Microsoft says it has received at least 1000 surveillance requests from US govt in 1H 2016

Image Credits: REUTERS

Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it had received at least a thousand surveillance requests from the US government that sought user content for foreign intelligence purposes during the first half of 2016.

The amount, shared in Microsoft’s biannual transparency report, was more than double what the company said it received under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the preceding six-month interval, and was the highest the company has listed since 2011, when it began tracking such government surveillance orders.

The scope of spying authority granted to US intelligence agencies under FISA has come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks, sparked in part by evolving, unsubstantiated assertions from President Donald Trump and other Republicans that the Obama White House improperly spied on Trump and his associates.

Microsoft said it received between 1,000 and 1,499 FISA orders for user content between January and June of 2016, compared to between 0 and 499 during both January-June 2015 as well as the second half of 2015.

The number of user accounts impacted by FISA orders fell during the same period, however, from between 17,500 and 17,999 to between 12,000 and 12,499, according to the report.

The US government only allows companies to report the volume of FISA requests in wide bands rather than specific numbers.

FISA orders, which are approved by judges who sit on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, are tightly guarded national security secrets. Even the existence of a specific FISA order is rarely disclosed publicly.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the FBI obtained a FISA order to monitor the communications of former Trump advisor Carter Page as part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign.

Parts of FISA will expire at the end of the year, unless US lawmakers vote to reauthorise it. Privacy advocates in Congress have been working to attach new transparency and oversight reforms to any FISA legislation, and to limit government searches of American data that is incidentally collected during foreign surveillance operations.

Microsoft also for the first time published a national security letter, a type of warrantless surveillance order used by the FBI.

Other technology companies, including Twitter Inc and Yahoo Inc, have also disclosed national security letters in recent months under a transparency measure of the USA Freedom Act that was enacted into law by the US Congress in 2015.

Reuters

Publish date: April 14, 2017 11:52 am| Modified date: April 14, 2017 11:52 am

WikiLeaks reveals that NSA has been spying on Pakistan’s mobile networks

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on Pakistan’s mobile networks, whistleblowing organisation WikiLeaks has tweeted. “Hundreds of NSA cyber weapons variants publicly released including code showing hacking of Pakistan mobile system,” @wikileaks tweeted.

According to a report in Express Tribune on Monday, the hacker group “Shadow Brokers” released a new cache of information detailing how the NSA accessed private and public networks in other countries. A researcher on Twitter who identifies himself as ‘x0rz’ decrypted the files and uploaded them on Github, a web-based repository and internet hosting service.

“The researcher confirmed that the archives include evidence of NSA operators’ access inside the GSM network of Mobilink – one of the Pakistan’s most popular mobile services provider,” the report noted. The hacker group had previously released data suggesting the US agency may have been monitoring hundreds of IP addresses in Pakistan. The encrypted files were being decrypted by security researchers around the world.

“Shadow Brokers” had initially wanted to auction its data cache in exchange for Bitcoin but as no buyer turned up, they released the data online. This is not the first time that reports have surfaced claiming that the US NSA is snooping on other countries. According to a Daily Mail report in 2014, WikiLeaks disclosed documents that suggested the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was among six political parties from around the world the NSA was authorised to conduct surveillance on for gathering foreign intelligence. The authorisation was given by a secret American court, it said.

The leak was planned months ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US, the report claimed. Another report in the Washington Post that also came in 2014 said the US has long had broad no-spying arrangements with four countries – Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – in a group known collectively as the “Five Eyes”.

“But a classified 2010 legal certification – approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden – lists 193 countries [including India], that would be of valid interest for US intelligence,” the Post said.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 11:45 am| Modified date: April 12, 2017 11:41 am

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter data was shared with Geofeedia; was used by authorities for snooping

Representative image.

By tech2 News Staff /  11 Jan 2017 , 10:10

Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter pride themselves when it comes to sharing data with government authorities. But in a report released by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in California in October last year, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were found guilty of sharing user data with Geofeedia. This is a location-based analytics platform that is known to be used by American law enforcement agencies as a surveillance tool to track and monitor protest activity.

All three social media networks provided Geofeedia with access to its APIs. For instance, Facebook gave access to its data feed called Topic Feed API, which is a tool used by media companies to access public posts on Facebook related to specific topics or hashtags or events or places. Instagram provided access to its stream of public Instagram posts including location data associated with these posts. Twitter on the other hand provided access to its public database via a subsidiary.

