Intelligence

With friends like Washington, Brussels needs no enemies
US President Barack Obama addressed the ministers of the EU-US Summit in Brussels with high-sounding, candy-coated phrases in an apparent effort to mask deep strains in the transatlantic partnership. Very little of what Obama said in Brussels on Wednesday was any different from anything he’d already said before in Prague [...]
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Targeting Huawei: NSA Spied on Chinese Government and Networking Firm
The American government conducted a major intelligence offensive against China, with targets including the Chinese government and networking company Huawei, according to documents from former NSA worker Edward Snowden that have been viewed by SPIEGEL. Among the American intelligence service's targets were former Chinese President Hu Jintao, the Chinese Trade Ministry, banks, as well as telecommuni [...]
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Google encrypts Gmail to safeguard against NSA snooping
Google is doing its best to put a lid on the NSA'€™s prying eyes by using enhanced encryption technology to make its flagship email service airtight. “Your email is important to you, and making sure it stays safe and always available is important to us,” Gmail engineering security chief, Nicolas Lidzborski, said in a blog post. [...]
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NSA recording “€˜100 percent”€™ of another country’€™s phone calls
A secret spy program developed by the National Security Agency and reported publically for the first time on Tuesday has given the United States the ability to digitally record the contents of each and every phone call occurring across entire nations. [...]
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New Chinese stealth jet built with stolen F-35 component designs
A new Chinese stealth fighter jet'€™s design includes details obtained in a Chinese cyber-spying operation conducted seven years ago against the F-35 Lightning II, according to a new report based on conversations with US military officials and contractors. The Chinese espionage plot, dubbed Operation Byzantine Hades by US intelligence agencies, primarily targeted government as well as US industr [...]
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Snowden leak: NSA plans to infect “€˜millions”€™ of computers
Yet more previously secret surveillance operations waged by the United States National Security Agency were made public Wednesday morning thanks to leaked documents supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. [...]
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Snowden, Assange and Greenwald scheduled to address Texas tech conference from abroad
Three of the top presenters scheduled to speak at a technology conference in Texas next week will deliver their remarks remotely due to leak investigations that have left them all unable or unwilling to come to the United States. [...]
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GCHQ taught NSA how to monitor Facebook, Twitter in real time |€“ Snowden leak
British intelligence officials can infiltrate the very cables that transfer information across the internet, as well as monitor users in real time on sites like Facebook without the company's consent, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden. The internal documents reveal that British analysts gave instruction to members of the National Security Agency in 2012, showing them how to spy on Fa [...]
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GCHQ and NSA intercepted Yahoo users’ private photographs
British and American surveillance agencies teamed up to develop a system that collected millions of images from the webcams of unsuspecting and innocent internet users, new leaked documents reveal. This “Optic Nerve” program — administered by the UK's GCHQ with the assistance of the National Security Agency [...]
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No spying on friends: NSA bugs Merkel aides instead of chancellor
In the wake of President Obama's promise to stop spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the US intelligence has switched its attention to her top government officials, a German newspaper reported. Washington's relations with Germany were strained last year after revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was conducting mass surveillance in Germany and even tapped the mobile phone o [...]
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US plunges in World Press Freedom index after NSA leaks, attacks on whistleblowers
Press freedom in the United States has suffered "€œone of the most significant declines"€ in the last year after sacrificing information to national security, with the NSA surveillance scandal topping the list of wrongdoing. That’s according to The World Press Freedom Index for 2014 from Reporters Without Borders (RWB), which put the US in 46th place out of 180 countries, a 13-place drop fr [...]
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Hackers sue Merkel and entire German government over NSA spying
Europe'€™s largest association of hackers has filed a criminal complaint against the German government for aiding foreign spying by NSA and GCHQ, and violating the right to citizens'€™ privacy, basing their case on leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden. [...]
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Attention fliers: Canada’€™s electronic spy agency is following you – new Snowden leaks
Documents released by US whistleblower Edward Snowden show the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) used airport Wi-Fi to track passengers from around the world. Travelers passing through a major Canadian airport were potentially caught up in a vast electronic surveillance net, which allowed the nation’s electronic spy agency to track the wireless devices of thousands of airline p [...]
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GCHQ chief to step down by year’€™s end following Snowden leaks
The head of GCHQ, Britain's electronic intelligence agency, will step down by year’s end, the Foreign Office said. Officials denied his departure was linked to public outrage over mass surveillance revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. [...]
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Top lawyer to MPs: GCHQ mass surveillance largely illegal
A substantial part of the GCHQ's dragnet snooping program is most likely illegal and was approved by government ministers despite breaching human rights and surveillance laws, a legal analysis requested by British MPs has found, The Guardian reports. [...]
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NSA is after industrial spying -€“ Snowden to German TV
The NSA agency is not preoccupied solely with national security, but also spies on foreign industrial entities in US business interests, former American intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, has revealed in an interview to German TV. [...]
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Independent panel denounces “€˜chilling”€™ NSA program as illegal, demands end
An independent review board has labeled NSA hoarding of phone data "€˜illegal"€™, adding that while it poses a serious threat to civil liberties, it was unable to find a "€œsingle instance"€ of a threat to the US where the program made any difference. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) released an acerbic report stating that the statute upon which the NSA program was [...]
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Chelsea Manning awarded 2014 Sam Adams Prize for Integrity in Intelligence
€‹The former US Army intelligence analyst who was found guilty of releasing the largest set of classified documents in US history will be honored in absentia for her role in exposing the dark nature of civilian casualties in Iraq. [...]
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Former NSA whistleblowers plead for chance to brief Obama on agency abuses
A group of former National Security Agency insiders who went on to become whistleblowers have written a letter to President Barack Obama, requesting a meeting with him to offer "€œa fuller picture"€ of the spy agency's systemic problems. The group of four intelligence specialists - William Binney, Thomas Drake, Edward Loomis and Kirk Wiebe [...]
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