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EU parliament votes for dropped charges, asylum protection for Edward Snowden

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Resolution passed by European Parliament Thursday calls on member states to prevent whistleblower’s extradition, rendition

A sticker calling for asylum for Edward Snowden seen in Berlin. (Photo: Tony Webster/flickr/cc)

A sticker calling for asylum for Edward Snowden seen in Berlin. (Photo: Tony Webster/flickr/cc)

by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams

The European Parliament passed a resolution Thursday urging its nations to afford NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden protection.

Passed by a 285 to 281 vote, the resolution calls on EU member states to “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender.”

Snowden, who’s been residing in Russia since 2013, responded to the resolution on Twitter by calling it a “game-changer”:

While the resolution is not binding, Wolfgang Kaleck, Snowden’s lawyer in Berlin, told the Daily Dot in an email, “It is an overdue step and we urge the member States to act now to implement the resolution.”

U.S.-based digital rights group Fight for the Future welcomed the news as well. Evan Greer, the organization’s campaign director, said, “We hope that this resolution leads to a binding agreement in the EU that allows Edward Snowden to move to whichever EU country he wants, and we hope he gets an epic party thrown in his honor when he arrives.”

“The battle over mass government surveillance is a decisive moment in the history of humanity, and it’s hard to think of anyone who has done more than Edward Snowden to educate the public about the grave risks that runaway spying programs pose to our basic human rights, the future of the Internet, and freedom of expression,” he added.

The World Wide Web Foundation, which advocates for an open Internet and was founded by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, called it a “landmark resolution.” It added in a statement, “We call on national leaders to publicly commit to respecting the will of the European people and offering Snowden asylum.”

Berners-Lee said in a Reddit Ask Me Anything session last year that Snowden “should be protected, and we should have ways of protecting people like him. Because we can try to design perfect systems of government, and they will never be perfect, and when they fail, then the whistleblower may be all that saves society.”

NSA talks must focus only on terror, Sushma Swaraj tells Pakistan

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sushma-swaraj

New Delhi: The talks between the national security advisers of India and Pakistan must focus only on terrorism, said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today.

The minister quoted the Ufa statement and said the talks between the two NSAs had to be only on terrorism.

“Keeping in mind the spirit of Ufa, don’t make Hurriyat a third party to the talks, and don’t expand the subject of talks beyond terrorism,” the minister said.

“Come and talk on terror, you are welcome,” she added.

Pakistan’s NSA Sartaj Aziz is to meet Indian NSA Ajit Doval for talks on Aug 23-24.

Sushma Swaraj said that the talks would be held only on the issue of terrorism and not Kashmir, as decided in Ufa, Russia.

(Agencies)

'He should get the Nobel Peace Prize': Ellsberg champions Snowden's profound impact

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“[T]he first time…this mass surveillance that’s been going on is subjected to a genuine debate, it didn’t stand up.”

Renowned whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg spoke with The Guardian about the changing landscape of U.S. surveillance. (Photo: Steve Rhodes/flickr/cc)

Renowned whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg spoke with The Guardian about the changing landscape of U.S. surveillance. (Photo: Steve Rhodes/flickr/cc)

by Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden should be credited with helping change U.S. surveillance law, Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, said Monday in an interview with The Guardian.

“It’s interesting to see that the first time… this mass surveillance that’s been going on is subjected to a genuine debate, it didn’t stand up,” he said.

Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing secret U.S. military documents related to the Vietnam War in 1971. Snowden, who leaked a trove of classified NSA documents in 2013 and has been living in political asylum in Russia for the past three years, also faces prosecution under the Espionage Act.

Asked what should happen to Snowden, Ellsberg replied, “He should get the Nobel peace prize and he should get asylum in a west European country.”

Although “there is much more support for him month by month as people come to realise how little substance in the charges that he caused harm to us…that does not mean the intelligence community will ever forgive him for having exposed what they were doing,” Ellsberg continued.