Now Geofeedia calls itself a cloud-based, location-based analytics platform with the expertise in predicting, analysing and acting on real-time social media content by location. It provides this data not only to law enforcement agencies, but also to marketers and advertisers, education and corporate security and so on. According to this particular report, the data was shared with around 500 law enforcement agencies, which helped them track activist groups and monitor protests.

All three social media networks have since terminated their contracts with Geofeedia, and do not share any APIs with the Geofeedia. According to Facebook and Twitter, they were not aware of what activities Geofeedia was up to, which sounds quite hollow.

But the problem lies in the fact that, like Geofeedia, there are several other companies which offer surveillance tools using Facebook and Twitter data. According to this Forbes comment, the ACLU was able to get access to Geofeedia’s contracts was because the police departments directly made the purchase. Considering there are many other surveillance service providers, the authorities will take a very discreet approach when finalising such contracts, making it difficult for anyone to lead these surveillance tactics back to them.

US and UK spies tried accessing data from passengers’ mobile phones on commercial airline, says report

  09 Dec 2016 , 10:49

American and British spy agencies have tried to intercept data from passengers’ mobile phones on commercial airlines including Air France, French media has reported, citing documents from US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The French flag-carrier was an early target of the US National Security Agency and its British counterpart GCHQ as it was seen as a terrorist target and it carried out tests in 2007 on allowing the use of mobile phones on its aircraft.

“The use of mobile phones with Internet connections in the sky gave rise to the creation of specific programs at the NSA and GCHQ,” said Le Monde, which has access to Snowden’s archive in partnership with news website The Intercept.

While it is not normally possible to make phone calls on planes, some carriers allow passengers to connect to a cabin Wi-Fi, allowing them to use internet-based functions on their handsets.

In 2012, at least 27 airlines allowed passengers to use mobile phones on board, including British Airways, Aeroflot, Etihad, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines.

But Air France was “such a symbol of the surveillance of communications on board airlines that the British spy agency used a drawing of one of their planes to illustrate how the interception worked.”

Asked about the British and American surveillance claims, Air France told Le Monde, “We are visibly not the only ones to have been targeted and we know absolutely nothing about these practices.”

According to the report, internal documents from the two agencies describe the results of the “impressive” programs – codenamed “Thieving Magpie” and “Homing Pigeon” – which allowed data to be collected “almost in real time”.

In order to spy on a telephone, all that was needed was that the aircraft be cruising at an altitude above 10,000 feet, the report said.

Secret aerial stations on the ground could intercept the signal as it transited through a satellite.

“The simple fact that the telephone was switched on was enough to give away its position, the interception could then be cross-referenced with the list of known passengers on the flight, the flight number, and the airline code to determine the name of the smartphone user,” the report said.

The mobile phone’s function could also be disrupted, it said, forcing the user to input their access codes and thereby allowing the British spy agency to intercept the information.

Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, leaked thousands of classified documents to the press in 2013 which revealed the vast scope of US surveillance of private data that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.

After fleeing his home in Hawaii, he now lives in exile in Russia where he has sought asylum.

Should he ever return to the United States, Snowden would be tried for espionage and other charges carrying up to 30 years in prison.

AFP

Internet Authority announces formal regulations and rules for live streaming industry in China

Image credit: Reuters

  04 Nov 2016 , 17:50

Chinese internet authorities have formalized controversial rules regulating the country’s fast-growing live-streaming video industry, in a move that strips out smaller competitors and places hard-line surveillance measures on leading firms. In an announcement posted on their website on Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China grouped a handful of earlier restrictions under a final 24-point regulation that will come into effect on Dec. 1.

The rules require streaming services to log user data and content for 60 days, and work with regulators to provide information on users who stream content that the government deems threatening to national security or social order. Both users and providers are punishable under the regulations.

The law also codifies rules that ban online news broadcasting services from original reporting, requiring them to identify sources and non-selectively reproduce state-sanctioned information. China’s live video streaming industry has experienced booming growth in the past two years as dozens of video and social media sites scrambled to add the updated capabilities to their existing services.

Credit Suisse Group analysts estimate the industry could top $5 billion by the end of 2017, driven by cheap bandwidth and a growing population of young mobile users. The industry’s exponential growth attracted increased scrutiny from government authorities in 2016. In April, Chinese authorities called on 20 of the country’s top firms to join a self-criticism coalition, saying the industry was damaging China’s youth by proliferating content including pornography, fraud and terrorism.

On June 1 companies including Baidu Inc, Sina Corp, Sohu.com Inc and Youku Tudou, acknowledged new rules as part of the group, including requirements for real-name authentication. While the latest move places wide-reaching restrictions on the sites, it also signals an official sanctioning of the industry and its top players by Chinese officials.

