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Written by Kaunain Sheriff M | New Delhi | Updated: October 25, 2020 7:14:37 amThe Indian Express investigation, China is Watching, was published in September.

Referring to revelations in a series of investigative reports by The Indian Express and other global publications on how a private technology firm in Shenzhen, with links to the Chinese government and Communist Party of China (CPC) uses big data tools for hybrid warfare, a top US Security official has said that the Chinese foreign ministry handles a United Front, which includes powerful tech firms that gather intelligence to influence private citizens overseas.

Pointing to the database of Zhenhua Data, which targets individuals and institutions in politics, government, business, technology, media, and civil society, US Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger has said that the CPC is compiling digital dossiers on millions of foreign citizens around the world, with the aid of new tools of digital surveillance.

Pottinger made the remarks from White House on Thursday during a video conference hosted by Policy Exchange in London.

The Indian Express, using big-data tools, investigated metadata from Zhenhuas operations to extract Indian entities from the massive dump of log files that constituted what the company called Overseas Key Information Database (OKIDB). The investigation, published in September, had revealed the firm is monitoring over 10,000 Indian individuals, including President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and their families.

The exposure last month of a Chinese database on at least 2.4 million people around the world, including many of us on this call, speaks to the Partys (CPCs) sheer ambition to wed traditional Leninist techniques with powerful new tools of digital surveillance, Pottinger said.

He claimed Chinas United Front Work system is handled by the countrys foreign ministry and gathers intelligence about, and works to influence, private citizens overseas. He said, The focus is on foreign elites and the organizations they run. Think of a United Front worker as a cross between an intelligence collector, a propagandist, and a psychologist.

Pottinger said while Zhenhua isnt a particularly large or sophisticated actor in the United Front world, it may even be acting opportunistically, because it thinks the Party will reward it.

He said, Far more powerful tech firms, including famous Chinese app developers, play a much bigger role in this kind of work. The dossiers Zhenhua is compiling include people in virtually every country, no matter how small. They include members of royal families and members of Parliament, judges and clerks, tech mavens and budding entrepreneurs, four-star admirals and crew members of warships, professors and think-tankers, and national and local officials. They also include children, who are fair game under Beijings rules of political warfare. No one is too prominent or too obscure.

Pottinger said the United Front Work is a serious business, and the focus is on foreign elites and organisations they run. He said, the United Front Work Department alone has four times as many cadres as the US State Department has foreign-service officers.the United Front gathers intelligence about, and works to influence, private citizens overseas.

Read The Indian Express investigative series China is Watching

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China govt uses United Front to gather intel on citizens abroad, says US dy NSA - The Indian Express

We live in a world of a beehive of online activities, with many individuals happily sharing their private information on the Internet. Unfortunately, Uncle Sam is constantly looking over your shoulder. Unknown to most people, a lot of data is collected via the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) PRISM surveillance program. Once youre the target, a massive amount of data about you can be collected and forwarded to the government. Whenever the government is caught with its hands in the privacy jar, two platitudes are always given: If you have not done something wrong, youve nothing to hide, and you have to trust the government it has your best interests at heart.

Basically, the governments nothing-to-hide notion implies that its only criminals who may want to hide. But is that true? Besides, we all have something that we want to hide. Just ask anybody to show you their credit card bill or even their emails what would be the response?

If theres nothing that should be hidden and you can trust the government with your data, think about this scenario: What will happen if someone gains access into the governments database? Since you are here, we assume you are one of those folks who want to escape NSA spying. If so, it is time for you to be smart and be a ghost!

Online activities should be private, but unfortunately, thats not the case. In 2013, the NSA outlined how data can be collected via the PRISM program. The technology is merely based on the optical fiber wiretaps. PRISM is meant to track the activities of potential foreign terrorists. Just like in criminal investigations, the NSA is probably not intentionally spying on you, but the fact that they can when they want to is a breach of privacy.

There are several ways you stay out of the omnipresent eyes of the government and the NSAs PRISM. Below are some simple measures to minimize the likelihood of the NSA PRISM program monitoring your Internet activities.

One of the surest ways of beating the NSAs PRISM surveillance trap is by encrypting your Internet traffic. Its simply that all the encrypted data is useless to the PRISM program without the decryption key. Your conversations may not be private unless you encrypt. First, you can encrypt the hard drive and all the existing files. All the data stored on the cloud should be encrypted before being submitted to Internet service providers. The last thing you want is entirely trusting Google, Microsoft, or Apple to encrypt data for you. As an individual, avoid storing unencrypted personal data in clouds like OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive.

