omnibus PRISM/NSA/free Edward Snowden/encryption tutorial thread

The battle over encryption, which dates to the 1990s, could heat up quickly with Trump's win and the reelection of Republican Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee.

Burr spearheaded a failed effort last year to pass legislation requiring that companies build 'back doors' into their products that would allow government agents to bypass encryption and other forms of data protection.

Such requirements are fiercely opposed by the tech industry, which argues that back doors weaken security for everyone and that the government has no business mandating tech product design.

"I imagine (Trump) is going to be a guy who is probably going to mandate back doors," said Hank Thomas, chief operating officer at Strategic Cyber Ventures and a veteran of the National Security Agency. "I don't think he's ultimately going to be a friend to privacy, and the fearful side of me says he will get intelligence agencies more involved in domestic law enforcement."

http://news.trust.org/item/20161110005059-q7znd

Saw somebody tweet yesterday about how many new Signal check-ins they were getting on their phone.
You can't put back doors in everything.

Verge has a handy update on what does what

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/10/13585712/secure-encrypted-messaging-services-signal-imessage-president-trump

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-york-hidden-in-plain-sight/

Intelligence experts urge Obama to end Edward Snowden's 'untenable exile

Fifteen former staff members of the Church committee, the 1970s congressional investigation into illegal activity by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, have written jointly to Obama calling on him to end Snowden’s “untenable exile in Russia, which benefits nobody”. Over eight pages of tightly worded argument, they remind the president of the positive debate that Snowden’s disclosures sparked – prompting one of the few examples of truly bipartisan legislative change in recent years.

...

The lead signatories of the Obama letter are Frederick Schwarz, who was chief counsel to the Church committee and is now at the Brennan Center for Justice, and William Green Miller, the committee’s staff director who went on to become US ambassador to Ukraine in the 1990s.

...

In their letter, which they have also sent to the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, the 15 cite the former CIA director David Petraeus as an example of the kind of official leniency that has so far eluded Snowden. Petraeus violated both the law and national security by leaking confidential information to his biographer and lover, then lied about it to the FBI.

“Yet he was allowed to plead guilty to just one misdemeanor for which he received no jail time,” the letter says. The reference to Petraeus is pointed at a time when the former military commander is being actively considered by President-elect Donald Trump to become US secretary of state.

Dutch newspaper announcing that at 20.00 gmt "shocking news' will be revealed, researched by 60 papers and journalists worldwide from 1.7tb of data.

(Posting it in this particular thread is my own personal guess, don't know if it's from Snowden stuff)

no anglo papers have the story?

Appears that that isn't the case. Der Spiegel naming papers from Denmark, Holland, Romania, Serbia, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium

Is the case

EU data dump?

brexit vote fixed by putin, i knew it

#fml it's about Cristiano Ronaldo tax-evading for a gazillion dollars... Bitterly disappointed.

Twitter in #wellthatsdisappointing meltdown

"SIDtoday is the internal newsletter for the NSA’s most important division, the Signals Intelligence Directorate. After editorial review, The Intercept is releasing nine years’ worth of newsletters in batches, starting with 2003. The agency’s spies explain a surprising amount about what they were doing, how they were doing it, and why."

https://theintercept.com/snowden-sidtoday/

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/this-low-cost-device-may-be-the-worlds-best-hope-against-account-takeovers/

deeeeeeelightful (eff Obama)

@charlie_savage
BREAKING: Obama admin permits NSA to give raw (unminimized to protect privacy)12333 surveillance to FBI/CIA/DEA/etc

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-latitude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch signed the new rules, permitting the N.S.A. to disseminate “raw signals intelligence information,” on Jan. 3, after the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., signed them on Dec. 15, according to a 23-page, largely declassified copy of the procedures.

Previously, the N.S.A. filtered information before sharing intercepted communications with another agency, like the C.I.A. or the intelligence branches of the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The N.S.A.’s analysts passed on only information they deemed pertinent, screening out the identities of innocent people and irrelevant personal information.

Now, other intelligence agencies will be able to search directly through raw repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such rules for “minimizing” privacy intrusions.

nope no chance of abuse here

I'M GLAD LYNCH THOUGHT ABOUT IT OVER HER HOLIDAZE

@Snowden
Days ago, I criticized the Russian government's oppressive new "Big Brother" law. Now, threatening rumors. But I won't stop.

