Below is a listing of nicknames and codewords related to US Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Communications Security (COMSEC). Most of them are from the NSA, some are from other government or military agencies. Some of them also have an abbreviation which is shown in brackets.
NICKNAMES are generally unclassified. NSA uses single word nicknames, outside NSA they usually consist of two separate words, with the first word selected from alphabetical blocks that are assigned to different agencies by the Joint Staff. Usually, nicknames are printed using all capital letters.
CODEWORDS are always classified and always consist of a single word. Active codewords, or their three-letter abbreviations, which identify a classification compartment always need to be shown in the classification or banner line. Normally, codewords are printed using all capital letters.
Due to very strict secrecy, it’s not always clear whether we see a nickname or a codeword, but terms mentioned in public sources like job descriptions are of course unclassified nicknames.
Please keep in mind that a listing like this will always be work in progress (this list has been copied on some other websites and forums, but only this one is being updated frequently!).
BASECOAT – Program targeting the mobile phone network on the Bahamas
BASTE – Retired SIGINT product codeword
– Type 1 Block cipher algorithm, used with many crypto products
BEACHHEAD – Computer exploit delivered by the FERRETCANON system
BEAMER – ?
BELLTOPPER – NSA database
BELLVIEW – SIGINT reporting tool
– List of personnel cleared for access to highly sensitive information or operations
BINOCULAR – Former NSA intelligence dissemination tool
BIRCHWOOD – Upstream collection site
BLACKBOOK – ODNI tool for large-scale semantic data analysis
BLACKFOOT – The French mission at the United Nations in New York
BLACKHEART – Collection through FBI implants
BLACKMAGIC – NSA database or tool
BLACKPEARL – NSA database of survey/case notations(?)
BLACKWATCH – NSA reporting tool
– Program for intercepting phone and internet traffic at switches in the US (since 1978)
BLINDDATE – Hacking tools for WLAN collection, plus GPS
BLUEANCHOR – Partner providing a network access point for the YACHTSHOP program
BLUEFISH (BLFH) – Compartment of the KLONDIKE control system
BLUEZEPHYR – Sub-program of OAKSTAR
BOOTY – Retired SIGINT product codeword
– DNI and DNR metadata visualization tool
BOURBON – Joint NSA and GCHQ program for breaking Soviet encryption codes (1946-?)
BROKENRECORD – NSA tool
BROKENTIGO – Tool for computer network operations
BROADSIDE – Covert listening post in the US embassy in Moscow
BROOMSTICK – ?
BRUNEAU – Operation against the Italian embassy in Washington DC using LIFESAVER techniques
BRUTUS – Tool or program related to MARINA
BUFFALOGREEN – The name ORANGECRUSH was known to Polish partners
BULLDOZER – PCI bus hardware implant on intercepted shipping
– An NSA COI for decryption of network communications
BULLSEYE – NSG High-Frequency Direction-Finding (HF-DF) network (now called CROSSHAIR)
(BYE) – Retired SCI control system for overhead collection systems (1961-2005)
BYZANTINE – First word of nicknames for programs involving defense against Chinese cyber-warfare and US offensive cyber-warfare
BYZANTINE ANCHOR (BA) – A group of Chinese hackers which compromised multiple US government and defense contractor systems since 2003
BYZANTINE CANDOR (BC) – A group of Chinese hackers which compromised a US-based ISP and at least one US government agency
BYZANTINE FOOTHOLD (BF) – A group of Chinese hackers who attacked various international companies and internet services providers
BYZANTINE HADES (BH) – A concerted effort against Chinese hackers who attacked the Pentagon and military contractors. Probably renamed to the LEGION-series
C
CADENCE – NSA database with tasking dictionaries
CAJABLOSSOM – Automated system for analysing and profiling internet browsing histories
CALYPSO – Remote SATCOM collection facility
CANDYGRAM – Laptop mimicking GSM cell tower, sends out SMS whenever registered target enters its area, for tracking and ID of targets
– Class of COMINT spy satellites (1968-1977)
CANOE – Retired SIGINT product codeword
CANNON LIGHT – Counterintelligence database of the US Army
CAPRICORN – (former?) database for voice data
CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE – Computer implant plug-in to take over a targeted computer’s microphone and record conversations taking place near the device
CARBOY – Second Party satellite intercept station at Bude, England
CARBOY II – Units of ECHELON which break down satellite links into telephone and telegraph channels
CARILLON – NSA high performance computing center, since 1976 made up of IBM 360s and later four IBM 3033s
CASport – NSA user authorization service
– Computer system capable of automatically analyzing the massive quantities of data gathered across the entire intelligence community
CENTER ICE – Data center for the exchange of intelligence regarding Afghanistan among the members of the 14-Eyes/SSEUR
CENTERMASS – NSA tool or database
CERF CALL MOSES1 – Contact Event Record Format – for certain telephony metadata
CHALKFUN – Analytic tool, used to search the FASCIA database
CHASEFALCON – Major program of the Global Access Operations (GAO)
CHEER – Retired SIGINT product codeword
CHESS – Compartment of TALENT KEYHOLE for the U-2 spy plane
CHEWSTICK – NSA tool or database
CHIMNEYPOOL – Framework or specification of GENIE-compliance for hardware/software implants
CHIPPEWA – Some communications network, involving Israel
CHUTE – Retired SIGINT product codeword
CIMBRI – Probably a metadata database
CINEPLEX – NSA tool or database
CLASSIC BULLSEYE – Worldwide ocean SIGINT surveillance system (1960’s-?)
CLEVERDEVICE – Upstream collection site
CLOUD – NSA database
COASTLINE – NSA tool or database
COBALTFALCON – Sub-program of OAKSTAR
COBRA FOCUS – NSA-G operations center for producing intelligence from Iraq
COGNOS – NSA tool or database
CORDOBA – Type 2 Cryptographic algorithm used in a number of crypto chips
COMBAT SENT – Reconaissance operation
COMMONDEER – Computer exploit for looking whether a computer has security software
COMMONVIEW – NSA database or tool
CONFIRM – NSA database for personell access
CONJECTURE – Network compatible with HOWLERMONKEY
CONTRAOCTAVE – NSA telephony tasking database Used to determine ‘foreigness’
CONVEYANCE – Voice content ingest processor
COPILOT – System that automatically scans digital data for things like language, phone and creditcard numbers and attachments
COPSE – Retired SIGINT product codeword
CORALINE – NSA satellite intercept station at Sabena Seca at Puerto Rico (closed)
CORALREEF – Database for VPN crypto attack data
– A series of photographic surveillance satellites (1959-1972)
CO-TRAVELER – Set of tools for finding unknown associates of intelligence targets by tracking movements based upon cell phone locations
COTTONMOUTH (CM) – Computer implant devices used by NSA’s TAO division
COTTONMOUTH-I (CM-I) – USB hardware implant providing wireless bridge into target network and loading of exploit software onto target PCs, formerly DEWSWEEPER
COTTONMOUTH-II (CM-II) – USB hardware host tap provides covert link over USP into target’s network co-located with long haul relay; dual-stacked USB connector, consists of CM-I digital hardware plus long haul relay concealed in chassis; hub with switches is concealed in a dual stacked USB connector and hard-wired to provide intra-chassis link.
COTTONMOUTH-III (CM-III) – Radio Frequency link for commands to software implants and data infiltration/exfiltration, short range inter-chassis link within RJ45 Dual Stacked USB connector
COURIERSKILL – NSA Collection mission system
COWBOY – The DICTIONARY computer used at the Yakima station of ECHELON
CRANKSHAFT – Codename for Osama bin Laden
CREAM – Retired SIGINT product codeword
CREDIBLE – Transport of intelligence materials to partner agencies
CREST – Database that automatically translates foreign language intercepts in English
CRISSCROSS – Database of telecommunications selectors
CROSSBEAM – GSM module mating commercial Motorola cell with WagonBed controller board for collecting voice data content via GPRS (web), circuit-switched data, data over voice, and DTMF to secure facility, implanted cell tower switch
CRUMPET – Covert network with printer, server and desktop nodes
CULTWEAVE – Smaller size SIGINT database
CYBERTRANS – A common interface to a number of underlying machine translation systems
CYCLONE Hx9 – Base station router, network in a box using Typhon interface
D
DAFF – Codeword for products of satellite imagery
DAMEON – Remote SATCOM collection facility
DANCINGOASIS (DGO) – SSO program collecting data from fiber optic cables between Europe and the Far East (since 2011)
DANDERSPRITZ – Software tool that spoofs IP and MAC addresses, intermediate redirector node
DANGERMOUSE – Tactical SIGINT collecting system for like cell phone calls
DARDANUS – Remote SATCOM collection facility
DAREDEVIL – Shooter/implant as part of the QUANTUM system
DARKTHUNDER – SSO Corporate/TAO Shaping program
DARKQUEST – Automated FORNSAT survey system
DAUNT – Retired SIGINT product codeword
DECKPIN – NSA crisis cell activated during emergencies
DEEPDIVE – An XKEYSCORE related method
DEITYBOUNCE – Provides implanted software persistence on Dell PowerEdge RAID servers via motherboard BIOS using Intel’s System Management Mode for periodic execution, installed via ArkStream to reflash the BIOS
DELTA – Former SCI control system for intercepts from Soviet military operations
DENIM – Retired SIGINT product codeword
DESPERADO – NSA software tool to prepare reports
DEWSWEEPER – Technique to tap USB hardware hosts
DIKTER – SIGINT Exchange Designator for Norway
DINAR – Retired compartment for intercepts from foreign embassies in Washington
DIONYSUS – Remote SATCOM collection facility
DIRESCALLOP – Method to circumvent commercial products that prevent malicious software from making changes to a computer system
DISCOROUTE – A tool for targeting passively collected telnet sessions
– NSA database for text messages (SMS)
DISTANTFOCUS – A pod for tactical SIGINT and precision geolocation (since 2005)
DIVERSITY – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ?
DOBIE – The South African consulate and mission at the UN in New York
DOCKETDICTATE – Something related to NSA’s TAO division
DOGCOLLAR – A type of Question-Focussed Dataset based on the Facebook display name cookie
DOGHUT – Upstream collection site
DOUBLEARROW – One of NSA’s voice processing databases?
DRAGGABLEKITTEN – An XKEYSCORE Map/Reduce analytic
DREADNOUGHT – NSA operation focused on Ayatollah Khamenei
– Passive collection of emanations (e.g. from printers or faxes) by using a radio frequency antenna
DROPOUTJEEP – STRAITBIZARRE-based software implant for iPhone, initially close access but later remotely
– System for processing data from mobile communication networks
DRUID – SIGINT Exchange Designator for third party countries
– A US military numeral cipher/authentication system
DRYTORTUGAS – Analytic tool
DYNAMO – SIGINT Exchange Designator for Denmark
E
EAGLE – Upstream collection site
– A SIGINT collection network run by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States
ECHO – SIGINT Exchange Designator for Australia
ECRU (EU) – Compartment of the ENDSEAL control system
EDEN – Upstream collection site
EGOTISTICALGIRAFFE (EGGI) – NSA program for exploiting the TOR network
EGOTISTICALGOAT (EGGO) – NSA tool for exploiting the TOR network
EIDER – Retired SIGINT product codeword
EINSTEIN – Cell phone network intercepting equipment used by SCS units
– Intrusion detection system for US government network gateways (deployed in 2004)
EINSTEIN 2 – Second version of the EINSTEIN program for detecting malicious network activity
EINSTEIN 3 – Third version of the EINSTEIN program that will monitor government computer traffic on private sector sites too
ELEGANTCHAOS – Large scale FORNSAT data analysis system
EMBRACEFLINT – Tool for computer network operations
ENDSEAL (EL) – SCI control system
ENDUE – A COI for sensitive decrypts of the BULLRUN program
ENTOURAGE – Directional finder for line of bearing for GSM, UMTS, CDMA, FRS signals, works with NEBULA active interrogator within GALAXY program
EPICSHELTER – Sophisticated data backup system designed by Edward Snowden
ERRONEOUSINGENUITY (ERIN) – NSA tool for exploiting the TOR network
EVENINGEASEL – Program for surveillance of phone and text communications from Mexico’s cell phone network
EVILOLIVE – Iinternet geolocation tool
EVOLVED MUTANT BROTH – Second party database
EYESPY – System that scans data for logos of companies, political parties and other organizations, as well for pictures with faces for facial recognition
F
FACELIFT – Codeword related to NSA’s Special Source Operations division
– NSA corporate partner with access to international cables, routers, and switches (since 1985)
FAIRVIEWCOTS – System for processing telephony metadata collected under the FAIRVIEW program
FALLENORACLE – NSA tool or database
FALLOUT – DNI metadata ingest processor/database
– DNR metadata ingest processor/database
FASCINATOR – Series of Type 1 encryption modules for Motorola digital-capable voice radios
FASHIONCLEFT (FC) – Wrapper used to exfiltrate data of VPN and VoIP communications
FASTBAT – Telephony related database?
FASTFOLLOWER – Tool to identify foreign agents who might tail American case officers overseas by correlating cellphone signals
FASTSCOPE – NSA database
FEEDTROUGH – Software implant for unauthorized access to Juniper firewall models N5XT, NS25, NS50, NS200, NS500, ISG1000
FERRETCANON – Subsystem of the FOXACID system
FINKDIFFERENT (FIDI) – Tool used for exploiting TOR networks
FIRE ANT – Open Source visualisation tool
– NSA key generation scheme, used for exchanging EKMS public keys
FIRETRUCK – SIGINT tool or database
FIREWALK -Bidirectional network implant, passive gigabit ethernet traffic collector and active ethernet packet injector within RJ45 Dual Stacked USB connector, digital core used with HOWLERMONKEY, formerly RADON
– NSA program for securing commercial smartphones
FLARE – Retired SIGINT product codeword
FLATLIQUID – TAO operation against the office of the Mexican president
FLEMING – The embassy of Slovakia in Washington DC
FLINTLOCK – The DICTIONARY computer used at the Waihopai station of ECHELON
FLUXBABBITT – Hardware implant for Dell PowerEdge RAID servers using Xeon processors
FOGGYBOTTOM – Computer implant plug-in that records logs of internet browsing histories and collects login details and passwords used to access websites and email accounts
FOREMAN – Tactical SIGINT database? Used to determine ‘foreigness’
FOURSCORE – (former?) database for fax and internet data
FOXACID (FA?) – System of secret internet servers used to attack target computers
FOXSEARCH – Tool for monitoring a QUANTUM target which involves FOXACID servers
FOXTRAIL – NSA tool or database
FRIARTUCK – VPN Events tool or database (CSEC?)
FREEFLOW-compliant – Supported by TURBULENCE architecture
FREEZEPOST – Something related to NSA’s TAO division
FRONTO – Retired SIGINT Exchange Designator for ?
FROSTBURG – Connection Machine 5 (CM-5) supercomputer, used by NSA from 1991-1997
FROTH – Retired SIGINT product codeword
FRUGALSHOT – FOXACID servers for receiving callbacks from computers infected with NSA spying software
G
GALACTICHALO – Remote SATCOM collection facility
GALAXY – Find/fix/finish program of locating signal-emitting devices of targets
GAMMA (G) – Compartment for highly sensitive communication intercepts
GAMUT – NSA collection tasking tool or database
GARLIC – The NSA satellite intercept station at Bad Aibling (Germany)
GATEKEEPER – NSA user account management system
GAVEL – Retired SIGINT product codeword
GECKO II – System consisting of hardware implant MR RF or GSM, UNITEDRAKE software implant, IRONCHEF persistence back door
GEMINI – Remote SATCOM collection facility
GENESIS – Modified GSM handset for covert network surveys, recording of RF spectrum use, and handset geolocation based on software defined radio
GENIE – Overall close-access program, collection by Sigads US-3136 and US-3137
GHOSTMACHINE – NSA’s Special Source Operations cloud analytics platform
GINSU – Provides software persistence for the CNE implant KONGUR having PCI bus hardware implant BULLDOZER on MS desktop PCs
GILGAMESH – Predator-based NSA geolocation system used by JSOC
GISTQEUE (GQ) – NSA software or database
GJALLER – NSA tool or database
GLINT – Retired SIGINT product codeword
GLOBALBROKER – NSA tool or database
GM-PLACE – Database for the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool
GODLIKELESION – Modernization program for NSA’s European Technical Center (ETC) in Wiesbaden in 2011
GODSURGE – Runs on FLUXBABBITT circuit board to provide software persistence by exploiting JTAG debugging interface of server processors, requires interdiction and removal of motherboard of JTAG scan chain reconnection
GOPHERSET – Software implant on GMS SIM phase 2+ Toolkit cards that exfiltrates contact list, SMS and call log from handset via SMS to user-defined phone; malware loaded using USB smartcard reader or over-the-air.
GOSSAMER – SIGINT/EW collection and exploitation system
GOTHAM – Processor for external monitor recreating target monitor from red video
GOURMETTROUGH – Configurable implant for Juniper NetScreen firewalls including SSG type, minimal beaconing
GOUT – Subcompartment of GAMMA for intercepts of South Vietnamese government communications
GOVPORT – US government user authentication service
GRAB – SIGINT satellite program
GREY FOX – The 2003 covername of the Mission Support Activity (MSA) of JSOC
GREYSTONE (GST) – CIA’s highly secret rendition and interrogation programs
GROK – Computer implant plug-in used to log keystrokes
GUMFISH – Computer implant plug-in to take over a computer’s webcam and snap photographs
GUPY – Subcompartment of GAMMA for intercepts from Soviet leadership car phones (1960’s-70’s)
H
HALLUXWATER – Software implant as boot ROM upgrade for Huawei Eudemon firewalls, finds patch points in inbound packet processing, used in O2, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom
HAMMERCHANT – Implant for network routers to intercept and perform exploitation attacks against data sent through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and/or phone calls via Skype and other VoIP software
HAMMERMILL – Insertion Tool controls HEADWATER boot ROM backdoor
HAMMERSTEIN – Implant for network routers to intercept and perform exploitation attacks against data sent through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and/or phone calls via Skype and other VoIP software
HAPPYFOOT – Program that intercepts traffic generated by mobile apps that send a smartphone’s location to advertising networks
HARD ASSOCIATION – Second party database
– An IBM supercomputer used by NSA from 1962-1976
HAVE BLUE – Development program of the F-117A Stealth fighter-bomber
HAVE QUICK (HQ) – Frequency-hopping system protecting military UHF radio traffic
HEADWATER – Permanent backdoor in boot ROM for Huawei routers stable to firmware updates, installed over internet, capture and examination of all IP packets passing through host router, controlled by Hammermill Insertion Tool
HEMLOCK – Operation against the Italian embassy in Washington DC using HIGHLANDS techniques
HERCULES – CIA terrorism database
HERETIC – NSA tool or database
HEREYSTITCH – Collaboration program between NSA units T1222 and SSG
HERMOS – Joint venture between the German BND and another country with access for NSA (2012)
HERON – Retired SIGINT product codeword
HIGHCASTLE – Tactical database?
HIGHLANDS – Technique for collection from computer implants
HIGHTIDE – NSA tool or database
HOBGOBLIN – NSA tool or database
HOLLOWPOINT – Software defined radio platform
HOMEBASE – Database which allows analysts to coordinate tasking with DNI mission priorities
HOMEMAKER – Upstream collection site
HOMINGPIGEON – Program to intercept communications from airplane passengers
HOTZONE – ?
HOWLERMONKEY (HM) – Generic radio frequency (RF) transceiver tool used for various applications
HUFF – System like FOXACID?
