NSA Whistle-blower Ed Snowden

[cupper]

Didn't the 9-11 Commission make recommendations on information sharing amongst the agencies? Apparently information on employees moving from one agency to another didn't get included in the memo.

For want of a nail and all of that... :facepalm:

NSA never heard CIA's concerns about Snowden -- report
The CIA suspected that then-employee Edward Snowden wanted to break into classified computer files, a new report says. But that didn't prevent Snowden from moving on to a job as a contractor with the NSA.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57607199-38/nsa-never-heard-cias-concerns-about-snowden-report/

The CIA suspected Edward Snowden of trying to get his hands on classified files when he worked for the outfit in 2009, a new report says, but that info didn't make it to the National Security Agency, where Snowden next worked as a contractor, and where he leaked the secret documents that have touched off a furor over NSA surveillance.

Snowden's supervisor at the CIA dropped a note into Snowden's personnel file, "noting a distinct change in the young man's behavior and work habits" as well as the suspicions over classified documents, The New York Times reports, citing two unnamed senior American officials. Snowden subsequently left the agency, his security credentials intact, and went to work for NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

The Times story says that at the time, "the electronic systems the CIA and NSA [used] to manage the security clearances for its full-time and contracted employees [were] intended to track major rule-based infractions, not less serious complaints about personal behavior...Thus, lesser derogatory information about Mr. Snowden was unlikely to have been given to the NSA unless it was specifically requested." That system has since been changed and such info is forwarded on, the Times reports.

The news may well add to concern about the management and communication processes of the NSA and the larger intelligence community, as well as to more specific questions about the issuing of security clearances and the use of private contractors.

Congress is examining the clearance process, after the Snowden leaks and the recent shootings at Washington's Navy Yard. The Times notes that contractor USIS handled checks on both Snowden and on Navy Yard suspect Aaron Alexis. In total, the company took care of 700,000 checks for the government, the paper says.

Private contractors, overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers, are also handling the building of the NSA's main data center, which has suffered a series of blow-outs in its electrical system that have kept the center offline for a year.

In both the security-clearance and construction situations, corner-cutting has been cited as part of the problem.

As for broader concerns about communication and management systems, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper recently suggested that the NSA doesn't always comprehend its own processes. Clapper attributed "compliance incidents" regarding illegal searches of Americans' phone records to the technological complexity of the system involved and to "gaps in understanding" among NSA staff.

In regard to the CIA's suspicions about Snowden, the Times said, "spokesmen for the CIA, NSA, and FBI all declined to comment on the precise nature of the warning and why it was not forwarded, citing the investigation into Mr. Snowden's activities."

 

[cupper]

Spy chief Clapper: We've been snooping on our friends for years

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/29/21233196-spy-chief-clapper-weve-been-snooping-on-our-friends-for-years?lite

The nation's top intelligence official told Congress on Tuesday that the U.S. has been snooping on friendly foreign leaders for years, and getting spied on by allies in return.

As controversy swirled over reports that the National Security Agency monitored the calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper gave the impression he didn't know what all the fuss was about.

During a grilling by the House Intelligence Committee, Clapper said understanding "foreign leadership intentions" is one of NSA's basic goals.
"That's a hardy perennial as long as I have been in the intelligence business,” he said, explaining that the U.S. needs to make sure what allies are telling America matches what's going on behind the scenes.

Asked whether allies also spy on the U.S., Clapper was unequivocal: "Absolutely."
He suggested the outrage and surprise expressed by representatives of allies in recent days was naive or disingenuous and reminded him of a line from the movie "Casablanca."

"'My God, there's gambling going on here?' It's the same kind of thing," he said.

President Obama reportedly had to apologize to Merkel and to the presidents of France and Brazil after revelations about U.S. spying — disclosures that stem from former NSA and CIA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks of government documents.

As the White House tries to control the damage, Obama has promised a “complete review” of overseas spying operations and is reportedly considering whether to suspend monitoring of allies.

“What we've seen over the last several years is their capacities continue to develop and expand, and that's why I'm initiating now a review to make sure that what they're able to do doesn't necessarily mean what they should be doing," Obama said Monday in a televised interview.

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander said overseas reports that the U.S. had collected tens of millions of phone calls in France, Spain and other European nations were "false."

He said the data cited came from foreign service agencies — "collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations" — and was not culled from European citizens.

Clapper and Alexander appeared before the committee hours after a bipartisan team of Congress members introduced a bill that would sharply curb the NSA's collection of American's phone data, legislation that is expected to face a fight from others who think it goes too far.

Several protesters wearing clown-size sunglasses with the words "Stop Spying" scrawled on the lenses sat behind the two spy bosses.
Both defended the data-sweeping program as lawful, aimed at foreign terrorists and successful in saving lives.

Clapper said he would support declassifying secret intelligence court orders to boost transparency and pointed to plans to hire a director of civil liberties and privacy. Alexander said an independent Senate-confirmed inspector general, one of the proposals the committee is considering, "won't hurt."

But Clapper also warned those looking to reform the NSA's activities that they must avoid “over-correcting.”

“We believe we have been lawful and that the rigorous oversight we’ve operated under has been effective,” Clapper said in his opening remarks.

“We do not spy on anyone except for valid foreign intelligence purposes and we do not violate the law.”
Clapper conceded “we have made mistakes,” blaming them on human error or technical problems and said there has been an “erosion of trust in the in the intelligence community.”

But he urged the lawmakers to be cautious in responding to the errors.

“As Americans, we face an unending array of threats to our way of life. We need to sustain our ability to detect these threats,” he said.
Months of leaks from Snowden are already “affecting our ability to conduct intelligence and keep our country safe,” he said.
Alexander struck a similar note in his testimony.

“It is much more important for this county that we defend this country and take the beating than it for us to give up a program that would prevent this nation from being attacked,” he said.

Before the two testified, Rep. Charles Ruppersberger, D-Md., said more transparency and oversight of NSA activities may be needed but said the data collection is crucial to uncovering terrorist plots.

“I shudder to think what connections would be missed if the program were eliminated,” he said.

A move to significantly alter the program is already under way in the form of a bill that would essentially end the bulk collection of Americans' phone records under the Patriot Act.

