enhanced_deficit
06-09-2013, 04:14 AM
According to an article in the American technology magazine "Wired" (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/shady-companies-nsa/all/1) from April 2012, two Israeli companies – which the magazine describes as having close connections to the Israeli security community – conduct bugging and wiretapping for the NSA.
Verint, which took over its parent company Comverse Technology earlier this year, is responsible for tapping the communication lines of the American telephone giant Verizon, according to a past Verizon employee sited by James Bamford in Wired. Neither Verint nor Verizon commented on the matter.
Both Verint and Narus have ties to the Israeli intelligence agency and the Israel Defense Forces intelligence-gathering unit 8200. Hanan Gefen, a former commander of the 8200 unit, told Forbes magazine in 2007 (http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/israel-military-unit-ventures-biz-cx_gk_0208israel.html) that Comverse's technology, which was formerly the parent company of Verint and merged with it this year, was directly influenced by the technology of 8200. Ori Cohen, one of the founders of Narus, told Fortune magazine in 2001 (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/10/15/311567/) that his partners had done technology work for the Israeli intelligence.
Original Wired 2012 report excerpts:
Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA
By James Bamford (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/author/james-bamford/) 04.03.12
Army General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, is having a busy year — hopping around the country, cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency’s greatly expanded eavesdropping network.
In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia.
Designed to house about 4,000 earphone-clad intercept operators, analysts and other specialists, many of them employed by private contractors, it will have a 2,800-square-foot fitness center open 24/7, 47 conference rooms and VTCs, and “22 caves,” according to an NSA brochure from the event. No television news cameras were allowed within two miles of the ceremony.
The climax, however, will be the opening next year of the NSA’s mammoth 1-million-square-foot, $2 billion Utah Data Center. The centerpiece in the agency’s decade-long building boom, it will be the “cloud” where the trillions of millions of intercepted phone calls, e-mails, and data trails will reside, to be scrutinized by distant analysts over highly encrypted fiber-optic links.
And with some of the key companies building the U.S.’s surveillance infrastructure for the digital age employing unstable employees, crooked executives, and having troubling ties to foreign intelligence services, it’s not clear that Americans should trust the secretive agency,even if its current agency chief claims he doesn’t approve of extrajudicial spying on Americans. His predecessor, General Michael V. Hayden, made similar claims while secretly conducting the warrantless wiretapping program.
In addition to constructing the Stellar Wind center, and then running the operation, secretive contractors with questionable histories and little oversight were also used to do the actual bugging of the entire U.S. telecommunications network.
According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint (http://verint.com/), owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon, which I first reported in my book The Shadow Factory in 2008. Verint did not return a call seeking comment, while Verizon said it does not comment on such matters.
At AT&T the wiretapping rooms are powered by software and hardware from Narus (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70908), now owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/05/att_whistleblow/) in 2004. Narus did not return a call seeking comment.
What is especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to that country’s intelligence service, a country with a long and aggressive history of spying on the U.S.
In fact, according to Binney, the advanced analytical and data mining software the NSA had developed for both its worldwide and international eavesdropping operations was secretly passed to Israel by a mid-level employee, apparently with close connections to the country. The employee, a technical director in the Operations Directorate, “who was a very strong supporter of Israel,” said Binney, “gave, unbeknownst to us, he gave the software that we had, doing these fast rates, to the Israelis.”
Because of his position, it was something Binney should have been alerted to, but wasn’t.
But Binney now suspects that Israeli intelligence in turn passed the technology on to Israeli companies who operate in countries around the world, including the U.S. In return, the companies could act as extensions of Israeli intelligence and pass critical military, economic and diplomatic information back to them. “And then five years later, four or five years later, you see a Narus device,” he said. “I think there’s a connection there, we don’t know for sure.”
Narus (http://www.narus.com/) was formed in Israel in November 1997 by six Israelis with much of its money coming from Walden Israel, an Israeli venture capital company. Its founder and former chairman, Ori Cohen (http://www.haaretz.com/news/ori-cohen-private-eye-1.192771), once told Israel’s Fortune Magazine that his partners have done technology work for Israeli intelligence. (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/10/15/311567/index.htm) And among the five founders was Stanislav Khirman (http://www.linkedin.com/in/khirman), a husky, bearded Russian who had previously worked for Elta Systems, Inc. A division of Israel Aerospace Industries, Ltd., Elta (http://www.iai.co.il/17887-en/Groups_ELTA.aspx) specializes in developing advanced eavesdropping systems for Israeli defense and intelligence organizations. At Narus, Khirman became the chief technology officer.
A few years ago, Narus boasted that it is “known for its ability to capture and collect data from the largest networks around the world.” The company says its equipment is capable of “providing unparalleled monitoring and intercept capabilities to service providers and government organizations around the world” and that “Anything that comes through [an Internet protocol network], we can record. We can reconstruct all of their e-mails, along with attachments, see what Web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their [Voice over Internet Protocol] calls.”
