#ghcq

[froschperspektiven]

Schafft den Hamster weg!

Die inkarnierte Inkompetenz

[liquidvpn]

UK Government rushing IP Bill through Parliament | LiquidVPN

The IP Bill has been given a second reading date startlingly soon. MPs will have under 3 weeks to read over 900 pages pertaining to the bill

Eventually these guys are going to pass one of these

[wochenwebschau]

Wochenwebschau #111 vom 1. Oktober 2015 – Geheimdienst-Special mit: Intelexit, Snowden auf Twitter & E-Cards von der NSA

  #Aussteigerprogramm Intelexit

 Abhörskandale, Drohnenkrieg und Social Network-Überwachung – bei BND, NSA und GCHQ zählen Daten und Fakten. Als Spion eines Geheimdienstes kann man schon mal in moralische Konflikte geraten. Die Kampagne Intelexit will Angehörigen von Intelligence Communitys jetzt beim Ausstieg helfen. Wir sprechen mit der Wiener Aktivistin Lizvlx.

  #NSA-Grußkarten

 Die NSA versprüht ihren Charme. Der Geheimdienst will nämlich Sympathiepunkte sammeln und brachte passend zum Love Note Day Liebesbekundungen als E-Cards auf den Markt. Es geht um Netzwerksicherheit, Cyberattacken und… süße Dalmatiner. So richtig oldschool, diese digitalen Grußkarten.

 #AfghanistanNeedsYou

Immer mehr junge, gute ausgebildete Menschen flüchten vor der Taliban aus Afghanistan. Sie hoffen auf eine bessere Zukunft in Europa. Eine Kampagne gegen die Flucht auf Afghanistan fordert jetzt auf Facebook und Twitter: Bleibt hier denn #AfghanistanNeedsYou! Wer soll das Land (wieder)aufbauen, wenn niemand mehr da ist? Genau darum geht’s bei dieser Hashtag-Aktion.  

  #15SecondShakespeare

 Drama Baby! Auf Twitter verleihen britische Schauspieler derzeit den Popsongs von heute ein neues Gewand. In klassischer Shakespeare-Manier rezitieren sie in ihren 15-sekündingen Clips Songs wie Gangnam Style, Single Ladies oder Anaconda – voller Inbrunst und Ernst. Unter #15SecondShakespeare werden die Werke gesammelt. Außerdem rufen die meisten Beteiligten zum Spenden für das Rote Kreuz auf.

   Und diese Woche im Filter:  

    #Edward Snowden twittert jetzt

 #Britischer Geheimdienst GCHQ spielt Karma Police 

[tld2012]

Citizenfour Official Trailer #1 (2014)

CITIZENFOUR is the never before seen, utterly riveting first-person look at how director Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald first met with whistleblower Edward Snowden in Hong Kong where he gave them documents showing widespread abuses of power by the National Security Administration. It is an unprecedented fly-on-the-wall account of one of the most groundbreaking moments in recent history. In January 2013, Poitras (recipient of the 2012 MacArthur Genius Fellowship and co-recipient of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service) was several years into making a film about surveillance in the post-9/11 era when she started receiving encrypted e-mails from someone identifying himself as "citizen four," who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programs run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies. In June 2013, she and Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is absolutely sui generis in the history of cinema: a 100% real-life thriller unfolding minute by minute before our eyes.

[tld2012]

HOW COVERT AGENTS INFILTRATE THE INTERNET TO MANIPULATE, DECEIVE, AND DESTROY REPUTATIONS

BY GLENN GREENWALD  @ggreenwald One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.

Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking “Five Eyes” alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.”

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums. Here is one illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document we’re publishing today:

Other tactics aimed at individuals are listed here, under the revealing title “discredit a target”:

Then there are the tactics used to destroy companies the agency targets:

GCHQ describes the purpose of JTRIG in starkly clear terms: “using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world,” including “information ops (influence or disruption).”

Critically, the “targets” for this deceit and reputation-destruction extend far beyond the customary roster of normal spycraft: hostile nations and their leaders, military agencies, and intelligence services. In fact, the discussion of many of these techniques occurs in the context of using them in lieu of “traditional law enforcement” against people suspected (but not charged or convicted) of ordinary crimes or, more broadly still, “hacktivism”, meaning those who use online protest activity for political ends.

