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Microsoft resists US government demand to seize offshore emails
Microsoft has filed a court challenge to a US government demand that it hand over emails from its data center in Ireland. That appears to be the first time a US corporation has opposed such an order, and Microsoft has been backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and an amicus brief from Verizon. The US prosecutor heading the drug case in question said that if the objection succeeds, tech companies like Microsoft could stymie domestic cases by merely storing data overseas. However, experts say the suspect was likely abroad when he sent the emails in question -- making the legal situation murkier.
Vodafone admits some governments have free rein to eavesdrop on calls
Gone are the days when we thought governments could only access our phone calls through official, naive-sounding procedures like "warrants." Nevertheless, it's only now, after the whole Snowden / NSA blow-up, that companies like Vodafone are trying to be more transparent. In a 40,000-word "disclosure report," the multinational carrier says that "a small number" out of the 29 countries in which it operates demand to have "direct access to a phone operator's network," thus "bypassing" any control the operator might otherwise have had over the privacy of its customers. Needless to say, Vodafone doesn't call out any of the culprit nations by name, since doing so would breach the same laws that it agreed to uphold in order to business with them in the first place.
Edward Snowden wants you to call him what he is: a trained government spy
Edward Snowden has been called a variety of things: whistleblower, patriot, traitor. But when it comes to his technical expertise, he's usually just referred to as a hacker, contractor or some flavor of system administrator. That, Snowden says, doesn't do his role and background justice. In an excerpt of an NBC interview, Snowden asserts that he's a technical expert "trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word," worked undercover and overseas for the CIA and NSA, lectured at a counterintelligence training academy and implemented systems for the government "at all levels." According to the infamous whistleblower, he qualifies as a spy in the classic sense since he "lived and worked undercover overseas -- pretending to work in a job that I'm not -- and even being assigned a name that was not mine."
Latest Snowden leak reveals the NSA intercepted and bugged Cisco routers
As promised, the release of Glenn Greenwald's new book, No Place to Hide, has brought plenty more Snowden leaks, and one document is particularly mind-blowing. The photo above shows an NSA team intercepting and bugging a Cisco router before it's sent to a customer who's been targeted for surveillance. In the document, an internal newsletter from June 2010, the chief of the NSA's Access and Target Development department explains the process of intercepting routers, servers and other internet hardware to install beacon implants, then resealing them and sending them on to targets.
Putin tells Snowden live on air: no 'massive scale' surveillance of public communications
Edward Snowden is not only working the conference circuit, or playing a part in Pulitzer prize-winning journalism, he's now taking his cause to world leaders directly. This morning Snowden asked Vladimir Putin live on Russian television if his government intercepts the communications of its citizens. Putin responded, telling him "on a massive scale, on an uncontrolled scale we certainly do not allow this and I hope we will never allow it". Putin has been busy this morning taking part in an annual event where the head of state takes questions from the public. Of course, given the current military tensions with Ukraine, his approach to public privacy has other pressing issues to contend with.
NSA spied on Huawei founder's emails to implicate him as a Communist Party insider
Ren Zhengfei might seem to us like a man of mystery; a quintessential "elusive figure" about whom we know very little beyond the facts that he founded Huawei and has had some (partly refuted) connections to the Chinese Communist Party. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden and seen by Der Spiegel and The New York Times, however, there are snoops inside the NSA who know him much better than we do -- not least because they've been reading his private emails.
Leaked documents detail how and why NSA targets network admins
With the amount of NSA-related information that's been leaked to the press, one may wonder if the feds will have anything new to share whenever the agency's first transparency report releases. The latest info is that the NSA was targeting foreign network administrators to gain access to the networks they control, as late as 2012. Edward Snowden gave The Intercept a handful of screengrabs from an internal agency message board that, among other things, detail how the NSA can monitor calls and emails moving through a foreign telco's network simply by having access to the system admin's PC. The steps for that apparently include grabbing the admin's IP address, and from there hacking the user's Facebook or web-mail accounts to gain full access to their computer via surveillance malware.
Orange shares all its call data with France's intelligence agency, according to new Snowden leak
Another day, another round of troubling surveillance news. In a twist, though, today's nugget has less to do with the US or the NSA but rather, France's central intelligence agency, the DGSE. According to a leak by Edward Snowden to the French paper Le Monde, Orange, the country's leading telecom, has been willingly sharing all of its call data with the agency. And according to the leaked document -- originally belonging to the UK intelligence agency GCHQ -- the French government's records don't just include metadata, but all the information Orange has on file. As you might expect, the DGSE then shares this information with other countries, including, of course, the UK, which had this incriminating document in the first place.