Among those spearheading the legislation is Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., the main author of the Patriot Act, who said that while it has protected Americans since 9/11, it has also been abused.

"Somewhere along the way, the balance between security and privacy was lost," he said in a statement.

"It’s now time for the judiciary committees to again come together in a bipartisan fashion to ensure the law is properly interpreted, past abuses are not repeated and American liberties are protected.  Washington must regain Americans’ trust in their government."

The USA Freedom Act would require proof that phone data sought is relevant to an authorized investigation into international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities — and there is a link to a foreign power or agent. The government would also need court orders to search the communications of Americans collected during foreign intelligence operations.
A similar measure failed in the House in July.

http://youtu.be/SjbPi00k_ME

 

[a_majoor]

Well, duh, a spy agency is supposed to spy on foreign powers to see what is up and identify potential issues before they can become harmful for the "home team".

They are not supposed to be snooping on their own citizens without cause or oversight. That is creating the architecture for a police state.

 

[pbi]

Well, duh, a spy agency is supposed to spy on foreign powers to see what is up and identify potential issues before they can become harmful for the "home team".

They are not supposed to be snooping on their own citizens without cause or oversight. That is creating the architecture for a police state.

Agreed, and some of this Euro-indignation is a bit rich. One of the things that struck me in Afghanistan (04-05) was the degree to which "allies" were peeking on each other, incl French and Germans. I had thought that stuff was only in comic books. I don't think that anymore.

Extremely embarrassing for some Americans in the diplomatic sphere, perhaps, but my impression is that the average American really couldn't care less: them damned furriners can't be trusted anyway, so might as well spy on 'em. But they better not try that on us!

What really worries me is the second part: domestic snooping. I wonder to what extent some agencies parlay the terrorist/organized crime/kiddie porn threats into unustified but ever-expanding powers to spy and monitor. This isn't helped by a dialogue (such as we heard from the recent Minister of Public Safety) that you are either "for this bill or you support child pornographers" (or words to that effect).

This type of black and white, all or nothing ranting is used, IMHO, to deflect, belittle and just shut down the vitally important debate and transparency that we need to have if we are to remain a truly civil and free society. I am a big believer that all of these agencies and their powers should be subject to strict "sundown" clauses and reviews, with a view to forcing them to demonstrate that they actually need a power or capability.

All powerful agencies, whether we're speaking of the Govt, the police, the Church, big business or the military, will serve us much better (and harm us much less...) if they are subjected to regular and effective scrutiny. I didn't use to believe this during most of my military career, but as I get older I see it as inescapable. Bad things grow in the dark.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Internet has made obeying the laws against domestic spying very, very hard to manage.

When the laws were written a telephone call or telegram between two Canadians was routed, almost entirely, within Canada ~ carried on Canadian networks, including Canadian satellites.

Now everything has changed ~ when two Canadians communicate their calls originate and are received in Canada, of course, but an E-mail or even a voice call may be routed through one or more foreign countries and it may be "detected" and then "intercepted" in that foreign country, or on one of it's satellite links, (by CSEC) and even fully analyzed before anyone figures out that it is between two Canadians. Life gets even worse when one or the other of those two Canadians uses any one of many techniques, like proxies, to disguise where they are ~ tools that, for example, allow a Canadian to "look like" an American in order to access US copyright entertainment.

 

[Edward Campbell]

And former Canadian Ambassador to the UN Paul Heibecker proves, yet again, that he's a dolt, a very edudite and well educated dolt, but at dolt all the same in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/world-insider/five-reasons-our-international-eavesdropping-isnt-worth-the-cost/article15153675/#dashboard/follows/

Five reasons our international eavesdropping isn’t worth the cost

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

Paul Heinbecker
Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Oct. 30 2013

Few things can get a government leader into hot water with important international partners faster than getting caught intercepting their mail, literally or electronically, as both President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper can attest. Similarly, few things can be as seductive to government officials as intelligence, and few things more politically risky. What governments can do technologically should not dictate what they will do politically; capacity unbounded by a well-managed overarching political strategy can lead to errors in judgment with serious and far-reaching consequences.

The reality is that the value of intelligence can be, and frequently is, over-rated.

The revelations by Edward Snowden keep coming, undermining trust in the United States among its allies. The U.S. National Security Administration, one of reportedly 15 American intelligence agencies with an estimated cumulative budget of $75-billion, has been outed for gathering data from friend and foe alike. In France, the NSA apparently vacuumed up 70 million digital communications in a single month. In Spain, the number was reportedly 60 million electronic communications. The United Nations Secretary General has been a target as have Mexico’s current and former presidents and the German Chancellor. The Germans, who long endured the espionage predations of the old East German Stasi, and who considered themselves a steadfast ally of Washington, are particularly distressed that Chancellor Angela Merkel has been an NSA target.

What kind of ally would bug the German Chancellor’s mobile phone for a decade? In what respect exactly was Chancellor Merkel a security risk to the Americans? If Presidents Bush and Obama wanted to know what she thought, why did they not just pick up the phone and ask her, or meet with her at any of the numerous summits they attended together? The alleged bugging of the communications of 34 other leaders around the world that Mr. Snowden claims happened will doubtless produce more unhappy surprises. In Brazil the United States was revealed to be spying both on the communications of President Dilma Rouseff and on the Brazilian national oil company Petrobras. Meanwhile, Canada’s Communications Security Establishment was revealed to be spying on the Brazilian Ministry of Mining and Energy.

The repercussions are potentially very serious. The sheer scale of electronic eavesdropping and the impudence with which it is undertaken have hit nerves worldwide. Consumers in this digital age, who paradoxically are more ready to tolerate the pervasive incursions of foreign corporations into their lives than the snooping of foreign governments, are up in arms. Allied governments, whose outrage appears partly but not wholly tactical, are threatening a range of retaliations. The European Parliament has sent a delegation to Washington seeking explanations. The Germans, who want to be removed from the NSA targets list, as do others, have dispatched their intelligence chiefs to Washington this week to seek cooperation.

