Thursday, October 31, 2013

Israel Said to Strike Syrian Base to Destroy Missiles

from bloomberg



By Tony Capaccio & Jonathan Ferziger - Oct 31, 2013 9:35 PM PT
Israel carried out air strikes in Syria, according to a U.S. official who asked not to be identified discussing security matters.
Israeli warplanes struck a Syrian base near the Mediterranean port of Latakia, targeting missiles that were earmarked for the Hezbollah militant group, according to reports by CNN and Al-Arabiya television.
Arabiya said Israel carried out another attack around Damascus late Oct. 30, without saying where it got the information. Israeli officials declined to comment and the U.S. official didn’t provide additional details.
It was at least the fifth report of Israeli strikes on Syrian targets this year, none of which were confirmed by the Jewish state. Syria has issued threats of retaliation after previous incidents, without carrying them out. President Bashar al-Assad’s ability to do so is constrained because he’s battling rebel militias in a 2 1/2-year civil war that has left more than 100,000 dead.
The Associated Press reported that the attack near Latakia was aimed at destroying Russian-made missiles.
Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shiite movement considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union, has fought alongside Assad’s army in the civil war. The group emerged in the 1980s in resistance to Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon. Hezbollah has repeatedly fought with the Jewish state, including a monthlong war in 2006, though there have been few clashes in recent years.
“We have a practice of not commenting on these kinds of incidents when they arrive,” Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a phone interview.
Israel carried out air strikes in Syria in January, May and July this year, according to reports that said the targets in each case were weapons bound for Hezbollah.
The New York Times reported on Aug. 1, citing U.S. officials, that Israeli intelligence concluded the July attack near Latakia failed to destroy the whole of the shipment of Russian-made anti-ship missiles that it had targeted, making further strikes likely.
To contact the reporters on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington atacapaccio@bloomberg.net; Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net; John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
at No comments:

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Can Snowden revert privacy to a social norm?

from usatoday


SHARE 99 34 7COMMENTMORE
SEATTLE – The steady trickle of revelations of government snooping that continues to seep from the Edward Snowden documents is serving to keep attention riveted on how privacy in the digital age ought to be defined.
That' most probably not to the liking of Google and Facebook. In January 2010, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg infamously declared that the expectation of privacy was no longer a social norm, and, in October 2010, then Google chairman Eric Schmidt said "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."
By rationing out details of the NSA's bag of tricks on a regular basis, the Guardianand the Washington Post have orchestrated sustained attention on the true cost of using free services from Google and Facebook , whose business models revolve around unfettered access to your online persona.
So far the NSA and White House have taken much of the heat for the varied methodologies we now know, thanks to Snowden, that the NSA uses to tap into the trove of data compiled and packaged by search engines, social websites ad popular apps.
"This totally violates the privacy of US citizens," says Craig Kensek, senior manager at anti-malware supplier Ahnlab. "The NSA is coming across as a rogue operation, splitting technical fine hair, since data could literally reside anywhere in the world, thanks to cloud technology."
It's unlikely Congress will do much to restrict the NSA's ability to deter terrorists.. So the enduring effect of shedding steady light on Snowden's stolen documents may be exactly opposite of what Facebook and Google want.
The slow process of raising awareness about the desirability of privacy as a social norm appears to be gaining traction.
"The on-going persistence of the Snowden story with its continuing revelations appears to be reaching people's consciousness," says C. J. Radford, Vice President of Cloud at data security firm Vormetric. "At the same time, I don't believe that most U.S. consumers have connected the dots.
"The large amount of private information about them exists because it was collected for other purposes, such as advertising, billing, service delivery, etc.," Radford points out. "But they are learning, and the level of awareness is rising."
It's not just consumers who ought to question the level of privacy associated with use of the Web's most popular services, as we've come to know them. Companies are embracing BYOD – the trend of having employees use personal mobile devices for work duties – and are also increasingly relying on services delivered over the Internet cloud.
Pierluigi Stella, chief technical officer at Network Box USA, points to heightened privacy concerns raised for commercial users of Google's popular Web-delivered productivity suite, and would-be Office killer, Google Docs.
"Now we know that whatever they write is being collected and analyzed by the NSA before it is stored in the Google cloud. Do I really want my business emails to go through that? Do I trust that no illegitimate use will come of it?," Stella observes. "Personally, I prefer the good old e-mail server I control, because it is unlikely the NSA will come snooping simply because there is nothing of interest for them."
at No comments:

