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NSA Warns "Bad Guys Are Everywhere" As Spooks Run Afoul Of German Laws Again
Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man blog,
Successfully Distracted …
We can probably “thank” ISIS for having distracted everyone from the ongoing spy scandal. A new barbaric and powerful terrorist group the danger of which is blown out of all proportion by politicians and the media is no doubt a Godsend for the national security apparatus and the military-industrial complex. In fact, this reminds us that ISIS looks suspiciously like an artificial creation anyway, one that has at some point undoubtedly received assistance from one or more states.
In a previous missive (see “Equal Opportunity Spy-Fest” for details), we discussed an article in German news magazine Der Spiegel (which has by the way done some excellent sleuthing beyond merely reporting on the content of the Snowden files). The article at Der Spiegel inter alia mentioned occasions when representatives of the “national security” apparatus or government spokesmen speaking on its behalf were caught in blatant lies and noted in its conclusion:
“The next weeks and months will show whether democratic societies across the world are strong enough to take a stand against the unlimited, totalitarian ambitions of Western secret services — or not. The governments of the countries in question apparently did not have the necessary backbone. They knew full well that the kind of surveillance being undertaken lacked all democratic legitimacy. But they pursued the programs anyway, behind the backs of their electorates. It is now up to voters to defend themselves. It is up to us, whose data has landed as by-catch in the nets of Tempora. We must force our own representatives to defend our freedoms. ”
Our comment to this was:
“Shocker! They lied to the public! And now ‘we must force our own representatives to defend our freedoms‘. Apparently over at the ‘Spiegel’ magazine they have completely forgotten who’s who in the zoo. The secret services are not an entity apart from the State – they are part of it. The mirage of ‘democratic accountability’ is held up as a way out. But how exactly can one’s ‘representatives’ be forced to alter course? Surely no-one can be so naïve as the think that any of this can be ‘fixed’ by elections or mere protests. Too powerful and well-funded an apparatus stands behind these activities. It would be a miracle if anything changed; moreover, the couch potatoes can’t be bothered anyway. Those that have ordered and are involved in the spying are undoubtedly betting that the furor will die down again just as it did the first time around, and they are probably right. In the meantime, they will continue exactly as before. We’re willing to take bets on this. All that has really happened is that whistleblowers have been put on notice.”
There is no reason to assume that this pessimistic conclusion needs to be reassessed. The Snowden revelations have had zero effect on the spying activities or the legal safeguards allegedly keeping them in check. So far, the main effect of these revelations was simply intimidation on a global scale.
To our not too great surprise, surveys have found that the public in the US and UK couldn’t care less. There is in fact a vast gulf though between the public’s reaction to the scandal in the US and the UK and elsewhere. Very likely this is a result of the fact that the US and the UK have a long history of liberty. The English monarchy was the first in Europe that lost much of its power to an elected parliament. Even if the initial construction was deeply flawed, it ensured a much faster evolution toward a democratic dispensation than in continental Europe. Obviously, in the American colonies, the British monarchy lost power entirely in the late 18th century already.
In Germany by contrast, people still remember Hitler and the GDR’s Stasi, so they are naturally more inclined to distrust state-run surveillance agencies (and rightly so). As a result, the spook agencies are also more likely to break the law in Europe, where privacy laws are as a rule much stricter than in the US. This brings us to the latest revelations about NSA and GCHQ surveillance documents.
A welcome distraction: the Islamist dude with the $6.500 James Bond watch.
The Treasure Map
In its most recent edition, Der Spiegel reports on something called “Treasure Map” – which documents the attempt by the spy agencies to map the entire internet and ensure they have access to every single user. To do so, they have apparently illegally broken into networks belonging to German telecom providers. A few excerpts:
“When it comes to choosing code names for their secret operations, American and British agents demonstrate a flare for creativity. Sometimes they borrow from Mother Nature, with monikers such as “Evil Olive” and “Egoistic Giraffe.” Other times, they would seem to take their guidance from Hollywood. A program called Treasure Map even has its own logo, a skull superimposed onto a compass, the eye holes glowing in demonic red, reminiscent of a movie poster for the popular “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, starring Johnny Depp.
Treasure Map is anything but harmless entertainment. Rather, it is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.
Furthermore, every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world — every smartphone, tablet and computer — is to be made visible. Such a map doesn’t just reveal one treasure. There are millions of them.
The breathtaking mission is described in a Treasure Map presentation from the documents of the former intelligence service employee Edward Snowden which SPIEGEL has seen. It instructs analysts to “map the entire Internet — Any device, anywhere, all the time.”
