Critical To Human Freedom’

February 14, 2015 John Queally, www.commondreams.org Educate! Freedom, NSA, Privacy, Snowden, Surveillance

During a unique conversation hosted by the New School and the New York Times on Thursday, the three people most responsible for bringing the story of mass global surveillance programs orchestrated by the U.S. National Security Agency were brought together for the first time since they first met in a Hong Kong hotel in 2013. Filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald sat with the New York Times media columnist David Carr on stage while the whistleblower himself, Edward Snowden, appeared via videolink from Russia where he remains under asylum protection. "Yes, governments possess extraordinary powers—but at the end of the day there are more of us than there are of them." —Edward Snowden

FBI Director Acknowledges Racial Bias Of Police

February 13, 2015 Ben Mathis-Lilley, www.slate.com Educate! FBI, police brutality, Racial Justice, Surveillance

Speaking at Georgetown University today, FBI Director James Comey said that American law enforcement officers can be racially biased and have a history of discriminating against black citizens—and asserted that the FBI needs to do a better job collecting comprehensive data on police killings and other uses of force against suspects nationwide. Comey’s remarks acknowledged that authorities have often protected the interests of white Americans by discriminating against blacks: “At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups.”

FBI Monitored African-American Writers For Decades

February 10, 2015 Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com Educate! FBI, Privacy, Racial Justice, Surveillance

Newly declassified documents from the FBI reveal how the US federal agency under J Edgar Hoover monitored the activities of dozens of prominent African American writers for decades, devoting thousands of pages to detailing their activities and critiquing their work. Academic William Maxwell first stumbled upon the extent of the surveillance when he submitted a freedom of information request for the FBI file of Claude McKay. The Jamaican-born writer was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, author of the sonnet If We Must Die, supposedly recited by Winston Churchill, and Maxwell was preparing an edition of his complete poems. When the file came through from the FBI, it stretched to 193 pages and, said Maxwell, revealed “that the bureau had closely read and aggressively chased McKay” – describing him as a “notorious negro revolutionary” – “all across the Atlantic world, and into Moscow”.

Samsung’s Smart TV Can Spy On You Even When Off

February 10, 2015 Thomas Newton, www.recombu.com Educate! Media, Privacy, Surveillance

Is your Samsung smart TV spying on you? Korean connected telly maker Samsung has been embroiled in a micro-scandal for allegedly failing to protect the privacy of its customers. Samsung smart TV sets like the £850-ish UE50H6400 feature voice controls that let you change the channel, search for new TV shows and browse the interface without having to use that clunky old remote. But much like voice controls on phones, smart TV voice-activated commands are a little rusty. In our experience, voice activated controls don’t respond that well and most of the time it’s simply been easier for us to reach for the good old-fashioned remote control. Like any manufacturer worth its salt, Samsung isn’t content to let the situation stand as it is and so it’s constantly striving to improve its voice recognition software.

Newsletter: We Will Not Back Down

February 7, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Climate Change, Criminal Justice and Prisons, FERC, Police abuse, Surveillance, TPP, TTIP

This week we focus on the grim reality that government agencies and corporations work together to exploit people and planet and suppress dissent. This knowledge can be overwhelming at times to those who are striving for a more peaceful and just world, especially for those who are labeled as ‘terrorists’ by the ones who are violent. In this work, our hearts are fortified by the love demonstrated in activist communities, by the growing number of communities who are standing up to the security state and corporate domination and by the tangible victories occurring each week. When you see the power structure stiffen its back and get abusive, remember that is because we are building power – and they fear the people having power. This is the time to escalate and show them that we will not back down.

Court: US-UK Surveillance Scheme Illegal For 7 Years

February 7, 2015 Owen Bowcott, www.theguardian.com Educate! NSA, Privacy, Snowden, Surveillance

The regime that governs the sharing between Britain and the US of electronic communications intercepted in bulk was unlawful until last year, a secretive UK tribunal has ruled. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) declared on Friday that regulations covering access by Britain’s GCHQ to emails and phone records intercepted by the US National Security Agency (NSA) breached human rights law. Advocacy groups said the decision raised questions about the legality of intelligence-sharing operations between the UK and the US. The ruling appears to suggest that aspects of the operations were illegal for at least seven years – between 2007, when the Prism intercept programme was introduced, and 2014.

Seven Lessons From How Police Crushed Occupy

February 4, 2015 Curtis Bunn, www.atlantablackstar.com Strategize! FBI, Occupy, Police, Surveillance

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), via the Freedom of Information Act, obtained FBI documents revealing that the FBI considered the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began Sept. 17, 2011, a terrorist threat — even as they pointed out that the organizers called for peaceful protests and did “not condone the use of violence.” According to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security treated protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.” The perception of Occupy Wall Street as “terrorism” engineered extreme measures taken to undermine the group’s peaceful protests, including constant spying. FBI agents had OWS in their crosshairs as early as a month before the protesters took up camp at New York’s Zuccotti Park.

