RECENT bombshells from Snowden et al. revealed a high degree of criminality in the NSA, which infects computer networks [1]. Perhaps they can no longer accuse China of doing such things. But to what degree have governments other than the United States' played in all this? Well, there's allegation that Canada's government is now part of the same institutional corruption [2]. Other US allies, even neighbours of China (where the majority of the nation is of Chinese descent), may be complicit [3]. The high degree of state surveillance [4] is being studied [5] and citizens in the United States (not to be confused with the government) want some answers [6,7,8] about the NSA's facilities. Networks got compromised [9], essentially subverting any notion of security [10]. Now we have it confirmed that the NSA used information it had gathered for blackmail [11-14]. This is a huge deal as it makes complicit nations accomplices in the act. Back in the days of COINTELPRO, the FBI used surveillance in an attempt to drive Martin Luther King to suicide. ⬆
A presentation slide provided by Edward Snowden and published by the Dutch media outlet NRC on November 23 shows that the NSA has infected more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide with malicious software designed to steal sensitive and private information.
The NSA used U.S. Embassy in Ottawa as command post during summits
With revelations of spyware planted on 50,000 networks, the "Five Eyes" states have been allowed to trample over their citizens' privacy for far too long
The MetaPhone project asks volunteers to install an Android app that sends the researchers copies of a device’s call logs and basic data from a person’s Facebook account. The researchers say that a large collection of such data will make it possible to use data-mining techniques to discover which aspects of people’s lives—as recorded in their Facebook data—can be revealed by examining just their calling and texting logs.
Bluffdale agreed to sell water to the National Security Agency at a rate below its own guidelines and the Utah average in order to secure the contract and spur economic development in the town, according to records and interviews.
As other countries push for more control over the Internet, “you’re going to see national boundaries begin in cyberspace,” said Jason Healey, director of policy group Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, according to Bloomberg.
That's not to say that the NSA has "broken" all cryptography: "the math works," says Schneier, and while anonymizing tools like Tor are targeted by NSA, they seem to remain secure. Instead, the NSA appears to have manipulated encryption tools and tapped into data center links and fiber backbones—in essence, silently removing the hinges from their doors.
The US authorities have studied online sexual activity and suggested exposing porn site visits as a way to discredit people who spread radical views, the Huffington Post news site has reported.
The disclosures from the Snowden files keep on coming, with each revelation more disturbing than the last. The latest report reveals a plan by the National Security Agency to collected information on six people's online activity, particularly their visits to pornographic websites, to discredit them within their community.
This is an example of "how 'personal vulnerabilities' can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation, and authority," activist Glenn Greenwald wrote in the Huffington Post on Tuesday evening.