(emphasis added)
That’s quite something. However, while the spook agencies obviously believe that they are a law unto themselves (probably because they are able to blackmail those who are supposed to provide oversight), they are still breaking German law in their quest to “map everything”.
“Treasure Map graphics don’t just provide detailed views of German cable and satellite networks. Red markings also reveal to agents which carriers and internal company networks FiveEyes agencies claim to have already accessed. Of particular interest from the German perspective are two “Autonomous Systems” (AS) — networks — marked in red. They are labeled Deutsche Telekom AG and Netcologne, a Cologne-based provider.
[…]
Because Netcologne is a regional provider, it would seem highly likely that the NSA or one of its Treasure Map partners accessed the network from within Germany. That would be a clear violation of German law and potentially another NSA-related case for German public prosecutors. Thus far, the only NSA-related case currently being investigated is the monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.”
So only the surveillance of the German chancellor’s mobile phone has so far roused public prosecutors from their slumber, as they appear to regard surveillance of everyone else as a somewhat lesser problem. The reason for this apathy can be guessed – nearly every nation is involved in spying on the citizenry, both at home and abroad. In fact, the NSA’s “anything goes” approach is very likely welcomed by spook agencies in allied countries that are more tightly regulated, as they can get information they could not otherwise obtain in “information exchanges”. Then they don’t need to do the spying, thus remaining within the law, but will get anything they want in roundabout fashion from those operating with fewer restrictions. Actually, in the case of the “five eyes” alliance it would be better to say “no restrictions whatsoever”, as the checks and balances that allegedly exist are usually revealed as a joke upon closer examination (such as the FISA court, which basically rubber-stamps every request it gets from government agencies).
Among the activities related to “treasure map” is also the close surveillance of key employees of major internet providers. Note that these are perfectly innocent citizens, who are under close surveillance by spy agencies 24/7 merely on account of their jobs. Most people don’t care as long as they are reasonable sure that they are law-abiding and consider themeselves too unimportant to come under scrutiny. These attitudes tend to radically change once one becomes a target.
In this context, we urge you to watch a brief video in which a Spiegel reporter reveals to satellite internet provider Stella who among its key personnel is under NSA/GCHQ surveillance and how deeply into their network the spooks have already hacked – in the process obtaining sensitive passwords to major internet routers that allow them to alter links, find out the geo-location of every customer, and arbitrarily turn the internet access of Stella customers off.
The video can be seen here. Note how the faces of Stella’s engineers become longer and longer as they begin to realize what has happened. As der Spiegel reports, Stella’s CEO had a terse initial comment: “F*ck!”
The mindset of the spooks meanwhile is illustrated nicely by one of the pages from the “treasure map” overview published by Der Spiegel:
Bad guys are everywhere!
So according to the NSA, the world is brimming with bad guys. They’re everywhere! This makes them sound like Peeping Toms with paranoid delusions. As we have pointed out on a previous occasion, even in the US, where one of the worst terror attacks in history has claimed nearly 3,000 lives, the average citizen is far more likely to die from falling off a piece of furniture or drowning in his own bathtub than from a terror attack.
So what happens if it indeed turns out that German laws have been violated in the implementation of “treasure map”? Will there be any consequences? Our bet is that there will be none – in fact, our bet is that there very likely won’t even be an investigation, and if there is one, it will soon quietly die again.
Conclusion:
Although 99.99% of what the spook agencies collect on the internet is undoubtedly useless nonsense (which makes one wonder how effective these unfocused efforts can possibly be in catching actual terrorists), the fact that they apparently do indeed collect everything is a danger to liberty, no matter how many “bad guys” there are in the world that can be used to rationalize these activities (bad people will always exist).
There is no telling what the future will bring, what kind of governments will come to power if there is a major emergency (economic collapse due to a breakdown of the monetary system is e.g. a distinct possibility). It is after all well-known that radical political forces tend to come to power under such circumstances, and then there can no longer be even the remotest assurance that the data so diligently collected by agencies of “free societies” won’t be misused. Even democratic governments are known for their past efforts to suppress political dissent. In fact, as Washington’s Blog correctly argues, history shows beyond a doubt that ultimately, this is what mass surveillance is always about.
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"...99.99% of what the spook agencies collect on the internet is undoubtedly useless nonsense..."
Clearly they don't spend much time here at ZH...
/snarkity-snark-snark
Bad guys, like the kind that violate the Fourth Amendment of The Constitution as a matter of course, or a different kind of bad guy?
Exactly, the bad guys are the guys trying to convince you they are the good guys. How many times can they power fuck us for our "safety"?
