02.06.14

Privacy Watch: GCHQ Resorts to DDOS Attacks, New Smears Against Snowden, Greenwald to Get Journalism Award

Posted in Law at 5:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Today’s and yesterday’s news items about mass surveillance and abuse

• Snowden leak: GCHQ DDoSed chatrooms of Anonymous, LulzSec

  British intelligence ran denial-of-service attacks against chatrooms used by Anonymous and LulzSec, according to an investigation by NBC News involving Snowden confidante Glenn Greenwald.

• Snowden Leak: GCHQ Targeted Anonymous With DoS Attacks

• Jake Davis: Following Latest GCHQ Revelations, Who are the Real Criminals?

  In recent years we’ve learned that the FBI has no problem with using informants to organise, encourage, and assist computer hacking at a global level, and now it seems GCHQ has been in on the double-standards game too: launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against chat servers hosted by Anonymous in 2010/2011 in order to scare off supporters of the movement.

• Victims Of GCHQ’s Denial Of Service Attacks Start Asking Who Are The Real Criminals?

  Earlier today, we wrote about the latest Snowden docs, in which it was revealed that the UK spy agency, GCHQ, was engaged in DDoS attacks on people participating in Anonymous chats and other events, while also helping to identify certain participants, leading to their eventual arrests and convictions. Basically, it looks like GCHQ was engaged in widespread DDoSing, while at the same time helping to convict some kids for doing their own DDoSing. We’ve already questioned whether or not GCHQ is even supposed to be doing that to UK citizens (they’re supposed to be focused on foreign targets), but some of those convicted are already questioning how it’s right that they were convicted of the same thing that the GCHQ itself was doing to them.

• New surveillance technology can track everyone in an area for several hours at a time

  As Americans have grown increasingly comfortable with traditional surveillance cameras, a new, far more powerful generation is being quietly deployed that can track every vehicle and person across an area the size of a small city, for several hours at a time. Although these cameras can’t read license plates or see faces, they provide such a wealth of data that police, businesses and even private individuals can use them to help identify people and track their movements.

• Former NSA chief explains how Snowden gained high-level access

• Snowden leaks: The man who watches over the NSA

  Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations have revealed that a huge capability resides within America’s National Security Agency to collect and analyse communications.

• Wheeler: “Clapper Confirms NSA Engages In Domestic Surveillance,” It’s Not Just “Terrorism”

  After closely following the National Security Agency story for two years (16+ months before anyone ever heard the name, Edward Snowden), I can honestly say that blogger and journalist Marcy Wheeler’s real-time coverage of this incredible chapter in the Orwellian history of our nation’s clandestine underbelly blows the doors off of virtually everyone (as she’s again reminding us, in multiple stories over the past day), in terms of her intensive and incisive analysis of the hard information and public statements that are being released by our government in the wake of the Snowden document leaks this past June.

• John McCain Wants A Special NSA Committee, And Dianne Feinstein Isn’t Too Happy About That

  At least four different Senate committees have jurisdiction over the leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — and now Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wants to create one committee to rule them all.

  McCain introduced legislation on Tuesday that would create a special new committee to investigate the NSA. He has been calling for the creation of such a committee since October, and the resolution is his first concrete step toward that goal.

• Glenn Greenwald denies selling NSA documents

• Snowden ally Greenwald to get top journalism award for reports on NSA spying

  Glenn Greenwald and three other journalists who were the first to report on whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaked NSA files will receive a George Polk award for their work. That’s according to a source familiar with the plans to award the prestigious prize later this month.

• A Smoking Gun: Online DEA Manuals Show How Feds Use NSA Spy Data, Train Local Cops to Construct False Chains of Evidence

  Whoever suggests the Snowden revelations mean nothing to the lives of ordinary black people either isn’t paying close attention, or is working for the police and prison state. The federal DEA, the Justice Department’s federal drug police, have passed tons illegal NSA spying data to local police agencies and cynically coached them to lie about the sources of their evidence. It’s not exaggeration or hype. You can view the manuals online for yourself.

• Wozniak criticizes cloud dependence in light of NSA

  Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he has sympathy for companies at odds with the NSA and its surveillance tactics, but that their own dependence on server farms is part of the problem.

  “I think most companies, just like Apple, start out young and idealistic,” Wozniak said at the Apps World North America convention here. “But now all these companies are going to the cloud. And with the cloud you don’t have any control.”

• Swiss govt tightens computer security amid NSA spying concerns

  Citing worries about foreign surveillance efforts, the government of Switzerland has ordered tighter control methods on its own computer and phone technology systems in order to prevent Swiss communications from being monitored.

• Author of the Patriot Act Says NSA Bulk Collection Is Illegal

  Since the revelations about the NSA from Edward Snowden’s leaks last year, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, who authored the Patriot Act, has come out in opposition to certain NSA surveillance practices, particularly bulk collection of Americans’ telephone metadata.

• Germany’s Schroeder was number 388 on NSA spying list – report

• Verizon ‘Dispels NSA Inaccuracies’ With More Inaccuracies

  For a long time Verizon was dead silent regarding their cooperation with the NSA, with the only public comment at one point being to mock Yahoo and Google for demanding greater government transparency. R

• Internet Firms Release Data on NSA Requests

  A flurry of new reports from major technology companies show that the government collects customer information on tens of thousands of Americans every six months as part of secret national security investigations. And the companies’ top lawyers struck a combative stance, saying the Obama administrative needs to provide more transparency about its data collection.

• Who Did the NSA’s Illegal Spying Put in Jail?

  Last week, the ACLU joined a constitutional challenge to the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), the statute that allows the NSA to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international phone calls and emails. With the Federal Defenders Office, we filed a motion on behalf of Jamshid Muhtorov, the first criminal defendant to receive notice that he had been monitored under this controversial spying law. But Mr. Muhtorov received this notice only after the Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its previous policy of concealing FAA surveillance in criminal cases — a policy that violated both the statute itself and defendants’ due process rights.

• Edward Snowden NSA revelations forge pro-privacy bond among liberal and conservative lawmakers in U.S. states

  Revelations of National Security Agency surveillance programs have prompted state lawmakers around the United States to propose bills to curtail the powers of law enforcement to monitor and track citizens.

• State lawmakers push back against government surveillance

  Angry over revelations of National Security Agency surveillance and frustrated with what they consider outdated digital privacy laws, state lawmakers around the nation are proposing bills to curtail the powers of law enforcement to monitor and track citizens.

• Civil liberties: We the people must stop NSA infringements

  “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt was upholding the wisdom of our founding fathers. But we have governed our country by the opposite creed since 9/11.

• NSA surveillance should not be the new normal

• Curbs on NSA are necessary

  Based upon the disturbing revelations of the NSA power abuse that continue to come into the light of transparency, it is clear that significant changes and controls need to be made in how the NSA is allowed to conduct business.

• The first congressman to battle the NSA is dead. No-one noticed, no-one cares.

  Last month, former Congressman Otis Pike died, and no one seemed to notice or care. That’s scary, because Pike led the House’s most intensive and threatening hearings into US intelligence community abuses, far more radical and revealing than the better-known Church Committee’s Senate hearings that took place at the same time. That Pike could die today in total obscurity, during the peak of the Snowden NSA scandal, is, as they say, a “teachable moment” —one probably not lost on today’s already spineless political class.

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