Using a good VPN will help keep the NSA from sniffing around your personal space and your business. A VPN merely helps establish a private network thats private to the Internet and allows you to surf anonymously (although there are many caveats here). It conceals the user identity by masking the devices IP address and then directing traffic via VPN servers in a location that you may choose.

However, a VPN should not be just a VPN but should be a VPN that doesnt keep logs. A VPN without logs means that the VPN provider cannot reveal your identity even if it gets a court order. Thats because it wont be recording any of your web activities details in the first place. Moreover, a VPN will ensure that you easily bypass Internet restrictions, as well as getting access to blocked websites.

Each time you visit a new site, a trail of footprints are left behind that can tell so much about you. Most advertising networks use those digital footprints for targeted ads, meaning that the NSA is most probably watching every keystroke you make.

Therefore, to ensure that you block web tracking, simply visit your browsers settings and then disable third-party cookies so that they do not load on the current web page.

Secondly, you need to privately search the web by activating private incognito mode in the browser. Alternatively, you can opt to use browser extensions like Ghostery that prevent ad agencies and search engines from tracking web pages.

Furthermore, you can disable JavaScript from the browser setting to help avoid web tracking. And masking your IP address via a VPN is another excellent way of staying out of the radar of tracking cookies.

Sometimes connecting to free hotspots can prove to be a channel through which someone can access your device. However, wandering from the library to the coffee shop and the free caf down the street can provide a security protection layer. Why? Because your IP address keeps on varying by location. However, you should be very careful about such hotspots as they are the real hotspots of malware invasion.

After doing everything right, youll also want to tie all your encrypted services with hard-to-crack passwords. You need to find the best password manager and then create your unique password.

The NSA can tap into all cellular networks across the globe. Therefore, theres every reason to protect your communications. Your instant messaging services can be protected from the NSA surveillance program using an Off-the-Record (OTR) chat extension. It helps in encrypting all messages on IM networks.

Another reigning king for anonymous browsing is the Onion Router (TOR). It allows you to browse anonymously as it conceals user identity by encrypting and bouncing communications over a plethora of servers. Therefore, it makes it difficult for spy agencies to trace the traffic source or the recipient easily. All they see is traffic originating from a plethora of random nodes and not your PC.

Ultimately, keeping off the NSAs PRISM is not a walk in the park. While all these tips do not mean that youre entirely PRISM-proof, theyll minimize the risk of NSA snooping on your online activities. You just have to pray that you dont give them enough evidence to suspect you because then all privacy bets are off.

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Home Articles PRISM and privacy: Ways to avoid being spied on by the government

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PRISM and privacy: Ways to avoid being spied on by the government - TechGenix

In a long (long) portrait dedicated to the NSA and US Cyber Command boss General Paul Nakasone, Wired revealed that in two years, it authorized more cyber attacks than before. NSA since its inception.

The NSA has long monitored and spied on its targets abroad. Wired describes how he did not initiate what would become his cyber command responsible for defending American systems and attacking his adversaries and enemies until 2009. Russia had indeed entered its classified computer network and disconnected from the Internet, possibly via a broken USB key.

Nakasone was then appointed as the head of a group nicknamed the Four Horsemen (four horsemen including a woman), who were responsible for explaining what the NSAs Cyberdefense Division would be, but raising it from 100 to 2000 Also for cyber fighters.

Unlike France, which refuses to attribute the attacks that identify the countries launching them and does not officially recognize its offensive computer warfare (LIO) operations, Nakasone was convinced that it It was necessary to communicate. Wanting to leave the private sector to join their units, not only to gain more resources and powers from the authorities, but to create hackers, and finally to demonstrate their expertise to reject their rivals.

Launched in 2010, USCYBERCOM today has more than 6,000 cyber-fighters, in addition to 38,000 and 20,000 private intelligence contractors working for the NSA.

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How the NSA built its offensive computer warfare unit - The Market Mail

There are "several other" countries beyond Russia and Iran who have interfered with the upcoming election, National Secuirty Advisor Robert O'Brien said Wednesday.

"As you know, it's not just Russia and Iran," O'Brien said on Fox News' "Fox &Friends." "It's China, and there are several other countries we have not yet gone public on. We're taking major steps to protect the elections."

O'Brien said that he's held White House meetings with the National Security Council and that the Department of Homeland Security is working with secretaries of state across the country. He added that the Iowa National Guardis using its "terrific cyber unit"to detect interference in the state.