Like Narus, Verint was founded by in Israel by Israelis, including Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, a former Israeli intelligence officer. Some 800 employees work for Verint, including 350 who are based in Israel, primarily working in research and development and operations, according to the Jerusalem Post (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-50140593.html). Among its products is STAR-GATE, which according to the company’s sales literature (http://verint.com/communications_interception/section2a.cfm?article_level2_category_id=7&article_level2a_ib%20d=220), lets “service providers … access communications on virtually any type of network, retain communication data for as long as required, and query and deliver content and data …” and was “[d]esigned to manage vast numbers of targets, concurrent sessions, call data records, and communications.”
In a rare and candid admission (http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/israel-military-unit-ventures-biz-cx_gk_0208israel.html) to Forbes, Retired Brig. Gen. Hanan Gefen, a former commander of the highly secret Unit 8200, Israel’s NSA, noted his former organization’s influence on Comverse, which owns Verint, as well as other Israeli companies that dominate the U.S. eavesdropping and surveillance market. “Take NICE, Comverse and Check Point for example, three of the largest high-tech companies, which were all directly influenced by 8200 technology,” said Gefen. “Check Point was founded by Unit alumni. Comverse’s main product, the Logger, is based on the Unit’s technology.”
According to a former chief of Unit 8200, both the veterans of the group and much of the high-tech intelligence equipment they developed are now employed in high-tech firms around the world. “Cautious estimates indicate that in the past few years,” he told a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha’artez (http://rpdefense.over-blog.com/article-une-unite-d-elite-qui-a-pour-but-de-developper-les-prouesses-technologiques-de-tsahal-85544009.html) in 2000, “Unit 8200 veterans have set up some 30 to 40 high-tech companies, including 5 to 10 that were floated on Wall Street.” Referred to only as “Brigadier General B,” he added, “This correlation between serving in the intelligence Unit 8200 and starting successful high-tech companies is not coincidental: Many of the technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by Unit veterans.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/shady-companies-nsa/all/1
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/how-was-israel-involved-in-collecting-u-s-communications-intel-for-nsa-1.528529
Fox news had done this alarming report about access of some Israeli companies to US phone call records and other data few years back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWpWc_suPWo&feature=player_detailpage#t=317s
President Bush had started to clamp down on foreign spying operations in general and even started espionage prosecution of top AIPAC executives in unrelated matter. Obama had dropped that case quietly after getting in WH. There is a lot that is still not known but it appears Obama put spying on Americans on steroids.
Although Obama got lot of money for his political campaign from Israeli linked groups in the US, deals his administration has signed with Israeli intelligence technolgies companies will receive additional scrutiny now.
The Chamber's U.S.-Israel Business Initiative and National Security & Emergency Preparedness Department have teamed up to lead a National Security Trade Mission to Israel from November 11-14, 2012. Led by former Secretary of Homeland Security, The Hon. Tom Ridge, U.S. Chamber Senior Vice President of International Affairs, Myron Brilliant and U.S. Chamber Vice President, National Security & Emergency Preparedness Department, Ann M. Beauchesne, this mission will offer companies a unique opportunity to meet and network with senior Israeli government officials and business executives on key homeland security, cyber security, border security, and trade facilitation issues.
Homeland security encompasses a broad range of sectors and is an area of tremendous collaboration between the United States and Israel. From sub-sectors such as border protection technologies to cyber security, the U.S. and Israel are working together both on the intelligence and commercial side in unprecedented ways. There is also a strong “spillover effect” from Israel’s long-standing defense and security relationship with the United States into homeland security. Israel has earned itself a global reputation as a forerunner for providing leading security and emergency preparedness solutions and continues to successfully partner with key world players to protect airports, seaports, government offices, financial institutions, international events, and beyond.
There has been a flurry of activity recently aimed at advancing U.S.-Israel partnership on homeland security and trade issues.
Last month, the United States Congress passed the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, which recommends several ways to strengthen bilateral cooperation in a range of areas including homeland security, advanced technology, energy, intelligence, and cyber security. This legislation paves the way for additional public-private partnerships between the U.S. and Israel in related sectors.
In May, The Hon. Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security visited Israel in May for discussions on collaboration with international partners to combat terrorism, and facilitate trade and travel. She also signed a joint statement with the Government of Israel on the implementation of the Global Entry trusted traveler program for Israeli citizens. With the goal of enhancing U.S.-Israel collaboration in Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Israeli Ministry of Public Security (MOPS) have recently announced a list of high-priority areas related to first responders, disaster management, cyber security and explosive detection for suggested bilateral collaboration in research and development. They can be viewed here (http://www.birdf.com/_Uploads/dbsAttachedFiles/MOPS_DHS_Topics.pdf).
http://www.usisraelbusiness.com/u-s-israel-business-initiative-executive-update/
Verint, which took over its parent company Comverse Technology earlier this year, is responsible for tapping the communication lines of the American telephone giant Verizon, according to a past Verizon employee sited by James Bamford in Wired. Neither Verint nor Verizon commented on the matter.