HYSON – Retired SIGINT product codeword
I
ICEBERG – Major NSA backbone project
ICREACH – Tool that uses telephony metadata
IDITAROD (IDIT) – Compartment of the KLONDIKE control system
INCENSER – A joint NSA-GCHQ high-volume cable tapping operation, part of the WINDSTOP program
INDIA – SIGINT Exchange Designator for New Zealand (retired)
– Satellite intercept station near Khon Khaen, Thailand (1979-ca. 2000)
INTREPID SPEAR – The 2009 covername of the Mission Support Activity (MSA) of JSOC
– Series of ELINT and COMINT spy satellites (since 2009)
IRATEMONK – Hard drive firmware providing software persistence for desktops and laptops via Master Boot Record substitution, for Seagate Maxtor Samsung file systems FAR NRFS EXT3 UFS, payload is implant installer, shown at internet cafe
IRONAVENGER – NSA hacking operation against an ally and an adversary (2010)
IRONCHEF – Provides access persistence back door exploiting BIOS and SMM to communicate with a 2-way RF hardware implant
IRONSAND – Second Party satellite intercept station in New Zealand
ISHTAR – SIGINT Exchange Designator for Japan (retired)
ISLANDTRANSPORT – Internal messaging service, as part of the QUANTUM system
IVORY – Retired SIGINT product codeword
IVY BELLS – NSA, CIA and Navy operation to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communication cables
J
JACKKNIFE – The NSA satellite intercept station at Yakima (US)
JACKPOT – Internal NSA process improvement program (early 1990s – early 2000s)
JETPLOW – Persistent firmware back door for Cisco PIX and ASA firewall and routers, modifies OS at boot time
JOLLYROGER – NSA database
JOSEKI-1 – Classified Suite A algorithm
JOURNEYMAN – Major NSA backbone project
JUGGERNAUT – Ingest system for processing signals from (mobile?) phone networks
– Class of SIGINT reconnaissance satellites (1971-1983)
JUNIORMINT – Implant digital core, either mini printed circuit board or ultra-mini Flip Chip Module, contains ARM9 micro-controller, FPGA Flash SDRAM and DDR2 memories
K
KAMPUS – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ? (retired)
KANDIK (KAND) – Compartment of the KLONDIKE control system
KARMA POLICE – Second party database
KATEEL – The Brazilian embassy in Washington
KEA – Asymmetric-key Type 2 algorithm used in products like Fortezza, Fortezza Plus
KEELSON – Internet metadata processing system
KEYCARD – Database for VPN key exchange IP packet addresses
KEYRUT – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ? (retired)
KILTING – ELINT database
KIMBO – Retired SIGINT product codeword
KLIEGLIGHT (KL) – Tactical SIGINT reports
KLONDIKE (KDK) – Control system for sensitive geospatial intelligence
KLONDIKE – The embassy of Greece in Washington DC
KNIGHTHAWK – Probably a military SIGINT tool
– Method for summarizing very large textual data sets
KONGUR – Software implant restorable by GINSU after OS upgrade or reinstall
KRONE – Retired SIGINT product codeword
L
(LAC) – Retired NSA dissemination control marking
LADYLOVE – The NSA satellite intercept station at Misawa, Japan (since 1982)
LANYARD – Reconaissance satellite program
LARUM – Retired SIGINT product codeword
LEGION AMBER – Chinese hacking operation against a major US software company
LEGION JADE – A group of Chinese hackers
LEGION RUBY – A group of Chinese hackers
LEGION YANKEE – Chinese hacking operation against the Pentagon and defense contractors (2011)
LEMONWOOD – NSA satellite intercept station in Thailand
LEXHOUND – Tool for targeting social networking?
LIBERTY – First word of nicknames for collection and analysis programs used by JSOC and other sensitive DOD activities
LIBERTY BLUE – Modified RC-12 Guardrail surveillance airplane used by JSOC’s Mission Support Activity (MSA)
LIFESAVER – Technique which images the hard drive of computers
LIONSHARE – Internal NSA process improvement program (2003-2008)
LITHIUM – Facility to filter and gather data at a major (foreign?) telecommunications company under the BLARNEY program
LODESTONE – NSA’s CRAY-1 supercomputer
LOGGERHEAD – Device to collect contents of analog cell phone calls (made by Harris Corp.)
LOMA – SCI control system for Foreign Instrumentation and Signature Intelligence
LOPERS – Software application for Public Switched Telephone Networks or some kind of hardware
LOUDAUTO – An ANGRYNEIGHBOR radar retro-reflector, microphone captures room audio by pulse position modulation of square wave
M
MACHINESHOP – ?
MADCAPOCELOT – Sub-program of STORMBREW for collection of internet metadata about Russia and European terrorism
MAESTRO-II – Mini digital core implant, standard TAO implant architecture
MAGIC – Codeword for decrypted high-level diplomatic Nazi messages
– A keystroke logging software developed by the FBI
MAGNES – Remote SATCOM collection facility
MAGNETIC – Technique of sensor collection of magnetic emanations
– Series of SIGINT spy satellites (since 1985)
MAGOTHY – The embassy of the European Union in Washington DC
MAILORDER – Data transfer tool (SFTP-based?)
– Federal database of personal and financial data of suspicious US citizens
– NSA database of bulk phone metadata
MANASSAS – Former NSA counter-encryption program, succeeded by BULLRUN
– NSA database of bulk internet metadata
MARKHAM – NSA data system?
MARTES – NSA software tool to prepare reports
MASTERLINK – NSA tasking source
MASTERSHAKE – NSA tool or database
MATRIX – Some kind of data processing system
MAYTAG – Upstream collection site
MEDLEY – Classified Suite A algorithm
MENTOR – Class of SIGINT spy satellites (since 1995)
MERCED – The Bulgarian embassy in Washington DC
MERCURY – Soviet cipher machine partially exploited by NSA in the 1960’s
MERCURY – Remote SATCOM collection facility
MESSIAH – NSA automated message handling system
METAWAVE – Warehouse of unselected internet metadata
METROTUBE – Analytic tool for VPN data
METTLESOME – NSA Collection mission system
MIDAS – Satellite program
MIDDLEMAN – TAO covert network
MILKBONE – Question-Focused Dataset used for text message collection
– A sister project to Project SHAMROCK (1967-1973)
MINERALIZE – Technique for collection through LAN implants
MIRANDA – Some kind of number related to NSA targets
MIRROR – Interface to the ROADBED system
MOCCASIN – A hardware implant, permanently connected to a USB keyboard
MONKEYCALENDAR – Software implant on GMS SIM cards that exfiltrates user geolocation data
MONKEYROCKET – Sub-program of OAKSTAR for collecting internet metadata and content through a foreign access point
MOONLIGHTPATH (EGL?) – SSO collection facility
MOONPENNY – The NSA satellite intercept station at Harrogate (Great Britain)
MORAY – Compartment for the least sensitive COMINT material, retired in 1999
MORPHEUS – Program of the Global Access Operations (GAO)
MOTHMONSTER – NSA tool for exploiting the TOR network
MOVEONYX – Tool related to CASPORT
MULBERRY – The mission of Japan at the United Nations in New York
(JPM?) – Joint NSA-GCHQ operation to tap the cables linking Google and Yahoo data clouds to the internet Part of WINDSTOP
MUSKET – Retired SIGINT Exchange Designator for ?
MUSKETEER – NSA’s Special Signal Collection unit
– SSO unilateral voice interception program
– Presidential Global Communications System
N
NASHUA – The mission of India at the United Nations in New York
NAVAJO – The mission of Vietnam at the United Nations in New York
NAVARRO – The embassy of Georgia in Washington DC
NEBULA – Base station router similar to CYCLONE Hx9
NECTAR – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ? (retired)
NELEUS – Remote SATCOM collection facility
NEMESIS – SIGINT satellite
– Operation to kill or capture Osama bin Laden (2011)
NIGHTSTAND – 802.11 wireless packet injection tool that runs on standalone x86 laptop running Linux Fedora Core 3 and exploits windows platforms running Internet Explorer, from 8 miles away
NIGHTWATCH – Portable computer in shielded case for recreating target monitor from progressive-scan non-interlaced VAGRANT signals
NINJANIC – Something related to TURMOIL
NITESURF – NSA tool or database
NITRO – Remote SATCOM collection facility
NOCON – NSA dissemination marking or COI
NONBOOK (NK) – Compartment of the ENDSEAL control system
NORMALRUN – NSA tool or database
NUCLEON – Database for contents of phone calls
NYMROD – Automated name recognition system
O
– Umbrella program to filter and gather information at major telecommunications companies (since 2004)
OCEAN – Optical collection system for raster-based computer screens
OCEANARIUM – Database for SIGINT from NSA and intelligence sharing partners around the world
OCEANFRONT – Part of the communications network for ECHELON
OCEAN SHIELD – NATO anti-piracy operation
OCEANSURF – Engineering hub of the Global Access Operations (GAO)
OCELOT – Actual name: MADCAPOCELOT
OCTAVE – NSA tool for telephone network tasking (succeeded by the UTT?)
OCTSKYWARD – Collection of GSM data from flying aircraft
OILSTOCK – A system for analyzing air warning and surveillance data
– CSEC tool for discovering and identifying telephone and computer connections
OLYMPIC – First word of nicknames for programs involving defense against Chinese cyber-warfare and US offensive cyber-warfare
OLYMPIC GAMES – Joint US and Israel operation against the Iranian nuclear program (aka Stuxnet)
OLYMPUS – Software component of VALIDATOR/SOMBERKNAVE used to communicate via wireless LAN 802.11 hardware
OMNIGAT – Field network component
ONEROOF – Main tactical SIGINT database, with raw and unfiltered intercepts
– Newer units of the LACROSSE reconaissance satellites
ORANGEBLOSSOM – Sub-program of OAKSTAR for collection from an international transit switch (sigad: US-3251)
ORANGECRUSH – Sub-program of OAKSTAR for collecting metadata, voice, fax, phone and internet content through a foreign access point
ORION – SIGINT satellite
ORLANDOCARD – NSA operation thtat attracted visits from 77,413 foreign computers and planted spyware on more than 1,000 by using a ‘honeypot’ computer
OSAGE – The embassy of India in Washington DC
OSCAR – SIGINT Exchange Designator for the USA
OSWAYO – The embassy annex of India in Washington DC
– The Lockheed A-12 program (better known as SR-71)
P
PACKAGEDGOODS – Program which tracks the ‘traceroutes’ through which data flows around the Internet
PACKETSCOPE – Internet cable tapping system
PACKETSWING – NSA tool or database
PACKETWRENCH – Computer exploit delivered by the FERRETCANON system
PADSTONE – Type 1 Cryptographic algorithm used in several crypto products
PAINTEDEAGLE – SI-ECI compartment related to the BULLRUN program
PALANTERRA – A family of spatially and analytically enabled Web-based interfaces used by the NGA
PANGRAM (PM) – Alleged SCI control system
PANTHER – The embassy of Vietnam in Washington DC
PARCHDUSK (PD) – Productions Operation of NSA’s TAO division
PARTNERMALL PROGRAM (PMP) – A single collaboration environment, to be succeeded by the Global Collaboration Environment (GCE)
PARTSHOP – ?
PATHFINDER – SIGINT analysis tool (developed by SAIC)
PATHWAY – NSA’s former main computer communications network
– Call chaining analysis tool (developed by i2)
PAWLEYS – SI-ECI compartment related to the BULLRUN program
PEARL – Retired SIGINT product codeword
PEDDLECHEAP – Computer exploit delivered by the FERRETCANON system
PENDLETON – SI-ECI compartment related to the BULLRUN program
PEPPERBOX – Tool or database for targeting Requests (CSEC?)
PERDIDO – The mission of the European Union at the United Nations in New York
PERFECTMOON – An out-sites covering system
PHOTOANGLO – A continuous wave generator and receiver. The bugs on the other end are ANGRYNEIGHBOR class
PIEDMONT – SI-ECI compartment related to the BULLRUN program
PICARESQUE (PIQ) – SI-ECI compartment related to the BULLRUN program
PICASSO – Modified GSM handset that collects user data plus room audio
PINUP – Retired SIGINT product codeword
– Database for recorded signals intercepts/internet content
PITCHFORD – SI-ECI compartment related to the BULLRUN program
PIVOT – Retired SIGINT product codeword
PIXIE – Retired SIGINT product codeword
PLATFORM – Computer system linking the ECHELON intercept sites
PLUS – NSA SIGINT production feedback program
POCOMOKE – The Brazilian Permanent Mission to the UN in New York
POISON NUT – CES VPN attack orchestrator
POLARBREEZE – NSA technique to tap into nearby computers
POPPY – SIGINT satellite program
POPTOP – Collection system for telephony data
POWELL – The Greek mission at the United Nations in New York
PREFER – System for identifying and extracting text messages (SMS) from the DISHFIRE database
PRESSUREPORT – Software interface related to PRESSUREWAVE
PRESSUREWAVE – NSA cloud database for VPN and VoIP content and metadata
PRIMECANE – American high-tech company cooperating in providing a network access point for the ORANGECRUSH program
– Program for collecting foreign internet data from US internet companies
PROFORMA – Intelligence derived from computer-based data
– Mobile tactical SIGINT collection system
PROTEIN – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ?
PROTON – SIGINT database for time-sensitive targets/counterintelligence
PROTOSS – Local computer handling radio frequency signals from implants
PURPLE – Codename for a Japanese diplomatic cryptosystem during WWII
– US military OPSEC program (since 1966)
PUTTY – NSA tool or database
PUZZLECUBE – NSA tool or database
PYLON – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ?
Q
QUADRANT – A crypto implementation code
QUADRESPECTRE PRIME – ?
– A consolidated QUANTUMTHEORY platform to reduce latencies by co-locating passive sensors with local decisioning and traffic injection (under development in 2011)
– Secret servers placed by NSA at key places on the internet backbone; part of the TURMOIL program
QUANTUMBISCUIT – Enhancement of QUANTUMINSERT for targets which are behind large proxies
QUANTUMBOT – Method for taking control of idle IRC bots and botnets)
QUANTUMBOT2 – Combination of Q-BOT and Q-BISCUIT for webbased botnets
QUANTUMCOOKIE – Method to force cookies onto target computers
QUANTUMCOPPER – Method for corrupting file uploads and downloads
QUANTUMDNS – DNS injection/redirection based off of A record queries
QUANTUMHAND – Man-on-the-side technique using a fake Facebook server
QUANTUMINSERT (QI) – Man-on-the-side technique that redirects target internet traffic to a FOXACID server for exploitation
QUANTUMMUSH – Targeted spam exploitation method
QUANTUMNATION – Umbrella for COMMONDEER and VALIDATOR computer exploits
QUANTUMPHANTOM – Hijacks any IP address to use as covert infrastructure
QUANTUMSKY – Malware used to block targets from accessing certain websites through RST packet spoofing
QUANTUMSMACKDOWN – Method for using packet injection to block attacks against DoD computers
QUANTUMSPIN – Exploitation method for instant messaging
QUANTUMSQUEEL – Method for injecting MySQL persistant database connections
QUANTUMSQUIRREL – Using any IP address as a covert infrastructure
QUANTUMTHEORY (QT) – Computer hacking toolbox used by NSA’s TAO division, which dynamically injects packets into target’s network session
QUANTUM LEAP – CIA tool to “find non-obvious linkages, new connections, and new information” from within a dataset
QUARTERPOUNDER – Upstream collection site
– Relay satellite for reconaissance satellites
QUEENSLAND – Upstream collection site
R
RADIOSPRING – ?
RADON – Host tap that can inject Ethernet packets
RAGEMASTER – Part of ANGRYNEIGHBOR radar retro-reflectors, for red video graphics array cable in ferrite bead RFI chokers between video card and monitor, target for RF flooding and collection of VAGRANT video signal
(RGT) – ECI compartment for call and e-mail content collected under FISA authority
RAILHEAD – NCTC database project
RAISIN – NSA database or tool
RAMPART – NSA operational branches that intercept heads of state and their closest aides. Known divisions are RAMPART-A, RAMPART-I and RAMPART-T. Also mentioned as a suite of programs for assuring system functionality
RAVEN – SIGINT satellite
REACTOR – Tool or program related to MARINA?
REBA – Major NSA backbone project
REDHAWK – NSA tool
REDROOF – NSA tool
REMATION – Joint NSA-GCHQ counter-TOR workshop
RENOIR – NSA telephone network visualization tool
REQUETTE – A Taiwanese TECO in New York
RESERVE (RSV) – Control system for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
RESERVEVISION – Remote monitoring tool
RESOLUTETITAN – Internet cable access program?
RETRO – see RETROSPECTIVE
RETROSPECTIVE – 30-day retrospective retrieval tool for SCALAWAG
RETURNSPRING – High-side server shown in UNITEDRAKE internet cafe monitoring graphic
RHINEHEART – NSA tool or database
– Class of SIGINT spy satellites (in 1975 changed to AQUACADE)
RICHTER – SIGINT Exchange Designator for Germany
RIPCORD – ?
RIVET JOINT – Reconaissance operation
ROADBED – Probably a military SIGINT database
ROCKYKNOB – Optional DSP when using Data Over Voice transmission in CROSSBEAM
RONIN – NSA tool for detecting TOR-node IP-addresses
RORIPA – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ?
ROYALNET – Internet exploitation tool
RUFF – Compartment of TALENT KEYHOLE for IMINT satellites
RUMBUCKET – Analytic tool
RUTLEY – Network of SIGINT satellites launched in 1994 and 1995
S
SABRE – Retired SIGINT product codeword
SALEM – ?
SALVAGERABBIT – Computer implant plug-in that exfiltrates data from removable flash drives that connect to an infected computer
SAMOS – Reconnaissance satellite program
SAPPY – Retired SIGINT product codeword
SARATOGA – SSO access facility (since 2011)
SARDINE – SIGINT Exchange Designator for Sweden
– Narrow band voice encryption for radio and telephone communication
SAVIN – Retired SIGINT product codeword
SCALAWAG – Collection facility under the MYSTIC program
SCALLION – Upstream collection site
SCAPEL – Second Party satellite intercept station in Nairobi, Kenia
SCHOOLMONTANA – Software implant for Juniper J-series routers used to direct traffic between server, desktop computers, corporate network and internet
SCIMITAR – A tool to create contact graphs?
SCISSORS – System used for separating different types of data and protocols
SCORPIOFORE – SIGINT reporting tool
SEABOOT – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ?
SEADIVER – Collection system for telephony data
SEAGULLFARO – High-side server shown in UNITEDRAKE internet cafe monitoring graphic
SEARCHLITE – Tactical SIGINT collecting system for like cell phone calls
SEASONEDMOTH (SMOTH) – Stage0 computer implant which dies after 30 days, deployed by the QUANTUMNATION method
SECONDDATE – Method to influence real-time communications between client and server in order to redirect web-browsers to FOXACID malware servers
SECUREINSIGHT – A software framework to support high-volume analytics
SEMESTER – NSA SIGINT reporting tool
– Transportable suite of ISR equipment (since 1991)
– Radome on top of the U2 to relay SIGINT data to ground stations
SENTINEL – NSA database security filter
SERENADE – SSO corporate partner (foreign?)
SERUM – Bank of servers within ROC managing approvals and ticket system
SETTEE – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ?
