Mar 28
After last week’s uproar over Microsoft’s 2012 snooping in a blogger’s Hotmail account
     |
Jan 17
We already knew that Obama was set to announce some major NSA reforms today
| |
Jan 13
The report from the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies on the U.S. government’s mass spying—domestically and around the globe— has much that’s good in it. As the folks handling the only ongoing case where National Security Letters have been declared unconstitutional, we also especially appreciate the recommendation that NSLs may only be issued after judicial review and subject to significant additional limitations. We appreciate their strong endorsement of strong, non-backdoored encryption. And we never thought we’d see a presidential panel explain the risks posed by the government’s stockpiling of Zero Days rather than making sure that they are fixed.
| |
Nov 15
The Central Intelligence Agency has been busy aggregating a huge database of international money transfers, according to the Wall Street Journal—and it includes millions of Americans’ financial and personal data.
| |
Sep 16
German newspaper Spiegel Online reports that the NSA has its own financial database to track money flows through a "tailored access operations" division.
| |
Sep 13
It’s come to light that the NSA has impersonated Google—and possibly other big websites—in order to intercept, store, and read supposedly secure online communications.
Mother Jones reports that the agency managed this by using "man-in-the-middle (MITM)" attacks, which are often used by high-class hackers. PowerPoint slides made public by a Brazilian news channel also suggest the technique is used by the UK-based GCHQ. Mother Jones describes how the hack works:
According to the document, NSA employees log into an internet router—most likely one used by an internet service provider or a backbone network. (It’s not clear whether this was done with the permission or knowledge of the router’s owner.) Once logged in, the NSA redirects the "target traffic" to an "MITM," a site that acts as a stealthy intermediary, harvesting communications before forwarding them to their intended destination.
| |
Sep 11
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) just today released hundreds of pages of documents related to the government’s secret interpretation of Patriot Act Section 215 and the NSA’s (mis)use of its massive database of every American’s phone records. The documents were released as a result of EFF’s ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
| |
Sep 02
The Wall Street Journal published an important investigation last week, reporting that the National Security Agency (NSA) has direct access to many key telecommunications switches around the country and “has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans.” Notably, NSA officials repeatedly refused to talk about this story on theirconference call with reporters the next day. Instead the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA released a statement about the story later that evening.
| |
Aug 15
It’s been two months since President Barack Obama first said that he welcomes a debate about NSA surveillance, which he once again reiterated last week at his press conference. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to have a real debate about a subject when the administration constantly and intentionally misleads Americans about the NSA’s capabilities and supposed legal powers.
| |
Aug 09
What It Means to Be an NSA ‘Target’
Posted in: Today's Chili
An important New York Times investigation from today reporting that the NSA "is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country," coupled with leaked documents published by the Guardian, seriously calls into question the accuracy of crucial statements made by government officials about NSA surveillance.
| |
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.