Both Verint and Narus have ties to the Israeli intelligence agency and the Israel Defense Forces intelligence-gathering unit 8200. Hanan Gefen, a former commander of the 8200 unit, told Forbes magazine in 2007 (http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/israel-military-unit-ventures-biz-cx_gk_0208israel.html) that Comverse's technology, which was formerly the parent company of Verint and merged with it this year, was directly influenced by the technology of 8200. Ori Cohen, one of the founders of Narus, told Fortune magazine in 2001 (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/10/15/311567/) that his partners had done technology work for the Israeli intelligence.
Original Wired 2012 report excerpts:
Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA
By James Bamford (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/author/james-bamford/) 04.03.12
Army General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, is having a busy year — hopping around the country, cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency’s greatly expanded eavesdropping network.
In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia.
Designed to house about 4,000 earphone-clad intercept operators, analysts and other specialists, many of them employed by private contractors, it will have a 2,800-square-foot fitness center open 24/7, 47 conference rooms and VTCs, and “22 caves,” according to an NSA brochure from the event. No television news cameras were allowed within two miles of the ceremony.
The climax, however, will be the opening next year of the NSA’s mammoth 1-million-square-foot, $2 billion Utah Data Center. The centerpiece in the agency’s decade-long building boom, it will be the “cloud” where the trillions of millions of intercepted phone calls, e-mails, and data trails will reside, to be scrutinized by distant analysts over highly encrypted fiber-optic links.
And with some of the key companies building the U.S.’s surveillance infrastructure for the digital age employing unstable employees, crooked executives, and having troubling ties to foreign intelligence services, it’s not clear that Americans should trust the secretive agency,even if its current agency chief claims he doesn’t approve of extrajudicial spying on Americans. His predecessor, General Michael V. Hayden, made similar claims while secretly conducting the warrantless wiretapping program.
In addition to constructing the Stellar Wind center, and then running the operation, secretive contractors with questionable histories and little oversight were also used to do the actual bugging of the entire U.S. telecommunications network.
According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint (http://verint.com/), owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon, which I first reported in my book The Shadow Factory in 2008. Verint did not return a call seeking comment, while Verizon said it does not comment on such matters.
At AT&T the wiretapping rooms are powered by software and hardware from Narus (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70908), now owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/05/att_whistleblow/) in 2004. Narus did not return a call seeking comment.
What is especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to that country’s intelligence service, a country with a long and aggressive history of spying on the U.S.
In fact, according to Binney, the advanced analytical and data mining software the NSA had developed for both its worldwide and international eavesdropping operations was secretly passed to Israel by a mid-level employee, apparently with close connections to the country. The employee, a technical director in the Operations Directorate, “who was a very strong supporter of Israel,” said Binney, “gave, unbeknownst to us, he gave the software that we had, doing these fast rates, to the Israelis.”
Because of his position, it was something Binney should have been alerted to, but wasn’t.
But Binney now suspects that Israeli intelligence in turn passed the technology on to Israeli companies who operate in countries around the world, including the U.S. In return, the companies could act as extensions of Israeli intelligence and pass critical military, economic and diplomatic information back to them. “And then five years later, four or five years later, you see a Narus device,” he said. “I think there’s a connection there, we don’t know for sure.”
Narus (http://www.narus.com/) was formed in Israel in November 1997 by six Israelis with much of its money coming from Walden Israel, an Israeli venture capital company. Its founder and former chairman, Ori Cohen (http://www.haaretz.com/news/ori-cohen-private-eye-1.192771), once told Israel’s Fortune Magazine that his partners have done technology work for Israeli intelligence. (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/10/15/311567/index.htm) And among the five founders was Stanislav Khirman (http://www.linkedin.com/in/khirman), a husky, bearded Russian who had previously worked for Elta Systems, Inc. A division of Israel Aerospace Industries, Ltd., Elta (http://www.iai.co.il/17887-en/Groups_ELTA.aspx) specializes in developing advanced eavesdropping systems for Israeli defense and intelligence organizations. At Narus, Khirman became the chief technology officer.
A few years ago, Narus boasted that it is “known for its ability to capture and collect data from the largest networks around the world.” The company says its equipment is capable of “providing unparalleled monitoring and intercept capabilities to service providers and government organizations around the world” and that “Anything that comes through [an Internet protocol network], we can record. We can reconstruct all of their e-mails, along with attachments, see what Web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their [Voice over Internet Protocol] calls.”