Meanwhile, the European Union parliament is threatening to delay U.S.-EU free trade negotiations and contemplating privacy legislation that would force American internet companies like Google and Yahoo on the pain of heavy fines to get EU approval before complying with U.S. warrants seeking e-mails and search histories of EU citizens. Germany and Brazil are promoting a resolution at the UN that would call on states to respect privacy rights under the 1976 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights particularly as regards the extraterritorial surveillance of private communications of citizens in foreign jurisdictions. Perhaps the most significant cost of the Snowden revelations is that American (and Canadian) policy to promote multi-stakeholder governance of the Internet and to limit its regulation by governments is in serious jeopardy. NSA meta-data dragnets around the world have made the case for greater national control of the Internet more persuasively than the Chinese, Russians and Iranians ever could. Meanwhile, Deutsche Telekom among others is launching a new encrypted service using only data centres located on German soil. The Balkanization of the Internet looms.

The gap between American words and American deeds has grown too wide for foreign governments and their publics to ignore. This week’s protestations by American leaders that American spying saves lives, including European lives, are seen as self-serving piffle. No lives were at stake in the German Chancellor’s office, nor were there any terrorists, as one Brazilian legislator observed, at the bottom of any Brazilian oil well. The excuse that ”they all do it” is equally unpersuasive. Although the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the German Nachtrichtendienst and the Brazilian Agência Brasileira de Inteligência do do it, the point is not who else is dissembling but how effective intelligence is and at what political, financial and moral costs it is purchased. In Washington, after initially blowing off others’ concerns, the Obama administration and Congress are having second thoughts about the wisdom of spying on allies.

Here are five lessons we can draw from all this for Canada.

First, secrets are hard to keep in the digital world. The intelligence leadership and their political masters should presume that they will see their decisions on The front page of the Globe and Mail one day.

Second, intelligence is a means not an end, and not all its purposes – national security, counter-terrorism, communications security, commercial secrets and economic advantage – are equally compelling. Mature judgment is a must if sound decisions are to be made about the risks that are worth running – or not. For example, at a time when our Governor-General, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Trade Minster and other ministers had visited Brazil to court the government, was it really worth spying on the Brazilian Ministry of Energy and Mines, as we are alleged to have done?

Third, membership in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), which dates from the end of the Second World War, entails costs as well as benefits and needs to be kept under sober review. Rubbing shoulders with the American intelligence community can be intoxicating, a poor condition in which to make important judgments.

Fourth, intelligence can be and frequently is over-rated. Spending on intelligence and diplomacy needs to be re-balanced. While intelligence operates beyond the pale of international law, diplomacy is both legally sanctioned and uncontroversial, and effective, in its creation of trusting relationships, effective. It does not make sense at a time when intelligence expenditures have grown dramatically, and CSEC is erecting a billion-dollar building in Ottawa, that the Foreign Affairs department is selling off assets abroad to cover a shrinking budget.

Fifth, leadership matters. The key challenge is not so much to do things right as it is to do the right things. Oversight to ensure that Canadian laws are not being broken is important and needs reinforcement, but coherent, strategic policy leadership that ensures that the intelligence tail never wags the foreign policy dog is crucial. Technological capacity should never trump political judgment.

Paul Heinbecker, who was the last Canadian Ambassador to sit on the UN Security Council, is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and inaugural Director of the Laurier University Centre for Global Relations.

First, Ambassador Heinbecker is quite correct when, in the second paragraph, he says "the value of intelligence can be, and frequently is, over-rated." But that's a problem with the people processing and using intelligence, people like Heinbecker himself when he was in government, not with intelligence, per se.

Then he goes badly wrong and then gets worse as he tries to go from that fundamental truth towards suggesting that Canada ought to stop building a new building for CSEC and, instead, buy new, luxury residences for foreign service officers abroad.

Paul Heinbecker is a living example of what went badly wrong with Canadian policies ~ foreign, defence and security ~ in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. He is a "do gooder" with a soft heart and a head to match.

 

[George Wallace]

If we dissect his five points, ERC's comments are amplified:

First, secrets are hard to keep in the digital world. The intelligence leadership and their political masters should presume that they will see their decisions on The front page of the Globe and Mail one day.

This is true.  Secrets are hard to keep in a digital world if one is not vigilant.  If you think that justifies no one collecting information, then you are just ensuring that secrets are kept secret. 

Second, intelligence is a means not an end, and not all its purposes – national security, counter-terrorism, communications security, commercial secrets and economic advantage – are equally compelling. Mature judgment is a must if sound decisions are to be made about the risks that are worth running – or not. For example, at a time when our Governor-General, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Trade Minster and other ministers had visited Brazil to court the government, was it really worth spying on the Brazilian Ministry of Energy and Mines, as we are alleged to have done?

I suppose it would have been wiser for our representatives to have gone totally unprepared for any eventuality.  Is Government any different from Private Enterprise when it comes to dealing with outside parties in negotiations?  It is naïve for anyone to suggest that they not do some "research" as to what to expect.

Third, membership in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), which dates from the end of the Second World War, entails costs as well as benefits and needs to be kept under sober review. Rubbing shoulders with the American intelligence community can be intoxicating, a poor condition in which to make important judgments.

Naïve statement if I ever saw one.  Is he suggesting that we are not competent enough to come to our own conclusions/assessments of information presented/collected?

Fourth, intelligence can be and frequently is over-rated. Spending on intelligence and diplomacy needs to be re-balanced. While intelligence operates beyond the pale of international law, diplomacy is both legally sanctioned and uncontroversial, and effective, in its creation of trusting relationships, effective. It does not make sense at a time when intelligence expenditures have grown dramatically, and CSEC is erecting a billion-dollar building in Ottawa, that the Foreign Affairs department is selling off assets abroad to cover a shrinking budget.

Perhaps Mr Heinbecker has been watching too many Hollywood films and TV programs. 

Fifth, leadership matters. The key challenge is not so much to do things right as it is to do the right things. Oversight to ensure that Canadian laws are not being broken is important and needs reinforcement, but coherent, strategic policy leadership that ensures that the intelligence tail never wags the foreign policy dog is crucial. Technological capacity should never trump political judgment.