Much like China’s earlier online video and music industries, the regulations put pressure on smaller competitors and bring larger firms into line with regulators, offering more growth opportunities for a smaller number of controllable companies.

“One of the things the government always wants to do is narrow the playing field to a smaller number of higher profile known entities, ideally ones that have a better track record of cooperating with the government,” says Mark Natkin, Managing Director at Marbridge Consulting.

“In the long run it’s actually relatively beneficial to the large companies.” In May the government handed down 588 licenses for prominent media outlets and live-streaming sites, effectively banning all unapproved services.

Reuters

Shadow Brokers reveal more tools from NSA trove

Image Credit: Venture Beat

  01 Nov 2016 , 09:25

A group calling itself “Shadow Brokers” says it has released another gem from its trove of high-level hacking tools stolen from the U.S.’s National Security Agency, potentially offering added insight into how America’s spies operate online. The leak discloses NSA-style codenames — including “Jackladder” and “Dewdrop”— and carries internet protocol information about scores of organizations, many based in Japan, China and South Korea, according to severalexperts who have examined the data.

Matthew Hickey, co-founder of U.K.-based cybersecurity consultancy Hacker House, said it was plausible that the servers would have seen use as staging posts to help obfuscate the origin of electronic eavesdropping operations. More worrying for the NSA, the leak backs Shadow Brokers’ claims to have stolen an as-yet undisclosed set of electronic lock picks from the agency.

“Those can be hard to generate,” Hickey said in a telephone interview, calling it “quite expensive to replicate all those tools.” Shadow Brokers has been closely followed by intelligence watchers and cybersecurity specialists since the group released an initial set of NSA hacking tools back in August. The seriousness of the leak was confirmed when security companies rushed to patch holes in their software revealed by the disclosure.

The Intercept, an investigative publication with access to NSA material leaked by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, later confirmed Shadow Brokers’ tools were really from the NSA by cross-referencing the leaked data with information held in a previously unpublished top secret manual. The authenticity of the latest batch of material could not immediately be established, although Hickey said any hoax would have to have been unusually elaborate.

Shadow Brokers did not return messages seeking comment Monday. The NSA declined to comment.

AP

Illegal mining to be monitored by surveillance system

Image: Sumaira Abdulali

  16 Oct 2016 , 11:33

With the objective of curbing illegal mining, the government on Saturday launched the satellite-based Mining Surveillance System, an official statement said. The system is built up to establish a regime of responsive mineral administration, through public participation, by curbing instances of illegal mining activity through automatic remote sensing detection technology, it said.

The Mines Ministry, through Indian Bureau of Mines(IBM), developed the system, in coordination with the Gandhinagar-based Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics(BISAG) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), to use space technology for curbing illegal mining activity in the country, said a Ministry statement. Developed under the Digital India Programme, MSS is one of the first such surveillance systems developed in the world using space technology, it said, adding that as the current system of monitoring of illegal mining is based on local complaints and unconfirmed information, there is no robust mechanism to monitor the action taken on such complaints.

Launching the system, Union Mines Minister Piyush Goyal said: “MSS will put a leash on illegal mining through public participation.” The system checks a region of 500 metres around the existing mining lease boundary to search for any unusual activity which is likely to be illegal mining. Any discrepancy, if found, is flagged-off as a trigger. An automatic software leveraging image processing technology will generate automatic triggers of unauthorised activities.

In the initial phase, a total of 296 triggers have been generated in the MSS software across the states covering a total area of 3994.87 hectares under the system. The process is underway to launch a similar system for minor minerals in coalition with the state governments, it said.

IANS

NSA contractor arrested for stealing highly classified information

Image Credit: Wikimedia.org

  06 Oct 2016 , 10:55

A National Security Agency contractor has been arrested and charged with stealing highly classified information, authorities said on Wednesday, a data breach that could mark a damaging new leak about the US government’s surveillance efforts.

Harold Thomas Martin, 51, who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, was taken into custody in Maryland in August, said a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Booze Allen is the consulting firm that employed Edward Snowden when he revealed the collection of metadata by the NSA in 2013.

Booz Allen said in a statement that when the company “learned of the arrest of one of its employees by the FBI,” they immediately fired the employee and offered full cooperation to the FBI.

The same month Martin was arrested, some of the NSA’s most sophisticated hacking tools were dumped onto public websites by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers.

The company’s stock was down 3.7 percent to $30.33 a share, following the report.

The US Justice Department charged Martin, who had top secret national security clearance, with theft of classified government material, according to