Ellsberg is currently on a week-long European speaking tour with several other renowned U.S. whistleblowers, including Thomas Drake, who helped expose fraud and abuse in the NSA’s Trailblazer program; Coleen Rowley, who testified about the FBI’s mishandling of information related to the September 11 attacks; and Jesselyn Radack, who disclosed ethics violations committed by the FBI and currently serves as the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project.

Although the sunset of the Patriot Act on Sunday has forced the NSA to end its domestic phone records collection program, the agency will likely retain much of its surveillance power with the expected passage of the USA Freedom Act, a “compromise” bill which would renew modified versions of Section 215 and other provisions.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the NSA’s bulk phone records collection program “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized” under the Patriot Act. Referring to that decision, Ellsberg said Monday that “even the USA Freedom Act, which is better than the Patriot Act, still doesn’t really reflect the full weight of the circuit court opinion that these provisions have been unconstitutional from their beginning and what the government has been doing is illegal.”

Drake also spoke to The Guardian on Monday, stating, “This is the first time in almost 14 years that we stopped certain provisions… The national security mindset was unable to prevail.”

The USA Freedom Act, meanwhile, “effectively codifies all the secret interpretations, a lot of the other authorities they claimed were enabled by the previous legislation, including the Patriot Act,” Drake continued.

In a press briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that despite the sunset of the Patriot Act, the Obama administration would not change its view that Snowden “committed very serious crimes.”

But the importance of the Senate’s rejection of the legislation cannot be discounted, said Ellsberg, and Snowden’s influence on the changing political landscape in the U.S. deserves credit.

“This is the first time, thanks to Snowden, that the Senate really stood up and realized they have been complicit in the violation of our rights all along—unconstitutional action,” Ellsberg said. “The Senate and the House have been passive up until now and derelict in their responsibilities. At last there was opposition.”

Obama administration still after Edward Snowden

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A man holds a placard with a portrait of former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. | Photo: Reuters

A man holds a placard with a portrait of former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. | Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

The White House said Snowden must still face prosecution, despite the expiration of the surveillance program under the Patriot Act.

Former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, who exposed a mass spy program ruled illegal by U.S. federal courts, must still face prosecution despite the expiration of the Patriot Act, the White House said Monday.

“The fact is that Mr. Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the U.S. government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them,” White House Josh Earnest said during a press briefing Monday.

The surveillance program terminated after the Senate failed to reauthorize parts of the Patriot Act which expired Sunday, although the lawmakers did vote to advance the White House-backed Freedom Act so a new form of data collection is likely to be approved in the coming days, according to BBC.

The Freedom Act will curtail the phone records program by forcing the NSA to get a narrower set of records from private phone companies. The bill also requires the agency to get warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and phone call records will be maintained by the telephone companies, rather than being stored by NSA. In May, a federal appeals court rejected the government’s long-standing claim that such bulk collection was permissible under the Patriot Act, ruling instead that the NSA acted without congressional approval. However, NSA critics have expressed concern that that the bill does not go far enough to protect civil liberties of U.S. citizens, as it would still allow the intelligence agency to track calls made by people. The Freedom Act is the only legislative reform that has resulted from the Snowden’s leaks which caused public concern and debate over privacy violation by government agencies. In a series of leaked documents, Snowden revealed in 2013 that the NSA collects data from almost all U.S. phone calls, along with harvesting millions of emails and other forms of electronic communication.

U.S. federal prosecutors have accused Snowden of espionage and for exposing the NSA program, but escaped prosecution when granted political asylum in Russia where he currently resides.

Edward Snowden a 'Total Hero,' says Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak

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“It’s almost like you can’t have any secrets anymore,” Steve Wozniak says. “And the modern generation just accepts this as the status quo.”

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and says NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a 'total hero.' (Photo: Getty)

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and says NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a ‘total hero.’ (Photo: Getty)

by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams

Privacy advocate and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak considers NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be a “total hero” and laments a missed opportunity to build more privacy protections into modern computer operating systems, according to a recent interview.

Asked about Snowden in an interview with the Middle East technology website ITP.netpublished late last week, “Woz” said: “Total hero to me; total hero. Not necessarily [for] what he exposed, but the fact that he internally came from his own heart, his own belief in the United States Constitution, what democracy and freedom was about. And now a federal judge has said that NSA data collection was unconstitutional.”