Perhaps Mr Heinbecker's perception of Canadian policies is flawed.  We do not have an "intelligence driven" policy.  Intelligence products are only to advise/inform, not dictate to,  a leader and assist in their decision making.  Our "Spymasters" do not make policies unrelated to their field of responsibility, negotiate with foreign governments, nor overrule our Diplomatic Corps.

 

[pbi]

Mr Heinbecker apparently knows very little about intelligence or why it is gathered.

For example:

Mature judgment is a must if sound decisions are to be made about the risks that are worth running – or not.

Right. But try making decisions with no current information.

Third, membership in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), which dates from the end of the Second World War, entails costs as well as benefits and needs to be kept under sober review. Rubbing shoulders with the American intelligence community can be intoxicating, a poor condition in which to make important judgments.

Yes, of course. All the Int folks I have known, who have ever worked with the US, have been completely  intoxicated by the experience. This is rubbish: where does he think a country of our limited means, but of our strategic importance, would get access to intelligence if not through its alliances?

But this one takes the dumb*ss comment award:

Fourth, intelligence can be and frequently is over-rated.

Yes, let's do away with it altogether. Flying blind is much better.

All that slagging aside, I do agree with this:

Fifth, leadership matters. The key challenge is not so much to do things right as it is to do the right things. Oversight to ensure that Canadian laws are not being broken is important and needs reinforcement, but coherent, strategic policy leadership that ensures that the intelligence tail never wags the foreign policy dog is crucial. Technological capacity should never trump political judgment.

But believing this doesn't entail accepting his other nonsense.

 

[Good2Golf]

pbi: Eeference your earlier post about Euro-indignation...wasn't it the French government that was found to have collaborated (theme word) with Air France to bug many of the first class and business class seats in key trams-Atlantic flights for intelligence purposes?

 

[pbi]

pbi: Eeference your earlier post about Euro-indignation...wasn't it the French government that was found to have collaborated (theme word) with Air France to big many of the first class and business class seats in key trams-Atlantic flights for intelligence purposes?

I can't recall, but nothing would surprise me, particularly where that nation is concerned. I'm sure that a "French Snowden" (or a "Snowden" from any significant country) would tell equally lurid and embarrassing tales.

 

[The Bread Guy]

pbi: Eeference your earlier post about Euro-indignation...wasn't it the French government that was found to have collaborated (theme word) with Air France to big many of the first class and business class seats in key trams-Atlantic flights for intelligence purposes?

Good memory - more here.

 

[a_majoor]

From today's Instapundit; the difference between the scale and scope of the private sector and the government (and the double standard when looking out for privacy rights)

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

SO MAYBE IT’S JUST ME, but this British “phone-hacking” scandal seems like weak tea now that we know that the British government, in cooperation with the NSA, was hoovering up billions of private communications without a warrant. Against that, journalists guessing voicemail passwords doesn’t sound like much. And yet, guess who’s on trial?

 

[a_majoor]

Now they don't even need black helicopters anymore:

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/this-is-how-the-internet-backbone-has-been-turned-into-a-weapon/

Our Government Has Weaponized the Internet. Here’s How They Did It
BY NICHOLAS WEAVER11.13.139:30 AM

Photo: Andreas H / Flickr
The internet backbone — the infrastructure of networks upon which internet traffic travels — went from being a passive infrastructure for communication to an active weapon for attacks.

According to revelations about the QUANTUM program, the NSA can “shoot” (their words) an exploit at any target it desires as his or her traffic passes across the backbone. It appears that the NSA and GCHQ were the first to turn the internet backbone into a weapon; absent Snowdens of their own, other countries may do the same and then say, “It wasn’t us. And even if it was, you started it.”

If the NSA can hack Petrobras, the Russians can justify attacking Exxon/Mobil. If GCHQ can hack Belgacom to enable covert wiretaps, France can do the same to AT&T. If the Canadians target the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Chinese can target the U.S. Department of the Interior. We now live in a world where, if we are lucky, our attackers may be every country our traffic passes through except our own.

Which means the rest of us — and especially any company or individual whose operations are economically or politically significant — are now targets. All cleartext traffic is not just information being sent from sender to receiver, but is a possible attack vector.

Here’s how it works.

The QUANTUM codename is deliciously apt for a technique known as “packet injection,” which spoofs or forges packets to intercept them. The NSA’s wiretaps don’t even need to be silent; they just need to send a message that arrives at the target first. It works by examining requests and injecting a forged reply that appears to come from the real recipient so the victim acts on it.

In this case, packet injection is used for “man-on-the-side” attacks — which are more failure-tolerant than man-in-the-middle attacks because they allow one to observe and add (but not also subtract, as the man-in-the-middle attacks do). That’s why these are particularly popular in censorship systems. It can’t keep up? That’s okay. Better to miss a few than to not work at all.

Nicholas Weaver
Nicholas Weaver is a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley and U.C. San Diego (though this opinion is his own). He focuses on network security as well as network intrusion detection, defenses for DNS resolvers, and tools for detecting ISP-introduced manipulations of a user’s network connection. Weaver received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley.

The technology itself is actually pretty basic. And the same techniques that work on on a Wi-Fi network can work on a backbone wiretap. I personally coded up a packet-injector from scratch in a matter of hours five years ago, and it’s long been a staple of DefCon pranks.

So how have nations used packet injection, and what else can they do with it? These are some of the known uses.

Censorship
The most infamous use of packet injection prior to the Snowden leaks was censorship, where both internet service providers (ISPs) and the Great Firewall of China injected TCP reset packets (RST) to block undesired traffic. When a computer receives one of these injected RST packets, it closes the connection, believing that all communication is complete.

Although public disclosure forced ISPs to stop this behavior, China continues to censor with injected resets. It also injects the Domain Name System (DNS) — the system all computers use to turn names such as “www.facebook.com” into IP addresses — by inserting a fake reply whenever it sees a forbidden name. (It’s a process that has caused collateral damage by censoring non-Chinese internet traffic).

User Identification
User cookies, those inserted by both advertising networks and services, also serve as great identifiers for NSA targeting. Yet a web browser only reveals these cookies when communicating with such sites. A solution lies in the NSA’s QUANTUMCOOKIE attack, which they’ve utilized to de-anonymize Tor users.

