Mediaboss Marketing

The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.

By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.

According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSAs acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agencys headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records including metadata, which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video.

The NSAs principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agencys British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.

The MUSCULAR project appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship American companies. The agency is built for high-tech spying, with a wide range of digital tools, but it has not been known to use them routinely against U.S. companies.

In a statement, the NSA said it is focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets only.

NSA applies Attorney General-approved processes to protect the privacy of U.S. persons minimizing the likelihood of their information in our targeting, collection, processing, exploitation, retention, and dissemination, it said.

In a statement, Googles chief legal officer, David Drummond, said the company has long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping and has not provided the government with access to its systems.

We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform, he said.

More:
NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers ...

In room-size metal boxes secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.

According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build a cryptologically useful quantum computer a machine exponentially faster than classical computers is part of a $79.7million research program titled Penetrating Hard Targets. Much of the work is hosted under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park, Md.

[Read an annotated description of the Penetrating Hard Targets project]

The development of a quantum computer has long been a goal of many in the scientific community, with revolutionary implications for fields such as medicine as well as for the NSAs code-breaking mission. With such technology, all current forms of public key encryption would be broken, including those used on many secure Web sites as well as the type used to protect state secrets.

Physicists and computer scientists have long speculated about whether the NSAs efforts are more advanced than those of the best civilian labs. Although the full extent of the agencys research remains unknown, the documents provided by Snowden suggest that the NSA is no closer to success than others in the scientific community.

Explore an annotated version of the NSA's description of its effort to build "a cryptologically useful quantum computer." Read it.

The agency describes classification levels for information related to quantum computing. Read it.

It seems improbable that the NSA could be that far ahead of theopen world without anybody knowing it, said Scott Aaronson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The NSA appears to regard itself as running neck and neck with quantum computing labs sponsored by the European Union and the Swiss government, with steady progress but little prospect of an immediate breakthrough.

The geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European Union and Switzerland, one NSA document states.

Read more here:
NSA seeks quantum computer that could ... - Washington Post

Karen U. Kwiatkowski, ne Unger,[1] (born September 24, 1960) is an American activist and commentator. She is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2012, she challenged incumbent Bob Goodlatte, in the Republican primary for Virginia's 6th congressional district seat in the United States House of Representatives and garnered 34% of the Republican vote on a constitutional and limited government platform.

While in the Air Force, she wrote two books about U.S. policy towards Africa: African Crisis Response Initiative: Past Present and Future (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 2000) and Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa: Challenges and Solutions (Air University Press, 2001). She contributed to Ron Paul: A Life of Ideas, (Variant Press, 2008) and Why Liberty: Personal Journeys Toward Peace and Freedom, (Cobden Press, 2010). She has been featured in a number of documentaries, including "Why We Fight",[2] in 2005. She has written for LewRockwell.com since 2003.[3]

Born Karen Unger, Kwiatkowski was raised in western North Carolina. She received an MA in Government from Harvard University and an MS in Science Management from the University of Alaska. She has a PhD in World Politics from The Catholic University of America; her thesis was on the overt and covert war in Angola, A Case Study of the Implementation of the Reagan Doctrine.

Kwiatkowski began her military career in 1982 as a Second Lieutenant. She served at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, providing logistical support to missions along the Chinese and Russian coasts. She also served in Spain and Italy. Kwiatkowski was then assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA), eventually becoming a speechwriter for the agency's director. After leaving the NSA in 1998 she became an analyst on sub-Saharan Africa policy for the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski was in her office in the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11, 2001. From May 2002 to February 2003 she served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA).[4] While at NESA, she wrote a series of anonymous articles, Insider Notes from the Pentagon which appeared on the website of David Hackworth.[5] Kwiatkowski left NESA in February 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month.

In April 2003 Kwiatkowski began writing a series of articles for the libertarian website LewRockwell.com. In June of that year she published an article in the Ohio Beacon Journal, "Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon,"[6] which attracted additional notice. Since February 2004 she has written a biweekly column ("Without Reservations") for the website MilitaryWeek.com.

Her most comprehensive writings on the subject of a corrupting influence of the Pentagon on intelligence analysis leading up to the Iraq War appeared in a series of articles in The American Conservative magazine in December 2003 and in a March 2004 article on Salon.com. In the latter piece ("The New Pentagon Papers") she wrote:

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.