Regarding today’s privacy protections—or lack thereof—the inventor, engineer, and programmer, who designed both the Apple I and Apple II computers in the late 1970s, is unimpressed.

“It’s almost impossible [to protect yourself] because today’s operating systems generally get so huge that they can only come from a few sources, like Microsoft, Google and Apple,” he said. “And those operating systems have so many millions of lines of code in them, built by tens of thousands of engineers over time, that it’s so difficult to go back and detect anything in it that’s spying on you. It’s like having a house with 50,000 doors and windows and you have no idea where there might be a tiny little camera.”

“It’s almost like you can’t have any secrets anymore,” he added. “And the modern generation just accepts this as the status quo.”

Wozniak, known to many by his nickname Woz, also lashed out at mega-corporations like Google and Facebook, which he said “are trying to make money off knowing things about you.”

As Yoni Heisler notes for the tech website BGR, “Woz’s own views on digital privacy are particularly intriguing because Woz’s own work on the Apple I and Apple II helped kickstart the personal computing revolution, helping to establish the framework for the connected world we live in today.”

During the interview, conducted during an international tech conference in Dubai, U.A.E., Wozniak also claimed the U.S. would look like Dubai—a city known for infrastructure spending, ultra-modern architecture, and lavish wealth—if it pursued different spending priorities.

“Everything is first-class,” he said of Dubai. “The United States used to talk, when I was growing up, like that’s what we were. The U.S. would look like this if we didn’t spend all our money on the military.”

US's NSA labeled Al Jazeera journalist a member of Al Qaeda

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Al Jazeera Islamabad bureau chief Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan put on watch list after years of reporting on terror groups

Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan

by Common Dreams

The U.S. government labeled Al Jazeera journalist Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan a member of al Qaeda and put him on a watch list of suspected terrorists, new reporting by the Intercept has revealed.

Zaidan, a Syrian national who serves as Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, was put on a watch list by the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2012, according to agency documents leaked in 2013 by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Among those documents are a PowerPoint slide from an NSA presentation which shows Zaidan’s face, name, terror watch list identification number, and a label that states he is a “member of Al-Qa’ida” and the Muslim Brotherhood. It also says he “works for Al Jazeera.”

As a journalist, Zaidan spent years reporting on the Taliban and al Qaeda, conducting several interviews with senior leaders in those groups, including Osama bin Laden.

“To assert that myself, or any journalist, has any affiliation with any group on account of their contact book, phone call logs, or sources is an absurd distortion of the truth and a complete violation of the profession of journalism,” Zaidan told the Intercept.

“For us to be able to inform the world, we have to be able to freely contact relevant figures in the public discourse, speak with people on the ground, and gather critical information. Any hint of government surveillance that hinders this process is a violation of press freedom and harms the public’s right to know.”

Read more at the Intercept.

Germany accused of spying on France and engaging in industrial espionage on behalf of NSA

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germany-accused-of-eavesdropping-on-top-french-officials-and-engaging-in-industrial-espionage-on-behalf-of-the-nsa

by Melodie Bouchaud, Vice

Remember German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s outrage at having her cell phone tapped by the NSA, after whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked the evidence? She accused the NSA of being “like the Stasi.”

Now, it’s been revealed that Germany’s foreign intelligence agency BND spied on senior French and European officials on behalf of the US’s National Security Agency (NSA), according to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ).

SZ reports that the BND used its satellite tracking station in Bavaria — which famously resembles a field of oversized golf balls — to eavesdrop on members of the French foreign affairs ministry, the office of the French presidency, and the European Commission.

But leaked reports that surfaced in the German media this week indicate that the NSA also relied on Germany to conduct industrial espionage on a number of European firms, as early as 2008. According to the BBC, Washington was checking for violations of trade agreements.

Germany first started sharing data with the US in 2002 under Frank-Walter Steinmeier, then chief of staff to former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The aim of the 2002 Memorandum of Agreement between Germany and the US was to strengthen cooperation on intelligence in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks and to combat global terrorism.