NSA broke into Yahoo and Google data centers around world, report says

from cbs


CBS/AP/ October 30, 2013, 3:50 PM


Updated at 3:50 p.m. Eastern
WASHINGTONThe National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, the Washington Post reported, citing documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
According to a secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, NSA sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency's Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters. In the last 30 days, field collectors had processed and sent back more than 180 million new records - ranging from "metadata," which would indicate who sent or received emails and when, to content such as text, audio and video, the Post reported Wednesday on its website.
Play VIDEO

NSA did not break into Google, Yahoo servers: NSA chief

However, Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, disputed the Post report. Speaking at a cybersecurity conference Wednesday in Washington, Alexander said Google and Yahoo are "compelled" to work with the government, which doesn't have access to their servers.
"These are specific requirements that come from a court order, this is not NSA breaking into any databases," Alexander said. "It would be illegal for us to do that."
Play VIDEO

NSA surveillance program

Play VIDEO

NSA director: European allies shared phone records

The new details about the NSA's access to Yahoo and Google data centers around the world come at a time when Congress is reconsidering the government's collection practices and authority, and as European governments are responding angrily to revelations that the NSA collected data on millions of communications in their countries. Details about the government's programs have been trickling out since Snowden shared documents with the Post and Guardian newspaper in June.
Meanwhile the Justice Department said it has joined a lawsuit against United States Investigations Services, the firm that vetted Snowden, Reuters is reporting.
The NSA's principal tool to exploit the Google and Yahoo data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency's British counterpart, GCHQ. The Post said NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.
White House officials and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA, declined to comment, the Post said.
A Yahoo spokeswoman told CBS News: "We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency."
In a statement to the Post, Google said it was "troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centers, and we are not aware of this activity." Getting free access to Google's data center traffic means the NSA has bypassed Google's "gold standard" security, the Post said.
The MUSCULAR project documents state that this collection from Yahoo and Google has led to key intelligence leads, the paper said.
Meanwhile the issue of hacking was raised at the United Nations on Wednesday. Asked by CBS News' Pamela Falk about reports of past intelligence gathering activities and the hacking of the U.N.'s internal videoconferencing system, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Martin Nesirky said the U.S. authorities had given assurances that U.N. communications are not and will not be monitored.
To the question of whether past monitoring was discussed he would not respond, but added, "The inviolability of diplomatic missions, including the United Nations, has been well established in international law. Therefore, all member states are expected to act accordingly."
© 2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
at No comments:

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Clapper contradicts White House, says Obama was aware of spying on allies