A packet injector can reveal these cookies by replying to an unnoticed web fetch (such as a small image) with a HTTP 302 redirect pointing to the target site (such as Hotmail). The browser now thinks “hey, should really go visit Hotmail and ask it for this image”. In connecting to Hotmail, it reveals all non-secure cookies to the wiretap. This both identifies the user to the wiretap, and also allows the wiretap to use these cookies.

So for any webmail service that doesn’t require HTTPS encryption, QUANTUMCOOKIE also allows the wiretap to log in as the target and read the target’s mail. QUANTUMCOOKIE could also tag users, as the same redirection that extracts a cookie could also set or modify a cookie, enabling the NSA to actively track users of interest as they move across the network — although there is no indication yet that the NSA utilizes this technique.

User Attack
The NSA has a collection of FOXACID servers, designed to exploit visitors. Conceptually similar to Metasploit’s WebServer browser autopwn mode, these FOXACID servers probe any visiting browser for weaknesses to exploit.

All it takes is a single request from a victim passing a wiretap for exploitation to occur. Once the QUANTUM wiretap identifies the victim, it simply packet injects a 302 redirect to a FOXACID server. Now the victim’s browser starts talking to the FOXACID server, which quickly takes over the victim’s computer. The NSA calls this QUANTUMINSERT.

The NSA and GCHQ used this technique not only to target Tor users who read Inspire (reported to be an Al-Qaeda propaganda magazine in the English language) but also to gain a foothold within the Belgium telecommunication firm Belgacom, as a prelude to wiretapping Belgium phones.

One particular trick involved identifying the LinkedIn or Slashdot account of an intended target. Then when the QUANTUM system observed individuals visiting LinkedIn or Slashdot, it would examine the HTML returned to identify the user before shooting an exploit at the victim. Any page that identifies the users over HTTP would work equally well, as long as the NSA is willing to write a parser to extract user information from the contents of the page.

Other possible QUANTUM use cases include the following. These are speculative, as we have no evidence that the NSA, GCHQ, or others are utilizing these opportunities. Yet to security experts they are obvious extensions of the logic above.

HTTP cache poisoning. Web browsers often cache critical scripts, such as the ubiquitous Google Analytics script ‘ga.js’. The packet injector can see a request for one of these scripts and instead respond with a malicious version, which will now run on numerous web pages. Since such scripts rarely change, the victim will continue to use the attacker’s script until either the server changes the original script or the browser clears its cache.

Zero-Exploit Exploitation. The FinFly “remote monitoring” hacking tool sold to governments includes exploit-free exploitation, where it modifies software downloads and updates to contain a copy of the FinFisher Spyware. Although Gamma International’s tool operates as a full man-in-the-middle, packet injection can reproduce the effect. The injector simply waits for the victim to attempt a file download, and replies with a 302 redirect to a new server. This new server fetches the original file, modifies it, and passes it on to the victim. When the victim runs the executable, they are now exploited — without the need for any actual exploits.

Mobile Phone Applications. Numerous Android and iOS applications fetch data through simple HTTP. In particular, the “Vulna” Android advertisement library was an easy target,  simply waiting for a request from the library and responding with an attack that can effectively completely control the victim’s phone. Although Google removed applications using this particular library, other advertisement libraries and applications can present similar vulnerabilities.

DNS-Derived Man-in-the-Middle. Some attacks, such as intercepting HTTPS traffic with a forged certificate, require a full man in the middle rather than a simple eavesdropper. Since every communication starts with a DNS request, and it is only a rare DNS resolver that cryptographically validates the reply with DNSSEC, a packet injector can simply see the DNS request and inject its own reply. This represents a capability upgrade, turning a man-on-the-side into a man-in-the-middle.

One possible use is to intercept HTTPS connections if the attacker has a certificate that the victim will accept, by simply redirecting the victim to the attacker’s server. Now the attacker’s server can complete the HTTPS connection. Another potential use involves intercepting and modifying email. The attacker simply packet-injects replies for the MX (Mailserver) entries corresponding to the target’s email. Now the target’s email will first pass through the attacker’s email server. This server could do more than just read the target’s incoming mail, it could also modify it to contain exploits.

Amplifying Reach. Large countries don’t need to worry about seeing an individual victim: odds are that a victim’s traffic will pass one wiretap in a short period of time. But smaller countries that wish to utilize the QUANTUMINSERT technique need to force victims traffic past their wiretaps. It’s simply a matter of buying the traffic: Simply ensure that local companies (such as the national airline) both advertise heavily and utilize in-country servers for hosting their ads. Then when a desired target views the advertisement, use packet injection to redirect them to the exploit server; just observe which IP a potential victim arrived from before deciding whether to attack. It’s like a watering hole attack where the attacker doesn’t need to corrupt the watering hole.

***

The only self defense from all of the above is universal encryption. Universal encryption is difficult and expensive, but unfortunately necessary.

Encryption doesn’t just keep our traffic safe from eavesdroppers, it protects us from attack. DNSSEC validation protects DNS from tampering, while SSL armors both email and web traffic.

There are many engineering and logistic difficulties involved in encrypting all traffic on the internet, but its one we must overcome if we are to defend ourselves from the entities that have weaponized the backbone.

I can see a very "Balkanized" Internet developing, as nations attempt to cut off access or reroute around the United States, both to reduce the ability of the NSA to eavesdrop, but also for the less savoury aspect of containing and "filtering" their own users, much in the Manner Iran is attempting to build an "Iran only" internet architecture and the "Great Firewall of China" blocks access to the outside world.

 

[a_majoor]

The push back begins. Twitter offers a form of the "one time pad" for encrypting their communications, expect to see much more of this, along with an increasing Balkanization of the Internet:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/twitter-toughening-its-security-to-thwart-government-snoops/?_r=1

Twitter Toughening Its Security to Thwart Government Snoops
By NICOLE PERLROTH and VINDU GOEL

Noah Berger for The New York Times
Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, right, a security engineer at Twitter, had been pushing the company to adopt forward secrecy for some time, but did not get much support for the project until the recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance practices.
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
GOOGLE+
SAVE
E-MAIL
SHARE
PRINT
A year ago, hardly anyone, save for cryptographers, had heard of Perfect Forward Secrecy. Now, some customers are demanding it, and technology companies are adding it, one by one, in large part to make government eavesdropping more difficult.