Asked to spy on companies like European aerospace and defense corporation EADS or helicopter manufacturer Eurocopter, BND employees apparently didn’t take long to figure out they were engaging in industrial espionage rather than the war on terror.

According to German news weekly Der Spiegel, BND employees alerted German higher-ups as early as 2008, and again in 2010, that the NSA’s intelligence requests exceeded the counterterrorism mandate of the original agreement.

Der Spiegel claims that, of the 690,000 phone numbers and 7.8 million IP addresses cleared for surveillance, 40,000 fell outside of the counterterrorism remit of the German-American intelligence pact. The US was not “solely interested in terrorism,” wrote the German weekly, but “used [Germany’s] technological resources to spy on western European companies and firms.”

German media has reported that the government turned a blind eye to NSA spying so that it might continue to receive US counterterrorism information.

On Wednesday, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere — who was responsible for the BND at the time — denied the government had lied to the German parliament about supposedly known breaches to the agreement. De Maiziere, who has been accused of lying by the German media, was pictured Wednesday on the cover of German tabloid newspaper Bild with an elongated Pinocchio nose.

The spying allegations are particularly embarrassing for Merkel, who commented at the time it was revealed that her cell phone was tapped that “spying between friends is simply unacceptable.” She’s been branded hypocritical, particularly in light of Germany’s political collaboration with France, which is also known as the “Franco-German Friendship.” Merkelhas vowed to “bring everything out into the open.”

New Zealand Plotted Hack on China With US's NSA

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Photo of New Zealand prime minister John Key, left, and Chinese premier Li Keqiang in Beijing, March 2014. (Feng Li/AP)

Photo of New Zealand prime minister John Key, left, and Chinese premier Li Keqiang in Beijing, March 2014. (Feng Li/AP)

by Ryan Gallagher and Nicky Hager

New Zealand spies teamed with National Security Agency hackers to break into a data link in the country’s largest city, Auckland, as part of a secret plan to eavesdrop on Chinese diplomats, documents reveal.

The covert operation, reported Saturday by New Zealand’s Herald on Sunday in collaboration with The Intercept, highlights the contrast between New Zealand’s public and secret approaches to its relationship with China, its largest and most important trading partner.

The hacking project suggests that New Zealand’s electronic surveillance agency, Government Communications Security Bureau, or GCSB, may have violated international treaties that prohibit the interception of diplomatic communications.

New Zealand has signed both the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, international treaties that protect the “inviolability” of diplomatic correspondance. The country’s prime minister, John Key, said in a recent speech on security that New Zealand had an obligation to support the rule of law internationally, and was “known for its integrity, reliability and independence.”

Last year, Key said that New Zealand’s relationship with China, worth an estimated $15 billion in annual two-way trade, had “never been stronger.” The relationship was not just about “purely trading,” he said, “it is so much broader and much deeper than that.”

In 2013, Key described a meeting with top Chinese officials in Beijing as “extremely warm” and told of how he was viewed as a “real friend” by the country’s premier, Li Keqiang.

At the same time, as minister in charge of the GCSB, Key was overseeing spying against China – which included the top-secret planned operation in Auckland, aimed at the Chinese consulate.

The hacking project is outlined in documents obtained by The Interceptfrom NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

A secret report called “NSA activities in progress 2013,” includes an itemtitled “New Zealand: Joint effort to exploit Chinese MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] link.” The operation, according to another NSA document, had “identified an MFA data link between the Chinese consulate and Chinese Visa Office in Auckland,” two buildings about a five-minute walk apart on the city’s busy Great South Road.

The document added that the New Zealand agency was “providing additional technical data” on the data link to the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations, a powerful unit that hacks into computer systems and networks to intercept communications. The agencies had “verbally agreed to move forward with a cooperative passive and active effort against this link,” it said.

Passive surveillance refers to a method of eavesdropping on communications that intercepts them as they are flowing over Internet cables, between satellites, or across phone networks. Active surveillance is a more aggressive tactic that involves hacking into computers; in the case of the Auckland operation, active surveillance could have involved planting spyware in the Chinese government computers or routers connected via the consulate data link.