from washingtontimes.com


By Guy Taylor
-
The Washington Times
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
  • Protesters, including Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin (left), listen as NSA Director Gen. Keith B. Alexander testifies Tuesday on potential changes to the intelligence act that is the heart of revelations about U.S. spying at home and abroad. (Associated Press)
    Enlarge Photo
    Protesters, including Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin (left), listen as NSA Director ...more >
America’s top intelligence official acknowledged Tuesday that President Obama and other senior White House officials were well aware of U.S. surveillance activities targeting leaders of friendly foreign nations — a stark contradiction of the administration’s insinuation in recent days that the president was unaware of such spying.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper described the targeting of foreign leaders, including American allies, as a “fundamental” aspect of intelligence gathering, and said neither the CIA nor the National Security Agency can tap into a given leader’s private communications without White House oversight.
His testimony, made during a series of tacit exchanges Tuesday with members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, came as all sides in Congress have begun seriously examining legislative proposals that would rein in the legal framework surrounding the NSA’s snooping programs.
Two lawmakers introduced a bill Tuesday that would end the agency’s legal ability to collect and store massive amounts of private, albeit basic, telephone metadata, while a separate Senate proposal would allow the data gathering to continue under new oversight requirements.
Despite his broad characterizations about the program and the White House’s knowledge of it, Mr. Clapper sought also to defend Mr. Obama during the intelligence hearing, saying that while the president is briefed “quite frequently” on the scope of surveillance operations, it would be “unrealistic” to think his staff regularly goes over specific details, such as explicitly how or when the intelligence is being gleaned.
Testifying alongside Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the NSA, Mr. Clapper painted a picture in which recent revelations about American spying are obvious.
Both men said foreign leaders are disingenuous when expressing outrage over the snooping because America’s own allies have conducted similar spying operations against the U.S.
“Some of this reminds me a lot of the classic movie ‘Casablanca’: ‘My God, there’s gambling going on here?’” Mr. Clapper quipped at one point.
The remarks also added fresh context to the questions surging with Watergate-era flair through Washington in recent days, over exactly what the president knew about NSA efforts to tap into the private communications of some of America’s closest allies, including the cellphones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Mrs. Merkel, along with leaders from Mexico, France, Sweden, Spain and Italy have seethed publicly at international news reports drawn from documents leaked by Edward Snowden — the former NSA contractor now hiding in Russia — that reveal aspects of the American snooping program, including one mission that involved hacking into Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s emails in 2010.
The White House this week has dodged questions about one specific report that claimed Mr. Obama learned of the NSA program’s scope only a few months ago.
The story, published Monday by The Wall Street Journal, cited unidentified officials as saying Mr. Obama had moved to swiftly end the program upon learning that the U.S. was tapping Mrs. Merkel’s phones.
Speaking only the condition of anonymity with reporters, U.S. officials have said that during a personal telephone call with Mrs. Merkel last week, Mr. Obama, who sought to allay the German leader’s frustration about the NSA program, denied having known about it.
Hitting a nerve
While Mr. Clapper and Gen. Alexander asserted Tuesday that the surge of international news reports about the NSA program have been inaccurate, neither was willing to disclose much about what the highly classified program entails.
View Entire Story
© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Guy Taylor

Guy Taylor

Guy Taylor rejoined The Washington Times in 2011 as the State Department correspondent.
As a freelance journalist, Taylor’s work was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Fund For Investigative Journalism, and his stories appeared in a variety publications, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to Salon, Reason, Prospect Magazine of London, the Daily Star of Beirut, the ...

at 1 comment:

Saturday, October 26, 2013

US has been monitoring German chancellor Angela Merkel's phone since 2002, report says

from theverge



By Adrianne Jeffries on  65COMMENTS
angela merkel
The US government may have been monitoring German chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone for more than 10 years, according to a report by Der Spiegel based on internal documents from the National Security Agency (NSA).
President Barack Obama told Merkel that he was not aware her phone was being bugged, or he would have stopped it. However, he declined to say whether her phone had been monitored in the past. A separate report in Die Welt said the number of Merkel's Nokia 6120 Slide was listed in leaked NSA documents, although she's since switched to a BlackBerry Z10 smart phone.
The White House assured Merkel that her phone is not being tapped now. But today's report suggests that the surveillance went back as far as 2002, when Merkel was the head of her political party, the Christian Democratic Union. She became chancellor in 2005.
It's unclear how much data was being collected. Der Spiegel reports the surveillance was being done from a legally-registered intelligence office. The agency reportedly has 80 such offices around the world, including Paris, Madrid, Rome, Prague, Geneva, and Frankfurt, according to a 2010 NSA document.
EUROPEAN LEADERS ARE GROWING INCREASINGLY INCENSED
European leaders are growing increasingly incensed over new revelations of NSA spying on foreign citizens and governments. Details are still being revealed by former federal contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden, who turned over an unknown number of internal NSA documents to journalists.
Germany and France are now pushing the United Nations to pass a measure protectect their citizens' privacy against foreign spying, and Germany is sending representatives to Washington.
at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)