FIVE Revelations from Snowden’s Newest Leak 5 Sep 2013 ... 03:49 PM PDT A new round of disclosures from the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has revealed the intelligence agency’s ultimate goal: undo Internet privacy as we know it. According to some 50,000 leaked documents provided to the Guardian, ProPublica, and The New York Times, the NSA has circumvented or cracked some of the most widely used encryption software in its effort to monitor global communications. Still, documents reveal, some encryption systems continue to stymie the agency, and the NSA, according to the Times, is working toward a future in which it can “decode, in real time, all of the information flying over the world’s fiber optic cables and through its Internet hubs.” The document dump unveils some of the U.S. and its allies’ most closely guarded state secrets—whereas highly classified information is often disseminated on a “need to know” basis, “there will be NO ‘need to know,’” with respect to the highly-classied program known as Bullrun, according to one document quoted by the Times. “This is the golden age of spying,” one former NSA analyst told the Times. Here are five things you need to know about Snowden’s latest leak. Often the NSA circumvents encryption by simply collaborating with cooperative technology companies (which are unidentified in the documents). At other times, it seems, the NSA has acquired encryption keys by hacking into a company’s servers. The documents indicate that the NSA is careful to reveal decrypted messages to other agencies only when such communications could plausibly have been acquired legally. By 2006, according to The New York Times, the NSA had cracked the communications of three foreign airlines, one travel reservation system, one foreign government’s nuclear department and a different foreign government’s Internet service. By 2010, the British GCHQ (the UK’s counterpart to the NSA) was reportedly deciphering encrypted VPN communications “for 30 targets and had set a goal of an additional 300.” According to the leaked documents, by 2012 the GCHQ had acquired “new access opportunities” into Google’s systems. The full extent of the NSA’s highly classified encryption cracking program feedproxy.google/~r/timeblogs/swampland/~3/PCXddUXvOnc/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 13:38:21 +0000
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