Put your emoji where we can see them! The NSA collected text messages, too
Secretly sifting through your text messages isn't just for overprotective parents and paranoid lovers anymore. Now the NSA's prying eyes have shifted from your call logs and location data to your texts in a not-so-secret initiative called Dishfire. The Guardian reported that the NSA collected some 200 million text messages per day globally, extracting location data, contact information and credit card numbers. This revelation, unsurprisingly, sprung from documents leaked by Edward Snowden. According to the paper, the British intelligence agency known as the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) also used the NSA's database to cull information about "untargeted and unwarranted" communications by UK citizens, noting that the program collects "pretty much everything it can." In addition to collecting and storing data from texts, a 2011 NSA presentation titled "SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit," revealed a second program, referred to as "Prefer." Under Prefer, the agency used information pulled from automated text messages, missed call and network roaming alerts and electronic business cards to collect information pertaining to users' travel habits and social connections. While the documents, complete with smiley face Venn diagrams and gemstone metaphors, stated that US phone numbers were either removed or minimized. The same cannot be said for numbers from the UK and elsewhere. In a response to the report, an NSA spokesperson told The Guardian that the information would only be used against "valid foreign intelligence targets." Meanwhile the GCHQ claims it used the Dishfire data to develop new targets. According to a representative from the UK carrier Vodafone, the findings came as a shock and the program sounded like it circumvented UK privacy and security standards. Joseph Volpe contributed to this report
The biggest stories of 2013: Console wars, Bitcoin's boom and the NSA's very bad year
2013 was a bust! Or so we've been told. Whether you follow that line of thinking or reflect on the last 363 days in a more optimistic light, it's clear the year wasn't all big breakthroughs and great triumphs. This was the year of government surveillance revelations, fallen giants and lackluster product releases. But it was also the year Netflix took on the studios, patent reform became a real priority in DC and two new game consoles hit the scene. No, we won't be riding our hoverboards into the sunset at the close of 2013, but the stories that rocked the industry had a profound impact not only on technology, but also on society as a whole. So let's raise those half-empty glasses and make a toast as we recap the year that was: Here's to the glassholes!
NSA reportedly infiltrated Xbox Live and World of Warcraft in hunt for terrorists
According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden and brought to light today by The Guardian, the NSA has been monitoring online gaming communities since 2008 and has even been sending real-life agents into online RPGs posing as players. Xbox Live was apparently one of the biggest services to be targeted, while World of Warcraft and Second Life also came under some degree of scrutiny. It's not totally clear why the NSA, along with its UK equivalent the GCHQ, thought such operations were necessary, but there seems to have been a general sense that online games could be used as communication hubs by evil-doers, as well as some evidence that Hezbollah had developed its own game for the purpose of recruitment. None of the leaked files suggest that the agent-avatars caught any terrorists, even though undercover operations were apparently so numerous that, at one point, an NSA analyst called for a "deconfliction group" to be set up to prevent the agency's personnel from inadvertently spying on each other. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Linden Labs have refused to comment, but Blizzard Entertainment has said it was unaware of any surveillance taking place in World of Warcraft and certainly has never granted any permission for its players to be observed. The Guardian says it'll publish the relevant files later today, in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica. Update: We asked Microsoft how this happened, and a spokesperson told us that Redmond wasn't aware of any surveillance activity. "If it occurred as has been reported, it certainly wasn't done with our consent."
NSA collecting 5 billion cellphone location records per day
Hey everyone, the government's tracking you. Quelle surprise. In what has to be one of the least shocking pieces of news to come from the Edward Snowden leaks, The Washington Post is reporting that the National Security Agency has been gathering surveillance data on foreign cellphone users' whereabouts globally, with some Americans potentially caught in the net. The database, which collects about 5 billion records per day, is so vast that not even the NSA has the proper tools to sift through it all. That's not to say the agency hasn't been able to make "good" use of it with analytics programs, though. One such program, ominously labeled Co-Traveler, allows the NSA to determine "behaviorally relevant relationships" based on data from signals intelligence activity designators (or sigads for short) located around the world, including one codenamed "Stormbrew." That's a lot of jargon for what are essentially data hubs that collect geolocation information down to the cell tower level. Co-Traveler can locate targets of interest based on cellphone users moving in tandem, even if they're unknown threats -- frequent meetups with an existing suspect could reveal a close associate, for instance. As we've come to expect by now, both the NSA and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence argue that this location-based surveillance is legal. Agency representatives tell the Post that the collection system doesn't purposefully track Americans. However, the NSA also says it can't determine how many US residents get swept up in these location scans; there are concerns that it's following targets protected by Fourth Amendment search rights. Jon Fingas contributed to this report.
