Caller: I #39;m Opposed to Bodycams because of NSA...
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Caller: I'm Opposed to Bodycams because of NSA... - Video
The sign outside the National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Md. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
For many years, the National Security Agency (NSA) was seen as the most secretive of agencies, beyond impenetrable. The joke was that NSA stood for No Such Agency.
Butlongbefore Edward Snowden blew the cover off the joint, the agency had been lightening up. Like other intelligence agencies, the State Department and the White House, NSA has for many decades hada protocol office to handle official events, visitors and such.
We came across a recent agency help-wanted ad for an NSA protocol officer, whose job would be to explain and apply codes and procedures of social behavior, etiquette and ceremony. Yes, you can bean events planner and virtual latter-day Emily Post.
Youll coordinate, plan and organize. . . visits, ceremonies, dinners and conferences. . . And when big-wigs come to the Fort Meade, youll make sure they can get into the building and have security, transportation and special diet.
You have to have the ability to plan/organize/coordinate and do multitasking, thead says, plus,be able to view computer screen continuously for two hours or more and be able to stand, walk, or kneel for long periods. (Kneel?)
If you can meet all those criteria, then pass a drug test, security background investigation and a polygraph,NSA will pay you between $42,631 and $67,787 a year.(Not much for someone with skills like those.)
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In the Loop: The NSA wants you to help them party with panache
The allegations by the Intercept website are based on documents contained in material provided by Edward Snowden, above. Photograph: Pontus Lundahl/AFP/Getty Images
The National Security Agency has reportedly intercepted emails sent by employees of mobile operators in an attempt to find security weaknesses in their networks that it could exploit for surveillance purposes.
The US government body has spied on hundreds of companies and organisations, including those in allies such as Britain and Australia, as well as in nations America regards as hostile. It plans to insert flaws into communications systems so that they can be accessed by their operatives.
The allegations, reported by the Intercept, are based on documents provided to the website and contained in material provided to them by Edward Snowden, the whistleblower and former NSA subcontractor who is now living in Russia.
A covert operation called AURORAGOLD that started in 2010, if not earlier, has monitored the content of messages to and from 1,200 email accounts associated with mobile operators to intercept relevant documents, the article states.
By May 2012, the NSA had collected technical data on about 700 of the almost 1,000 mobile networks worldwide.
According to the article, the information collected has been shared with other US intelligence agencies as well as those in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Very few companies that have been targeted have been identified in the documents, but a map found in one indicated that the NSA had some degree of network coverage in countries on every continent, including Germany and France.
Another of the operations targets has been the GSM Association, the London-based trade body that sets standards for mobile networks around the world.
Its members represent the interests of 800 major mobile, software and internet companies from more than 200 countries and include the likes of Verizon, AT&T, Facebook, Intel, Samsung and Vodafone.
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NSA accused of intercepting emails sent by mobile phone firm employees
Yet another top-secret National Security Agency (NSA) program has been unearthed by Glenn Greenwalds publication the Intercept. The report details a program called Auroragold, which according to the official documents leaked by Edward Snowden, specialized in spying on the email correspondence between carriers security experts to break into cellular networks and expose vulnerabilities. The unit would then exploit the flaws in the security system to listen in on the conversations and text messages carried by those cellular networks.
The program is described as the NSAs method of staying one step ahead of carriers encryption, so as to ensure that the agency has access to communications held over most cellular networks. If vulnerabilities did not already exist in the security systems, the NSA would create them, the report states. The Auroragold program has been active since 2012 and regularly monitors 1,200 email accounts that are associated with major cellular networks and carriers around the world.
The Intercept revealed that the NSA has already obtained the technical security information of 70 percent of the worlds networks.
Related: Brazil lays its own fiber optic cables to avoid the NSA
The NSA devoted special attention to monitoring communications among members of the U.K.-based GSM Association, which includes high-profile tech companies and carriers, such as AT&T, Cisco, Microsoft, Samsung, Vodafone, Facebook,Verizon, Sprint, Intel, Oracle, Sony, Nokia, and Ericsson. It is unclear how many of these high-profile companies security structures the NSA infiltrated.
The Intercept revealed that the NSA has already obtained the technical security information of 70 percent of the worlds networks. Although penetration into the U.S. carriers networks is surprisingly low, the NSA has access to nearly all the communications in North Africa, the Middle East, and China.
Claire Cranton, a spokeswoman for the GSM Association, said that the organization cannot respond to any of the details revealed by the Intercepts report until its lawyers have seen the documents. If there is something there that is illegal then they will take it up with the police, Cranton told the publication.
Related:NSA report shows innocent users caught in its web
The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), a U.S. government agency that recommends cybersecurity measures, stated that it is unaware of any NSA surveillance of the GSM Association. However, NIST previously warned users of NSA interference with encryption standards.
In April, White House officials stated that Obama ordered the NSA alert the federal government of any security gaps it finds in cellular networks and other technology companies security systems. There is, however, a major loophole in the order, which allows the NSA to keep vulnerabilities to itself if it plans to use them for a clear national security or law enforcement purpose.
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NSAs Auroragold program spies on carriers to break into cell networks
The Intercept
The National Security Agency has spied on hundreds of companies and groups around the world, including in countries allied with the US government, as part of an effort designed to allow agents to hack into any cellphone network, no matter where it's located, according to a report published Thursday.
Armed with technical details of a specific provider's current or planned networks, agents secretly attempt to identify or introduce flaws that will make it possible for communications to be covertly tapped, according to anarticle published by The Intercept. Security experts warned that programs that introduce security flaws or suppress fixes for existing vulnerabilities could cause widespread harm, since the bugs can also be exploited by criminal hackers or governments of nations around the world.
"Even if you love the NSA and you say you have nothing to hide, you should be against a policy that introduces security vulnerabilities," Karsten Nohl, a cryptographer and smartphone security expert, told The Intercept. "Because once NSA introduces a weakness, a vulnerability, it's not only the NSA that can exploit it."
The program reported Thursday, codenamed AURORAGOLD, has monitored messages sent and received by more than 1,200 email accounts associated with large cellphone operators around the world. One surveillance target is the GSM Association (GSMA), a UK-based group that works with Microsoft, Facebook, AT&T, Cisco Systems, and many other companies to ensure their hardware and software related to cellular technology is compatible. At the same time the NSA has been monitoring the group, other arms of the US government has funded GSMA programs designed to boost privacy on mobile networks. According to The Intercept:
The NSA focuses on intercepting obscure but important technical documents circulated among the GSMAs members known as IR.21s.
Most cellphone network operators share IR.21 documents among each other as part of agreements that allow their customers to connect to foreign networks when they are roaming overseas on a vacation or a business trip. An IR.21, according to the NSA documents, contains information necessary for targeting and exploitation.
The details in the IR.21s serve as a warning mechanism that flag new technology used by network operators, the NSAs documents state. This allows the agency to identify security vulnerabilities in the latest communication systems that can be exploited, and helps efforts to introduce new vulnerabilities where they do not yet exist.
The IR.21s also contain details about the encryption used by cellphone companies to protect the privacy of their customers communications as they are transmitted across networks. These details are highly sought after by the NSA, as they can aid its efforts to crack the encryption and eavesdrop on conversations.
Last year, The Washington Post reported that the NSA had already managed to break the most commonly used cellphone encryption algorithm in the world, known as A5/1. But the information collected under AURORAGOLD allows the agency to focus on circumventing newer and stronger versions of A5 cellphone encryption, such as A5/3.
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Exposed: NSA program for hacking any cellphone network, no matter where it is