"Across the country, we're making big efforts to make sure our election infrastructure's hardened and that people know their votes are going to be counted," he said.

Meanwhile, it should come as no surprise that Iran or Russia would try to interfere in the election, he said.

Iran has been cut off from the "jackpot they received '' when they signedthe multi-nation nuclear dealbecause President Donald Trump pulled the United States out in 2018, said O'Brien, adding that Iran doesn't like the fact that Israel has been making peace with Arab nations.

"The same thing with Russia," said O'Brien. "The president's been tougher on Russia than any administration since Ronald Reagan. We see that they're out on Twitter and various places with disinformation. You can see the same thing with China."

The administration also is working through the Department of Homeland Security to ensure secure elections, said O'Brien.

"The good news is we're so decentralized, 95% of the ballots that are cast have some sort of paper analog so that they can be audited," he said. "It's very difficult for an adversary to actually change the outcomes of the elections, and we've been doing everything we can to make sure that's the case on Election Day."

The topics for Thursday night's debate, meanwhile, don't include items on foreign policy, but O'Brien said he wants to focus on what Trump has done, particularly concerning peace in the Middle East.

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NSA O'Brien: 'Several Other' Countries Interfering in Election - Newsmax

BEDFORD, Texas Deep in the suburbs northeast of Fort Worth, Democrats trying to win the Texas House for the first time in years have been getting help from a surprising source.

Republicans.

For 16 years, until he left office in 2013, Todd A. Smith was a Republican representing these suburbs in the Texas House of Representatives. His district covered a fast-growing hub of middle-class and affluent communities next door to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

When it came time to decide whom he would support for his old seat, Mr. Smith said he had no hesitation he threw his endorsement to the Democrat in the race, Jeff Whitfield.

This is no longer my Republican Party, Mr. Smith said last week while sitting outside his house, which has a Republicans For Biden 2020 sign on the front lawn.

This is the Trump party, he said. If you give me a reasonable Republican and a crazy Democrat, then I will still vote for the Republican. But if you give me a lunatic Republican and a reasonable Democrat, then Im going to vote for the Democrat, and that applies in the presidential race, and it applies in the Whitfield race.

After a generation under unified Republican control, Texas is a battleground at every level of government this year. President Trump and Senator John Cornyn are fighting for their political lives, and five Republican-held congressional seats are in danger of flipping.

But some of the most consequential political battles in Texas are taking place across two dozen contested races for the Texas State House, which Republicans have controlled since 2003. To win a majority, Democrats must flip nine of the chambers 150 seats the same number of Republican-held districts Beto ORourke carried during his 2018 Senate race, when he was the first Texas Democrat to make a competitive run for Senate or governor in a generation.

Mr. ORourke has organized nightly online phone banks that are making about three million phone calls a week to voters during the campaigns final stretch. His organization helped register about 200,000 Texas Democratic voters in an attempt to finish a political transformation of Texas that began with his Senate race.

I actually won more state House districts than Ted Cruz, Mr. ORourke said in an interview last week. Its just that the candidates in nine of those, the Democratic candidates, didnt end up winning.

Control of the Texas House comes with huge implications beyond the states borders. A Democratic state House majority in Texas would give the party one lever of power in the 2021 redistricting process, when the state is expected to receive as many as three new seats in Congress. It would also give them a voice in drawing Texas state legislative lines for the next decade.

Keep up with Election 2020

Officials from both parties said the difference between the current unified Republican control of the Texas state government and Democrats controlling the state House could be as many as five congressional seats when new maps are drawn.

Flipping the Texas House this year can be the key that unlocks a Democratic future in Texas, said John Bisognano, the executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. With fair maps, Democrats will be able to compete all over the state and build a deep bench of candidates who can run and win statewide.

Nowhere in the country has there been a surge of voting to match the one in Texas. Through two weeks of in-person early voting, more than 6.9 million Texans have voted a figure that accounts for more than three-quarters of the entire 2016 turnout.

The turnout is highest in the states biggest metropolitan areas, which are the core state House battlegrounds and are six of the 10 fastest-growing counties in the country. There are five competitive state House seats in Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, five more in other Dallas suburbs, and eight in greater Houston.

Ive always been political my whole life, said Gina Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin whose father is the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Now, suddenly, everybody is so political. The last election has had the result of engaging everyday people in our political process.

Texas Republicans have sought to tie Democrats running for the state House, who are campaigning on issues like health care and increasing school funding, to the most liberal proposals in their party. Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday launched a digital advertisement attacking Mr. ORourkes past statements on police funding, gun control, tax policy and the Green New Deal.