NSA reportedly cracks down on staff who thought it was okay to share their logins with Edward Snowden
In a slightly ironic twist for the National Security Agency, Reuters reports that as many as 25 members of its staff have been "removed from their assignments" because they shared their private passwords with Edward Snowden while he worked there. A number of government offices are currently trying to find out just how Snowden got hold of so much confidential data, and sources close to those investigations now claim that the PRISM whistleblower used his position as a systems admin to dupe colleagues into handing over their passwords. It's not clear whether the NSA staff involved in the breach have been fired or re-assigned, but if the allegations are true then there are likely to be some red faces at the agency once the various investigations reach their conclusions, because such a large-scale failure by supposedly highly-trained staff would implicate the NSA's systems and practices, rather than just a few naive individuals.
Daily Roundup: Nexus 5 hands-on, new FAA rules on electronic devices, Amazon pilots and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Need tech support in Russia? Give Edward Snowden a call
So, what happens after you've become an international pariah? The PRISM revelations may rattle along, but the figure who started it all is trying to return to something approaching a normal life. Edward Snowden's lawyer has revealed that, after settling at an undisclosed location in Russia, the NSA whistleblower has found a job. He'll be offering technical support for a domestic website, which isn't being named for the obvious reasons. Is this the last that we'll hear from the former intelligence analyst? Only time will tell.
Report: NSA used taxpayer dollars to cover PRISM compliance costs for tech companies
The mounting national debt? Yeah, you're probably better off just ignoring why exactly it's mounting. The Guardian is continuing the blow the lid off of the whole NSA / PRISM saga, today revealing new documents that detail how the NSA paid out "millions" of dollars to cover PRISM compliance costs for a multitude of monolithic tech outfits. As the story goes, the National Security Agency (hence, tax dollars from American taxpayers) coughed up millions "to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the PRISM surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional." The likes of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are expressly named, and while Google is still angling for permission to reveal more about its side of the story, other firms have conflicting tales. For whatever it's worth, a Yahoo spokesperson seemed a-okay with the whole ordeal, casually noting that this type of behavior is perfectly legal: "Federal law requires the US government to reimburse providers for costs incurred to respond to compulsory legal process imposed by the government. We have requested reimbursement consistent with this law." Meanwhile, Facebook stated that it had "never received any compensation in connection with responding to a government data request." Microsoft, as you might imagine, declined to comment, though we heard that Steve Ballmer could be seen in the distance throwing up a peace sign. At any rate, it's fairly safe to assume that your worst nightmares are indeed a reality, and you may have a far more enjoyable weekend if you just accept the fact that The Man knows everything. Better, right?
Lavabit, reportedly Edward Snowden's email service of choice, shuts down
It looks like Edward Snowden is going to have to find a new email service as the one he supposedly used -- Lavabit -- has abruptly closed its doors. The company's owner, Ladar Levison, posted an open letter on the site today, saying, "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit." Levison also claimed to be unable to speak to the specifics surrounding the situation, stating that a Congressionally approved gag order prevented him from doing so. While Lavabit's situation seems pretty dire, it might not be curtains just yet. In his message, Levison stated that he would take his fight to reinstate Lavabit to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. To read the missive in full, head on over to the source link below.
The Daily Roundup for 08.01.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Snowden leaves neutral confines of Moscow airport, enters Russia
Edward Snowden has finally escaped his month-long Moscow airport purgatory and arrived in Russian territory, according to the Associated Press. The NSA whistleblower had already been granted temporary asylum by the Putin-led government after Bolivia and Venezuela also offered to take the fugitive, and was awaiting paperwork in order to leave Sheremetyevo Airport. The NSA's arch-enemy will be granted a year's stay, according to his Russian lawyer, and will be able to re-apply to remain after that. Now that his Russian residency has been established, most press outlets expect a strong reaction from the US government after it assured Moscow that Snowden wouldn't face the death penalty if deported. For its part, Russia said it has no intention of handing over the man who blew the lid off the pervasive PRISM monitoring program.
The Guardian: NSA's XKeyscore tool is its 'widest reaching' system for collecting online data
Edward Snowden has said that he still has more information about the NSA than what he's already leaked, and we're now getting a look at another big piece of that. According to a new set of documents provided to The Guardian, the NSA is using a tool called XKeyscore that is said to be its "widest reaching" system for collecting information from the internet -- one that lets it examine "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet," as one presentation slide explains. That apparently includes both metadata and the contents of emails, as well as social media activity, which can reportedly be accessed by NSA analysts without prior authorization; as The Guardian notes, a FISA warrant is required if the target of the surveillance is a US citizen, but not if a foreign target is communicating with an American. According to The Guardian, the amount of data collected is so large that content is only able to stored in the system for three to five days, or as little as 24 hours in some cases, while metadata is stored for 30 days. That's reportedly led the NSA to develop a multi-tiered system that lets it move what's described as "interesting" content to other databases where it can be stored for as much as five years. In a statement provided to The Guardian, the NSA says that "XKeyscore is used as a part of NSA's lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system," and that "allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA's analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks." The agency further adds that "every search by an NSA analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law."