– Operation for intercepting telegraphic data going in or out the US (1945-1975)
SHAREDVISION – Mission program at Menwith Hill satellite station
SHARKFIN – Sweeps up all-source communications intelligence at high speed and volumes
SHARPFOCUS (SF2) – Productions Operation of NSA’s TAO division
SHELLTRUMPET – NSA metadata processing program (since December 2007)
SHENANIGANS – Aircraft-based NSA geolocation system used by CIA
SHIFTINGSHADOW – Sub-program of OAKSTAR for collecting telephone metadata and voice content from Afghanistan through a foreign access point
SHILLELAGH – Classified Suite A algorithm
SHORTSHEET – NSA tool for Computer Network Exploitation
SHOTGIANT – NSA operation for hacking and monitoring the Huawei network (since 2009)
SIERRAMONTANA – Software implant for Juniper M-series routers used by enterprises and service providers
SIGINT NAVIGATOR – NSA database
SIGSALY – The first secure voice system from World War II
SILKWORTH – A software program used for the ECHELON system
SILLYBUNNY – Some kind of webbrowser tag which can be used as selector
SILVER – Soviet cipher machine partially exploited by NSA in the 1960’s
SILVERCOMET – SIGINT satellites?
SILVERZEPHYR (SZ) – Sub-program of OAKSTAR for collecting phone and internet metadata and content from Latin and South America through an international transit switch
SIRE – A software program used for the ECHELON system(?)
– Type 2 Block cipher algorithms used in various crypto products
SKOPE – SIGINT analytical toolkit
SKYSCRAPER – Interface to the ROADBED system
SKYWRITER – NSA tool to prepare (internet) intelligence reports
SLICKERVICAR – Used with UNITEDRAKE or STRAITBIZARRE to upload hard drive firmware to implant IRATEMONK
SLINGSHOT – End Product Reports (CSEC?)
SMOKEYSINK – SSO access facility (since 2011?)
SNICK – 2nd Party satellite intercept station in Oman
SNORT – Repository of computer network attack techniques/coding
SOAPOPERA – (former?) database for voice, end product and SRI information
SOMBERKNAVE – Windows XP wireless software implant providing covert internet connectivity, routing TCP traffic via an unused 802.11 network device allowing OLYMPUS or VALIDATOR to call home from air-gapped computer
SORTING HAT – ?
SORTING LEAD – ?
SOUFFLETROUGH – Software implant in BIOS Juniper SSG300 and SSG500 devices, permanent backdoor, modifies ScreenOS at boot, utilizes Intel’s System Management Mode
SOUNDER – Second Party satellite intercept station at Cyprus
SPARKLEPONY – Tool or program related to MARINA
SPARROW II – Airborne wireless network detector running BLINDDATE tools via 802.11
SPECTRE – SCI control system for intelligence on terrorist activities
SPECULATION – Protocol for over-the-air communication between COTTONMOUTH computer implant devices, compatible with HOWLERMONKEY
SPHINX – Counterintelligence database of the Defense Intelligence Agency
SPINNERET (SPN) – SSO collection facility
SPLITGLASS – NSA analytical database
SPLUNK – Tool used for SIGINT Development
SPOKE – Compartment for less sensitive COMINT material, retired in 1999
SPOTBEAM – ?
SPORTCOAST – Upstream collection site
SPRIG – Retired SIGINT product codeword
SPRINGRAY – Some kind of internal notification system
SPYDER – Analytic tool for selected content of text messages from the DISHFIRE database
STARBURST – The initial code word for the STELLARWIND compartment
STARLIGHT – Analyst tool
STARPROC – User lead that can be uses as a selector
STARSEARCH – Target Knowledge tool or database (CSEC?)
STATEROOM – Covert SIGINT collection sites based in US diplomatic facilities
STEELFLAUTA – SSO Corporate/TAO Shaping program
STEELKNIGHT – (foreign?) partner providing a network access point for the SILVERZEPHYR program
STEELWINTER – A supercomputer acquired by the Norwegian military intelligence agency
STELLAR – Second Party satellite intercept station at Geraldton, Australia
STELLARWIND (STLW) – SCI compartment for the President’s Surveillance Program information
STEPHANIE – Covert listening post in the Canadian embassy in Moscow (est. 1972)
STINGRAY – Device for tracking the location of cell phones (made by Harris Corp.) STONEGHOST – DIA network for information exchange with UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (TS/SCI)
STORMBREW – Program for collection from an international transit switches and cables (since 2001)
STRAIGHTBIZARRE – Software implant used to communicate through covert channels
STRATOS – Tool or databse for GPRS Events (CSEC?)
STRAWHAT – NSA datalinks between field sites and processing centers (1969-?)
STRONGMITE – Computer at remote operations center used for long range communications
STRUM – (see abbreviations)
STUCCOMONTANA – Software implant for Juniper T-Series routers used in large fixed-line, mobile, video, and cloud networks, otherwise just like SCHOOLMONTANA
STUMPCURSOR – Foreign computer accessing program of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations
SUBSTRATUM – Upstream collection site
SUEDE – Retired SIGINT product codeword
SULPHUR – The mission of South Korea at the United Nations in New York
SUNSCREEN – Tool or database
SURFBOARD – NSA tool or database
SURLEYSPAWN – Data RF retro-reflector, gathers keystrokes FSK frequency shift keyed radar retro-reflector, USB or IBM keyboards
SURPLUSHANGAR – High to low diode, part of the QUANTUM system
SURREY – Main NSA requirements database, where tasking instructions are stored and validated, used by the FORNSAT, SSO and TAO divisions
SUTURESAILOR – Printed circuit board digital core used with HOWLERMONKEY
SWAMP – NSA data system?
SWAP – Implanted software persistence by exploiting motherboard BIOS and hard drive Host Protected Area for execution before OS loads, operative on windows linux, freeBSD Solaris
– NSA data model for analyzing target connections
T
TACOSUAVE – ?
TALENT KEYHOLE (TK) – Control system for space-based collection platforms
TALK QUICK – An interim secure voice system created to satisfy urgent requirements imposed by conditions to Southeast Asia. Function was absorbed by AUTOSEVOCOM
TAPERLAY – Covername for Global Numbering Data Base (GNDB), used for looking up the registered location of a mobile device
TARMAC – Improvement program at Menwith Hill satellite station
TAROTCARD – NSA tool or database
TAWDRYYARD – Beacon radio frequency radar retro-reflector used to positionally locate deployed RAGEMASTER units
TEMPEST – Investigations and studies of compromising electronic emanations
– GCHQ program for intercepting internet and telephone traffic
THESPIS – SIGINT Exchange Designator for ?
THINTREAD – NSA program for wiretapping and sophisticated analysis of the resulting data
THUMB – Retired SIGINT product codeword
THUNDERCLOUD – Collaboration program between NSA units T1222 and SSG
TIAMAT – Joint venture between the German BND and another country with access for NSA
TICKETWINDOW – System that makes SSO collection available to 2nd Party partners
TIDALSURGE – Router Configurations tool (CSEC?)
TIDEWAY – Part of the communications network for ECHELON
TIMBERLINE – The NSA satellite intercept station at Sugar Grove (US)
TINMAN – Database related to air warning and surveillance
TITAN POINTE – Upstream collection site
– Presumably Chinese attacks on American computer systems (since 2003)
TITLEHOLDER – NSA tool
TOPAZ – Satellite program
TOTECHASER – Software implant in flash ROM windows CE for Thuraya 2520 satellite/GSM/web/email/MMS/GPS
TOTEGHOSTLY – Modular implant for windows mobile OS based on SB using CP framework, Freeflow-compliant so supported by TURBULENCE architecture
TOWERPOWER – NSA tool or database
TOXICARE – NSA tool
TOYGRIPPE – NSA’s CES database for VPN metadata
TRACFIN – NSA database for financial data like credit card purchases
TRAFFICTHIEF – Part of the TURBULENCE and the PRISM programs
TRAILBLAZER – NSA Program to analyze data carried on communications networks
TRAILMAPPER – NSA tool or database
TRANSX – NSA database
TREACLEBETA – TAO hacking against the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba
TREASUREMAP – NSA internet traffic visualization tool
TRIGGERFISH – Device to collect the content of digital cell phone calls (made by Harris Corp.)
TRINE – Predecessor of the UMBRA compartment for COMINT
TRINITY – Implant digital core concealed in COTTONMOUTH-I, providing ARM9 microcontroller, FPGA Flash and SDRAM memories
TRITON – Tool or database for TOR Nodes (CSEC?)
– Series of ELINT reconnaissance satellites (1994-2008)
TRYST – Covert listening post in the British embassy in Moscow
TUBE – Database for selected internet content?
TUMULT – Part of the TURBULENCE program
TUNINGFORK – Sustained collection linked to SEAGULLFARO, previously NSA database or tool for protocol exploitation
TURBINE – Active SIGINT: centralized automated command/control system for managing a large network of active computer implants for intelligence gathering (since 2010)
TURBOPANDA – The Turbopanda Insertion Tool allows read/write to memory, execute an address or packet; joint NSA/CIA project on Huawei network equipment
TURBULENCE (TU) – Integrate NSA architecture with several layers and sub-programs to detect threats in cyberspace (since 2005)
TURMOIL – Passive SIGINT sensors: high speed collection of foreign target satellite, microwave and cable communications, part of the TURBULENCE program Maybe for selecting common internet encryption technologies to exploit.
TURTLEPOWER -NSA tool
TUSKATTIRE – Ingest system for cleaning and processing DNR (telephony) data
TUTELAGE – Active defense system to monitor network traffic in order to detect malicious code and network attacks, part of the TURBULENCE program
TWEED – Retired SIGINT product codeword
TWISTEDKILT – Writes to Host Protected area on hard drive to implant Swap and its implant installer payload
TWISTEDPATH – NSA tool or database
TYPHON HX – GSM base station router network in box for tactical Sigint geolocating and capturing user
U
ULTRA – Decrypted high-level military Nazi messages, like from the Enigma machine
UMBRA – Retired compartment for the most sensitive COMINT material
UNIFORM – SIGINT Exchange Designator for Canada
UNITEDRAKE – Computer exploit delivered by the FERRETCANON system
USHER – Retired SIGINT product codeword
V
VAGRANT – Radar retro-reflector technique on video cable to reproduce open computer screens
VALIDATOR – Computer exploit delivered by the FERRETCANON system for looking whether a computer has security software, runs as user process on target OS, modified for SCHOOLMONTANA, initiates a call home, passes to SOMBERKNAVE, downloads OLYMPUS and communicates with remote operation center
– Decrypted intercepts of messages from Soviet intelligence agencies
VERDANT (VER) – Alleged SCI control system
VESUVIUS – Prototype quantum computer, situated in NSA’s Utah Data Center
VICTORYDANCE – Joint NSA-CIA operation to map WiFi fingerprints of nearly every major town in Yemen
VIEWPLATE – Processor for external monitor recreating target monitor from red video
VINTAGE HARVEST – Probably a military SIGINT tool
VITALAIR – NSA tool
VOICESAIL – Intelligence database
– Class of SIGINT spy satellites (1978-1989)
VOXGLO – Multiple award contract providing cyber security and enterprise computing, software development, and systems integration support
W
WABASH – The embassy of France in Washington DC
WAGONBED – Hardware GSM controller board implant on CrossBeam or HP Proliant G5 server that communicates over I2C interface
WALBURN – High-speed link encryption, used in various encryption products
WARPDRIVE – Joint venture between the German BND and another country with access for NSA (2013)
WATERWITCH – Hand-held tool for geolocating targeted handsets to last mile
WAVELEGAL – Authorization service that logs data queries
WEALTHYCLUSTER – Program to hunt down tips on terrorists in cyberspace (2002- )
WEASEL – Type 1 Cryptographic algorithm used in SafeXcel-3340
WEBCANDID – NSA tool or database
WESTPORT – The mission of Venezuela at the United Nations in New York
WILLOWVIXEN – Method to deploy malware by sending out spam emails that trick targets into clicking a malicious link
WISTFULTOLL – Plug-in for UNITEDRAKE and STRAITBIZARRE used to harvest target forensics via Windows Management Instrumentation and Registry extractions, can be done through USB thumb drive
WHIPGENIE (WPG) – ECI compartment for details about the STELLARWIND program
WHITEBOX – Program for intercepting the public switched telephone network?
WHITELIST – NSA tool
WHITETAMALE – Operation for collecting e-mails from Mexico’s Public Security Secretariat
WINDCHASER – Tool or program related to MARINA
WINDSORBLUE – Supercomputer program at IBM
WINDSTOP – Joint NSA-GCHQ unilateral high-volume cable tapping program
WINTERLIGHT – A QUANTUM computer hacking program in which Sweden takes part
WIRESHARK – Database with malicious network signatures
WITCH – Retired SIGINT product codeword
WITCHHUNT – ?
WOLFPOINT – SSO corporate partner under the STORMBREW program
WORDGOPHER – Platform to enable demodulation of low-rate communication carriers
WRANGLER – Database or system which focuses on Electronic Intelligence
X
– Program for finding key words in foreign language documents
XKEYSCORE (XKS) – Program for analysing SIGINT traffic
Y
YACHTSHOP – Sub-program of OAKSTAR for collecting internet metadata
YELLOWPIN – Printed circuit board digital core used with HOWLERMONKEY
YELLOWSTONE – NSA analytical database
YUKON – The embassy of Venezuela in Washington DC
Z
ZAP – (former?) database for texts
ZARF – Compartment of TALENT KEYHOLE for ELINT satellites, retired in 1999
ZESTYLEAK – Software implant that allows remote JETPLOW firmware installation, used by NSA’s CES unit
I am a former Google employee and I am writing this to leak information to the public of what I
witnessed and took part in while being an employee. My position was to deal with AdSense accounts,
more specifically the accounts of publishers (not advertisers). I was employed at Google for a period of
several years in this capacity.
Having signed many documents such as NDA’s and non-competes, there are many repercussions for me,
especially in the form of legal retribution from Google. I have carefully planned this leak to coincide with
certain factors in Google such as waiting for the appropriate employee turn around so that my identity
could not be discovered.
To sum it up for everyone, I took part in what I (and many others) would consider theft of money from
the publishers by Google, and from direct orders of management. There were many AdSense employees
involved, and it spanned many years, and I hear it still is happening today except on a much wider scale.
No one on the outside knows it, if they did, the FBI and possibly IRS would immediately launch an
investigation, because what they are doing is so inherently illegal and they are flying completely under
the radar.
It began in 2009. Everything was perfectly fine prior to 2009, and in fact it couldn’t be more perfect from
an AdSense employees perspective, but something changed.
Google Bans and Ban Criteria
Before December 2012:
In the first quarter of 2009 there was a “sit-down” from the AdSense division higher ups to talk about
new emerging issues and the role we (the employees in the AdSense division needed to play. It was a
very long meeting, and it was very detailed and intense. What it boiled down to was that Google had
suffered some very serious losses in the financial department several months earlier. They kept saying
how we “needed to tighten the belts” and they didn’t want it to come from Google employees pockets.
So they were going to (in their words) “carry out extreme quality control on AdSense publishers”. When
one of my fellow co-workers asked what they meant by that. Their response was that AdSense itself
hands out too many checks each month to publishers, and that the checks were too large and that
needed to end right away. Many of the employees were not pleased about this (like myself). But they
were successful in scaring the rest into thinking it would be their jobs and their money that would be on
the line if they didn’t participate. The meeting left many confused as to how this was going to happen.
What did they mean by extreme quality control? A few other smaller meetings occur with certain key
people in the AdSense division that furthered the idea and procedure they planned on implementing.
There were lots of rumors and quiet talking amongst the employees, there was lots of speculations,
some came true and some didn’t. But the word was that they were planning to cut off a large portion of
publisher’s payments.
After that point there was a running gag amongst fellow co-workers where we would walk by each other
and whisper “Don’t be evil, pft!” and roll our eyes.
What happened afterwards became much worse. Their “quality control” came into full effect. Managers
pushed for wide scale account bans, and the first big batch of bans happened in March of 2009. The
main reason, the publishers made too much money. But something quite devious happened. We were
told to begin banning accounts that were close to their payout period (which is why account bans never
occur immediately after a payout). The purpose was to get that money owed to publishers back to
Google AdSense, while having already served up the ads to the public.
This way the advertiser’s couldn’t claim we did not do our part in delivering their ads and ask for money
back. So in a sense, we had thousands upon thousands of publishers deliver ads we knew they were
never going to get paid for.
Google reaped both sides of the coin, got money from the advertisers, used the publishers, and didn’t
have to pay them a single penny. We were told to go and look into the publishers accounts, and if any
publisher had accumulated earnings exceeding $5000 and was near a payout or in the process of a
payout, we were to ban the account right away and reverse the earnings back. They kept saying it was
needed for the company, and that most of these publishers were ripping Google off anyways, and that
their gravy train needed to end. Many employees were not happy about this. A few resigned over it.
I did not. I stayed because I had a family to support, and secondly I wanted to see how far they would
go.
From 2009 to 2012 there were many more big batches of bans. The biggest of all the banning sessions
occurred in April of 2012. The AdSense division had enormous pressure from the company to make up
for financial losses, and for Google’s lack of reaching certain internal financial goals for the quarter prior.
So the push was on. The employees felt really uneasy about the whole thing, but we were threatened
with job losses if we didn’t enforce the company’s wishes. Those who voiced concerned or issue were
basically ridiculed with “not having the company’s best interest in mind” and not being “team players”.
Morale in the division was at an all-time low. The mood of the whole place changed quite rapidly. It no
longer was a fun place to work.
The bans of April 2012 came fast and furious. Absolutely none of them were investigated, nor were they
justified in any way. We were told to get rid of as many of the accounts with the largest
checks/payouts/earnings waiting to happen. No reason, just do it, and don’t question it. It was heart
wrenching seeing all that money people had earned all get stolen from them. And that’s what I saw it as,
it was a robbery of the AdSense publishers. Many launched appeals, complaints, but it was futile
because absolutely no one actually took the time to review the appeals or complaints. Most were simply
erased without even being opened, the rest were deposited into the database, never to be touched
again.
Several publishers launched legal actions which were settled, but Google had come up with a new policy
to deal with situations such as that because it was perceived as a serious problem to be avoided.
So they came up with a new policy.
After December 2012: The New Policy
The new policy; “shelter the possible problem makers, and fuck the rest” (those words were actually
said by a Google AdSense exec) when he spoke about the new procedure and policy for “Account
Quality Control”.
The new policy was officially called AdSense Quality Control Color Codes (commonly called AQ3C by
employees). What it basically was a categorization of publisher accounts. Those publisher’s that could
do the most damage by having their account banned were placed in a VIP group that was to be left
alone. The rest of the publishers would be placed into other groupings accordingly.
The new AQ3C also implemented “quality control” quotas for the account auditors, so if you didn’t meet
the “quality control” target (aka account bans) you would be called in for a performance review.
There were four “groups” publishers could fall into if they reached certain milestones.
They were:
Red Group: Urgent Attention Required
Any AdSense account that reaches the $10,000/month mark is immediately flagged (unless they are part
of the Green Group).
– In the beginning there were many in this category, and most were seen as problematic and were seen
as abusing the system by Google. So every effort was taken to bring their numbers down.
– They are placed in what employees termed “The Eagle Eye”, where the “AdSense Eagle Eye Team”
would actively and constantly audit their accounts and look for any absolute reason for a ban. Even if
the reason was far-fetched, or unsubstantiated, and unprovable, the ban would occur. The “Eagle Eye
Team” referred to a group of internal account auditors whose main role was to constantly monitor
publisher’s accounts and sites.
– A reason has to be internally attached to the account ban. The problem was that notifying the
publisher for the reason is not a requirement, even if the publisher asks. The exception: The exact
reason must be provided if a legal representative contacts Google on behalf of the account holder.