We the NSA/CIA are everywhere these days.
In our brassieres? And our underpants?!?
Notice I said WE. As in they have us and everyone connected to the internet tagged, so WE are everywhere for them.
Yes, we got it.
The bad guys are everywhere? Gee, I thought they were all rounded up and herded in Washington, D.C.
That Treasure Map logo on the slide looks like Skull and Bones, meets NATO.
NATO Star.. good one.
The only thing worse than a deluded psychopath is a deluded psychopath with Powerpoint.
Look at Art 6 of the NATO Charter
In other manipulated events this week....
Remember the blonde ditz that won Ms America contest playing a plastic cup for the culture and talent quiz?
Was all pre-planned outcome.
Guess what:
http://www.lifenews.com/2014/09/15/newly-crowned-miss-america-kira-kazan...
The MSM and Ministry of Culture and Thought want you to see than some people are more worthy than others
(PS I could give a shit about the whole topic .... it's an individual's choice in which government should not partake)
Wouldn't surprise me if "The Donald" dipped in her cup.
Three in a row from NY? Totally un-rigged.
"individual's choice in which government should not partake"
The pain in Spain might
Soon be like Ukraine.
I know for FACT that they are even in the Military Academies of our Allies.
/ Cause they can't be trusted either. "West Point exchange students", my ass! /sarc
They’re not just “comparing notes” i.e. Benchmarking/Crowd-sourcing/Leveraging our Allies. They don’t need a physical presence to do that. Their physical presence lets their guys do a Pscyh/Personality Profile on the native guys in the Academy, and “Get into their heads” (i.e., to “Create a more robust Predictive Model”) for when it matters: When they need to be arm-twisted as Ally or faced in battle.
They define ZH followers as bad guys so we are everywhere.
hedgeless_horseman;
Yeah seeing as actually smart people vote in Germany and Take their government seriously, just as they take Peace Time Law like freedoms in the US Constitution Seriously...
- I think NATO is in Trouble
- I think People say okay if our Volunteer Armies want to go to war that is fine, but all people know that war is bad and they don't want to participate in War
- Freedom from Spying might was well be written into the Germany Constitution
- Germans are interested in Education, Success, Status, and in Creating new things or replicating smart technology
- Germans can see how some of the people depend on USA for Jobs, and that this money can corrupt everything
- Germans can see Obama, Bush, NATO and others are Dangerous and Stupid
- Germany can Outgrow NATO & USA & even the EU provided it can keep free trade and trade partners
- USA & It's Military must fix the US Government
.
Well, they don't limit themselves to the Fourth Amendment, but yes, that kind of bad guys.
We can probably “thank” ISIS for having distracted everyone from the ongoing spy scandal.
We can probably thank the NSA/CIA for inventing ISIS. Good work guys.
And Al Qaida before them
Scandal? What scandal? That's so last year...
Bad Guys are everywhere in the US govt in the beltway plus the scum on Wall Street, LA/Hollywood, SiliCon Valley et al plus the En Ess Aye devil base in utah.
Good guys in America? Are there any good guys? Just cowards who watch TV.
We know there are bad guys everywhere...starting with the District of Columbia.
Talking about bad guys, the CIA is now implicated in the Australian pedophile ring, a ring that included Nicole Kidman's father.
http://beforeitsnews.com/celebrities/2014/09/nicole-kidmans-father-dies-...
When everything is against the law we are all bad guys that just havent been caught yet.
But we fund most of them.
And the naked selfies of your children we collect help us protect you.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken
"Bad Guys are everywhere..."
"Bad Guys", like Charity, Justice and Truth, begin at home. NSA fascist scum!
"Bad guys are everywhere.
Good guys are somewhere"
so obviously if the good guys aren't "here", you're not the good guys.
Correct, the bad guys are inside of the NSA.
Are also inside the Criminal Pure Evil Psycopathic CIA.
This 1984 crap is getting out of Hand...
get out of my Life!
Jean
IMPORTANT: If you see something, say someting™
seesay@hq.dhs.gov
Does that come with a brown shirt?
I've got a USMC decal, lower left hand corner of my rear windshield. Took a grease pencil and wrote above it:
"THE NEXT TIME ISLAMISTS HIT US, REMEMBER DHS WAS WATCHING ME."
The way they are spying on us you'd think we were all terrrists. Oh wait maybe that was their point. Okay my bad carry on!
Read the whole article FB. And as this posting has mention,the public will forget about it until they board trains to their ultimate fate....
Um, there are no 'democratic societies'.