On Friday, Twitter will announce that it has added Perfect Forward Secrecy, after similar announcements by Google, Mozilla and Facebook. The technology adds an extra layer of security to Web encryption to thwart eavesdropping, or at least make the National Security Agency’s job much, much harder. (Update: Twitter has announced the security change on its blog.)

Until Edward J. Snowden began leaking classified documents last summer, billions of people relied on a more common type of security called Transport Layer Security or Secure Sockets Layer (S.S.L.) technology to protect the transmission of sensitive data like passwords, financial details, intellectual property and personal information. That technology is familiar to many Web users through the “https” and padlock symbol at the beginning of Web addresses that are encrypted.

But leaked N.S.A. documents make clear that the agency is recording high volumes of encrypted Internet traffic and retaining it for later cryptanalysis. And it’s hardly the only one: Iran, North Korea, and China all store vast amounts of Internet traffic. More recently, Saudi Arabia has been actively trying to intercept mobile data for Twitter and other communication tools.

The reason governments go to great lengths to store scrambled data is that if they later get the private S.S.L. keys to decrypt that data — via court order, hacking into a company’s servers where they are stored or through cryptanalysis — they can go back and decrypt past communications for millions of users.

Perfect Forward Secrecy ensures that even if an organization recording web traffic gets access to a company’s private keys, it cannot go back and unscramble past communications all at once. Perfect Forward Secrecy encrypts each web session with an ephemeral key that is discarded once the session is over. A determined adversary could still decrypt past communications, but with Perfect Forward Secrecy the keys for each individual session would have to be cracked to read the sessions’ contents.

Perfect Forward Secrecy was invented more than 20 years ago, and Paul Kocher, a leading cryptographer, put support for Perfect Forward Secrecy into the S.S.L .protocol. But companies have been reluctant to use it because it slows website and browser performance, uses resources and because — until Snowden — most consumers did not even know it existed. Unlike S.S.L. technology, there is no indication to a user that Perfect Forward Secrecy is enabled.

This tougher security is quickly becoming a must-have for Internet companies.

Earlier this week, Marissa Mayer, the chief executive of Yahoo, announced that Yahoo would introduce new security features in 2014. But, on Twitter, some consumers were quick to point out that Perfect Forward Secrecy was conspicuously absent from her blog post.

“With security, there are always the things you know you ought to do,” Mr. Kocher said in an interview. “But it’s not until you have a clear adversary that it’s much easier to justify the resources to go fix the problem.”

At Twitter, Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, a security engineer, had been pushing the company to adopt forward secrecy for some time, but did not get much support for the project until the Snowden leaks.

That showed “there really were organizations out there in the world that were scooping up encrypted data just so they could try to attack it at a large scale,” said Jeff Hodges, another Twitter software engineer. “We were like, oh, we need to actually spend some more time and really do this right.”

Actually installing and turning on the technology took only a few months, once Twitter decided to do it, both men said in an interview. That was in part because Google, an early pioneer in the technology, had worked out many of the kinks in Perfect Forward Secrecy and shared its knowledge with the security community.

Perfect Forward Secrecy does add a slight delay to a user’s initial connection to Twitter — about 150 milliseconds in the United States and up to a second in countries like Brazil that are farther away from Twitter’s servers. But the company said the extra protection was worth the delay.

Twitter said it turned on Perfect Forward Secrecy on Oct. 21, although it refrained from publicizing the change immediately to make sure there were no problems.

Twitter said it hoped that its example would prompt other companies to adopt the technology.

“A lot of services that don’t think they need it actually do,” Mr. Hodges said.

 

[cupper]

When will it all end? Enough is enough.

NSA Intercepted Children’s Letters To Santa

http://www.duffelblog.com/2013/12/nsa-letters-to-santa/

FORT MEADE, MD – The National Security Agency routinely intercepts children’s letters to Santa, internal agency documents have revealed.

The documents describe an operation known as MILK COOKIES, based out of Fort Meade and run in conjunction with the U.S. Postal Service. COOKIES is the interception of the letters while MILK feeds them through a complex series of algorithms to spot any hidden messages.

Agency director Gen. Keith Alexander had previously testified to Congress in 2011 that the NSA would occasionally collect letters addressed to Santa, but insisted that it was totally accidental and that no one was actually reading or storing them.

The NSA is prohibited from directly monitoring American citizens under both Executive Order 12333 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. However, because the letters are addressed to the North Pole, which falls outside of U.S. territory, they are considered potential foreign intelligence signals which the NSA is authorized to intercept.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former senior administration official defended the program: ”We’re only looking for any unusual presents, like children who ask Santa for pressure cookers, large amounts of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, hyzadrine rocket fuel, things like that. I mean a six-year old with a hammer is bad enough; just try to imagine that same six-year old with a truck bomb.”

The leaked reports show that the NSA also routinely hacked Santa’s Naughty and Nice List for any information on world leaders, and at one point tried to smuggle surveillance devices disguised as lumps of coal into Santa’s sack. They also reveal the existence of a massive NSA data storage center at the North Pole, known as ELFCHELON, which dwarfs even the planned one at Utah, and is capable of storing letters dating back to 1952.

The documents were part of the massive data haul taken by fugitive whistleblower and Playgirl centerfold Edward Snowden, whom the former official referred to as “a very naughty boy.”

U.S. intelligence has closely monitored the Letters to Santa program ever since the U.S. Post Office first created it in 1912. Initially, children’s letters were reviewed by both Army and Navy Intelligence under the aegis of Project SHAMROCK until that program’s termination in 1975.

Four years later the NSA began MILK COOKIES in response to the Secret Santa program, which the agency initially thought was a Soviet operation after a flier for the program mistakenly replaced the picture of Santa with Karl Marx.

Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the NSA began an almost-relentless campaign to insert itself both legally and covertly into the Christmas spirit.

First the NSA managed to get language inserted into the PATRIOT Act which required Santa to file a flight plan with NORAD and submit to random TSA inspections at select chimneys. Then came the 2002 judgment in United States v. Kringle, when the NSA and the Justice Department ordered him to deliver multiple GPS devices to the location of Usama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al Qaeda leaders.