– But again, if a ban is to occur, it must occur as close to a payout period as possible with the most
amount of money accrued/earned. Yellow Group: Serious Attention Required
Any AdSense account that reaches the $5,000/month mark is flagged for review (unless they are part of
the Green Group).
– All of the publisher’s site(s)/account will be placed in queue for an audit.
– Most of the time the queue is quite full so most are delayed their audit in a timely fashion.
– The second highest amount of bans occur at this level.
– A reason has to be internally attached to the account ban. Notifiying the publisher for the reason is not
a requirement, even if the publisher asks. The exception: The exact reason must be provided if a legal
representative contacts Google on behalf of the account holder.
– But again, if a ban is to occur, it must occur as close to a payout period as possible with the most
amount of money accrued/earned. Blue Group: Moderate Attention Required
Any AdSense account that reaches the $1,000/month mark is flagged for possible review (unless they
are part of the Green Group).
– Only the main site and account will be place in queue for what is called a quick audit.
– Most bans that occur happen at this level. Main reason is that a reason doesn’t have to be attached to
the ban, so the employees use these bans to fill their monthly quotas. So many are simply a random pick
and click.
– A reason does not have to be internally attached to the account ban. Notifying the publisher for the
reason is not a requirement, even if the publisher asks.
– But again, if a ban is to occur, it must occur as close to a payout period as possible with the most
amount of money accrued. Green Group: VIP Status (what employees refer to as the “untouchables”)
Any AdSense account associated with an incorporated entity or individual that can inflict serious
damage onto Google by negative media information, rallying large amounts of anti-AdSense support, or
cause mass loss of AdSense publisher support.
– Google employees wanting to use AdSense on their websites were automatically placed in the Green
group. So the database contained many Google insiders and their family members. If you work or
worked for Google and were placed in the category, you stayed in it, even if you left Google. So it
included many former employees. Employees simply had to submit a form with site specific details and
their account info.
– Sites in the Green Group were basically given “carte blanche” to do anything they wanted, even if they
flagrantly went against the AdSense TOS and Policies. That is why you will encounter sites with AdSense,
but yet have and do things completely against AdSense rules.
– Extra care is taken not to interrupt or disrupt these accounts.
– If an employee makes a mistake with a Green Level account they can lose their job. Since it seen as
very grievous mistake. New Policy 2012 Part 2:
Internal changes to the policy were constant. They wanted to make it more efficient and streamlined.
They saw its current process as having too much human involvement and oversight. They wanted it
more automated and less involved.
So the other part of the new policy change was to incorporate other Google services into assisting the
“quality control” program. What they came up with will anger many users when they find out. It
involved skewing data in Google Analytics. They decided it was a good idea to alter the statistical data
shown for websites. It first began with just altering data reports for Analytics account holders that also
had an AdSense account, but they ran into too many issues and decided it would be simpler just to skew
the report data across the board to remain consistent and implement features globally.
So what this means is that the statistical data for a website using Google Analytics is not even close to
being accurate. The numbers are incredibly deflated. The reasoning behind their decision is that if an
individual links their AdSense account and their Analytics account, the Analytics account can be used to
deflate the earnings automatically without any human intervention. They discovered that if an individual
had an AdSense account then they were also likely to use Google Analytics. So Google used it to their
advantage.
This led to many publishers to actively display ads, without earning any money at all (even to this day).
Even if their actual website traffic was high, and had high click-throughs the data would be automatically
skewed in favor of Google, and at a total loss of publishers. This successfully made it almost impossible
for anyone to earn amounts even remotely close what individuals with similar sites were earning prior
to 2012, and most definitely nowhere near pre-2009 earnings.
Other policy changes also included how to deal with appeals, which still to this day, the large majority
are completely ignored, and why you will rarely get an actual answer as to why your account was
banned and absolutely no way to resolve it.
—- The BIG Problem (which Google is aware of)
There is an enormous problem that existed for a long time in Google’s AdSense accounts. Many of the
upper management are aware of this problem but do not want to acknowledge or attempt to come up
with a solution to the problem.
It is regarding false clicks on ads. Many accounts get banned for “invalid clicks” on ads. In the past this
was caused by a publisher trying to self inflate click-throughs by clicking on the ads featured on their
website. The servers automatically detect self-clicking with comparison to IP addresses and other such
information, and the persons account would get banned for invalid clicking.
But there was something forming under the surface. A competitor or malicious person would actively go
to their competitor’s website(s) or pick a random website running AdSense and begin multiple-clicking
and overclicking ads, which they would do over and over again. Of course this would trigger an invalid
clicking related ban, mainly because it could not be proven if the publisher was actually behind the
clicking. This was internally referred to as “Click-Bombing”. Many innocent publishers would get caught
up in bans for invalid clicks which they were not involved in and were never told about.
This issue has been in the awareness of Google for a very long time but nothing was done to rectify the
issue and probably never will be. Thus if someone wants to ruin a Google AdSense publishers account,
all you would have to do is go to their website, and start click-bombing their Google Ads over and over
again, it will lead the servers to detect invalid clicks and poof, they get banned. The publisher would be
completely innocent and unaware of the occurrence but be blamed for it anyways.
—-
Their BIG Fear
The biggest fear that Google has about these AdSense procedures and policies is that it will be publicly
discovered by their former publishers who were banned, and that those publishers unite together and
launch an class-action lawsuit.
They also fear those whose primary monthly earnings are from AdSense, because in many countries if a
person claims the monthly amount to their tax agency and they state the monthly amount and that they
are earning money from Google on a monthly basis, in certain nations technically Google can be seen as
an employer. Thus, an employer who withholds payment of earnings, can be heavily fined by
government bodies dealing with labor and employment. And if these government bodies dealing with
labor and employment decide to go after Google, then it would get very ugly, very quickly ….. that is on
top of a class-action lawsuit.
Snowden made video to teach reporter how to speak with him securely
It explains how to use Public Key Encryption to scramble online messages
Privacy campaigners call on ordinary people to learn how to use the method
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Whistleblower: The tutorial Edward Snowden made for reporters on to avoid NSA email surveillance has been made public for the first time
Ordinary people must learn to scramble their emails, privacy campaigners said today, as an encryption how-to video made by Edward Snowden was made public for the first time.
The former NSA employee who blew the whistle on the agency’s all-pervasive online surveillance made the video to teach reporters how to communicate with him in secret.
The 12-minute clip, in which Mr Snowden has used software to distort his voiceover, explains how to use free software to scramble messages using a technique called Public Key Encryption (PKE).
The video’s description on Vimeo says: ‘By following these instructions, you’ll allow any potential source in the world to send you a powerfully encrypted message that ONLY YOU can read even if the two of you have never met or exchanged contact information.’
Mr Snowden made the video last year for Glenn Greenwald in an effort to get the then-Guardian reporter to communicate securely with him online so he could send over documents he wanted to leak.
Viewers may find the video difficult to follow. Mr Greenwald himself admitted he wasn’t able to finish it. It took him seven weeks and help from experts to finally gather the expertise to get back to Snowden.
The video’s publication comes as more and more internet users are adopting encryption techniques after the alarm caused by Mr Snowden’s revelations about communications surveillance.
He leaked documents which showed the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ were able to spy on virtually anybody’s communications and internet usage, monitor social network activity in real time, and track and record the locations of billions of mobile devices.
There was outrage when it emerged that, contrary to promises the NSA made to Congress, these technologies were being used to track U.S. citizens without warrants and to tap the communications of leaders of allied countries.
One answer to the risks to freedom that such surveillance pose is to scramble online communications so that government agencies can no longer eavesdrop at will.
However, the encryption technologies currently available can be difficult to use and privacy activists have called on internet companies to include them in their products at the source.
Meanwhile, the campaign to end blanket surveillance continues as experts warn encryption tools are unlikely to make their way into the mainstream while internet firms continue to make their profits on the back of users’ personal information.
Scroll down for video
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How-to guide: The video begins with a basic outline of the theory behind Public Key Encryption. It is voiced over by Mr Snowden, who has disguised his voice to avoid detection by NSA or GCHQ spies
+4
Detailed: The video then explains how to use a free program called GPG4Win to scramble messages using Public Key Encryption then send them over Tor, software that allows people to use the internet anonymously
In Mr Snowden’s video, he explains how traditional emails are sent as plain text – unencrypted by default – across the internet, allowing anyone able to intercept them to easily read their contents.
‘Any router you cross could be monitored by an intelligence agency or other adversary [such as] a random hacker. So could any end points on the way there, a mail server or a service provider such as Gmail.
‘If the journalist uses a web mail service personally or its provisioned by their company, the plain text could always be retrieved later on via a subpoena or some other mechanism, legal or illegal, instead of catching it during transit. So that’s doubly dangerous
‘The solution to that is to actually encrypt the message. Now one of the problems with encryption typically is that it requires a shared secret, a form of key or password that goes between the journalist and the source.
‘But if the source sends an encypted file across the internet to the journalist and says “Hey, here’s an encrypted file. The passwork is cheesecake,” the internet is going to know the password is cheesecake.
‘But public key encryption such as GPG allows the journalist to publish a key that anyone can have based on the design of the algorithm, and it doesn’t provide any advantage to the adversary.’
The video goes on to specifically explain how to use a free program called GPG4Win to scramble messages using Public Key Encryption then send them over Tor, a piece of software that allows people to use the internet anonymously.
It’s lessons, as well as help from experts, allowed Mr Greenwald to communicate securely with Mr Snowden to publish what has since been called the most significant leak in U.S. history. It has been made public to coincide with the release of Mr Greenwald’s book, No Place To Hide, in which he tells the story of the scoop.
Privacy campaigners told MailOnline today that all internet users should be now using encryption technology to preserve their privacy and maintain freedom of speech in the face of government spying.
Javier Ruiz, director of policy at the Open Rights Group, said: ‘Emails are like postcards and encryption is a tamper-proof envelope.
‘It’s probably obvious that journalists, MPs, doctors, lawyers or anyone transmitting confidential information online should always encrypt their emails to keep that information secure.
+4
http://youtu.be/jo0L2m6OjLA
‘But since the Snowden revelations, more and more ordinary citizens are adopting encryption software to help keep their emails private.
‘If encryption is to be used on a mass scale, it will require companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft to embed encryption in their tools.’
But TK Keanini, chief technology officer at internet security firm Lancope, said that it was unlikely that major internet companies would begin including encryption functions in their services as standard.
‘PGP and similar programs are just too complicated for the masses,’ he said. ‘Managing key pairs, understanding revocation and all that stuff is too complicated for most, and thus adoption over the past 20 years has been limited to the highly technical – the uber geeks.
‘Now, if a service like gmail.com had an option in there to perform digital signing and encryption in a way that most people could use it, that would have a huge impact; but it will never happen because Google and other ‘free’ services make their money on the fact that your data is in the clear and they can use it to market services to you.
‘People need to understand that when people offer free services, you and your information are the payment.’
‘While people can use technology to empower themselves, we must also challenge the policies of Government and intelligence agencies to end the unlawful mass surveillance of people around the world’
Mike Rispoli, a spokesman for Privacy International, echoed those sentiments, but added that there needs to be more pressure on government to stop them from snooping on the private lives of ordinary people.
‘It is critical that people use all technology at their disposal to keep their communications private and secure,’ he said.
‘We should all support the creation and widespread use of these tools. Ultimately, however, people should never have to do more or go to extra lengths to protect their rights.
‘This is why we need political, legal, as well as technological, solutions to ensure that our privacy rights are protected.
‘While people can use technology to empower themselves, we must also challenge the policies of Government and intelligence agencies to end the unlawful mass surveillance of people around the world.’
The @YourAnonNews Twitter account has been at the centre of a major upheval in the Anonymous community in the last few days, centring on missing funds of $35,000. Twitter
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.” – John F. Kennedy
Anonymous is just such an idea.
However details about in-fighting, backstabbing and missing fundraising donations which were made public over the weekend, threaten to undermine the trust people have in the movement – and especially one of its most prominent voices.
Your Anonymous News (@YourAnonNews) is one of the best known and loudest voices within the Anonymous group of hacktivists, but the person most associated with its operation, Christopher Banks (aka Jackal) has been accused of stealing $35,000 (£20,720) from a fundraising campaign which was designed to help build a new website for the account.
The details about what has happened over the weekend and prior to the events beaming public are confusing and contradictory depending on who you talk to, so let’s first go back to the beginning.
Anonymous’ powerful voice
As I said, Anonymous is an idea rather than a specific group of people, but certain voices within the movement came to the fore in the last few years.
Chief amongst these was the Twitter account @YourAnonNews which was created in April 2011 and was run primarily by a member of Anonymous known as Jackal.
Jackal was in fact Christopher Banks who lived in Denver, and over the next three years the account grew to become the most powerful voice within Anonymous. It currently has over 1.24 million followers.
While Jackal was in charge, running the account alone became too much work and so multiple members of Anonymous were brought on board to help out. At one point up to 25 people had access to the account and it was so well organised, it even had a highly detailed style guide.
Crowd-funding anarchy
In early 2013, Jackal and a few of the other prominent people running the account decided that they wanted to build a website with the goal of creating “a weekly news show, provide embedded coverage of direct actions, and run a new website to help ignite protest and DIY journalism around the world.”
The group turned to Indiegogo, the crowd-funding website and having set out with a goal of raising just $2,000, within weeks it saw 1,307 people donating a total of $54,668.
There were questions raised at the time about the logic of donating money to a project which was so ill-defined – and over a year later those concerns look to have been validated.
Truth and reconciliation
According to a Truth and Reconciliation document published this weekend, the donations were received by Jackal minus deductions from Indiegogo (4%) and credit card fees (3%).
The money was then used to pay for the merchandise which was promised in return for donations, including t-shirts, mugs, buttons, and stickers. The money was also used to buy laptops, broadband access and server time.
The total amount of money accounted for was $19,959, meaning that $34,709 remains unaccounted for.
This was to become the crux of a dispute among those who took charge of YourAnonNews in late 2013.
In October of 2013, Dell Cameron, a reporter with the Daily Dot and someone who had been involved with the Anonymous movement since the Arab Spring, got involved with the account and quickly realised there was something wrong.
None of the merchandise had been posted and there was no sign of the remaining money.
Cameron decided that he needed to get legal advice because, as he told IBTimes UK: “I was taking ownership of an account that had been used to commit a crime.”
Creating a non-profit
Cameron along with others involved with the account including Nicole Powers, Gregg Housh and lawyer Tor Ekeland, came together to form a de facto board to try and administer the account. Their plan was to move the intellectual property into a non-profit organisation which would run the account in the future.
The first point of business was to raise money in order to send out all the merchandise, which was done by raising private donations of $9,000.
At this point Banks still had access to the @YourAnonNews account and this was something Cameron was not happy with, but he was willing to let it be while the group tried to get answers from him about the missing money.
This situation continued until last week, when Cameron – along with Dan Stuckey, a reporter for Vice who was brought on board the @YourAnonNews account – told Ekeland at a meeting in New York that they were going to take control of the account and shut everyone else out.
Ekeland was able to talk them out of making a rash decision at the time, but in the middle of the night on Friday morning, Cameron went ahead with his plan and locked Ekeland, Powers and Housh out of the account, as well as Banks – a move Cameron claims was done with the consent of seven other YourAnonNews contributors.
Imploding
What followed was the cyber equivalent of mud-slinging with wild rumour and speculation being thrown around on social media channels.
Gabriella Coleman, professor at McGill University and an expert on Anonymous, told IBTimes UK that she has never seen anything like what happened on Thursday and Friday last week, when there were so many rumours being slung around various channels online.
It led the three exiled account members to publish the Truth and Reconciliation document on Saturday in an attempt to explain the situation.
By the time the document was published however, Cameron had already relinquished control of the account, following widespread criticism of his usurping of power. Control of the account was handed over to a group of Anonymous members based in Denver, who continue to operate it.
A deal with the devil
Speaking to both Cameron and Ekeland to try and find out exactly what happened, it’s clear there is a difference in opinion.
Cameron believes that Ekeland had done a deal with Banks which would simply brush the missing $35,000 under the carpet and allow him continue using the account – though without anyone knowing this publicly. This was unacceptable to Cameron.
Ekeland admitted he was indeed talking to Banks, but that they were only at the point of negotiation, and that any deal would have been brought to the board for approval, something Ekeland says Cameron was fully aware of.
A email sent by Cameron relating to the situation was also leaked over the weekend, in which Cameron makes potentially libellous and unsubstantiated claims about where the $35,000 went.
“You’re going to f**king regret it”
Cameron says he has personally asked Banks 12 times where the money is, and each time he has refused to give an answer. So far, Banks has remained silent on Twitter about anything to do with this debacle.
Cameron claims he was threatened by Ekeland before the email was leaked, saying: “He didn’t get specific, but he said if you publish a letter like this, you’re going to f**king regret it.”
Ekeland flatly denies that he threatened Cameron adding that he is happy to be no longer involved with the account, having immediately resigned from the board once Cameron locked him out of the account on Friday morning.
Ekeland likened the in-fighting over the @YourAnonNews account to the ring in The Lord of the Rings: “It drives people crazy, they get greedy for it, everyone wants it.”
Ekeland accused Cameron of wanting control of the feed for personal gain, something the Daily Dot reporter denies, claiming he only wanted “to do good” when he joined up.
Despite being the opposite side of the argument, Cameron echoes Ekeland’s sentiments:
“At the end, this is not about Anonymous, this is about a group of people fighting over a social media account. These are grown people squabbling like kids over the equivalent of a toy in the sandbox.”
The future of @YourAnonNews?
Coleman believes that YourAnonNews was close to imploding and that while the Truth and Reconciliation statement which was published on Saturday “may not be enough to save them, it is the wedge that gives them a chance [to survive].”
Numerous Anonymous accounts have been highly critical of the group over recent months for failing to make a public statement on the matter.
In the wake of the statement being made, while there is some appeasement, others believe that the YourAnonNews brand is tarnished forever and should be let to disappear completely.
Coleman counters that the rebirth like this should be expected:
“The strength of Anonymous is to have some points of stability but to be ad hoc and reborn. And it is definitely a great period to be reborn – whether that is going to happen or not is always an open questions.”
What the long-term impact this fiasco will have on @YourAnonNews – and more widely on the Anonymous movement – isn’t clear at this point.
What is clear is that $35,000 of donor’s money is still missing and unaccounted for, and the fight for control of the hugely popular and powerful @YourAnonNews account looks to be only just beginning.
* Use the hashtag #PayPal14. Respond to tweets from @Pierre and @ggreenwald. Don’t forget Greenwald’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/glenn.greenwald.5
PRESS RELEASE
The PayPal14 were arrested nearly three years ago on the front lines of the digital information war, helping put the hacktivist movement and specifically Anonymous on the map. Now the whistleblower/hacktivist culture they helped launch into the global spotlight is being co-opted by journalists and “tech bros” all over to advance their careers, most notably journalist Glenn Greenwald’s.
As Greenwald gets a book tour, the PayPal14 get sentencing hearings. He is traveling the world to promote his book about Snowden’s NSA leaks, and the 14 are struggling to raise more than $80,000 in court-ordered restitution for eBay/PayPal, companies ultimately overseen by Greenwald’s billionaire backer, Pierre Omidyar. The brand that popularized Pierre-Greenwald’s Snowden leaks is only so “edgy” and “cool” because heroes like the PayPal14 took direct action.
When PayPal, part of Pierre’s eBay, blocked donations to WikiLeaks, the 14 and many others saw that the company wasn’t just a means of transferring money. It was also a means of control. PayPal’s blockade attacked our ability to vote with our dollars. Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, and Western Union also participated in the financial blockade, a blatant corporate attempt at silencing dissent and suppressing information. The blockade destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks’ revenue.