Under where?!
Look! A squirrel!
*ZOINK*
Israel spies on the world using their stooges in the DC US and the UK.
Of course the Germans and any other Europeans in the know don't like it.
An American, not US subject.
Ugly people do ugly things.
And... whereas Beauty is skin-deep, Ugliness goes all the way through.
Corruption and criminality go even deeper.
An American, not US subject.
This is all about data grabs on politicians, judges and the like.
No power like absolute power.
Most of them are at the NSA.
Most of them? That's putting it Mildly. I would suffice it to say that all of them are.
The reactions of the engineers in the video is priceless. They know they're security is fucked and could lose control of all their systems without even knowing about it.
It's a lot worse than that; they know their systems have been rooted and even if they change passwords and increase security the enemy is already past the gates, inside the castle, drank all the single malt and is 24/7 screwing the queen, and there is not one single thing they can do about it forever.
more like: shit-shit-shit, was i watching that midget porn on my workstation or at home?
It is really not that hard to get a router's password especially when the Adminstrators are a bunch of self important know it all jack asses.
You try telling one of these self important blowhards they didn't do their job and see the reaction you get.
http://www.tunnelsup.com/encrypt-passwords-on-cisco-router
By default, when adding a username and password to a Cisco router or switch, the password will show up as clear text. So the question then becomes:
...
13 year old script kiddies exploit this shit all the time, you try telling an admin their router has been compromised by one because they are the IT guru and you aren't and see what happens.
You don't have to be good in most cases to root a commercial router especially ones owned by ISP's outside the US.
And in the cases where they have to be good. Granted this is 2013 but the more important point is.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2613969/password-security/cisco-inadver...
The Type 4 algorithm was supposed to conform to the PBKDF2 (Password-Based Key Derivation Function version 2) standard in an implementation where 80 bits of random data are appended to the plaintext password -- a process known as salting -- and the resulting string is subjected to 1,000 iterations through the SHA-256 hashing function.
"Due to an implementation issue, the Type 4 password algorithm does not use PBKDF2 and does not use a salt, but instead performs a single iteration of SHA-256 over the user-provided plaintext password," Cisco said its advisory. "This approach causes a Type 4 password to be less resilient to brute-force attacks than a Type 5 password of equivalent complexity."
The Type 5 algorithm uses the MD5 hashing function that dates back to 1992 and has known security weaknesses, but its implementation uses salting and 1,000 iterations.
Salting and hash iteration are standard methods recommended by cryptography experts to make password hashes harder to crack and all password encryption algorithms should use them, Schmidt and Steube said Wednesday via email. If a password is passed through 1,000 hashing iterations, a brute-force attack would have to compute the hash 1,000 times for every password guess. This significantly increases the time and resources needed for a successful password recovery attack, the researchers said.
Only a limited number of Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE releases based on the Cisco IOS 15 code base support the Type 4 algorithm, Cisco said in its advisory. "Issues apply only to devices running Cisco IOS or Cisco IOS XE releases with support for Type 4 passwords, and only to the 'enable secret <password>' and 'username <username> secret <password>' commands," the company said. "No other Cisco IOS or IOS XE features use this algorithm to hash passwords or keys."
...
Cisco included information on how to determine if a device uses Type 4 passwords and how to replace them with Type 5 passwords. However, while Type 5 passwords can be used on devices that support Type 4 passwords, they can't be generated on such devices.
...
Inadvertent my ass. The bigger point is how it is not the encryption per se that is weakened 'inadvertently' but the ability to guess the keys or passwords through the process to secure each by removing a shitload of potential right answers through weakening the key generators or hashing processes to reduce the bruteforcing time needed to generate a correct solution.
How many admins didn't bother to change their Type 4 passwords or generate new ones to replace those Type 4 passwords from other devices (i.e. use existing passwords that could have already been cracked).
Then if you look around there are plenty of tools to crack cisco router passwords out there.
One wonders if Cisco was paid or told to do this.
I know a bad guy when I see it, and perfectly capable of handling it myself.........
I'm one of these bad guys and you didn't know that until I told you.
As for handling me ... don't think so.
Nah just yanking your chain.
Not really.
The collective ghosts of Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Mussolini and all their lesser ilk send their warmest regards from the graves of all those that opposed their great intentions and thank the NSA and the other agencies for killing the Spirit of Human Liberty.
Pretty sad when the hysterical snipe-hunting spooks of America are really no different than the brain damaged political officers of North Korea.
All Hail The Corporate!
Which war are you off to fight today?
National (In)Security.