When Santa refused and was put on a no-fly list he briefly had to outsource all his American operations to Canada, which handles diplomatic issues for the North Pole.

In response to the scandal, the task force appointed by President Obama to review NSA activity has issued a further critique of the agency. Calling Santa a “close and traditional U.S. ally,” panel member Richard Clarke urged tough new restrictions on NSA collection against holiday figures.

He added, “We’re not in any way recommending the disarming of the intelligence community. The NSA can still spy on the Easter Bunny.”

Top NSA officials were skeptical. “What else would you expect from someone who asked Santa for a Barbie doll when he was nine?” Gen. Alexander was overheard remarking.

Some privacy advocate groups believe that the panel’s recommendations don’t go far enough. They are telling parents not to let their children use the U.S. Post Office to contact Santa this year, and risk having their children’s information indefinitely stored for whatever the government wants to use it for.

Parents are instead being urged to use organizations that have a higher regard for privacy, such as Google or Facebook.

 

[a_majoor]

Although we are all aware of the legalities of handling sensitive information, leakers and whistleblowers like Snowden have exposed an abusive system which is no longer being used to defend against foreign and domestic enemies but is deployed against the citizens of the nation. In that sense they are appealing to a higher law (in Snowden's case, the Constitution of the United States) which leads to them being viewed as the heros of this story and the Government as the Enemy:

http://reason.com/archives/2013/12/31/2013-the-year-defiance-of-the-state-beca/print

2013: The Year Defiance of the State Became Cool
J.D. Tuccille|Dec. 31, 2013 3:00 pm

Fred BenensonFor some high-profile people who publicly told the government to go to hell, 2013 was, personally, a bit rough. Information freedom activist Aaron Swartz took his own life under threat of a brutal prison sentence. Revealer of inconvenient government secrets Bradley/Chelsea Manning actually ended up in prison. And surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden went into exile in Russia to escape what promised to be a "fair" trial followed by a first-class hanging. But tough consequences aren't unusual for people who defy the state. What was different and encouraging was how many people rallied behind Swartz, Manning, Snowden, and other rebels, explicitly siding with them over the government, in opposition to the powers-that-be.

Swartz's case was supposed to be a warning to us all, after he violated the terms of service of the JSTOR archive by downloading academic papers in bulk instead of one at a time, the better to make them available far and wide. What should have been a civil matter between him and the archive became federal felony charges, with United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz threatening "up to 35 years in prison ... and a fine of up to $1 million."

This was all "pour encourager les autres," as an ambitious prosecutor sought to demonstrate how tough she could be on the high crime of intellectual property violations.

But after his death, Swartz, already known as a principled activist for making information accessible, quickly became a cause celebre. The case was immediately held up as an example of prosecutorial overreach, even inspiring the introduction of a law to rein-in such legal abuses. Swartz was posthumously inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. Americans didn't just support the activist; they despised his persecutors—people started talking about the end of Ortiz's political career.

Which is to say, Aaron Swartz, who started the year as a deliberate defier of the law, under criminal indictment, was immediately elevated by many people to the status of the good guy in the conflict. Government officials could either join the bandwagon or sputter in outrage that they were considered villains by their constituents.

Chelsea ManningChelsea Manning's case followed a similar, if less lethal, trajectory. Imprisoned by the United States government for leaking a treasure trove of sensitive and often embarrassing documents to WikiLeaks, the story quickly became one about government transparency, mistreatment of prisoners, and the lengths to which officials would go to target its critics.

Manning quickly disclaimed any association with pacifism, saying she acted for the sake of transparency. That was a credible argument, given her connection with WikiLeaks, and one that rang a bell at a time when the U.S. government is seen as both dangerously intrusive into people's lives, as well as excessively secretive about public officials' behavior. (President Obama's claims to run a transparent administration poll as a laugh riot.)

Truthfully, the government didn't help its case by mistreating Manning during detention, prompting the judge to award Manning with 112 days credit toward the ultimate sentence because of the illegal abuse. Yes, that's a small fraction of the 35 years eventually passed down. But it doesn't look good when jailers are forced to explain in court how they were ordered to keep a prisoner confined to a cell, naked and shivering.

Just as troubling were the lengths to which the federal government went to investigate people who merely supported Manning. Officials stalked David Maurice House so they would know when he'd left the country, making himself vulnerable to a search of his digital data at the border, beyond the protections of the Fourth Amendment.

Even after sentencing, in prison, Manning became spokesperson not just for government transparency, but for gender identity—that is the right to choose your own.

Laura Poitras / Praxis FilmsEdward Snowden is, of course, the 2013 poster child for deliberately working against the state. He did so in order to let Americans, and the world beyond, know just how subject to super-creepy spying they are by the United States government. Snowden took jobs that gave him access to troubling National Security Agency secrets—and then released them to journalists for publication after he left the country and whatever unpleasant fate might be planned for him. He's even believed to have retained an info-bomb of truly sensitive material that will "detonate" if the feds try to grab him from his current refuge in Russia or otherwise silence the whistleblower.

In years past, government officials would have counted on the public to boo and hiss at Snowden on command. You're not supposed to spill the government's secrets to the world at large.

But Americans are horrified by those secrets—published revelations of NSA snooping have helped drive public revulsion at "big government" to record high levels. Snowden himself gets more of a split decision, but over a third of people tell Reason-Rupe that what he did makes him a patriot (with even higher support for him among younger Americans). That's almost equal to the percentage of respondents who give him a thumbs-down. Those would have been unthinkable numbers in a different era.

And if powerbrokers in D.C. want to call Snowden a "traitor," lawmakers on the outs with the leadership have been moved by his actions to try to curtail the surveillance state.

Swartz, Manning, and Snowden have all incurred personal consequences for their actions. So did Ross William Ulbricht, who as the (alleged) "Dread Pirate Roberts," ran the famous (and still-functioning) Silk Road online drug marketplace. Before his arrest on federal charges, the Dread Pirate Roberts developed a following for setting up an illegal Website that emphasized honesty and allowed users to rate dealers. He also led libertarian political discussions, backing his illicit economic activity with activist conviction.