The 14 along with countless others bravely launched DDOS attacks, the digital equivalent of sit-ins, against PayPal to protest the unjust blockade. They shut down PayPal’s public website briefly without interfering with backend financial transactions or causing lasting harm, contrary to Department of “Justice” claims in court. After having their lives disrupted for years, 11 of the PayPal14 still face federal charges. Greenwald faces applause.
Sure, Greenwald and Pierre occasionally express tepid “support” for the PayPal14. But where’s the $80,000? That’s lunch money to Greenwald or Pierre. For the PayPal14, it’s a crushing financial burden. Pierre, according to Forbes, rakes in $7.8 billion per year while the PayPal14 struggle to stay afloat. Pierre started off First Look, Greenwald’s news media outlet, with $50 million in funding–tens of millions more than $80,000.
Greenwald and Pierre aren’t just riding the hacktivist movement–they’re watering it down. As a consequence, most of Snowden’s NSA leaks go unpublished. What is published is heavily redacted, preventing more aggressive, non-celebrity journalists from finding answers and pro-freedom hackers from building better defenses.
Ask yourself, Why isn’t Greenwald facing charges? Why isn’t he asking countries for asylum?
The PayPal14 put themselves on the front lines for something genuinely revolutionary. They grabbed the mainstream media’s attention and helped establish the “digital information war” culture that boosts this new kind of journalism. But the mainstream media has finished enjoying the spectacle of the PayPal14’s arrests. Now they’re watching Greenwald sign books, while the PayPal14, largely forgotten, sign plea deals.
Some rising players in the digital information war have confided that they believe we should make noise for the
PayPal14 at Greenwald’s book tour stops. But they’ve also confessed that doing so would put their financial interests in jeopardy. The tentacles of Greenwald/Pierre/First Look are spreading and snatching up people right and left. Thanks to Jeremy Hammond’s Stratfor leak, we better understand how corporate interests isolate radicals who try to create change. The “Duchin formula,” continued by the private intelligence firm Stratfor, states that opportunists “by definition … take the opportunity to side with the powerful for career gain” and bring the realists and idealists along with them, leaving the radicals exposed and unsupported.
We ask you to support the radicals and not the careerists. Your worst enemy is not the person in opposition to you. It is the person occupying the spot you would be fighting from and doing nothing.
The goal is to raise that $80,000. If we do that, we win this battle. For now, everything else is secondary. Supporting the PayPal14 doesn’t just mean one tweet and you’re done. It means constant effort.
Specifically, attend Greenwald’s book tour stops listed below. If they’re sold out–and most are NOT–still go and make noise outside (or get inside anyway!). For sold-out events, there are often stand-by lines in case extra seats become available. Take the steps below, inside or outside the event–or both!
1. This is crucial: Make sure people are equipped to record videos of the protest, including Greenwald’s responses, and upload them as soon as possible. Share them with the hashtag #PayPal14. If possible, videos should include the donation link – http://www.gofundme.com/PayPal14 – and text accompanying the video should include the link also.
2. Explain why you’re protesting the book tour, by mic-checking, passing out fliers, waving signs, or any other useful method. Get creative! “Pay Back the PayPal14” and “Obey eBay” and “Glenn Greenbacks” would make good slogans. Above all, make sure people get the donation link: http://www.gofundme.com/PayPal14 This can be done online, but it is critical that it be done in person at the book tour stops as well, making as much noise as possible. Occupy the book tour stops!
3. When are Greenwald and Pierre donating? You find out!
BOOK TOUR STOPS AND LINKS FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE PAYPAL14:
1. New York City, Tuesday May 13. 7:00-8:30 pm
Cooper Union’s Great Hall, in the Foundation Building
7 East 7th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues
East Village in Manhattan
May 13, 2014 7:00 pm
Admission is free and open the public on a first-come first-served basis.
http://www.cooper.edu/events-and-exhibitions/events/authors-talk-glenn-greenwald-edward-snowden-and-nsa
2. Washington DC, Wednesday May 14. Doors at 6 pm, event at 7 pm.
Politics & Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20008
May 14, 2014 7:00 pm
Doors and Will-call open at 6pm
1 General Admission Ticket: $17.00
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/639084
3. Boston, Thursday May 15. 7 pm.
First Parish Church
1446 Massachusetts Avenu
Cambridge, MA 02138
May 15, 2014 7:00 pm
Ticket costs $5, stand-by only
http://www.harvard.com/event/glenn_greenwald2/
http://www.harvard.com/about/sold_out_event_faq/
4. Amsterdam, Tuesday May 20. 20:00-21:30
Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam – Rabozaal
Leidseplein 26
1017 PT Amsterdam
May 20, 2014 20:00 – 21:30
http://www.ssba.nl/page.ocl?pageid=3&ev=56684
https://shop.ticketscript.com/channel/web2/get-dates/rid/CC235T4A/eid/210218/language/nl/format/html
Tickets range from € 18,27 to € 26,27
5. Seattle, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and San Diego: Mid-June. (No information available yet.)
* Updated book tour information may become available here https://twitter.com/ggreenwald here https://www.facebook.com/glenn.greenwald.5 or here https://www.facebook.com/glenn.greenwald.5/posts/10152804684159112
MOST IMPORTANTLY, ask people to donate to the PayPal14 by going here:
http://www.gofundme.com/PayPal14
PayPal 14 Homepage (in progress):
http://thepaypal14.com/support.htm
Microfinancing by Pierre’s Omidyar Network is loan-sharking the world’s most vulnerable:
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/extraordinary-pierre-omidyar/
News articles about the PayPal14:
https://medium.com/quinn-norton/66077450917e
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/05/inside-the-paypal-14-trial.html
Pierre Omidyar profile on Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/profile/pierre-omidyar/
WikiLeaks on the financial blockade:
https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html
Pierre started off First Look with $50 million in funding:
http://omidyargroup.com/firstlookmedia/pierre-omidyar-provides-initial-funding-of-50m-to-establish-first-look-media/
SPECIAL NOTE: This press release is intended to make sure people’s voices are heard in a way that educates the public.
Anonymous has released the bombshell new video report below on Illuminati billionaire Jacob Rothschild’s connection to the missing Malaysia Air 370 flight that has been missing for nearly a month now. Sharing information totally classified by the mainstream media, Anonymous busts the MH370 mystery wide open.
The Blaze A high-ranking Mexican drug cartel operative currently in U.S. custody is making startling allegations that the failed federal gun-walking operation known as “Fast and Furious” isn’t what you think it is.
It wasn’t about tracking guns, it was about supplying them — all part of an elaborate agreement between the U.S. government and Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel to take down rival cartels.
The explosive allegations are being made by Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, known as the Sinaloa Cartel’s “logistics coordinator.” He was extradited to the Chicago last year to face federal drug charges.
Zambada-Niebla claims that under a “divide and conquer” strategy, the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa Cartel through Operation Fast and Furious in exchange for information that allowed the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies to take down rival drug cartels. The Sinaloa Cartel was allegedly permitted to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the U.S. border from 2004 to 2009 — during both Fast and Furious and Bush-era gunrunning operations — as long as the intel kept coming.
This pending court case against Zambada-Niebla is being closely monitored by some members of Congress, who expect potential legal ramifications if any of his claims are substantiated. The trial was delayed but is now scheduled to begin on Oct. 9.
Zambada-Niebla is reportedly a close associate of Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and the son of Ismael “Mayo” Zambada-Garcia, both of which remain fugitives, likely because of the deal made with the DEA, federal court documents allege.
Based on the alleged agreement ”the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of defendant’s father, Ismael Zambada-Niebla and ‘Chapo’ Guzman, were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States and were also protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels which helped Mexican and United States authorities capture or kill thousands of rival cartel members,” states a motion for discovery filed in U.S. District Court by Zambada-Niebla’s attorney in July 2011.
A source in Congress, who spoke to TheBlaze on the condition of anonymity, said that some top congressional investigators have been keeping “one eye on the case.” Another two members of Congress, both lead Fast and Furious Congressional investigators, told TheBlaze they had never even heard of the case.
One of the Congressmen, who also spoke to TheBlaze on the condition of anonymity because criminal proceedings are still ongoing, called the allegations “disturbing.” He said Congress will likely get involved once Zambada-Niebla’s trial has concluded if any compelling information surfaces.
“Congress won’t get involved in really any criminal case until the trial is over and the smoke has cleared,” he added. “If the allegations prove to hold any truth, there will be some serious legal ramifications.”
Earlier this month, two men in Texas were sentenced to 70 and 80 months in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to export 147 assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition to Mexico’s Los Zetas cartel. Compare that to the roughly 2,000 firearms reportedly “walked” in Fast and Furious, which were used in the murders of hundreds of Mexican citizens and U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry, and some U.S. officials could potentially face jail time if they knowingly armed the Sinaloa Cartel and allowed guns to cross into Mexico.
If proven in court, such an agreement between U.S. law enforcement agencies and a Mexican cartel could potentially mar both the Bush and Obama administrations. The federal government is denying all of Zambada-Niebla’s allegations and contend that no official immunity deal was agreed upon.
To be sure, Zambada-Niebla is a member of one of the most ruthless drug gangs in all of Mexico, so there is a chance that he is saying whatever it takes to reduce his sentence, which will likely be hefty. However, Congress and the media have a duty to prove without a reasonable doubt that there is no truth in his allegations. So far, that has not been achieved.
Zambada-Niebla was reportedly responsible for coordinating all of the Sinaloa Cartel’s multi-ton drug shipments from Central and South American countries, through Mexico, and into the United States. To accomplish this, he used every tool at his disposal: Boeing 747 cargo planes, narco-submarines, container ships, speed boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers and automobiles. But Guzman and Zambada-Niebla’s overwhelming success within the Sinaloa Cartel was largely due to the arrests and dismantling of many of their competitors and their booming businesses in the U.S. from 2004 to 2009 — around the same time ATF’s gun-walking operations were in full swing. Fast and Furious reportedly began in 2009 and continued into early 2011.
According Zambada-Niebla, that was a product of the collusion between the U.S. government and the Sinaloa Cartel.
Soldiers and police officers guard packages of seized marijuana during a presentation for the media in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)
The claims seem to fall in line with statements made last month by Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico who said U.S. agencies ”don’t fight drug traffickers,“ instead ”they try to manage the drug trade.”
Also, U.S. officials have previously acknowledged working with the Sinaloa Cartel through another informant, Humberto Loya-Castro. He is also allegedly a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel as well as a close confidant and lawyer of “El Chapo” Guzman.
Loya-Castro was indicted along with Chapo and Mayo in 1995 in the Southern District of California in a massive narcotics trafficking conspiracy (Case no. 95CR0973). The case was dismissed in 2008 at the request of prosecutors after Loya became an informant for the United States government and subsequently provided information for years.
In 2005, “the CS (informant Loya-Castro) signed a cooperation agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California,” states an affidavit filed in the Zambada-Niebla case by Loya-Castro’s handler, DEA agent Manuel Castanon.
“Thereafter, I began to work with the CS. Over the years, the CS’ cooperation resulted in the seizure of several significant loads of narcotics and precursor chemicals. The CS’ cooperation also resulted in other real-time intelligence that was very useful to the United States government.”
Under the alleged agreement with U.S. agencies, “the Sinaloa Cartel, through Loya-Castro, was to provide information accumulated by Mayo, Chapo, and others, against rival Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations to the United States government,” a motion for discovery states.
In return, the United States government allegedly agreed to dismiss the charges in the pending case against Loya-Castro (which they did), not to interfere with his drug trafficking activities and those of the Sinaloa Cartel and not actively prosecute him or the Sinaloa Cartel leadership.
“This strategy, which he calls ‘Divide & Conquer,’ using one drug organization to help against others, is exactly what the Justice Department and its various agencies have implemented in Mexico. In this case, they entered into an agreement with the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel through, among others, Humberto Loya-Castro, to receive their help in the United States government’s efforts to destroy other cartels.”
“Indeed, United States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.”
The government has denied this and says the deal did not go past Loya-Castro.
Zambada-Niebla was arrested by Mexican soldiers in late March of 2009 after he met with DEA agents at a Mexico City hotel in a meeting arranged by Loya-Castro, though the U.S. government was not involved in his arrest. He was extradited to Chicago to face federal drug charges on Feb. 18, 2010. He is now being held in a Michigan prison after requesting to be moved from Chicago.
“Classified Materials”
During his initial court proceedings, Zambada-Niebla continually stated that he was granted full immunity by the DEA in exchange for his cooperation. The agency, however, argues that an “official” immunity deal was never established though they admit he may have acted as an informant.
Zambada-Niebla and his legal council also requested records about Operation Fast and Furious, which permitted weapons purchased in the United States to be illegally smuggled into Mexico, sometimes by paid U.S. informants and cartel leaders. Their request was denied. From the defense motion:
“It is estimated that approximately 3,000 people were killed in Mexico as a result of ‘Operation Fast and Furious,’ including law enforcement officers in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, the headquarters of the Sinaloa cartel. The Department of Justice’s leadership apparently saw this as an ingenious way of combating drug cartel activities.”
“It has recently been disclosed that in addition to the above-referenced problems with ‘Operation Fast & Furious,’ the DOJ, DEA, and the FBI knew that some of the people who were receiving the weapons that were being allowed to be transported to Mexico, were in fact informants working for those organizations and included some of the leaders of the cartels.”
Zambada’s attorney has filed several motions for discovery to that effect in Illinois Federal District Court, which were summarily denied by the presiding judge who claimed the defendant failed to make the case that he was actually a DEA informant.
In April, 2012, a federal judge refused to dismiss charges against him.
From a Chicago Sun Times report: “According to the government, [Zambada-Niebla] conveyed his interest and willingness to cooperate with the U.S. government, but the DEA agents told him they ‘were not authorized to meet with him, much less have substantive discussions with him,’” the judge wrote.
In this courtroom artist’s drawing Jesus Vincente Zambada-Niebla appears before U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Verna Sadock)
In their official response to Zambada-Niebla’s motion for discovery, the federal government confirmed the existence of “classified materials” regarding the case but argued they “do not support the defendant’s claim that he was promised immunity or public authority for his actions.”
Experts have expressed doubts that Zambada-Niebla had an official agreement with the U.S. government, however, agree Loya Castro probably did. Either way, the defense still wants to obtain DEA reports that detail the agency’s relationship with the Sinaloa Cartel and put the agents on the stand, under oath to testify.
The documents that detail the relationship between the federal government and the Sinaloa Cartel have still not been released or subjected to review — citing matters of national security.
Hmm. Hold up. So if we go by this Wikipedia entry..
“Founded as an independent company in 1982, RSA Security, Inc. was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2006 for US$ 2.1 billion and operates as a division within EMC.[5]”
People need to understand, this means RSA took around 2% of what they’d make in one year. FOR A BACK-DOOR OMG. Does this not sound more like a tax, than a payment (never mind a bribe!)? How much would you care about an extra 2% per year? Exactly. Thats all I got. Someone else needs to close that gap. -Max
What’s an encryption backdoor cost? When you’re the NSA, apparently the fee is $10 million.
Intentional flaws created by the National Security Agency in RSA’s encryption tokens werediscovered in September, thanks to documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It has now been revealed that RSA was paid $10 million by the NSA to implement those backdoors, according to a new report in Reuters.
Two people familiar with RSA’s BSafe software told Reuters that the company had received the money in exchange for making the NSA’s cryptographic formula as the default for encrypted key generation in BSafe.
“Now we know that RSA was bribed,” said security expert Bruce Schneier, who has been involved in the Snowden document analysis. “I sure as hell wouldn’t trust them. And then they made the statement that they put customer security first,” he said.
RSA, now owned by computer storage firm EMC Corp, has a long history of entanglement with the government. In the 1990s, the company was instrumental in stopping a government plan to include a chip in computers that would’ve allowed the government to spy on people.
The new revelation is important, Schneier said, because it confirms more suspected tactics that the NSA employs.
“You think they only bribed one company in the history of their operations? What’s at play here is that we don’t know who’s involved,” he said.
Other companies that build widely-used encryption apparatus include Symantec, McAfee, and Microsoft. “You have no idea who else was bribed, so you don’t know who else you can trust,” Schneier said.
RSA did not return a request for comment, and did not comment for the Reuters story.
Perhaps Edward Snowden’s hoodie should have raised suspicions.
The black sweatshirt sold by the civil libertarian Electronic Frontier Foundation featured a parody of the National Security Agency’s logo, with the traditional key in an eagle’s claws replaced by a collection of AT&T cables, and eavesdropping headphones covering the menacing bird’s ears. Snowden wore it regularly to stay warm in the air-conditioned underground NSA Hawaii Kunia facility known as “the tunnel.”
His coworkers assumed it was meant ironically. And a geek as gifted as Snowden could get away with a few irregularities.
But an NSA staffer who contacted me last month and asked not to be identified–and whose claims we checked with Snowden himself via his ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner—offered me a very different, firsthand portrait of how Snowden was seen by his colleagues in the agency’s Hawaii office: A principled and ultra-competent, if somewhat eccentric employee, and one who earned the access used to pull off his leak by impressing superiors with sheer talent.
The anonymous NSA staffer’s priority in contacting me, in fact, was to refute stories that have surfaced as the NSA and the media attempt to explain how a contractor was able to obtain and leak the tens of thousands of highly classified documents that have become the biggest public disclosure of NSA secrets in history. According to the source, Snowden didn’t dupe coworkers into handing over their passwords, as one report has claimed. Nor did Snowden fabricate SSH keys to gain unauthorized access, he or she says.
Instead, there’s little mystery as to how Snowden gained his access: It was given to him.
“That kid was a genius among geniuses,” says the NSA staffer. “NSA is full of smart people, but anybody who sat in a meeting with Ed will tell you he was in a class of his own…I’ve never seen anything like it.”
When I reached out to the NSA’s public affairs office, a spokesperson declined to comment, citing the agency’s ongoing investigation into Snowden’s leaks.
But over the course of my communications with the NSA staffer, Snowden’s former colleague offered details that shed light on both how Snowden was able to obtain the NSA’s most secret files, as well as the elusive 30-year old’s character:
Before coming to NSA Hawaii, Snowden had impressed NSA officials by developing a backup system that the NSA had widely implemented in its codebreaking operations.
He also frequently reported security vulnerabilities in NSA software. Many of the bugs were never patched.
Snowden had been brought to Hawaii as a cybersecurity expert working for Dell’s services division but due to a problem with the contract was reassigned to become an administrator for the Microsoft intranet management system known as Sharepoint. Impressed with his technical abilities, Snowden’s managers decided that he was the most qualified candidate to build a new web front-end for one of its projects, despite his contractor status. As his coworker tells it, he was given full administrator privileges, with virtually unlimited access to NSA data. “Big mistake in hindsight,” says Snowden’s former colleague. “But if you had a guy who could do things nobody else could, and the only problem was that his badge was green instead of blue, what would you do?”
As further evidence that Snowden didn’t hijack his colleagues’ accounts for his leak, the NSA staffer points to an occasion when Snowden was given a manager’s password so that he could cover for him while he was on vacation. Even then, investigators found no evidence Snowden had misused that staffer’s privileges, and the source says nothing he could have uniquely accessed from the account has shown up in news reports.
Snowden’s superiors were so impressed with his skills that he was at one point offered a position on the elite team of NSA hackers known as Tailored Access Operations. He unexpectedly turned it down and instead joined Booz Allen to work at NSA’s Threat Operation Center.
Another hint of his whistleblower conscience, aside from the telltale hoodie: Snowden kept a copy of the constitution on his desk to cite when arguing against NSA activities he thought might violate it.