I don't know if the rumors are true. But I can tell you this: I am not afraid. There are things that must be said no matter the consequence.

if putin does kick out snowden presumably everybody who thinks he's a russian spy will finally stfu

rly, do they ever stfu?

nobody with snowden opinions is ever going to stfu about snowden

i liked it so much better when "snowden's secret" was that people are sausage containers

what if putin kicks out snowden so he can take a job w/ the trump administration

employing a guy you've suggested should be executed is uncharted waters even for Yam*

*you dipshit

that particular example is maybe uncharted but he has flipped on very dramatic policy decisions already and appears to have no coherent perspective at all. also it was a joke.

lol yeah I thought that was just a variation on the "Trump appoints blatantly unqualified/antagonistic people to head x agency" joeks

my opinion about the snowden offer is that it's a poisoned chalice - another issue that will split the american public and create an upsetting national controversy that trump is ill-equipped to navigate. but maybe i'm overestimating the national public and americans would just be impressed that trump was able to procure snowden from putin to punish when obama couldn't.

2-year throwback:

@NSAGov
Every move they make, every step they take. We’ll be watching our foreign adversaries. #HappyValentinesDay from the #NSA #vday2015

nice job keepin' the Story of the Day about yr fave agency quiet so far, guys!

anyhoo

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/839168025517522944

Fuck wikileaks and Assange, that Trump-supporting rapist.

That tweet seems really misleading. It sounds like the NSA bought the exploit from the company that discovered it. It's not new information that the intelligence community/law enforcement do this. They didn't pay Apple to put the vulnerability or backdoor in iOS. I haven't found or heard of any intentional backdoors in the leak so far, just exploits.

The leak sheds some limited light on the CIA’s sources of those exploits, too. While some of the attacks are attributed to public releases by iOS researchers, and the Chinese hacker Pangu, who’s developed techniques to “jailbreak” the iPhone to allow the installation of unauthorized apps, others are attributed to partner agencies or contractors under codenames. The remote iOS exploit is listed as “Purchased by NSA” and “Shared with CIA.” The CIA apparently purchased two other iOS tools from a contractor listed as “Baitshop,” while the Android tools are attributed to sellers codenamed Fangtooth and Anglerfish.

In a tweet, NSA leaker Edward Snowden pointed to those references as “the first public evidence [the US government] is paying to keep US software unsafe.”

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/cia-can-hack-phone-pc-tv-says-wikileaks/

He worked in both agencies, at some point you'd think he would understand what their mission is

that seems pretty disingenuous to me. the only way that argument works is if you believe that the knowledge of exploits makes software unsafe as opposed to the existence of vulnerabilities. but the vulnerabilities exist whether or not the CIA is paying for the information. and the CIA paying for the information doesn't create the vulnerabilities since they're error on the part of the companies designing the hardware/software.

snowden's argument that is. disingenuous, sacre bleu, i know

If you assume "USG" is one big monolith, where all the FEMA folks and park rangers and yours truly get CC'd on the email where Agent Hax0rZ agrees to move 72/89ths of a bitcoin for the remote admin 0day in iOS, then his argument almost makes sense: Government, instead of keeping us safe, is keeping us UNSAFE, by not disclosing or fixing the problems in iOS etc. that it spends our taxes to find out about.

But different agencies do different things to keep us safe. We argue amongst ourselves about how to do that. It's not a monolith.

where all the FEMA folks and park rangers and yours truly get CC'd on the email where Agent Hax0rZ agrees to move 72/89ths of a bitcoin

yes i'm sure this is EXACTLY what Snowden means.

"USG" is shorthand for 'them who works for us'

This concerns me, though: https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_17760284.html

CIA emoji stash
https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_17760284.html

Lol, didn't see you posted that, sorry

¬_¬

Hey Morbs do you care to explain what YOU think Ed means in more than a dozen words?

Do you believe in foreign policy and "statecraft?" Is espionage a thing in your world? I guess not, since the Russian stuff really seems to turn you off on the US politics threads.

There are no spies! Only Obamafactured excuses for jacking phones and sending drones. Is that it?

Does it ever feel a tad pompous, presumptuous, or maybe even nationalistic, (!) to assume our own intelligence services are so ruthless, rich and competent that they're the REAL threat to peace and democracy, while other countries with similar designs on geopolitical power have these spy agencies that don't deserve respect unless they get caught red-handed stealing an election?

morbs you don't even have a portable telephone

i try to be as much of a nonperson as I can. Gotten harder when i have to pay for even my cancer drips with a credit card.

From history I have learned that our intel services are pretty much Murder Inc, only sometimes more competent. (lol good job on that Fidel assassination)

There are nothin BUT spies and suckers, buddy