The documents do not reveal whether the operation was successfully completed, due to the timeframe that the records cover. In May 2013, Snowden left his Hawaii-based intelligence job and flew to Hong Kong carrying the cache of secret files. In April 2013, shortly before Snowden’s departure, “formal coordination” on the hacking plan had begun between the NSA and its New Zealand counterpart, according to the documents.

More New Zealand operations targeting China appear to have been ongoing at that time. In another April 2013 NSA document describing the agency’s relationship with New Zealand spies, under the heading “What partner provides to NSA,” the first item on the list is “collection on China.” New Zealand’s GCSB surveillance agency “continues to be especially helpful in its ability to provide NSA ready access to areas and countries that are difficult for the United States to access,” the report said.

China intelligence is handled inside the New Zealand agency by a special section that focuses on economic analysis. According to sources with knowledge of the agency’s operations, its economic section, known as the “IBE,” specialised in Japanese diplomatic communications from 1981 until the late 2000s. In recent years its focus has shifted to intercepted Chinese communications, the sources say.

In response to the revelations, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in New Zealand told the Herald on Sunday that the country was “concerned” about the spying. “We attach great importance to the cyber security issue,” the spokesman said, adding that “China proposes to settle disputes through dialogue and formulate codes to regulate cyber space behaviors that are acceptable to all sides.”

China itself is known to be a major perpetrator of espionage on the global stage, and it has been repeatedly accused by the U.S. government of hacking into American computer networks. Last year, China was linked to an apparent intelligence-gathering hack on a powerful New Zealand supercomputer used to conduct weather and climate research.

But the Snowden documents have shown that countries in the so-called “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance – which includes New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia – are also heavily involved in conducting aggressive spying and hacking operations across the world.

Previous revelations have detailed how agencies in the alliance have hackedlaw–abiding companies, foreign government computers, and designed technology to attack and destroy infrastructure using cyberwar techniques. Last year, The Intercept revealed how the NSA had developed the capability to deploy millions of malware “implants” to infect computers and steal data on a large scale.

The NSA, the GCSB and the New Zealand prime minister’s office each declined to answer questions about this story.

GCSB’s acting director, Una Jagose, said in an emailed statement that the agency “exists to protect New Zealand and New Zealanders.” She added: “We have a foreign intelligence mandate. We don’t comment on speculation about matters that may or may not be operational. Everything we do is explicitly authorised and subject to independent oversight.”

'Citizenfour' triumphs: Snowden documentary nabs Oscar

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‘Thank you to Edward Snowden for his courage and for the many other whistleblowers,’ says director Laura Poitras

Laura Poitras (second from left) speaks after accepting the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for "Citizenfour" at the 87th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California February 22, 2015. The others, from left to right, producer Dirk Wilutzky, journalist Glenn Greenwald, Snowden's girlfriend Lindsay Mills, and producer Mathilde Bonnefoy. (Photo: Reuters/Mike Blake)

Laura Poitras (second from left) speaks after accepting the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for “Citizenfour” at the 87th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California February 22, 2015. The others, from left to right, producer Dirk Wilutzky, journalist Glenn Greenwald, Snowden’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills, and producer Mathilde Bonnefoy. (Photo: Reuters/Mike Blake)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

Citizenfour, the film chronicling the decision made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to expose wrongdoing to the world by leaking details of the agency’s top-secret global surveillance operation to journalists, was awarded the Best Documentary Film award at Sunday night’s Academy Award.

The award was accepted by the film’s director Laura Poitras alongside its producers, Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky. Joining them on stage was journalist Glenn Greenwald and Snowden’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills, both of whom are featured in the film.

“Thank you to Edward Snowden for his courage and for the many other whistleblowers,” Poitras said as she accepted the award.

“The disclosures that Edward Snowden revealed don’t only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself,” she added. “When the most important decisions being made affecting all of us are made in secret, we lose our ability to check the powers that control.”

Snowden himself, of course, was not at the ceremony as he remains in Russia where he has lived since 2013 under protective asylum. However, through his attorneys at the ACLU, Snowden did release an official statement in reaction to the Oscar win.