The source tells me Snowden also once nearly lost his job standing up for a coworker who was being disciplined by a superior.
Snowden often left small, gifts anonymously at colleagues’ desks.
Snowden’s former colleague says that he or she has slowly come to understand Snowden’s decision to leak the NSA’s files. “I was shocked and betrayed when I first learned the news, but as more time passes I’m inclined to believe he really is trying to do the right thing and it’s not out of character for him. I don’t agree with his methods, but I understand why he did it,” he or she says. “I won’t call him a hero, but he’s sure as hell no traitor.”
Ericson Harrell wore the Guy Fawkes mask, he said, because it’s a “symbol of protest.”
“I always keep my mask in my truck, my cape in the truck, the flag in truck and everything,” he said. “So I put on the mask and the cape, grabbed the flag, and I stood on the corner.”
Eventually a female police officer confronted him, at which point he asserted “my right to free speech,” and tried to convince the officer that the anti-masking statute didn’t apply to him, because that statute “was not put into place for peaceful protests, not for figures just standing on the side of the road trying to express their first amendment rights.”
After her supervisor showed up, he was arrested for refusing to remove his mask or identify himself.
He stated that the officer and her supervisor thought he was part of a larger anti-Obamacare protest, but “in actual reality, I was alone at the time. I was a soldier of one.”
Harrell also claimed that he only announced himself as a police officer “after the fact, because I didn’t want to get any preferential treatment.”
The anti-masking statute, he correctly claimed, was put into place “sometime in the 1950s because of the Ku Klux Klan trying to intimidate a certain group of people — a certain race of people.” He declined to specify which “group” or “race” that was.
Harrell is currently on administrative leave, and his department will make a decision as to his permanent employment situation after the charges against him are dealt with.
Watch the complete interview with Ericson Harrell below.
This story has been reported in partnership between The New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica based on documents obtained by The Guardian.
Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.
Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.
The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.
Takeaways: How Spy Agencies Operate In Virtual Worlds
GATHERING INTELLIGENCE: U.S. and British intelligence agencies — including the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense intelligence agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters — have operated in virtual worlds and gaming communities to snoop and try to recruit informants. For example, according to Snowden documents, the U.S. has conducted spy operations in Second Life (pictured), where players create human avatars to socialize, buy and sell goods and explore exotic virtual destinations. (Second Life image via Linden Lab)
Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 NSA document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!,” another 2008 NSA document declared.
But for all their enthusiasm — so many CIA, FBI and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.
The documents do not cite any counterterrorism successes from the effort, and former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate and plot operations.
Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.”
The surveillance, which also included Microsoft’s Xbox Live, could raise privacy concerns. It is not clear exactly how the agencies got access to gamers’ data or communications, how many players may have been monitored or whether Americans’ communications or activities were captured.
One American company, the maker of World of Warcraft, said that neither the NSA nor its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, had gotten permission to gather intelligence in its game. Many players are Americans, who can be targeted for surveillance only with approval from the nation’s secret intelligence court. The spy agencies, though, face far fewer restrictions on collecting certain data or communications overseas.
“We are unaware of any surveillance taking place,” said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., which makes World of Warcraft. “If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission.”
A spokeswoman for Microsoft declined to comment. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and a former chief executive officer of Linden Lab, the game’s maker, declined to comment on the spying revelations. Current Linden executives did not respond to requests for comment.
A Government Communications Headquarters spokesman would neither confirm nor deny any involvement by that agency in gaming surveillance, but said that its work is conducted under “a strict legal and policy framework” with rigorous oversight. An NSA spokeswoman declined to comment.
Intelligence and law enforcement officials became interested in games after some became enormously popular, drawing tens of millions of people worldwide, from preteens to retirees. The games rely on lifelike graphics, virtual currencies and the ability to speak to other players in real time. Some gamers merge the virtual and real worlds by spending long hours playing and making close online friends.
In World of Warcraft, players share the same fantasy universe — walking around and killing computer-controlled monsters or the avatars of other players, including elves, animals or creatures known as orcs. In Second Life, players create customized human avatars that can resemble themselves or take on other personas — supermodels and bodybuilders are popular — who can socialize, buy and sell virtual goods, and go places like beaches, cities, art galleries and strip clubs. In Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, subscribers connect online in games that can involve activities like playing soccer or shooting at each other in space.
According to American officials and documents that Mr. Snowden provided to The Guardian, which shared them with The New York Times and ProPublica, spy agencies grew worried that terrorist groups might take to the virtual worlds to establish safe communications channels.
In 2007, as the NSA and other intelligence agencies were beginning to explore virtual games, NSA officials met with the chief technology officer for the manufacturer of Second Life, the San Francisco-based Linden Lab. The executive, Cory Ondrejka, was a former Navy officer who had worked at the NSA with a top-secret security clearance.
He visited the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., in May 2007 to speak to staff members over a brown bag lunch, according to an internal agency announcement. “Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of social networking are a reality: come hear Cory tell you why!” said the announcement. It added that virtual worlds gave the government the opportunity “to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviors of non-Americans through observation, without leaving U.S. soil.”
Ondrejka, now the director of mobile engineering at Facebook, said through a representative that the NSA presentation was similar to others he gave in that period, and declined to comment further.
Even with spies already monitoring games, the NSA thought it needed to step up the effort.
“The Sigint Enterprise needs to begin taking action now to plan for collection, processing, presentation and analysis of these communications,” said one April 2008 NSA document, referring to “signals intelligence.” The document added, “With a few exceptions, NSA can’t even recognize the traffic,” meaning that the agency could not distinguish gaming data from other Internet traffic.
By the end of 2008, according to one document, the British spy agency, known as GCHQ, had set up its “first operational deployment into Second Life” and had helped the police in London in cracking down on a crime ring that had moved into virtual worlds to sell stolen credit card information. The British spies running the effort, which was code-named “Operation Galician,” were aided by an informer using a digital avatar “who helpfully volunteered information on the target group’s latest activities.”
Though the games might appear to be unregulated digital bazaars, the companies running them reserve the right to police the communications of players and store the chat dialogues in servers that can be searched later. The transactions conducted with the virtual money common in the games, used in World of Warcraft to buy weapons and potions to slay monsters, are also monitored by the companies to prevent illicit financial dealings.
In the 2008 NSA document, titled “Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments,” the agency said that “terrorist target selectors” — which could be a computer’s Internet Protocol address or an email account — “have been found associated with Xbox Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft” and other games. But that document does not present evidence that terrorists were participating in the games.
Still, the intelligence agencies found other benefits in infiltrating these online worlds. According to the minutes of a January 2009 meeting, GCHQ’s “network gaming exploitation team” had identified engineers, embassy drivers, scientists and other foreign intelligence operatives to be World of Warcraft players — potential targets for recruitment as agents.
At Menwith Hill, a Royal Air Force base in the Yorkshire countryside that the NSA has long used as an outpost to intercept global communications, American and British intelligence operatives started an effort in 2008 to begin collecting data from World of Warcraft.
One NSA document said that the World of Warcraft monitoring “continues to uncover potential Sigint value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.” In other words, targets of interest appeared to be playing the fantasy game, though the document does not indicate that they were doing so for any nefarious purposes. A British document from later that year said that GCHQ had “successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live.”
By 2009, the collection was extensive. One document says that while GCHQ was testing its ability to spy on Second Life in real time, British intelligence officers vacuumed up three days’ worth of Second Life chat, instant message and financial transaction data, totaling 176,677 lines of data, which included the content of the communications.
For their part, players have openly worried that the NSA might be watching them.
In one World of Warcraft discussion thread, begun just days after the first Snowden revelations appeared in the news media in June, a human death knight with the user name “Crrassus” asked whether the NSA might be reading game chat logs.
“If they ever read these forums,” wrote a goblin priest with the user name “Diaya,” “they would realize they were wasting” their time.
Even before the American government began spying in virtual worlds, the Pentagon had identified the potential intelligence value of video games. The Pentagon’s Special Operations Command in 2006 and 2007 worked with several foreign companies — including an obscure digital media business based in Prague — to build games that could be downloaded to mobile phones., according to people involved in the effort. They said the games, which were not identified as creations of the Pentagon, were then used as vehicles for intelligence agencies to collect information about the users.
The SAIC headquarters in McLean, Va., and the company’s island in Second Life. (The Meridian Group, SAIC)
Eager to cash in on the government’s growing interest in virtual worlds, several large private contractors have spent years pitching their services to American intelligence agencies. In one 66-page document from 2007, part of the cache released by Mr. Snowden, the contracting giant SAIC promoted its ability to support “intelligence collection in the game space,” and warned that online games could be used by militant groups to recruit followers and could provide “terrorist organizations with a powerful platform to reach core target audiences.”
It is unclear whether SAIC received a contract based on this proposal, but one former SAIC employee said that the company at one point had a lucrative contract with the CIA for work that included monitoring the Internet for militant activity. An SAIC spokeswoman declined to comment.
In spring 2009, academics and defense contractors gathered at the Marriott at Washington Dulles International Airport to present proposals for a government study about how players’ behavior in a game like World of Warcraft might be linked to their real-world identities. “We were told it was highly likely that persons of interest were using virtual spaces to communicate or coordinate,” said Dmitri Williams, a professor at the University of Southern California who received grant money as part of the program.
After the conference, both SAIC and Lockheed Martin won contracts worth several million dollars, administered by an office within the intelligence community that finances research projects.
It is not clear how useful such research might be. A group at the Palo Alto Research Center, for example, produced a government-funded study of World of Warcraft that found “younger players and male players preferring competitive, hack-and-slash activities, and older and female players preferring noncombat activities,” such as exploring the virtual world. A group from the nonprofit SRI International, meanwhile, found that players under age 18 often used all capital letters both in chat messages and in their avatar names.
Those involved in the project were told little by their government patrons. According to Nick Yee, a Palo Alto researcher who worked on the effort, “We were specifically asked not to speculate on the government’s motivations and goals.”
Information security, especially at schools that provide training on the subject, in for-profit higher education should not be a premium. It would make a really great story to send an “undercover” technician to DeVry and Rasmussen campuses to observe their incredible service delivery.
Rasmussen’s portal has long had a SQL injection vulnerability that has been published on the internet several times. It still remains uncorrected.
Rasmussen College and DeVry Institute of Technology are both HLC accredited schools with for-profit business models. Both schools often claim, “the same accreditation as Harvard” and other quality Universities. Surprisingly, the two institutions have a lot more in common. From sharing questionable leadership to providing questionable placement practices for students and even extremely questionable security policies, these institutions are the embodiment of the flaws of American education.
The curriculum, and curriculum for partner schools as mentioned later, is created by individuals that rarely have any current knowledge in the subjects. Course material is often incorrect or misunderstood by the instructors. The policy of both institutions require instructors with Masters Degrees, but because they do not invest in qualified candidates they will allow, for example, an individual with a Masters Degree in Business to teach OpenGL Programming based on course material created by an individual with no programming experience.
Rasmussen and DeVry not only share the same accreditation, but the sponsorship was provided with the same seed money. The two institutions share employees, transferring their employees back and forth. One such employee is Todd Pombert, a newly appointed Vice President of Infrastructure and Technology for Rasmussen College. Having very little professional experience when compared to individuals at similar roles, it was insisted Todd be given this role by Gerald Gagliardi. Gerald Gagliardi is on the board of directors for businesses like NetWolves and Rasmussen College itself. A shrewd investor from Boca Raton, Mr. Gagliardi is shrewd investor that has used his resources to create successful people and businesses as he decides. There is no altruism here.
Rasmussen College, Inc. itself, along with it’s sister company Deltak Innovation which is now owned by John Wiley & Sons in an attempt to break into online courseware, is reorganizing. Rasmussen Collge will be its own entity with I.T. services provided by Collegis Managed Services. These are the same employees but now with a different title. Services provided include lead generation, hosting online courses with the Angel, Blackboard and Moodle LMS systems; retaining student data and more. Customers of Collegis include Purdue University, University of Florida, Gonzaga, Benedictine, Lubbock, Anna Maria College and more – if a school’s online URL includes learntoday.info it is a Rasmussen (now Collegis) resource. Similarly, if the URL begins with “engage” then it is most likely a Collegis resource. These schools are outsourcing to Collegis hosting some of their online courses. There are no operational controls, no security officer and no practice in providing even the smallest amount of protection for the data these schools have hosted with Collegis. In particular, many colleges are Jesuit schools that are preyed upon for their association to other Jesuit colleges.
In the case of Todd Pombert this individual was promoted to a very senior role with no practical or noticeable work experience that should be required for a leader in an industry requiring critical care in student information security. A drop-out from his Master’s Degree, this individual maintains this position only because of the multi-level-marketing that DeVry and Rasmussen consider as qualifications for employment. There is no Security Officer for Rasmussen College. There is no reputable third party providing those services. Todd Pombert does not have the qualifications to adhere to industry practices that provide protection, confidentiality and integrity to managed services exposing flaws to their customers. Worse, an educational institution cannot provide and does not insist on the training required to keep students of Rasmussen and its partners safe. The lack of knowledge is so blatant that Todd Pombert keeps an archive of every email he received at DeVry to use as reference at Rasmussen. From confidential information, business plans, document templates and even financial data, much of DeVry’s history and future decisions are recorded unsecured on a “competitor” owned laptop with no disk encryption.
The school has all of the students in the same domain as contractors, faculty, staff and the board of directors. Not only does this create conflicts, but it allows any domain user (ie: student, contractor, etc) to browse the domain for information about any other user. Students are free to attempt to brute force Executive passwords giving them access to unencrypted financial information of other students and more. The network services between campus and the datacenter is the same class A network – you can reach the Chicago based datacenter from a school in Fargo from any ethernet jack. There are no standard, practical security mechanisms in place to prevent such a thing.
Students are forced to use a password convention that they often can’t change – firstname.lastname password: fl1234. This 6 character password utilizes the last four digits of the student’s social security number. None of the websites have any protection from common brute force attacks. If you know the name of a student (Joe Smith) then you know 1/3 of his password (jsXXXX) and it is trivial to use the portal, online courses or other services to continually guess 0000-9999. This exposes the student to possible fraud from someone acquiring their personal identifying information as well as allows an intruder to view the student’s grades, financial data email to the student with the same password and any academic work the student has previously submitted.
Staff manage students through a public RDP system at class.learntoday.info. There is no password policy assigned. Staff are free to use passwords including their own names and more. If an intruder gains access to the RDP system all student financial data is stored unencrypted on a Windows file share.
The wireless network for Rasmussen is WEP. WEP is a long outdated mechanism for securing a wireless network. Modern approaches to attacking WEP networks can allow an intruder to gain access within minutes. Again, financial data for students and the school itself are not encrypted in-place or in-flight. An attacker is able to gain access to any information just by being near a campus or corporate site.
There is no NAP, no RADIUS no 802.1X. The networks are completely unprotected. Coincidentally, both schools teach courses that promote the use of tools capable of easily harvesting corporate, student and financial data like Wireshark and Snort.
Even basic controls have been neglected. The printers and copiers throughout all sites run default settings with no authentication and the web interface enabled. Anyone can request a re-print of jobs including social security numbers or financial data.
The employee portal itself did not follow practical standards and did not have SSL protecting employee information from being broadcast in plain text. That includes the passwords of financial aid employees as well as C-level visitors to local campuses.
These points above may not even be considered the most critical flaws in the service provided. The practices of Rasmussen and DeVry are a blight on Higher Education as a whole. Their practices should be considered, and some are outright, criminally negligent.
Rasmussen and DeVry continue to pay their questionable leadership large amounts of money. This is a clear misappropriation. If even a fraction of Todd Pombert’s salary was spent on security reviews, operational controls or educating Todd Pombert then these schools would not be risking disastrous consequences for their students and students of large, responsible institutions like Purdue and the University of Florida.
For Rasmussen (Collegis) hosted instances of online platforms nearly all of the content has the same ACL. There is nothing protecting content from one school from being used in another school’s offering or worse – being copied by an intruder.
Finally, to add insult to injury, while these schools are raking in student tuition to pay higher amounts of money to irresponsible leadership, they are placing students with Bachelor’s degrees as minimum wage Gamestop clerks. They claim this to be “in-field” placement for Information Technology students. The subject of ballooning student loans is covered in-depth lately and there is no need to remind you that these students will never be able to pay their debt for an education they received at profit for individuals just as qualified as graduates.
Below is a letter claimed to be written by a former music executive who says he witnessed a secret meeting in 1991 where the prison industrial complex encouraged the music industry to promote rap artists who glorify crime with the goal of encouraging listeners to get locked up in prison, so the private prisons could make more money. It’s a very interesting read, but unless others come forward and confirm his story, there is no way to verify whether or not this meeting took place. This letter first surfaced on HipHopisRead.com after the admin claims he received it in his email anonymously on April 24, 2012. The spelling and grammatical errors have been left as they were in the original and have not been corrected. This ‘Dot’ Connects to Others, namely Prisons – for – Profit, Police Militarization, and plans for Martial Law by way of Racial Divide. All of which we’ve documented for some time. The buttons below will auto-search those keywords.
After more than 20 years, I’ve finally decided to tell the world what I witnessed in 1991, which I believe was one of the biggest turning point in popular music, and ultimately American society. I have struggled for a long time weighing the pros and cons of making this story public as I was reluctant to implicate the individuals who were present that day. So I’ve simply decided to leave out names and all the details that may risk my personal well being and that of those who were, like me, dragged into something they weren’t ready for.
Between the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was what you may call a “decision maker” with one of the more established company in the music industry. I came from Europe in the early 80’s and quickly established myself in the business. The industry was different back then. Since technology and media weren’t accessible to people like they are today, the industry had more control over the public and had the means to influence them anyway it wanted. This may explain why in early 1991, I was invited to attend a closed door meeting with a small group of music business insiders to discuss rap music’s new direction. Little did I know that we would be asked to participate in one of the most unethical and destructive business practice I’ve ever seen.
The meeting was held at a private residence on the outskirts of Los Angeles. I remember about 25 to 30 people being there, most of them familiar faces. Speaking to those I knew, we joked about the theme of the meeting as many of us did not care for rap music and failed to see the purpose of being invited to a private gathering to discuss its future. Among the attendees was a small group of unfamiliar faces who stayed to themselves and made no attempt to socialize beyond their circle. Based on their behavior and formal appearances, they didn’t seem to be in our industry. Our casual chatter was interrupted when we were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement preventing us from publicly discussing the information presented during the meeting. Needless to say, this intrigued and in some cases disturbed many of us. The agreement was only a page long but very clear on the matter and consequences which stated that violating the terms would result in job termination. We asked several people what this meeting was about and the reason for such secrecy but couldn’t find anyone who had answers for us. A few people refused to sign and walked out. No one stopped them. I was tempted to follow but curiosity got the best of me. A man who was part of the “unfamiliar” group collected the agreements from us.