Kwiatkowski described how a clique of officers led by retired Navy Captain Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA and former aide to Dick Cheney when the latter was Secretary of Defense, took control of military intelligence and how the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) grew and eventually turned into a censorship and disinformation organism controlling the NESA.[7]

Following the American Conservative and Salon articles, Kwiatkowski began to receive criticism from several conservative sources that supported President Bush's policies. Michael Rubin of the National Review argued she had exaggerated her knowledge of the OSP's workings and claimed she had ties to Lyndon LaRouche.[8] Republican U.S. Senator Jon Kyl criticized her in a speech on the Senate floor.[9] On a Fox News program, host John Gibson and former Republican National Committee communications director Clifford May incorrectly described her as an anarchist.[10] Kwiatkowski responded by saying, among other points, that she had never supported or dealt with LaRouche.[11] She requested and received a written apology from Senator Jon Kyl for his false statements about her.[citation needed]

In addition to her writings Kwiatkowski has appeared as a commentator in the documentaries Hijacking Catastrophe, Honor Betrayed, Why We Fight and Superpower.

Read more:
Karen Kwiatkowski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Video: The National Security Agency gathers location data from around the world by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones.

The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals and map their relationships in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.

The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, according to the officials and the documents, which were provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. New projects created to analyze that data have provided the intelligence community with what amounts to a mass surveillance tool.

(Video: How the NSA uses cellphone tracking to find and develop targets)

The NSA does not target Americans location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones incidentally, a legal term that connotes a foreseeable but not deliberate result.

One senior collection manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity but with permission from the NSA, said we are getting vast volumes of location data from around the world by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones. Additionally, data are often collected from the tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad with their cellphones every year.

In scale, scope and potential impact on privacy, the efforts to collect and analyze location data may be unsurpassed among the NSA surveillance programs that have been disclosed since June. Analysts can find cellphones anywhere in the world, retrace their movements and expose hidden relationships among the people using them.

(Graphic: How the NSA is tracking people right now)

U.S. officials said the programs that collect and analyze location data are lawful and intended strictly to develop intelligence about foreign targets.

Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA, said there is no element of the intelligence community that under any authority is intentionally collecting bulk cellphone location information about cellphones in the United States.

Read more:
NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden ...

The United States Naval Support Activity Panama City (NSA PC), is located just outside Panama City, Florida and is a United States Navy military base. It is located within Bay County. Among other commands, it houses Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) and the Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU).

The NSA PC was founded as the U.S. Navy Mine Countermeasures Station on 20 July 1945, as a result of the transfer of the test station from Solomons, Maryland, but was renamed ca. 1955 to the U.S. Navy Mine Defense Laboratory. In 1972, it was renamed the Naval Coastal Systems Laboratory which changed to Naval Coastal Systems Center in 1981. The base has been a subsidiary of several other commands in the past including Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division, and Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, under which it was designated Naval Surface Warfare Center: Coastal Systems Station. It obtained its current name in 2007 after changing from the prior command structure to the tenant command structure used by the Navy today in its command of research and development centers.

In addition to waterfront port facilities, the installation also contains a hangar and a paved heliport facility approximately 300 feet by 400 feet in size to accommodate naval helicopters up to and including the MH-53E Sea Dragon.[1] The Navy airfield identifier is NBV.

NSAPC consists of several tenant command organizations:

NSWC PCD conducts research on littoral warfare and its disciplines include optics, acoustics, mine warfare and robotics. NSWC PCD employs approximately 1,100 scientists and engineers within NSWC PCD. The newest facility on the base is the Littoral Warfare Research Facility, a $10 million research and development facility dedicated to littoral warfare research; it was completed in 2006.[3]

Engineering projects of historical note include the Swimmer Delivery Vehicle, Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) and Landing Craft Air Cushioned (LCAC). Current projects include the majority of U.S. research into hovercraft technology and weapons integration for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

NSA PC totals 657 acres (2.66km2) and houses 221 buildings. Additionally, NSA PC operates several miles of inter coastal waterways for a direct connection to the Gulf of Mexico.[4]

NSWC PCD is a major research, development, test and evaluation laboratories of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). It is one of the largest employers in Bay County, Florida with an annual payroll of about $117 million. NSA PC employs approximately 2800 civilian and military personnel, for an annual payroll of over $150 million. NSA PC contracts services, buys local goods, and maintains an active construction program. Its economic impact on Bay County is about $400 million annually.[5]

Read more from the original source:
Naval Support Activity Panama City - Wikipedia, the free ...