The title page of one of these documents reflects the agency’s own awareness that it is “pushing the boundaries” by using “cyber offensive” techniques against people who have nothing to do with terrorism or national security threats, and indeed, centrally involves law enforcement agents who investigate ordinary crimes:

No matter your views on Anonymous, “hacktivists” or garden-variety criminals, it is not difficult to see how dangerous it is to have secret government agencies being able to target any individuals they want – who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crimes – with these sorts of online, deception-based tactics of reputation destruction and disruption. There is a strong argument to make, as Jay Leiderman demonstrated in the Guardian in the context of the Paypal 14 hacktivist persecution, that the “denial of service” tactics used by hacktivists result in (at most) trivial damage (far less than the cyber-warfare tactics favored by the US and UK) and are far more akin to the type of political protest protected by the First Amendment.

The broader point is that, far beyond hacktivists, these surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people’s reputations and disrupt their online political activity even though they’ve been charged with no crimes, and even though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even national security threats. As Anonymous expert Gabriella Coleman of McGill University told me, “targeting Anonymous and hacktivists amounts to targeting citizens for expressing their political beliefs, resulting in the stifling of legitimate dissent.” Pointing to this study she published, Professor Coleman vehemently contested the assertion that “there is anything terrorist/violent in their actions.”

Government plans to monitor and influence internet communications, and covertly infiltrate online communities in order to sow dissension and disseminate false information, have long been the source of speculation. Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites, as well as other activist groups.

Sunstein also proposed sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups” which spread what he views as false and damaging “conspiracy theories” about the government. Ironically, the very same Sunstein was recently named by Obama to serve as a member of the NSA review panel created by the White House, one that – while disputing key NSA claims – proceeded to propose many cosmetic reforms to the agency’s powers (most of which were ignored by the President who appointed them).

But these GCHQ documents are the first to prove that a major western government is using some of the most controversial techniques to disseminate deception online and harm the reputations of targets. Under the tactics they use, the state is deliberately spreading lies on the internet about whichever individuals it targets, including the use of what GCHQ itself calls “false flag operations” and emails to people’s families and friends. Who would possibly trust a government to exercise these powers at all, let alone do so in secret, with virtually no oversight, and outside of any cognizable legal framework?

Then there is the use of psychology and other social sciences to not only understand, but shape and control, how online activism and discourse unfolds. Today’s newly published document touts the work of GCHQ’s “Human Science Operations Cell,” devoted to “online human intelligence” and “strategic influence and disruption”:

Under the title “Online Covert Action”, the document details a variety of means to engage in “influence and info ops” as well as “disruption and computer net attack,” while dissecting how human beings can be manipulated using “leaders,” “trust,” “obedience” and “compliance”:

The documents lay out theories of how humans interact with one another, particularly online, and then attempt to identify ways to influence the outcomes – or “game” it:

We submitted numerous questions to GCHQ, including: (1) Does GCHQ in fact engage in “false flag operations” where material is posted to the Internet and falsely attributed to someone else?; (2) Does GCHQ engage in efforts to influence or manipulate political discourse online?; and (3) Does GCHQ’s mandate include targeting common criminals (such as boiler room operators), or only foreign threats?

As usual, they ignored those questions and opted instead to send their vague and nonresponsive boilerplate: “It is a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters. Furthermore, all of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. All our operational processes rigorously support this position.”

These agencies’ refusal to “comment on intelligence matters” – meaning: talk at all about anything and everything they do – is precisely why whistleblowing is so urgent, the journalism that supports it so clearly in the public interest, and the increasingly unhinged attacks by these agencies so easy to understand. Claims that government agencies are infiltrating online communities and engaging in “false flag operations” to discredit targets are often dismissed as conspiracy theories, but these documents leave no doubt they are doing precisely that.

Whatever else is true, no government should be able to engage in these tactics: what justification is there for having government agencies target people – who have been charged with no crime – for reputation-destruction, infiltrate online political communities, and develop techniques for manipulating online discourse? But to allow those actions with no public knowledge or accountability is particularly unjustifiable.