Quickly after the meeting began, one of my industry colleagues (who shall remain nameless like everyone else) thanked us for attending. He then gave the floor to a man who only introduced himself by first name and gave no further details about his personal background. I think he was the owner of the residence but it was never confirmed. He briefly praised all of us for the success we had achieved in our industry and congratulated us for being selected as part of this small group of “decision makers”. At this point I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable at the strangeness of this gathering. The subject quickly changed as the speaker went on to tell us that the respective companies we represented had invested in a very profitable industry which could become even more rewarding with our active involvement. He explained that the companies we work for had invested millions into the building of privately owned prisons and that our positions of influence in the music industry would actually impact the profitability of these investments. I remember many of us in the group immediately looking at each other in confusion. At the time, I didn’t know what a private prison was but I wasn’t the only one. Sure enough, someone asked what these prisons were and what any of this had to do with us. We were told that these prisons were built by privately owned companies who received funding from the government based on the number of inmates. The more inmates, the more money the government would pay these prisons. It was also made clear to us that since these prisons are privately owned, as they become publicly traded, we’d be able to buy shares. Most of us were taken back by this. Again, a couple of people asked what this had to do with us. At this point, my industry colleague who had first opened the meeting took the floor again and answered our questions. He told us that since our employers had become silent investors in this prison business, it was now in their interest to make sure that these prisons remained filled. Our job would be to help make this happen by marketing music which promotes criminal behavior, rap being the music of choice. He assured us that this would be a great situation for us because rap music was becoming an increasingly profitable market for our companies, and as employee, we’d also be able to buy personal stocks in these prisons. Immediately, silence came over the room. You could have heard a pin drop. I remember looking around to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and saw half of the people with dropped jaws. My daze was interrupted when someone shouted, “Is this a f****** joke?” At this point things became chaotic. Two of the men who were part of the “unfamiliar” group grabbed the man who shouted out and attempted to remove him from the house. A few of us, myself included, tried to intervene. One of them pulled out a gun and we all backed off. They separated us from the crowd and all four of us were escorted outside. My industry colleague who had opened the meeting earlier hurried out to meet us and reminded us that we had signed agreement and would suffer the consequences of speaking about this publicly or even with those who attended the meeting. I asked him why he was involved with something this corrupt and he replied that it was bigger than the music business and nothing we’d want to challenge without risking consequences. We all protested and as he walked back into the house I remember word for word the last thing he said, “It’s out of my hands now. Remember you signed an agreement.” He then closed the door behind him. The men rushed us to our cars and actually watched until we drove off.
A million things were going through my mind as I drove away and I eventually decided to pull over and park on a side street in order to collect my thoughts. I replayed everything in my mind repeatedly and it all seemed very surreal to me. I was angry with myself for not having taken a more active role in questioning what had been presented to us. I’d like to believe the shock of it all is what suspended my better nature. After what seemed like an eternity, I was able to calm myself enough to make it home. I didn’t talk or call anyone that night. The next day back at the office, I was visibly out of it but blamed it on being under the weather. No one else in my department had been invited to the meeting and I felt a sense of guilt for not being able to share what I had witnessed. I thought about contacting the 3 others who wear kicked out of the house but I didn’t remember their names and thought that tracking them down would probably bring unwanted attention. I considered speaking out publicly at the risk of losing my job but I realized I’d probably be jeopardizing more than my job and I wasn’t willing to risk anything happening to my family. I thought about those men with guns and wondered who they were? I had been told that this was bigger than the music business and all I could do was let my imagination run free. There were no answers and no one to talk to. I tried to do a little bit of research on private prisons but didn’t uncover anything about the music business’ involvement. However, the information I did find confirmed how dangerous this prison business really was. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Eventually, it was as if the meeting had never taken place. It all seemed surreal. I became more reclusive and stopped going to any industry events unless professionally obligated to do so. On two occasions, I found myself attending the same function as my former colleague. Both times, our eyes met but nothing more was exchanged.
As the months passed, rap music had definitely changed direction. I was never a fan of it but even I could tell the difference. Rap acts that talked about politics or harmless fun were quickly fading away as gangster rap started dominating the airwaves. Only a few months had passed since the meeting but I suspect that the ideas presented that day had been successfully implemented. It was as if the order has been given to all major label executives. The music was climbing the charts and most companies when more than happy to capitalize on it. Each one was churning out their very own gangster rap acts on an assembly line. Everyone bought into it, consumers included. Violence and drug use became a central theme in most rap music. I spoke to a few of my peers in the industry to get their opinions on the new trend but was told repeatedly that it was all about supply and demand. Sadly many of them even expressed that the music reinforced their prejudice of minorities.
I officially quit the music business in 1993 but my heart had already left months before. I broke ties with the majority of my peers and removed myself from this thing I had once loved. I took some time off, returned to Europe for a few years, settled out of state, and lived a “quiet” life away from the world of entertainment. As the years passed, I managed to keep my secret, fearful of sharing it with the wrong person but also a little ashamed of not having had the balls to blow the whistle. But as rap got worse, my guilt grew. Fortunately, in the late 90’s, having the internet as a resource which wasn’t at my disposal in the early days made it easier for me to investigate what is now labeled the prison industrial complex. Now that I have a greater understanding of how private prisons operate, things make much more sense than they ever have. I see how the criminalization of rap music played a big part in promoting racial stereotypes and misguided so many impressionable young minds into adopting these glorified criminal behaviors which often lead to incarceration. Twenty years of guilt is a heavy load to carry but the least I can do now is to share my story, hoping that fans of rap music realize how they’ve been used for the past 2 decades. Although I plan on remaining anonymous for obvious reasons, my goal now is to get this information out to as many people as possible. Please help me spread the word. Hopefully, others who attended the meeting back in 1991 will be inspired by this and tell their own stories. Most importantly, if only one life has been touched by my story, I pray it makes the weight of my guilt a little more tolerable.
Thank you.
KRS One saw the reality of the situation a long time ago.
He tried to warn us. How relevant are these lyrics today?
Ask Yourself Why You’ve Never Heard of this OG Truth-Bomb dropper
Now here’s a little truth, open up your eye While you’re checkin’ out the boom-bap, check the exercise Take the word overseer, like a sample Repeat it very quickly in a crew, for example Overseer, overseer, overseer, overseer Officer, officer, officer, officer Yeah,officerfromoverseer You need a little clarity? Check the similarity! The overseer rode around the plantation The officer is off, patrollin’ all the nation The overseer could stop you, “What you’re doing?” The officer will pull you over just when he’s pursuing The overseer had the right to get ill And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill The officer has the right to arrest And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest
Conscious hip-hop is often confused with its musical cousin, political hip-hop, possibly because they both speak to social turmoil.
A disdain for commercialism is another common thread that weaves the two styles together. Politically charged songs by rappers such as Dead Prez and Public Enemy are usually delivered in a militant fashion.
September 6, 2012: Decrypted Matrix with Max Maverick on Revealing Talk Radio
Prison Industrial Complex Explained: Learn how Corporations are outsourcing & privatizing labor costs to the Prison Industry and how there are massive profits exploding from within this corrupted Incarceration System. Slave Labor Camps, Return of the Debtor Prisons, Products most often created by Prisoners, Recent Wallstreet investments & the Goldman Sachs connection. SERCO, UNICOR, Federal Prison Industries, Inc. and the astronomical nationwide per-capita figures that will make your head spin.
In 2008, the National Security Agency illicitly—if accidentally—intercepted a “large number” of phone calls from Washington, D.C. because an error confused Egypt’s country code—“20”—with, yes, “202.”
That fact, one of many startling ones from Barton Gellman’s new blockbuster Washington Post story based on documents given to him by Edward Snowden, is so catchy and memorable that I almost worry about it. That is, I worry people will just think of that and fail to grasp that this was actually one of the more anodyne NSA abuses revealed by these newly disclosed top-secret documents, including an internal audit. In fact, in the year preceding the May 2012 audit, there were 2,776 violations (another eye-grabber, suggestively alike the totemic 1,776).
I think more troubling is that the NSA deliberately fed international communications (which it is permitted to monitor in certain ways) through U.S. fiber-optic cables, commingling those kosher foreign emails with domestic ones—which the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC, and it is generally a rubber stamp) ruled unconstitutional.
I also think more troubling is that last year, the NSA retained more than 3,000 files of telephone call records in defiance of an FISC order (!). How many calls involving how many people were on each file is unknown, by the way.
I think it is pretty messed up that all of this information solely concerns violations that occurred at the NSA’s headquarters in Maryland. “Three government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, said the number [of violations] would be substantially higher if it included other NSA operating units and regional collection centers,” Gellman reports.
Here’s the audit, for those not faint of heart or jargon (an appendix is provided).
There is a valuable, vital debate to be had over how much the federal government, in its intelligence programs, ought to be permitted to violate Americans’ privacy in an effort to protect Americans from a dangerous world that includes people who want to kill Americans. There are many different places where the important red lines can be drawn in this debate. It is a debate strewn with well-intentioned, conscientious people who would draw those lines at very different places. Let’s even be generous and stipulate that the question of whether the statutorily provided oversight of these programs is sufficient belongs, as well, to that debate.
The terrifying thing is that we are not having that debate. As these documents are the latest things to demonstrate, the various overseers as well as the public do not have access to the information that even the current rules assert they should have. That is how I can state with certainty that we are not having that vital debate: We do not have the means to have that debate with any kind of authority; therefore, no matter how much we discuss these issues, we are not having that debate.
The most important thing about the Egypt-D.C. confusion isn’t that U.S. calls were collected in violation of rules, for instance. It is that, after this violation was uncovered, it was not reported to oversight staff.
In a separate, in many ways equally important Post article, Carol D. Leonnig reports that FISC’s chief judge is hopelessly dependent on the NSA in order for it to perform its statutorily mandated oversight. “The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance,” the judge, Reggie B. Walton, told her, “and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court.” Obama, Leonnig noted, has explicitly held FISC up as assurance that the programs do have strong oversight. But it should be obvious that outside oversight that depends on the purely internal machinations of the thing that is supposed to be overseen is not accountable oversight.
Lawmakers are not blameless. They may access unredacted documents, albeit in a secure room where they lack the ability to take notes. They might theoretically then, even, pull a Mike Gravel and read the results into the record on the House or Senate floor. Gellman reports that “fewer than 10 percent of lawmakers” presently have the ability actually to do this in practice. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, was unaware of the May 2012 audit until she was contacted for the Post story.
But mainly this is on the NSA, which is to say, on the administration. President Obama pledged last Friday to make these surveillance programs “more transparent.” He argued, “It’s not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them, as well.”
Yet the administration did not disclose, say, the lapses Gellman reported. In fact, the NSA retroactively placed an on-the-record interview with its director of compliance off the record, according to Gellman. It did this after Obama’s speech extolling the importance of and promising transparency. In a sense, we got his wished-for transparency. We can see right through him now.
The short but profitable tale of how 483,000 private individual have “top secret” access to the nation’s most non-public information begins in 2001. “After 9/11, intelligence budgets were increased, new people needed to be hired, it was a lot easier to go to the private sector and get people off the shelf,” and sure enough firms like Booz Allen Hamilton – still two-thirds owned by the deeply-tied-to-international-governments investment firm The Carlyle Group – took full advantage of Congress’ desire to shrink federal agencies and their budgets by enabling outside consultants(already primed with their $4,000 cost ‘security clearances’) to fulfill the needs of an ever-more-encroaching-on-privacy administration.
Booz Allen (and other security consultant providing firms) trade publicly with a cloak of admitted opacity due to the secrecy of their government contracts (“you may not have important information concerning our business, which will limit your insight into a substantial portion of our business”) but the actions of Diane Feinstein who promptly denounced “treasonous” Edward Snowden, “have muddied the waters,” for the stunning 1.1 million (or 21% of the total) private consultants with access to “confidential and secret” government information.
Perhaps the situation of gross government over-spend and under-oversight is summed up best, “it’s very difficult to know what contractors are doing and what they are billing for the work — or even whether they should be performing the work at all.”
First, Diane Feinstein’s take on it all…
“I don’t look at this as being a whistleblower. I think it’s an act of treason,” the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee told reporters. The California lawmaker went on to say that Snowden had violated his oath to defend the Constitution. “He violated the oath, he violated the law. It’s treason.”
The reliance on contractors for intelligence work ballooned after the 9/11 attacks. The government scrambled to improve and expand its ability to monitor the communication and movement of people who might threaten another attack.
“After 9/11, intelligence budgets were increased, new people needed to be hired,” Augustyn said. “It was a lot easier to go to the private sector and get people off the shelf.”
The reliance on the private sector has grown since then, in part because of Congress’ efforts to limit the size of federal agencies and shrink the budget.
Which has led to what appears to be major problems.
But critics say reliance on contractors hasn’t reduced the amount the government spends on defense, intelligence or other programs.
Rather, they say it’s just shifted work to private employers and reduced transparency. It becomes harder to track the work of those employees and determine whether they should all have access to government secrets.
“It’s very difficult to know what contractors are doing and what they are billing for the work — or even whether they should be performing the work at all,”
… And to the current PRISMgate whistleblowing situation:
Of the 4.9 million people with clearance to access “confidential and secret” government information, 1.1 million, or 21 percent, work for outside contractors, according to a report from Clapper’s office.
Of the 1.4 million who have the higher “top secret” access, 483,000, or 34 percent, work for contractors.
…
Because clearances can take months or even years to acquire, government contractors often recruit workers who already have them.
Why not – it’s lucrative!!
Snowden says he accessed and downloaded the last of the documents that detailed the NSA surveillance program while working in an NSA office in Hawaii for Booz Allen, where he says he was earning $200,000 a year.
Analysts caution that any of the 1.4 million people with access to the nation’s top secrets could have leaked information about the program – whether they worked for a contractor or the government.
For individuals and firms alike.
Booz Allen has long navigated those waters well.
The firm was founded in 1914 and began serving the U.S. government in 1940, helping the Navy prepare for World War II. In 2008, it spun off the part of the firm that worked with private companies and abroad. That firm, called Booz & Co., is held privately.
Booz Allen was then acquired by the Carlyle Group, an investment firm with its own deep ties to the government. In November 2010, Booz Allen went public. The Carlyle Group still owns two-thirds of the company’s shares.
Or, a full-majority stake.
Curiously once public, The Booz Allens of the world still operate like a psuedo-private company, with extensive confidential cloaks preventing the full disclosure of financial data. But don’t worry – we should just trust them. Via Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil.
Psst, here’s a stock tip for you. There’s a company near Washington with strong ties to the U.S. intelligence community that has been around for almost a century and has secret ways of making money — so secret that the company can’t tell you what they are. Investors who buy just need to have faith.
To skeptics, this might seem like a pitch for an investment scam. But as anyone who has been paying attention to the news might have guessed, the company is Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp.
…
“Because we are limited in our ability to provide information about these contracts and services,” the company said in its latest annual report, “you may not have important information concerning our business, which will limit your insight into a substantial portion of our business, and therefore may be less able to fully evaluate the risks related to that portion of our business.”
This seems like it would be a dream arrangement for some corporations: Not only is Booz Allen allowed to keep investors uninformed, it’s required to. I suppose we should give the company credit for being transparent about how opaque it is.
And while the media and popular attention is currently focused on who, if anyone else, may be the next Snowden struck by a sudden pang of conscience, perhaps a better question is what PE behemoth Carlyle, with a gargantuan $170 billion in AUM, knows, and why it rushed to purchase Booz Allen in the months after the Bear Stearns collapse, just when everyone else was batting down the hatches ahead of the biggest financial crash in modern history.
Carlyle Group, the private-equity firm run by David Rubenstein, agreed to acquire Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.’s U.S. government-consulting business for $2.54 billion, its biggest buyout since the credit markets collapsed in July.
The purchase would be Carlyle’s biggest since it agreed to buy nursing-home operator Manor Care Inc. last July for $6.3 billion. Deal-making may be rebounding from a 68 percent decline in the first quarter as investment banks begin writing new commitments for private-equity transactions. Buyouts ground to a halt last year because of a global credit freeze triggered by record U.S. subprime-mortgage defaults.
The Booz Allen government-consulting unit has more than 18,000 employees and annual sales of more than $2.7 billion. Its clients include branches of the U.S. military, the Department of Homeland Security and the World Bank.
Carlyle, based in Washington, manages $81.1 billion in assets [ZH: that was 5 years ago – the firm now boasts $170 billion in AUM]. Rubenstein founded the firm in 1987 with William Conway and Daniel D’Aniello. The trio initially focused on deals tied to government and defense.
Carlyle and closely held Booz Allen have attracted high-level officials from the government. Carlyle’s senior advisers have included former President George H.W. Bush, former British Prime Minister John Major, and Arthur Levitt, the ex-chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
R. James Woolsey, who led the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency from 1993 to 1995, is a Booz Allen executive. Mike McConnell, the U.S. director of national intelligence, is a former senior vice president with the company.
…
Carlyle last year sold a minority interest in itself to Mubadala Development Co., an investment fund affiliated with the government of Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.
And in addition to the UAE, who can possibly forget Carlyle’s Saudi connection. From the WSJ circa 2001:
If the U.S. boosts defense spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Laden’s alleged terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: Mr. bin Laden’s family.
Among its far-flung business interests, the well-heeled Saudi Arabian clan — which says it is estranged from Osama — is an investor in a fund established by Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specializing in buyouts of defense and aerospace companies.
Through this investment and its ties to Saudi royalty, the bin Laden family has become acquainted with some of the biggest names in the Republican Party. In recent years, former President Bush, ex-Secretary of State James Baker and ex-Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci have made the pilgrimage to the bin Laden family’s headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Mr. Bush makes speeches on behalf of Carlyle Group and is senior adviser to its Asian Partners fund, while Mr. Baker is its senior counselor. Mr. Carlucci is the group’s chairman.
Osama is one of more than 50 children of Mohammed bin Laden, who built the family’s $5 billion business, Saudi Binladin Group, largely with construction contracts from the Saudi government. Osama worked briefly in the business and is believed to have inherited as much as $50 million from his father in cash and stock, although he doesn’t have access to the shares, a family spokesman says. Because his Saudi citizenship was revoked in 1994, Mr. bin Laden is ineligible to own assets in the kingdom, the spokesman added.
…
People familiar with the family’s finances say the bin Ladens do much of their banking with National Commercial Bank in Saudi Arabia and with the London branch of Deutsche Bank AG. They also use Citigroup Inc. and ABN Amro, the people said.
“If there were ever any company closely connected to the U.S. and its presence in Saudi Arabia, it’s the Saudi Binladin Group,” says Charles Freeman, president of the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington nonprofit concern that receives tens of thousands of dollars a year from the bin Laden family. “They’re the establishment that Osama’s trying to overthrow.”
…
A Carlyle executive said the bin Laden family committed $2 million through a London investment arm in 1995 in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised $1.3 billion overall. The fund has purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. So far, the family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a 40% annualized rate of return, the Carlyle executive said. But a foreign financier with ties to the bin Laden family says the family’s overall investment with Carlyle is considerably larger. He called the $2 million merely an initial contribution. “It’s like plowing a field,” this person said. “You seed it once. You plow it, and then you reseed it again.”
The Carlyle executive added that he would think twice before accepting any future investments by the bin Ladens. “The situation’s changed now,” he said. “I don’t want to spend my life talking to reporters.”
We can clearly see why. We can also clearly see why nobody has mentioned Carlyle so far into the Booz Allen fiasco.
A U.S. inquiry into bin Laden family business dealings could brush against some big names associated with the U.S. government. Former President Bush said through his chief of staff, Jean Becker, that he recalled only one meeting with the bin Laden family, which took place in November1998. Ms. Becker confirmed that there was a second meeting in January 2000, after being read the ex-president’s subsequent thank-you note. “President Bush does not have a relationship with the bin Laden family,” says Ms. Becker. “He’s met them twice.”
Mr. Baker visited the bin Laden family in both 1998 and 1999, according to people close to the family. In the second trip, he traveled on a family plane. Mr. Baker declined comment, as did Mr. Carlucci, a past chairman of Nortel Networks Corp., which has partnered with Saudi Binladin Group on telecommunications ventures.
As one can imagine the rabbit hole just gets deeper and deeper the more one digs. For now, we will let readers do their own diligence. We promise the results are fascinating.