Like Narus, Verint was founded by in Israel by Israelis, including Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, a former Israeli intelligence officer. Some 800 employees work for Verint, including 350 who are based in Israel, primarily working in research and development and operations, according to the Jerusalem Post (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-50140593.html). Among its products is STAR-GATE, which according to the company’s sales literature (http://verint.com/communications_interception/section2a.cfm?article_level2_category_id=7&article_level2a_ib%20d=220), lets “service providers … access communications on virtually any type of network, retain communication data for as long as required, and query and deliver content and data …” and was “[d]esigned to manage vast numbers of targets, concurrent sessions, call data records, and communications.”
In a rare and candid admission (http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/israel-military-unit-ventures-biz-cx_gk_0208israel.html) to Forbes, Retired Brig. Gen. Hanan Gefen, a former commander of the highly secret Unit 8200, Israel’s NSA, noted his former organization’s influence on Comverse, which owns Verint, as well as other Israeli companies that dominate the U.S. eavesdropping and surveillance market. “Take NICE, Comverse and Check Point for example, three of the largest high-tech companies, which were all directly influenced by 8200 technology,” said Gefen. “Check Point was founded by Unit alumni. Comverse’s main product, the Logger, is based on the Unit’s technology.”
According to a former chief of Unit 8200, both the veterans of the group and much of the high-tech intelligence equipment they developed are now employed in high-tech firms around the world. “Cautious estimates indicate that in the past few years,” he told a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha’artez (http://rpdefense.over-blog.com/article-une-unite-d-elite-qui-a-pour-but-de-developper-les-prouesses-technologiques-de-tsahal-85544009.html) in 2000, “Unit 8200 veterans have set up some 30 to 40 high-tech companies, including 5 to 10 that were floated on Wall Street.” Referred to only as “Brigadier General B,” he added, “This correlation between serving in the intelligence Unit 8200 and starting successful high-tech companies is not coincidental: Many of the technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by Unit veterans.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/shady-companies-nsa/all/1
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/how-was-israel-involved-in-collecting-u-s-communications-intel-for-nsa-1.528529
Fox news had done this alarming report about access of some Israeli companies to US phone call records and other data few years back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWpWc_suPWo&feature=player_detailpage#t=317s
President Bush had started to clamp down on foreign spying operations in general and even started espionage prosecution of top AIPAC executives in unrelated matter. Obama had dropped that case quietly after getting in WH. There is a lot that is still not known but it appears Obama put spying on Americans on steroids.
Although Obama got lot of money for his political campaign from Israeli linked groups in the US, deals his administration has signed with Israeli intelligence technolgies companies will receive additional scrutiny now.
The Chamber's U.S.-Israel Business Initiative and National Security & Emergency Preparedness Department have teamed up to lead a National Security Trade Mission to Israel from November 11-14, 2012. Led by former Secretary of Homeland Security, The Hon. Tom Ridge, U.S. Chamber Senior Vice President of International Affairs, Myron Brilliant and U.S. Chamber Vice President, National Security & Emergency Preparedness Department, Ann M. Beauchesne, this mission will offer companies a unique opportunity to meet and network with senior Israeli government officials and business executives on key homeland security, cyber security, border security, and trade facilitation issues.
Homeland security encompasses a broad range of sectors and is an area of tremendous collaboration between the United States and Israel. From sub-sectors such as border protection technologies to cyber security, the U.S. and Israel are working together both on the intelligence and commercial side in unprecedented ways. There is also a strong “spillover effect” from Israel’s long-standing defense and security relationship with the United States into homeland security. Israel has earned itself a global reputation as a forerunner for providing leading security and emergency preparedness solutions and continues to successfully partner with key world players to protect airports, seaports, government offices, financial institutions, international events, and beyond.
There has been a flurry of activity recently aimed at advancing U.S.-Israel partnership on homeland security and trade issues.
Last month, the United States Congress passed the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, which recommends several ways to strengthen bilateral cooperation in a range of areas including homeland security, advanced technology, energy, intelligence, and cyber security. This legislation paves the way for additional public-private partnerships between the U.S. and Israel in related sectors.
In May, The Hon. Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security visited Israel in May for discussions on collaboration with international partners to combat terrorism, and facilitate trade and travel. She also signed a joint statement with the Government of Israel on the implementation of the Global Entry trusted traveler program for Israeli citizens. With the goal of enhancing U.S.-Israel collaboration in Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Israeli Ministry of Public Security (MOPS) have recently announced a list of high-priority areas related to first responders, disaster management, cyber security and explosive detection for suggested bilateral collaboration in research and development. They can be viewed here (http://www.birdf.com/_Uploads/dbsAttachedFiles/MOPS_DHS_Topics.pdf).
http://www.usisraelbusiness.com/u-s-israel-business-initiative-executive-update/