This week, the governor and other Republicans jumped on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.s pledge during the presidential debate on Thursday to transition away from the oil industry, a bedrock of the Texas economy, saying that such a move would cost the state hundreds of thousands of jobs and shrink revenues that pay for schools.

He is an albatross around the neck of down-ballot candidates in Texas, said Jared Woodfill, a Houston conservative activist and lawyer who is a former chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. Biden just lost Texas.

Democrats said they were not worried, calling the outcry over Mr. Bidens remarks an attempt to distract voters from more pressing issues, including the continued spread of the coronavirus in Texas.

Oct. 24, 2020, 10:30 p.m. ET

Suburban voters do not appear to be buying Republican arguments during the Trump era that Democrats will turn their communities socialist. Polling in 10 targeted Texas state House districts shows Mr. Biden gaining an average of 8.6 percentage points, while Democratic state House candidates have gained 6.5 points since March in surveys conducted by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which has invested more than $1 million in Texas over the last two years.

The suburban voters of 2020, said Steve Munisteri, a former Republican Party of Texas chairman who worked in Mr. Trumps White House, have far more in common with urbanites than they do with the more conservative voters who used to populate the outer edges of Texas metropolitan areas.

Because of urban growth, many of what are considered traditional suburbs in Texas metropolitan areas really are just extensions of the urban areas, Mr. Munisteri said.

Collin County, a suburban area 20 miles north of Dallas, has two competitive state House districts that Mr. ORourke carried in 2018. In six years, the county has added 200,000 people. It now has a population of more than 1 million people and has gone from a Democratic wasteland to one teeming with liberal volunteers.

In 2014, when John Shanks moved to Collin County, there were about 20 dedicated Democratic Party volunteers. Now Mr. Shanks, the executive director of the countys Democratic Party, has several hundred so many that he has trouble finding work for them all.

Weve had about four years of people getting used to the idea that their vote really can matter, Mr. Shanks said. Weve grown into realizing that you can make a difference. And as they realize that and wake up, things become more competitive.

Bedford sits in a part of the Dallas-Fort Worth region that has been deeply conservative for decades. Republicans have held the regions state House seat since 1985, and the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party was one of the most influential Tea Party groups during the Obama era.

The outgoing state representative, Jonathan Stickland, is a bearded Cruz-style firebrand who supported gun rights and wore his .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol at the Texas Capitol. In 2015, The Texas Tribune called him the chambers antagonist-in-chief.

Mr. Stickland apologized in 2016 after an online posting he made in 2008, before he ran for elected office, was unearthed by a political opponent. In the posting on a fantasy football site, he responded to a mans request for sex advice by writing: Rape is non existent in marriage, take what you want my friend!

Yet after years of sending conservatives to Austin, the district has changed. In just two years, the Republican advantage shrunk from 9,100 votes for Mr. Trump in 2016 to 1,167 when Senator Ted Cruz defeated Mr. ORourke in 2018.

When youre hearing people whove spent a lifetime voting Republican and they say, The party has left me, I dont know that weve ever heard that before, Mr. Whitfield, the Democratic state House candidate, said as he stood in a parking lot outside the Bedford Public Library, an early-voting site.

Steps away in the same parking lot, Mr. Whitfields Republican opponent, Jeff Cason, disputed any notion of a widespread Republican defection.

Im a man of faith, and I just believe the doors are opening for us, and if the Lord wants us in Austin, well be there, Mr. Cason said. Im not getting any sense of Republicans leaving our camp.

Julie McCarty, who was the president of the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party and is now the chief executive of the group it transformed into, the True Texas Project, attributed the Democratic gains in the region to Republicans not being conservative enough.

Republicans want to be left alone. We want smaller government. When we cant get that, we move where we can, she said. Therein lies the answer to what causes Tarrant to turn purple.

For Mr. Smith, the former Republican legislator, 2020 has been a year to split his ballot. In addition to the Biden sign and his support for Mr. Whitfield, he has a yard sign for Jane Nelson, a Republican state senator running for re-election. And he voted for Senator John Cornyn, the Trump ally locked in a tough re-election fight with M.J. Hegar, a Democrat and former Air Force helicopter pilot. Years ago, Mr. Smith threw Mr. Cornyn a fund-raiser at his house.

I have mixed feelings about it, he said of his vote for Mr. Cornyn. But I trust what I believe to be his honest convictions.

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Democrats Hope 2020 Is the Year They Flip the Texas House - The New York Times