Going back to the topic at hand, we will however ask just how much and what kind of confidential, classified, and or Top Secret information is shared “behind Chinese walls” between a Carlyle still majority-owned company and the private equity behemoth’s employees and advisors, among which are some of the most prominent political and business luminaries currently alive. The following is a list of both current and former employees and advisors. We have used Wiki but anyone wishing to comb through the firm’s full blown roster of over 1,000 employees and advisors, is welcome to do so at the firm’s website.
Olivier Sarkozy (half-brother of Nicolas Sarkozy, former President of France) – co-head and managing director of its recently launched global financial services division, since March 2008.
Luis Téllez Kuenzler, Mexican economist, former Secretary of Communications and Transportation under the Felipe Calderón administration and former Secretary of Energy under the Zedillo administration.
Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand (twice), former member of the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board until the board was disbanded in 2004
Fidel V. Ramos, former president of the Philippines, Carlyle Asia Advisor Board Member until the board was disbanded in 2004
Peter Chung, former associate at Carlyle Group Korea, who resigned in 2001 after 2 weeks on the job after an inappropriate e-mail to friends was circulated around the world
Thaksin Shinawatra, former Prime Minister of Thailand (twice), former member of the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board until 2001 when he resigned upon being elected Prime Minister.
Media
Norman Pearlstine – editor-in-chief of Time magazine from (1995–2005), senior advisor telecommunications and media group 2006-
Perhaps Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil sums it up best:
There’s no easy solution here, aside from the obvious point that the government keeps way too many secrets.
So what happens when one corporation, owned and controlled by the same government’s former (and in some cases current) top power brokers, potentially has access to all of the same government’s secrets?
The IRS, currently in the midst of scandals involving the targeting of conservative groups and lavish taxpayer-funded conferences, is ordering surveillance equipment that includes hidden cameras in coffee trays, plants and clock radios.
The IRS wants to secure the surveillance equipment quickly – it posted a solicitation on June 6 and is looking to close the deal by Monday, June 10. The agency already has a company lined up for the order but is not commenting on the details.
“The Internal Revenue Service intends to award a Purchase Order to an undisclosed Corporation,” reads the solicitation.
“If you feel that you can provide the following equipment, please respond to this email no later than 4 days after the solicitation date,” the IRS said.
Among the items the agency will purchase are four “Covert Coffee tray(s) with Camera concealment,” and four “Remote surveillance system(s)” with “Built-in DVD Burner and 2 Internal HDDs, cameras.”
The IRS also is buying four cameras to hide in plants: “(QTY 4) Plant Concealment Color 700 Lines Color IP Camera Concealment with Single Channel Network Server, supports dual video stream, Poe [Power over Ethernet], software included, case included, router included.”
Finishing out the order are four “Color IP Camera Concealment with single channel network server, supports dual video stream, poe, webviewer and cms software included, audio,” and two “Concealed clock radio.”
“Responses to this notice must be received by this office within 3 business days of the date of this synopsis by 2:00 P.M. EST, June 10, 2013,” the IRS said. Interested vendors are to contact Ricardo Carter, a Contract Specialist at the IRS.
“If no compelling responses are received, award will be made to the original solicited corporation,” the IRS said.
The original solicitation was only available to private companies for bids for 19 business hours.
The notice was posted at 11:07 a.m. on June 6 and had a deadline of 2:00 p.m. on Monday. Taking a normal 9-to-5 work week, the solicitation was open for bids for six hours on Thursday, eight hours on Friday, and five hours on Monday, for a total of 19 hours.
The response date was changed on Monday, pushed back to 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 11.
The location listed for the solicitation is the IRS’s National Office of Procurement, in Oxon Hill, Md.
“The Procurement Office acquires the products and services required to support the IRS mission,” according to its website.
In recent weeks the IRS has been at the center of multiple scandals, admitting to targeting Tea Party groups and subjecting them to greater scrutiny when applying for non-profit status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
A report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed that groups with names like “patriot” in their titles were singled out, required to complete lengthy personal questionnaires (often multiple times) and having their nonprofit status delayed, sometimes for more than three years.
Last week a second Inspector General report detailed nearly $50 million in wasteful spending by the agency on conferences, in which employees stayed at luxurious Las Vegas hotels, paid a keynote speaker $17,000 to paint a picture of U2 singer Bono, and spent $50,000 on parody videos of “Star Trek.”
Requests for comment from the IRS and Mr. Carter were not returned before this story was posted.
CNSNews.com asked IRS spokesmen Dean Patterson and Anthony Burke to explain the reasoning behind the solicitation, where the surveillance equipment will be used, why the request was so urgent, and whether the request has anything to do with the recent scandals at the IRS.
The Obama regime which was already in the midst of three high profile scandals now has a fourth one to deal with. Top secret documents were recently leaked to the Washington Post and the London Guardian detailing a vast government surveillance program code named PRISM. According to the leaked documents, the program allows the National Security Agency (NSA) back door access to data from the servers of several leading U.S. based Internet and software companies. The documents list companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Apple as some of the participants in the program. There have also been other reports indicating that the NSA is able to access real-time user data from as many as 50 separate American companies. Under the program, the NSA is able to collect information ranging from e-mails, chats, videos, photographs, VoIP calls and more. Most importantly is the fact that PRISM allows the NSA to obtain this data without having to make individual requests from the service providers or without having to obtain a court order. To say that this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment which forbids unreasonable searches and seizures would be a gross understatement. This is actually much more than that. This is a program designed specifically to serve as a Big Brother like control grid and to end privacy as we know it.
The NSA is quickly building a real life version of 1984’s Big Brother.
It is now painfully obvious that James Clapper the Director of National Intelligence when testifying before the Senate this past March blatantly lied when asked by Senator Ron Wyden if the NSA was involved in collecting data from the American people. Clapper flatly denied that the NSA was engaged in these types of domestic surveillance activities. What makes the situation such a joke is that the Obama regime is not focused on the fact that Clapper lied to the Senate which in of itself is unlawful. Instead they have been more focused on determining the source of the leak that exposed these broad abuses of power. This is probably not surprising considering that this is a regime that rewards corruption by promoting people involved in all sorts of questionable activity. The promotion of Susan Rice as Obama’s new National Security Advisor is a perfect example of this considering her involvement in spreading bogus Benghazi related talking points. On the other hand, the Obama regime has severely punished a variety of whistleblowers who have dared to expose any wrong doing.
At least the Obama regime won’t have to spend much time and energy trying to identify the whistleblower as this person who leaked these documents has already come forward publically. At his own request the Guardian revealed his identity as Edward Snowden a 29-year old Information Technology specialist who has been working at the NSA for different contractors including Booz Allen Hamilton and Dell. Snowden had previously worked at an NSA office in Hawaii but boarded a flight to Hong Kong a few weeks ago where he has stayed since turning over these documents to the media. He expects that he will never set foot on U.S. soil again and may possibly seek political asylum in a country like Iceland. The Guardian interviewed Snowden over several days and has recently posted an interview transcript that provides more detail on the abuses he became aware of and why he decided to come forward as a whistleblower. In the interview Snowden confirms that the NSA has the infrastructure that allows them to intercept almost any type of data that you can imagine from phone records, e-mails to credit cards. He also reveals how the U.S. government is engaged in hacking systems everywhere around the world and how the NSA has consistently lied to Congress about their activities. There is little doubt that Snowden is thus far one of the most important whistleblowers to come along in the 21st century and he will likely face retaliation considering the vast reach and capabilities of the U.S. intelligence community.
Many individuals within the Obama regime including Obama himself have claimed that this type of widespread data collection is needed to fight terrorism and is used for national security purposes. Even if we were to assume that the war on terror is real, this claim is ridiculous and absurd on its face. It would be one thing if they were collecting information based upon a specific criteria identified by legitimate human intelligence. Instead they are collecting indiscriminate amounts of information which makes it much more difficult to analyze and target anything that might indicate a potential threat. If the NSA’s goal is really to detect and target terrorism than all they are doing is making their job more difficult by vastly increasing the noise they have to filter through. Either the people running the NSA are incredibly stupid or the goal of this program is to establish the infrastructure necessary to centrally collect data from communications everywhere around the world.
Other evidence to support this notion is the fact that the NSA is building a huge new facility in Utah that is being designed to store an enormous amount of data. A Fox News report indicates that when completed the facility will be able to store billions of terabytes worth of information. It is hard to fathom how the NSA would need this much storage space unless it was being used to collect and store any and all communications.
The Obama regime has tried to justify all of this by saying that PRISM helped stop an alleged New York City subway bomb plot back in 2009. This has been proven to be factually incorrect as regular police work and help from the British were larger factors in stopping the plot. This is assuming you even believe the official story of this terror plot to begin with. The government and more specifically the FBI have manufactured so many fake terror plots that it is difficult to determine fact from fiction at this point. So with this said, there is really no proof that PRISM has even helped to stop any so-called terror plot. They are collecting information simply for the sake of collecting information with no probable cause or reasonable justification.
At this point it is an undeniable fact that the NSA has been illegally collecting information on the American people. For years what has been dismissed as conspiracy theory is now without question a conspiracy fact. It is laughable that Obama and his assorted cronies are even trying to defend this program as a useful tool to fight terrorists. It is more likely that this program is being used to help find people domestically who dislike the government and would potentially fight back against it. A striking similarity to what is depicted in George Orwell’s dystopic novel 1984 where political dissidents are identified as thought criminals. A tool the NSA uses called Boundless Informant which counts and categorizes the information they collect shows that more data is actually gathered from domestic sources in the U.S. than from Russia. So based off of this one could argue that the NSA almost seems to view the American people as more of a threat to national security than the Russians.
The three scandals the Obama regime was dealing with prior to this new scandal are all grounds for impeachment and one could easily argue that this one is many times worse than the previous three. Obama should resign in disgrace but being that he’s a narcissist who seems unwilling to admit making any mistakes it is highly doubtful he will do this. Obama and the rest of the useful idiots in his regime who have tried to defend and justify this and other criminal programs need to be forcibly removed from office and put on trial. The criminal activity from the Obama regime is so vastly transparent it has become a complete and total joke to anyone who is even remotely paying attention.
In this broadcast of the Cybertribe News Network, a North Carolina Police Lieutenant calls in to give his first hand knowledge of preparations being made within his own department to train and prepare for martial law in the United States, possibly in the coming year.
Many similar reports are starting to trickle in from all across the country, through various independent media resources and even organizations like Oath Keepers.
The consensus is that a major economic event is expected, and that it will be used to provide cover for the institution of draconian policies being readied behind the curtain.
The exact timing of this event is not clear, but we do know the planning is being done, and that provisions are being put in place.
The following officer’s admissions are another startling indicator of just how close to the precipice we really are…
RT talks to William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades. Virtual privacy in US, Petraeus affair and whistleblowers’ odds in fight against the authorities are among key topics of this exclusive interview
RT: In light of the Petraeus/Allen scandal while the public is so focused on the details of their family drama, one may argue that the real scandal in this whole story is the power, the reach of the surveillance state. I mean if we take General Allen – thousands of his personal e-mails have been sifted through private correspondence. It’s not like any of those men was planning an attack on America. Does the scandal prove the notion that there is no such thing as privacy in a surveillance state?
William Binney: Yes, that’s what I’ve been basically saying for quite some time, is that the FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of virtually everybody in the country. And the FBI has access to it. All the congressional members are on the surveillance too, no one is excluded. They are all included. So, yes, this can happen to anyone. If they become a target for whatever reason – they are targeted by the government, the government can go in, or the FBI, or other agencies of the government, they can go into their database, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all. So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least.
RT: And it’s not just about those, who could be planning, who could be a threat to national security, but also those, who could be just…
WB: It’s everybody. The Naris device, if it takes in the entire line, so it takes in all the data. In fact they advertised they can process the lines at session rates, which means 10-gigabit lines. I forgot the name of the device (it’s not the Naris) – the other one does it at 10 gigabits. That’s why they’re building Bluffdale [database facility], because they have to have more storage, because they can’t figure out what’s important, so they are just storing everything there. So, emails are going to be stored there in the future, but right now stored in different places around the country. But it is being collected – and the FBI has access to it.
RT: You mean it’s being collected in bulk without even requesting providers?
WB: Yes.
RT: Then what about Google, you know, releasing this biannual transparency report and saying that the government’s demands for personal data is at an all-time high and for all of those requesting the US, Google says they complied with the government’s demands 90 percent of the time. But they are still saying that they are making the request, it’s not like it’s all being funneled into that storage. What do you say to that?
WB: I would assume that it’s just simply another source for the same data they are already collecting. My line is in declarations in a court about the 18-T facility in San Francisco, that documented the NSA room inside that AST&T facility, where they had Naris devices to collect data off the fiber optic lines inside the United States. So, that’s kind of a powerful device, that would collect everything it was being sent. It could collect on the order over of 100 billion 1,000-character emails a day. One device.
RT: You say they sift through billions of e-mails. I wonder how do they prioritize? How do they filter it?
WB: I don’t think they are filtering it. They are just storing it. I think it’s just a matter of selecting when they want it. So, if they want to target you, they would take your attributes, go into that database and pull out all your data.
RT: Were you on the target list?
WB: Oh, sure! I believe I’ve been on it for quite a few years. So I keep telling them everything I think of them in my email. So that when they want to read it they’ll understand what I think of them.
RT: Do you think we all should leave messages for the NSA mail box?
WB: Sure!
RT: You blew the whistle on the agency when George W. Bush was the president. With President Obama in office, in your opinion, has anything changed at the agency, in the surveillance program? In what direction is this administration moving?
WB: The change is it’s getting worse. They are doing more. He is supporting the building of the Bluffdale facility, which is over two billion dollars they are spending on storage room for data. That means that they are collecting a lot more now and need more storage for it. That facility by my calculations that I submitted to the court for the Electronic Frontiers Foundation against NSA would hold on the order of 5 zettabytes of data. Just that current storage capacity is being advertised on the web that you can buy. And that’s not talking about what they have in the near future.
RT: What are they going to do with all of that? Ok, they are storing something. Why should anybody be concerned?
WB: If you ever get on the enemies list, like Petraeus did or… for whatever reason, than you can be drained into that surveillance.
RT: Do you think they would… General Petraeus, who was idolized by the same administration? Or General Allen?
WB: There are certainly some questions, that have to be asked, like why would they target it to begin with? What law were they breaking?
RT: In case of General Petraeus one would argue that there could have been security breaches. Something like that. But with General Allen – I don’t quite understand, because when they were looking into his private emails to this woman.
WB: That’s the whole point. I am not sure what the internal politics is… That’s part of the program. This government doesn’t want things in the public. It’s not a transparent government. Whatever the reason or the motivation was, I don’t really know, but I certainly think that there was something going on in the background that made them target those fellows. Otherwise why would they be doing it? There is no crime there.
RT: It seems that the public is divided between those, who think that the government surveillance program violates their civil liberties, and those who say, ‘I’ve nothing to hide. So, why should I care?’ What do you say to those who think that it shouldnt concern them.
WB: The problem is if they think they are not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does, the central government defines what is right and wrong and whether or not they target you. So, it’s not up to the individuals. Even if they think they aren’t doing something wrong, if their position on something is against what the administration has, then they could easily become a target.
RT: Tell me about the most outrageous thing that you came across during your work at the NSA.
WB: The violations of the constitution and any number of laws that existed at the time. That was the part that I could not be associated with. That’s why I left. They were building social networks on who is communicating and with whom inside this country. So that the entire social network of everybody, of every US citizen was being compiled overtime. So, they are taking from one company alone roughly 320 million records a day. That’s probably accumulated probably close to 20 trillion over the years.
The original program that we put together to handle this to be able to identify terrorists anywhere in the world and alert anyone that they were in jeopardy. We would have been able to do that by encrypting everybody’s communications except those who were targets. So, in essence you would protect their identities and the information about them until you could develop probable cause, and once you showed your probable cause, then you could do a decrypt and target them. And we could do that and isolate those people all alone. It wasn’t a problem at all. There was no difficulty in that.
RT: It sounds very difficult and very complicated. Easier to take everything in and…
WB: No. It’s easier to use the graphing techniques, if you will, for the relationships for the world to filter out data, so that you don’t have to handle all that data. And it doesn’t burden you with a lot more information to look at, than you really need to solve the problem.
RT: Do you think that the agency doesn’t have the filters now?
WB: No.
RT: You have received the Callaway award for civic courage. Congratulations! On the website and in the press release it says: “It is awarded to those, who stand out for constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.” Under the code of spy ethics – I don’t know if there is such a thing – your former colleagues, they probably look upon you as a traitor. How do you look back at them?
WB: That’s pretty easy. They are violating the foundation of this entire country. Why this entire government was formed? It’s founded with the Constitution and the rights were given to the people in the country under that Constitution. They are in violation of that. And under executive order 13526, section 1.7 – you can not classify information to just cover up a crime, which this is, and that was signed by President Obama. Also President Bush signed it earlier as an executive order, a very similar one. If any of this comes into Supreme Court and they rule it unconstitutional, then the entire house of cards of the government falls.
RT: What are the chances of that? What are the odds?
WB: The government is doing the best they can to try to keep it out of court. And, of course, we are trying to do the best we can to get into court. So, we decided it deserves a ruling from the Supreme Court. Ultimately the court is supposed to protect the Constitution. All these people in the government take an oath to defend the Constitution. And they are not living up to the oath of office.
A speech by 85 year old, Austrian born, American Citizen in South Dakota, Kitty Werthmann.
“What I am about to tell you is something you’ve probably never heard or read in history books,” she likes to tell audiences.
“I am a witness to history.
“I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history.
If you remember the plot of the Sound of Music, the Von Trapp family escaped over the Alps rather than submit to the Nazis. Kitty wasn’t so lucky. Her family chose to stay in her native Austria. She was 10 years old, but bright and aware. And she was watching.
“We elected him by a landslide – 98 percent of the vote,” she recalls.
She wasn’t old enough to vote in 1938 – approaching her 11th birthday. But she remembers.
“Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.”
Not so.
Hitler is welcomed to Austria
“In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25 percent inflation and 25 percent bank loan interest rates.
Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs.
“My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.’
“We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933.” she recalls. “We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living.
Austrian girls welcome Hitler
“Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group – Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone in Germany was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria. We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back.
“Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.
“We were overjoyed,” remembers Kitty, “and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.
Austrians saluting
“After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.
“Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family. Many women in the teach- ing profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been re- quired to give up for marriage.
“Then we lost religious education for kids
Poster promoting “Hitler Youth”
“Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school.. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,’ and had physical education.
“Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail.” And then things got worse.
“The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free.
“We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.
“My mother was very unhappy,” remembers Kitty. “When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination.
“I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing.
A pro-Hitler rally
“Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time, unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler.
“It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.
“In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death.
“Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.
“Soon after this, the draft was implemented.
Young Austrians
“It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps,” remembers Kitty. “During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys.
“They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines.
“When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.
“Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.
“When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. “You could take your children ages four weeks old to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, seven days a week, under the total care of the government.
“The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.
“Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna.. “After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything.
“When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full.
“If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.
“As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80 percent of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families.
“All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.
“We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. “ Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands.
“Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.
“We had consumer protection, too
Austrian kids loyal to Hitler
“We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, and then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.
“In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps. The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated.
“So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work.
“I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van.
“I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months.
“They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.
“As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.
“Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long afterwards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.
“No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.
“Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria. Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.”
“This is my eye-witness account.
“It’s true. Those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity.
“America is truly is the greatest country in the world. “Don’t let freedom slip away.