“When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant,” Snowden stated. “I’m grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received. My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world.”

In a congratulatory post on the blog of the digital freedom advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, Rainey Reitman, the group’s director of activism, said the award “recognizes not only the incredible cinematography of Poitras, but also her daring work with a high-stakes whistleblower and the journalism that kick-started a worldwide debate about surveillance and government transparency.”

Describing why the Oscar victory has import beyond the prestige of the trophy, Reitman continued:

This award means that more people will be no doubt be watching CITIZENFOUR, and thus learning about both Snowden’s sacrifice and the surveillance abuses by the United States government. For those watching the movie for the first time, there’s often a sense of urgency to get involved and fight back against mass untargeted surveillance. Here are some suggestions for getting started:

  1. Tell President Obama to amend Executive Order 12333, which is the primary legal authority the NSA uses to engage in surveillance of people worldwide.
  2. Start using encryption when communicating digitally.
  3. Speak out against reauthorization of a much-abused section of the Patriot Act which is set to expire this summer.

Explosive New Snowden Doc: NSA/GCHQ stole vital cell phone encryption keys

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New reporting by The Intercept, based on documents leaked by whistleblower, reveals how spy agencies hacked world’s largest SIM card manufacturer

'One of the biggest Snowden stories yet,' says journalist Glenn Greenwald. (Image: The Intercept)

‘One of the biggest Snowden stories yet,’ says journalist Glenn Greenwald. (Image: The Intercept)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

Explosive new reporting by The Intercept published Thursday, based on documents obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveals how the U.S. spy agency and their British counterpart, the GCHQ, worked together in order to hack into the computer systems of the world’s largest manufacturer of cell phone SIM cards – giving government spies access to highly-guarded encryption codes and unparalleled abilities to monitor the global communications of those with phones using the cards.

Following its publication, journalist Glenn Greenwald called it “one of the biggest Snowden stories yet.”

According to fellow journalists Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley, who did the reporting on the top-secret documents and detail the implications of the program, the target of the government hacking operation was a company called Gemalto, based in the Netherlands, which makes SIM cards for some of the best known makers of cell phones and other portable electronic products, including AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and hundreds of other global brands. The acronym SIM stands for “subscriber identity module” and is a small intergrated circuit within a phone that is used to authenticate users and relay key information to the network on which the phone is operating.

As Scahill and Begley report:

With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.

As part of the covert operations against Gemalto, spies from GCHQ — with support from the NSA — mined the private communications of unwitting engineers and other company employees in multiple countries.

In a series of tweets, both Scahill and Greenwald offered context for the latest reporting:

For its part, Gemalto told The Intercept it was totally unaware of the security breach or that the encryption keys to any of its cards had been compromised. In fact, after being reached for comment on the operation, Gemalto directed its own security team to investigate the situation, but told the journalists they could find no trace of the hack. However, according to the top-secret document detailing the program leaked by Snowden, an operative with the NSA boasted, “[We] believe we have their entire network.”

Technology experts who spoke with Scahill and Begley said the theft of the encryption keys was highly troubling. Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the idea that the NSA has stolen these encryption keys “will send a shock wave through the security community.”

Told about the program, Gerard Schouw, a member of the Dutch Parliament, said the revelation was “unbelievable.” And repeated: “Unbelievable.”

According to The Intercept:

Last November, the Dutch government amended its constitution to include explicit protection for the privacy of digital communications, including those made on mobile devices. “We have, in the Netherlands, a law on the [activities] of secret services. And hacking is not allowed,” he said. Under Dutch law, the interior minister would have to sign off on such operations by foreign governments’ intelligence agencies. “I don’t believe that he has given his permission for these kind of actions.”

The U.S. and British intelligence agencies pulled off the encryption key heist in great stealth, giving them the ability to intercept and decrypt communications without alerting the wireless network provider, the foreign government or the individual user that they have been targeted. “Gaining access to a database of keys is pretty much game over for cellular encryption,” says Matthew Green, a cryptography specialist at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. The massive key theft is “bad news for phone security. Really bad news.”

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