Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sheb]

The thing they didn't want to give the Senate was a list of the documents submitted. Nothing that need to be secret or something, just stuff that would help the Senate do its job and prevent the CIA from removing evidence unnoticed.

[Singularity125]

It probably wasn't too unknown, but the Senate Intelligence Committee has been running a long investigation on the use of "waterboarding" and other such practices used on detainees in prior years, which President Obama officially called acts of torture (along with most of the civilized world).  It's a long investigation because it involved trawling through millions of documents, trying to get the CIA to explain itself, which is something the CIA has been reticent to do since the day it was founded.  Somewhere along the way, a tiff started up between the CIA and the Senate, after the committee started finding documents the CIA probably didn't mean to provide (namely, that didn't want anyone to read), and after the CIA found out about it became really really interested in knowing how the Senate got them.

This lead to a whole series of weird hidden shit that ultimately culminated in Chairwoman Feinstein publicly accusing the CIA of tampering with computers and intimidating investigators this morning.  Main reason for suspicion?  The stuff being investigated happened mostly under the detainee program overseen by then deputy director John Brennan, who is now the CIA's overall director.

Meanwhile, Edward Snowden thinks it's hilarious for a politician to be crying foul about the CIA reading her emails when she had no problem with the NSA's wiretapping program.  He said so himself.

* Singularity125 sighs.

I shouldn't have read into the comments on those stories. So much of the same old Democrat vs. Republican BS. Who really cares about flinging blame, really? Nevermind the past, just focus on fixing it. But then, I'm too naive for politics anyways. Obviously turning everything into partisan warfare is the best way to solve problems... 

[Bauglir]

America's intelligence services are acting in their own interests, as opposed to America's?

Who the fuck RUNS these places?

People who've worked in America's intelligence services for years.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Yeah ... are you surprised that an organization that's part of the government is not 100% patriotic? Our politicians aren't quite traitors but they sure as shit are not Captain America.

[Zangi]

Yeah ... are you surprised that an organization that's part of the government is not 100% patriotic? Our politicians aren't quite traitors but they sure as shit are not Captain America.

Maybe they are 100% patriotic.  Everyone else questioning them is not.  True patriots will never question them, because what they are doing is for the good of the country. 
Even hiding the dirty laundry is good for the country, because the non-patriots will get hung up on the little details like ethics, morality and the welfare of our enemies, which obviously any true patriot will ignore, because they are working for the greater good of the country.

[Descan]

I think there's a phenomenon wherein people in an organization care more about preserving or elevating their own place within that organization, even if it means that the organization as a whole is less capable of doing it's job or becomes less powerful on the whole as a result.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

See: human history

[LeoLeonardoIII]

You see people go before senate hearings and lie or refuse to say anything constantly, even though the senator is sitting there compelling their testimony. And when it turns out later they were lying, they rarely have anything bad happen to them. It's weird!

[SalmonGod]

The CIA has always read to me like it was somewhat of a rogue organization from the very beginning.  I mean, within its first few years of existence, it had already begun illegal human medical experiments on its own citizens, often without knowledge or consent, has been found repeatedly to hide its activities from the government its supposed to answer to and spread misinformation to the public that will help it to expand its own power, and has been deeply implicated as having arranged the deaths of non-foreign people who threatened their secrecy and operations.  And as far as I'm aware, nobody in the organization has ever been held accountable for any of the unbelievably immoral and illegal stuff it's done.

[alway]

So another one, and it's pretty big:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/nsas-automated-hacking-engine-offers-hands-free-pwning-of-the-world/
So in summary, the NSA has been inserting backdoors in just about everything.

The implants being deployed were once reserved for a few hundred hard-to-reach targets, whose communications could not be monitored through traditional wiretaps. But the documents analyzed by The Intercept show how the NSA has aggressively accelerated its hacking initiatives in the past decade by computerizing some processes previously handled by humans. The automated system – codenamed TURBINE – is designed to “allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually.”

In a top-secret presentation, dated August 2009, the NSA describes a pre-programmed part of the covert infrastructure called the “Expert System,” which is designed to operate “like the brain.” The system manages the applications and functions of the implants and “decides” what tools they need to best extract data from infected machines.

It's basically an autonomous hacking and surveillance AI program capable of analyzing targets for weaknesses, and attacking accordingly. Scaling up into "millions" of targets, to the point where it actually needs to feed the pilfered data into their various bulk-analysis programs to make sense of it.

