Politics

Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).

The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

One key innovation has been GCHQ’s ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.

GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects.

This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user’s access to websites – all of which is deemed legal, even though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets.

The existence of the programme has been disclosed in documents shown to the Guardian by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as part of his attempt to expose what he has called the largest programme of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

It’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight, Snowden told the Guardian. They [GCHQ] are worse than the US — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Russia has long struggled with its reputation as being soft on piracy.

Unauthorised websites offering all types of media are perceived as operating with impunity which has led to the country being chastised by foreign rights holders, particularly those from the United States.

In response, Russia has delivered a draft bill detailing the most draconian anti-piracy legislation seen since the demise of the Stop Online Piracy Act. The proposed law is so tough it’s no surprise that critics are labelling it Russia’s SOPA.

One of the main concerns is how the law places site owners in a vulnerable position should copyright-infringing material be found on their services.

The draft envisions copyright holders filing lawsuits against sites carrying infringing content. Site owners are then expected to remove unauthorised content or links to the same within 72 hours. Failure to do so would result in the entire site being blocked by Internet service providers pending the outcome of a court hearing — via redwolf.newsvine.com

For those of you wondering just how much access the Australian Government has access to from the US Government’s controversial PRISM spying program (you know, the one which allows the National Security Agency access into the servers of US-based technology giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and so on)? Wonder no more. According to The Age, it’s bucketloads — enough that the Government has had to build a new data centre to contain it. The newspaper reports:

Australian intelligence agencies are receiving huge volumes of immensely valuable information from the United States including through the controversial PRISM program, Fairfax Media can reveal. The data deluge has required the Australian government to build a state-of-the-art secret data storage facility just outside Canberra.

The news has prompted Greens Communications Spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam, to accuse the Australian Government of being actively complicit in the US surveillance of Australian citizens through their own email and social network accounts. Ludlam tells us in a media release issued late last night:

The Australian Government has denied any knowledge of the NSA’s widespread online surveillance of people around the world since it was revealed by Edward Snowden. It is now clear that the ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ routine is a sham, Greens communications spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam said. The Australian Government was aware of the spying, and collaborating to circumvent due process through receipt of vast amounts of surveillance material from the United States.

Next week I will move an Order for the production of documents in the Senate to finally get some disclosure from our Government. This will be a test for the opposition as well; it is essential they support this motion. On 7 June I put a series of questions to the Attorney General on Australian involvement in PRISM.

While the National Security Inquiry looks at the Government’s proposed data retention scheme, the Government is already up to its neck in spying on the communications of law-abiding Australian citizens. Next week I am introducing a Bill into the Senate to strengthen regulation of data collection on Australians, returning normal warrant procedures to law enforcement agencies accessing peoples’ private communications data.

But while the Greens fight hard to defend people’s privacy and civil liberties from increasingly audacious Australian Government agencies, the Government leaves the nation wide open to spying by the United States. The Government must reveal the extent of its complicity in this unprecedented intrusion

— via redwolf.newsvine.com

Australia’s Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has made the extraordinary declaration that Australian law enforcement in Australia would grind to a halt if police officers and other law enforcement agents were forced to apply for a warrant every time they wanted to access Australians’ telecommunications data.

Last week Budget Estimates hearing sessions conducted in Canberra heard that the Australian Federal Police had made 43,362 internal requests for so-called metadata (data pertaining to the numbers, email addresses time, length and date involved in phone calls or emails, but not the content) over the past financial year. No warrant is required for these requests.

The revelations, combined with historical data tracking law enforcement and other Federal Government agency use of metadata without warrants and the revelations over the past week thatthe US-based National Security Agency has gained backdoor access into the data servers of major technology companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft, has spurred calls by Australian political groups for a ban on warrant-less interception of Australian telecommunications data.

For example, the Australian Greens this week noted that it would next week introduce legislation to strengthen regulation of data collection on Australians, returning “normal warrant procedures” to law enforcement agencies accessing peoples’ private data.

This is the first step to winding back the kind of surveillance overreach revealed by the PRISM whistleblower, Greens communications spokesperson and Senator Scott Ludlam said in a statement. Law enforcement agencies – not including ASIO — made 293,501 requests for telecommunications data in 2011-12, without a warrant or any judicial oversight. Under the Telecommunications Interception and Access Act, that’s entirely legal.

Vast amounts of private data are being accessed — including the precise location of everyone who carries a smartphone — without any recourse to the courts.  A law enforcement agency simply fills out a very basic form. My bill will return to the system where they will need a warrant — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Following High Court orders, six UK ISPs are required to block subscriber access to several of the world’s largest torrent sites.

The blocking orders are intended to deter online piracy and were requested by the music industry group BPI on behalf of a variety of major labels. Thus far they’ve managed to block access to The Pirate Bay, Kat.ph, H33T and Fenopy, and preparations are being made to add many others.

The effectiveness of these initial measures has been called into doubt, as they are relatively easy to bypass. For example, in response to the blockades hundreds of proxy sites popped up, allowing subscribers to reach the prohibited sites via a detour.

However, as of this week these proxies are also covered by the same blocklist they aim to circumvent, without a new court ruling — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Federal police are obtaining Australians’ phone and internet records without warrants nearly 1000 times a week, it has emerged as controversy rages over a vast US surveillance program.

Revelations in a recent Senate estimates hearing include efforts by the Australian Federal Police to access Facebook and Google data of the kind gathered under the US National Security Agency’s controversial PRISM program.