What a bunch of circle-jerks.
The term "God is watching you" used to be quite common.
Personally, I now hope "God is watching over us."
Of course, nothing is said about who is watching the watchers.
All that has really happened is that whistleblowers have been put on notice.”...
Edward Snowden is nothing more nothing less than the chosen spokesperson for the rest of the intelligence community that doesn't have the decency or the balls to step away from the "paycheck" even after all the damage they've created...
Still not certain where all his MO comes from and his "connections" through the likes of Glen Greenwald and Pierre Omidyar who serves many interest(s)...
At the end of the day it's all a test.
I think he is a See Eye Aye operative. He worked for them and never talks about what the See Eye Aye does exactly and their abuses. I am doubtful that he is a real deal especially when connected to scum like Omidyar and also the information came out of Wa Po which is a known mouthpiece of the See Eye Aye.
Bad guys are everywhere,... especially at the NSA.
"Bad Guys are everywhere" The worst are in the US government and all the alphabet agencies.
I'm really sick of these "scare tactics" whose's main purpose is to keep the masses in constant fear so they are easier to control. Personally I'll take my chances with the terrorists over the government and all it's black agencies any day. That's assuming there really are any real terrorists and NOT just those created by, and working for the government.
I guess if you work at the NSA, it would appear bad guys are everywhere. In the next cubical, in the break room, in the bathroom, upstairs, down stairs. Yeah, just about everywhere.
LOL! Don't forget the parking lot. Could you imagine? You go home and take a shower and no matter how much you wash - you can never get the dirty feeling and filth off you.
And the ghost driver who heard on the radio there was a ghost driver said to himself: 1 ghost driver? Everyone is a ghost driver here.
"Although 99.99% of what the spook agencies collect on the internet is undoubtedly useless nonsense (which makes one wonder how effective these unfocused efforts can possibly be in catching actual terrorists)"
By their own admission, they didn't "see ISIL coming". Couldn't even spot a frigging whole army of jihadists in one of the world's islamic hottest spots, so go figure.
Mind you, they could also have been lying about not knowing of ISIL.
Nobody can be THAT incompetent.
But I would have assumed that concerned Americans, gullible as they are about "the ISIL threat", blablabla, would at least have hollered for the NSA to stop its peeping, given it gets shit-all for results.
Well, not even. How asleep at the wheel can you be? Is the country populated by zombies or something?
Funny they trained ISIL in Jordan and Turkey so they must be employing blind SIS and CIA operatives - maybe their heads had been chopped off ?
don't worry so much --there is zero trust between watchers--
Germany is a control society. To get a SIM card you need ID and an address. To get a PO Box you need ID and an address. To access Wi-Fi you need to register which is why free WiFi is very very rare. You don't see people using tablets in public space for this reason. Anyone hosting a blog is obliged to check all posters are >18 in a move to force bloggers to register ID. All traffic passing over WiFi is the liability of the WiFi provider making the provider a policeman.
That is why the German State does not deal with the NSA - they have already rendered their own citizens transparent.........so Clay Kaserne in Mainz-Kastel with its new NSA listening station is simply an add-on like the FBI liaison in Wiesbaden at the BKA central police facility.
What is curious is how the Hamburg cell evaded BND, BfV, CIA and NSA surveillance and entered the US before 9/11........unless of course.......
That is the problem now, surveillance is so widespread and complete that there are no mistakes only collusion in any terrorism.......it is 1984
The NSA are idiots and should be shut down because they are scam artists, perverts and they work for terrorist regimes.
By far governments that are not run publicly by open source software are the greatest threat.
2001 thru 2012 the FBI reports that over 4,600 civilians were justifiably killed by Police.
Unnofficial statistics show the actual number of Police killlings to be much higher.
By all accounts you are far more likely to be killed by Officer Friendly than by a wild-eyed Arab.
Satellite providers in other countries whose main customer base is some god-forsaken wasteland where nothing is produced? Ok, spy agencies have always bent the laws where they could outside of their own country. Snowden, billion dollar databases, constant surveillance by multiple agencies created in the last decade? They must be pr0n surfing all the time if they haven't mapped every internet provider in the country.
Good guys vs Bad guys
" were here to help "
What could go wrong, will
NSA Warns "Bad Guys Are Everywhere" thats just too funny.
Deploy MOAR weapons of mass distraction.
I'm still waiting for mandatory seatbelts on shitters.
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/410441/toilet-safety-administration
These mother fuckers will dig in grandma's asshole to look for butt bombs, so don't be shocked when they do force us all to install shitterbelts.
boston marathon.