From the source: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/03/12/nsa-plans-infect-millions-computers-malware/

Earlier reports based on the Snowden files indicate that the NSA has already deployed between 85,000 and 100,000 of its implants against computers and networks across the world, with plans to keep on scaling up those numbers.

The intelligence community’s top-secret “Black Budget” for 2013, obtained by Snowden, lists TURBINE as part of a broader NSA surveillance initiative named “Owning the Net.”

In one secret post on an internal message board, an operative from the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate describes using malware attacks against systems administrators who work at foreign phone and Internet service providers. By hacking an administrator’s computer, the agency can gain covert access to communications that are processed by his company. “Sys admins are a means to an end,” the NSA operative writes.

The internal post – titled “I hunt sys admins” – makes clear that terrorists aren’t the only targets of such NSA attacks. Compromising a systems administrator, the operative notes, makes it easier to get to other targets of interest, including any “government official that happens to be using the network some admin takes care of.

But not all of the NSA’s implants are used to gather intelligence, the secret files show. Sometimes, the agency’s aim is disruption rather than surveillance. QUANTUMSKY, a piece of NSA malware developed in 2004, is used to block targets from accessing certain websites. QUANTUMCOPPER, first tested in 2008, corrupts a target’s file downloads. These two “attack” techniques are revealed on a classified list that features nine NSA hacking tools, six of which are used for intelligence gathering. Just one is used for “defensive” purposes – to protect U.S. government networks against intrusions.

The TURBINE implants system does not operate in isolation.

It is linked to, and relies upon, a large network of clandestine surveillance “sensors” that the agency has installed at locations across the world.

What’s more, the TURBINE system operates with the knowledge and support of other governments, some of which have participated in the malware attacks.

Classification markings on the Snowden documents indicate that NSA has shared many of its files on the use of implants with its counterparts in the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance – the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

GCHQ, the British agency, has taken on a particularly important role in helping to develop the malware tactics. The Menwith Hill satellite eavesdropping base that is part of the TURMOIL network, located in a rural part of Northern England, is operated by the NSA in close cooperation with GCHQ.

Top-secret documents show that the British base – referred to by the NSA as “MHS” for Menwith Hill Station – is an integral component of the TURBINE malware infrastructure and has been used to experiment with implant “exploitation” attacks against users of Yahoo and Hotmail.

And on a final note:

One of the NSA’s primary concerns, in fact, appears to be that its clandestine tactics are now being adopted by foreign rivals, too.

“Hacking routers has been good business for us and our 5-eyes partners for some time,” notes one NSA analyst in a top-secret document dated December 2012. “But it is becoming more apparent that other nation states are honing their skillz [sic] and joining the scene.”

[i2amroy]

I think there's a phenomenon wherein people in an organization care more about preserving or elevating their own place within that organization, even if it means that the organization as a whole is less capable of doing it's job or becomes less powerful on the whole as a result.

Heck, our organizations' organization (oooohh) is already doing it's best to ensure that we work at maximum inefficiency. Promoting anyone who does a good job at what they are currently doing is a great way to ensure that everyone manages to place themselves in a job that they don't do well at all by itself.

[Darvi]

I think there's a phenomenon wherein people in an organization care more about preserving or elevating their own place within that organization, even if it means that the organization as a whole is less capable of doing it's job or becomes less powerful on the whole as a result.

Heck, our organizations' organization (oooohh) is already doing it's best to ensure that we work at maximum inefficiency. Promoting anyone who does a good job at what they are currently doing is a great way to ensure that everyone manages to place themselves in a job that they don't do well at all by itself.

That's called the Peter Principle, fyi.

[darkrider2]

I think there's a phenomenon wherein people in an organization care more about preserving or elevating their own place within that organization, even if it means that the organization as a whole is less capable of doing it's job or becomes less powerful on the whole as a result.

Heck, our organizations' organization (oooohh) is already doing it's best to ensure that we work at maximum inefficiency. Promoting anyone who does a good job at what they are currently doing is a great way to ensure that everyone manages to place themselves in a job that they don't do well at all by itself.

That's called the Peter Principle, fyi.

Spoiler: Hazardous material, handle with care (click to show/hide)

I prefer the Dilbert Principle

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Oh yeah. That's a standard thing. I'm surprised nobody commented on it in a more famous way than Scott Adams.

[Bouchart]

Oh yeah. That's a standard thing. I'm surprised nobody commented on it in a more famous way than Scott Adams.

And Scott Adams has commented on the NSA.