The revelations draw Australia into the furious global debate about secret surveillance, which has erupted since US whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked sensitive details of the NSA’s spying program — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Over the past days the PRISM scandal has dominated the news. The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald pushed out leak after leak, revealing how millions of people around the world are being monitored by US intelligence agencies.

The revelations turned online privacy into a worldwide mainstream discussion. Privacy activists shouted we told you so, Orwell quotes were rife, and Kim Dotcom warmed up the public for his PRISM-proof email service.

Following the leaks the NSA and the US Government have been heavily criticized for their disregard of people’s privacy, and perhaps not totally unexpectedly this weekend the first legal action was filed.

TorrentFreak just obtained a copy of a complaint submitted at a federal court in Columbia, targeting President Obama, the NSA, Eric Holder and Verizon who all played a role in the mass surveillance scheme.

The class action lawsuit was filed by Larry Klayman, a former US prosecutor under the Reagan administration, together with the parents of the killed Navy SEAL Team VI member Michael Strange.

The plaintiffs accuse the PRISM participants of violating their constitutional rights, reasonable expectation of privacy, free speech and association, right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures, among other illegal and criminal acts. Both Klayman and the Navy Seal parents demand compensation for the damage they suffered — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong, he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations — the NSA — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.

The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA data mining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.

The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorising the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.

The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, What type of coverage do we have on country X in near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Some of the world’s biggest internet giants have condemned online spying and the PRISM surveillance program run by the US’s National Security Agency (NSA).

This week, The Guardian newspaper revealed details of the PRISM program, while The Washingston Post claimed federal authorities have access to the central servers of many technology companies including Google, Facebook, Apple, AOL, Skype (Microsoft), PalTalk and YouTube (Google).

In a number of similarly worded statements the technology companies responded denying US government agencies had direct access to its servers and data.

The bosses of Google and Facebook denied having ever heard of the PRISM program before the Washington Post report — via redwolf.newsvine.com

US intelligence agencies are accessing the servers of nine Internet giants as part of a secret data mining program likely to fuel fresh debate about government surveillance, it was reported Thursday.

The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI had direct access to servers which allowed them to track an individual’s web presence via audio, video, photographs, emails and connection logs.

Some of the biggest firms in Silicon Valley were involved in the program, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple, PalTalk, AOL, Skype and YouTube, reports said.

The newspaper cited details of a briefing on the top secret program — known as PRISM — intended for analysts at the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate in April — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), has told a hearing of the Australian Parliament’s Senate Estimates committee that its attempt to block access to the IP address of one investment scam site could have blocked 250,000 sites in total.

In its opening statement to the committee (Crikey has a copy here), ASIC said that in addition to the blocking of an IP address that took out 1,200 sites hosted at the same address, a similar request in March blocked 250,000 sites. In its defence, the commission said most of the URLs hosted at the target IP appear to contain no substantive content and that fewer than 1,000 active sites had been affected (El Reg presumes that the remaining 249,000 were parked domains) — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Australia’s security agencies are amongst the most secretive on the planet, far more so than their counterparts in the US and UK.

Why is this?

Four Corners journalist Andrew Fowler was told that it’s down to Australia’s junior relationship with its historical allies, the UK and then the US.

“We, the Australians, look after other people’s secrets, and so we have to prove we are more able to look after their secrets than anybody else … It’s a way of explaining in some way this rather, I suppose you could say, closed shop,” he told the BCC World Service program World Have Your Say (MP3).

Whether the explanation Fowler was given is true or not, this culture of extreme secrecy leads to an information vacuum.

Is China trying to hack Australian government agencies? Yes, of course. Everyone is hacking everyone else. That’s how espionage is done these days. But how successful were they? Who knows. Does the government have a valid case for more surveillance? Again, who knows.

Without hard facts, critics and supporters alike are free to assume the worst — either that incompetent security services are riddled with hacks while pursuing a massive power grab, or that Chinese hackers will bring the country to its knees unless we immediately lock down the internet and log everything. The truth is presumably somewhere in the middle, but without facts, a nuanced debate is impossible.

And without facts, we’re free to judge the government’s credibility by the hand-waving cyber language they use. I’ve already given my opinion on all this cybering and the cyberthreat beat-up, but things reached a new low this week with the coining of cybercrisis.

While the government continues to play secret squirrel, the infosec industry is getting into transparency — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The Federal Government has acknowledged that a third agency, beyond ASIC and the Australian Federal Police, has been using the Telecommunications Act to unilaterally block certain websites, with bureaucrats refusing to disclose which agency was involved, apart from stating that the issue was a national security matter.

In Budget Estimates hearings last night in Canberra, broadband department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi revealed under questioning by Greens Senator and Communications Spokesperson Scott Ludlam that a third agency, “in the Attorney-General’s portfolio” was also using the notices to order websites blocked.

However, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy interjected in the questioning and refused to answer further questions about which specific agency or department was involved, requesting that Ludlam pose his questions on the issue to the Attorney-General’s Department directly.

In a separate hearing this morning, Ludlam posed similar questions to the AFP about the issue, at a hearing attended by bureaucrats from the Attorney-General’s Department, such as departmental secretary Roger Wilkins. There’s one other agency also using it, Ludlam said. The full video is available online. Could someone at the table illuminate me as to who that is?

Wilkins replied: We don’t comment on national security matters, Senator. Ludlam replied that he hadn’t asked whether the website blocking was a national security matter. It is a national security matter; we’re not commenting on it, Wilkins added.

The comment is likely to raise fears that spy agency the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was the agency involved in the blocking activity, as it falls under the purview of the Attorney-General’s Department. However there are also a large number of other agencies under that portfolio; listed here on the website of the department — via redwolf.newsvine.com