Documents referenced in this article:

The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations

Email the author: [email protected]

[stopprism]

GCHQ's dark arts: Leaked documents reveal online manipulation, Facebook, YouTube snooping

The UK spy agency's dark arts were revealed in documents first published by The Intercept, and each piece of software is described in a wiki document written up by GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). The document, which reads like a software inventory, calls the tools part of the agency's "weaponised capability."

Some of the most interesting capabilities of the tools on the list include the ability to seed the web with false information — such as tweaking the results of online polls — inflating pageview counts, censoring video content deemed "extremist" and the use of psychological manipulation on targets — something similar to a research project conducted with Facebook's approval, which resulted in heavy criticism and outrage levied at the social media site.

A number of interesting tools and their short descriptions are below:

ASTRAL PROJECTION: Remote GSM secure covert Internet proxy using TOR hidden service

POISON ARROW: Safe malware download capability

AIRWOLF: YouTube profile, comment and video collection

BIRDSTRIKE: Twitter monitoring and profile collection

GLASSBACK: Technique of getting a target's IP address by pretending to be a spammer and ringing them. Target does not need to answer.

MINIATURE HERO: Active skype capability. Provision of realtime call records (SkypeOut and SkypetoSkype) and bidirectional instant messaging. Also contact lists.

PHOTON TORPEDO: A technique to actively grab the IP address of MSN messenger user

SPRING-BISHOP: Finding private photos of targets on Facebook

BOMB BAY: The capacity to increase website hits, rankings

BURLESQUE: The capacity to send spoofed SMS messages

GESTATOR: Amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (YouTube)

SCRAPHEAP CHALLENGE: Perfect spoofing of emails from Blackberry targets

SUNBLOCK: Ability to deny functionality to send/receive email or view material online

SWAMP DONKEY: A tool that will silently locate all predefined types of file and encrypt them on a targets machine

UNDERPASS: Change outcome of online polls (previously known as NUBILO).

WARPATH: Mass delivery of SMS messages to support an Information Operations campaign.

HUSK: Secure one-on-one web based dead-drop messaging platform.

The list, dated from 2012, says that most of the tools are "fully operational, tested and reliable,” and adds: "Don't treat this like a catalogue. If you don't see it here, it doesn't mean we can't build it."

"We only advertise tools here that are either ready to fire or very close to being ready," the document notes.

The release of these documents comes in the same week that the UK intelligence agency's spying activities are being investigated by surveillance watchdog the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). Civil liberty groups set a legal challenge against the GCHQ in order to question the legal standing of schemes such as Tempora — a project revealed in the NSA scandal that showed the agency placed data interceptors on fiber-optic cables that carry Internet traffic to and from the UK.

[skinflynn-blog]

An interpretation of laws surrounding spying, described as 'patronising' by Privacy International -advocates of rights to privacy around the world-, are affecting you as we speak! In releases made by Edward Snowden & co it appears that a loophole has been abused by GCHQ to snoop on what is classified as 'external communications' - your emails, google searches and social networking activity. From the outset, it's an outstanding abuse of power to just have at their fingertips however GCHQ has stated that all work 'is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate.' Make up your own mind. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27887639 Photo taken from BBC.

[dannymekic]

Which airplane to take? — DannyMekic.com

Which airplane to take?

The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jet could have been avoided, that’s what experts say. Of course it could have been avoided, in an era in which intelligence services like the GHCQ and NSA are able to track down each and every smartphone connected to a cell phone network, and Facebook and Google are planning to release their own world wide internet-like network with drones and balloons. The technological ingredients are there, airlines are allowed to use them — some of them already do — and now the big question is: how do we make all commercial airplanes part of the digital surveillance network?

Making it mandatory to have new surveillance technology on board through regulation seems the way to go, but that was also true after the disappearance and crash of the Air France flight 447, which went down in the middle of the South Atlantic in 2009. It wasn’t done. And even if regulations really will be passed this time; by the time it takes effect, the technology will already be obsolete again.

In order not to constantly lag behind new technological developments, it’s time for all airlines to publish what extra safety measures have been added to each individual aircraft. That way, safety-conscious consumers can decide which airplane to take — just like we know which cars are safer and less safe. That would create a dynamic where airlines are put under public pressure to make their airplanes as safe as possible — to make sure no gigantic passenger airplane will ever disappear from the radar again.

  Repost from http://dannymekic.com/2014/03/28/which-airplane-to-take/