FOIA Shows US Plans For Martial Law In 1950s

January 31, 2015 Michael Morisy, www.muckrock.com Educate! FBI, History, Surveillance

Starting on April 19, 1956, the federal government practiced and planned for a near-doomsday scenario known as Plan C. When activated, Plan C would have brought the United States under martial law, rounded up over ten thousand individuals connected to "subversive" organizations, implemented a censorship board, and prepared the country for life after nuclear attack. There was no Plan A or B. The first known mention of this strategy was a memo released by the FBI to MuckRock under a Freedom of Information Act request. It is an invitation to the Bureau to attend an afternoon meeting on April 19, 1956, organized by the Office of Defense Mobilization.

Canada Casts Global Surveillance Dragnet

January 29, 2015 Ryan Gallagher, www.firstlook.org Educate! Canada, Privacy, Surveillance

Canada’s leading surveillance agency is monitoring millions of Internet users’ file downloads in a dragnet search to identify extremists, according to top-secret documents. The covert operation, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, taps into Internet cables and analyzes records of up to 15 million downloads daily from popular websites commonly used to share videos, photographs, music, and other files. The revelations about the spying initiative, codenamed LEVITATION, are the first from the trove of files provided by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to show that the Canadian government has launched its own globe-spanning Internet mass surveillance system.

How The CIA Made Google

January 28, 2015 Nafeez Ahmed, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! CIA, Google, NSA, Surveillance, Technology

The project report, authored by Brin’s supervisor Prof. Ullman, goes on to say under the section ‘Indications of Success’ that “there are some new stories of startups based on NSF-supported research.” Under ‘Project Impact,’ the report remarks: “Finally, the google project has also gone commercial as Google.com.” Thuraisingham’s account therefore demonstrates that the CIA-NSA-MDDS program was not only funding Brin throughout his work with Larry Page developing Google, but that senior US intelligence representatives including a CIA official oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded. Google, then, had been enabled with a “significant” amount of seed-funding and oversight from the Pentagon: namely, the CIA, NSA, and DARPA.

Game Plan To End Global Mass Surveillance

January 27, 2015 Rainey Reitman, www.eff.org Strategize! NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

For years, we’ve been working on a strategy to end mass surveillance of digital communications of innocent people worldwide. Today we’re laying out the plan, so you can understand how all the pieces fit together—that is, how U.S. advocacy and policy efforts connect to the international fight and vice versa. Decide for yourself where you can get involved to make the biggest difference. This plan isn’t for the next two weeks or three months. It’s a multi-year battle that may need to be revised many times as we better understand the tools and authorities of entities engaged in mass surveillance and as more disclosures by whistleblowers help shine light on surveillance abuses.

Dem Rep Cites Sony Hack As Rationale For Reintroducing Bill

January 24, 2015 Barry Donegan, www.benswann.com Resist! Law, NSA, Surveillance

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is a controversial bill, promoted by supporters as a cyber-security solution and decried by detractors as a threat to online privacy, which has failed in two previous federal-level legislative sessions. The 112th and 113th congresses considered the bill, but pushback from civil rights groups and tech giants ultimately stopped CISPA in its tracks. Now, in the wake of a widely-publicized hack targeting employees at Sony Pictures Entertainment, The Hill is reporting that Maryland Democratic Representative Dutch Ruppersberger has revived the legislation and reintroduced it before the US House of Representatives last Friday.

DOJ Settles With Woman They Impersonated On Facebook

January 22, 2015 Adi Robertson, www.theverge.com Resist! Law, Media, Police, Surveillance

The Department of Justice has agreed to a settlement with a woman it impersonated with a fake Facebook profile in 2010. According to the Associated Press, the agency has reached a $134,000 settlement with Sondra Arquiett, who sued after learning that the Drug Enforcement Agency had used her name and pictures from her cellphone to set up a profile to communicate with suspects in an investigation. The Justice Department initially argued that Arquiett, who was arrested and ultimately sentenced to probation for drug offenses, had consented by giving officers access to data on her cellphone and letting them use it for investigative purposes. But it also said it would be "launching a review" of the incident, and it's now apparently agreed to a settlement that's just over half of the $250,000 Arquiett reportedly asked for in her complaint.

FBI’s ‘Suicide Letter’ To MLK, & The Dangers Of Surveillance

January 20, 2015 Nadia Kayyali, www.eff.org Educate! FBI, MLK, NSA, Surveillance

The New York Times has published an unredacted version of the famous “suicide letter” from the FBI to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter, recently discovered by historian and professor Beverly Gage, is a disturbing document. But it’s also something that everyone in the United States should read, because it demonstrates exactly what lengths the intelligence community is willing to go to—and what happens when they take the fruits of the surveillance they’ve done and unleash it on a target. The anonymous letter was the result of the FBI’s comprehensive surveillance and harassment strategy against Dr. King, which included bugging his hotel rooms, photographic surveillance, and physical observation of King’s movements by FBI agents.

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