Cody Wilson, of Defense Distributed, shares similar activist convictions, though he hasn't suffered legal consequences for introducing the world to functioning firearms created by people, on their own, with 3D printers. The same can be said of "Satoshi Nakamoto," the pseudonymous creator of the Bitcoin virtual (and anonymous) currency that has eased transactions in illegal goods and the protection of wealth from tax collectors. They may have (they definitely have) angered the powers that be, but governments have yet to find a practical way to criminalize innovation that enables activities they don't like.

Wilson, "Nakamoto," and their creations have also won wide world-wide followings, exlicitly linked to the authority-defying power of what they've done.

Flipping the bird to the state doesn't guarantee universal acclaim. It certainly doesn't ensure personal safety. But more than at any time in recent memory, defying governments and their laws has a constituency—a large one—that sees such action as necessary and even heroic.

Government officials may still act against the rebels. But instead of whipping up the public into a shared two minutes hate against a common foe, they're increasingly finding themseves viewed as the enemy by people who cheer acts of defiance.

Interesting observation near the end: new technologies are providing means of escaping from various nets the State lay out for us (3D printing, Bitcoins), and the gatekeepers and elites who derive their wealth and privilage from the current system don't like it at all...

 

[Jarnhamar]

[quote author=Thucydides]
Although we are all aware of the legalities of handling sensitive information, leakers and whistleblowers like Snowden have exposed an abusive system which is no longer being used to defend against foreign and domestic enemies but is deployed against the citizens of the nation. In that sense they are appealing to a higher law (in Snowden's case, the Constitution of the United States) which leads to them being viewed as the heros of this story and the Government as the Enemy:
[/quote]


I admit that I don't know very much about this story but from what I have read he seems like he did a good thing to me.

Read this in a paper

June 5th- He leaked documents that the NSA was collecting digital information from Internet firms.

Aug 1th5- an internal audit showed that the NSA broke privacy rules or overstepped it's authority thousands of times each year since 2008 including for almost 3 years searching a massive phone record database inviolation of privacy rules.

Aug 29th- A national intelligence program budget revealed the NSA is paying US companies for access to their communications networks.

Oct 14th- Revealed that the NSA is gathering hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal emails and instant messaging accounts including those belonging to Amercans.

Oct 30th- Found that the NSA is tapping into Yahoo and Google data centers to collect data at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts.

Dec 4th- Revealed the NSA is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the where abouts of cellphones around the world

 

[a_majoor]

Mr Snowden might be finding the company of the FIS to be much friendlier than the company of his former colleagues:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/americas-spies-want-edward-snowden-dead

America’s Spies Want Edward Snowden Dead

“I would love to put a bullet in his head,” one Pentagon official told BuzzFeed. The NSA leaker is enemy No. 1 among those inside the intelligence world.

posted on January 16, 2014 at 11:25pm EST
Benny Johnson

Snowden’s Russian refugee document. Maxim Shemetov / Reuters

Edward Snowden has made some dangerous enemies. As the American intelligence community struggles to contain the public damage done by the former National Security Agency contractor’s revelations of mass domestic spying, intelligence operators have continued to seethe in very personal terms against the 30-year-old whistle-blower.

“In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself,” a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed.

“A lot of people share this sentiment.”

“I would love to put a bullet in his head,” one Pentagon official, a former special forces officer, said bluntly. “I do not take pleasure in taking another human beings life, having to do it in uniform, but he is single-handedly the greatest traitor in American history.”

That violent hostility lies just beneath the surface of the domestic debate over NSA spying is still ongoing. Some members of Congress have hailed Snowden as a whistle-blower, the New York Times has called for clemency, and pundits regularly defend his actions on Sunday talk shows. In intelligence community circles, Snowden is considered a nothing short of a traitor in wartime.

“His name is cursed every day over here,” a defense contractor told BuzzFeed, speaking from an overseas intelligence collections base. “Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him.”

One Army intelligence officer even offered BuzzFeed a chillingly detailed fantasy.

“I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” he said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.”

There is no indication that the United States has sought to take vengeance on Snowden, who is living in an undisclosed location in Russia without visible security measures, according to a recent Washington Post interview. And the intelligence operators who spoke to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity did not say they expected anyone to act on their desire for revenge. But their mood is widespread, people who regularly work with the intelligence community said.

“These guys are emoting how pissed they are,” Peter Singer, a cyber-security expert at the Brookings Institute. “Do you think people at the NSA would put a statue of him out front?”

The degree to which Snowden’s revelations have damaged intelligence operations are also being debated. Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, recently called the leaks “unnecessarily and extremely damaging to the United States and the intelligence community’s national security efforts,” and the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Dutch Ruppersberger said terrorists have been “changing their methods because of the leaks.” Snowden’s defenders dismiss those concerns as overblown, and the government has not pointed to specific incidents to bear out the claims.

On the ground, intelligence workers certainly say the damage has been done. The NSA officer complained that his sources had become “useless.” The Army intelligence officer said the revelations had increased his “blindness.”

“I do my work in a combat zone so now I have to see the effects of a Snowden in a combat zone. It will not be pretty,” he said.

And while government officials have a long record of overstating the damage from leaks, some specific consequences seem logical.

“By [Snowden] showing who our collections partners were, the terrorists have dropped those carriers and email addresses,” the DOD official said. “We can’t find them because he released that data. Their electronic signature is gone.”

While it is true that the information he released was damaging, the most damaging revelation has been the agency was spying on Americans without warrant or just cause: the signature of either a rogue agency or laying down the architecture of a police state. Perhaps most chilling was the unnamed person who wanted to recreate the murder of Georgi Ivanov Markov (killed with a ricin pellet) by the Bulgarian secret police and the KGB.

 

[Edward Campbell]

And the Straits Times (Singapore) is reporting that "A former Norwegian minister nominated fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize Thursday in a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee ... "He has contributed to revealing the extreme level of surveillance by nations against other nations and of citizens," former Socialist Left Party minister Baard Vegar Solhjell said, explaining his move."

 

[tomahawk6]

It seems that Snowden is a Russian agent and not a whistle blower.As such if he ever returns to the US he should stand trial.