Breaking: More Snowden Revelations

[Warlord]

As the legal noose around whistleblower Edward Snowden tightens with the filing espionage charges by the United States government, the South China Morning Post can reveal that contrary to some reports, the former CIA analyst has not been detained, is not under police protection but is in a “safe place’’ in Hong Kong.

Snowden, who celebrated his 30th birthday on Friday as the US government made public their plan to indict him under the Espionage Act of - has divulged information to the Post which showed how computers in the SAR and on the mainland had been targeted by the NSA over a four-year period.

Now, after further scrutiny and clarification of that information, we can reveal more explosive details of the US cyber-spying operation against in Hong Kong, the mainland and the region.

Documents seen by the Post and statements by Snowden show that Washington’s cyber-spying programme carried out:


Extensive hacking of major telecommunication companies in China to access text messages
Sustained attacks on network backbones at Tsinghua University, China’s premier seat of learning.
Hacking of computers at the Hong Kong headquarters of Pacnet, which owns one of the most extensive fibre optic submarine cable networks in the region

Stay with SCMP.com (http://www.scmp.com/topics/edward-snowden) and read the full story in the Sunday Morning Post.

[mad cow]

Drip..drip....drip.....

[Warlord]

http://media.skynews.com/media/images/generated/2013/6/22/244278/default/v1/23jun1home02-1-329x437.jpg

Observer = guardian's sunday edition

[green73]

http://media.skynews.com/media/images/generated/2013/6/22/244278/default/v1/23jun1home02-1-329x437.jpg

Observer = guardian's sunday edition

I had just finally gotten over Amy Winehouse, and then the Observer had to go and pull this shit!

[FunkBuddha]

Feds press charges.

Snowden releases more info to China/Hong Kong where he is seeking asylum.


Check.

Your move, Feds.

[Origanalist]

I don't have any sympathy for China, but the US is going to dig a hole they can't get out of.

[Warlord]

Some more developments on GCHQ:

-
In response to the Guardian's latest revelations regarding the surveillance activities of GCHQ, politicians and freedom of information campaigners raised concerns about the lack of oversight and up-to-date laws with which to monitor and regulate the activities of the secret services. Former Foreign Office minister David Davis MP said documents containing an admission by GCHQ lawyers that UK oversight was "light" compared with that in the US were particularly worrying.

"This reinforces the view that the oversight structure is wholly inadequate. Really what is needed is a full-scale independent judicial oversight that reports to parliament."

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "It's possible to be shocked but not surprised at this blanket surveillance on a breathtaking scale. The authorities appear to be kidding themselves with a very generous interpretation of the law that cannot stand with article 8 of the European convention on human rights.

"To argue this isn't snooping because they haven't got time to read all this private information is like arguing we'd all be comfortable with our homes being raided and our private papers copied – as long as the authorities stored them in sealed plastic bags."


Sir Malcolm Rifkind has called an urgent inquiry

On Saturday the former British foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who now chairs the intelligence and security committee, said the committee would launch an investigation into the latest revelations. The committee will receive an official report from GCHQ about the story within days and will then decide whether to call witnesses to give oral evidence. If it is then thought necessary, the committee can require GCHQ to submit relevant data.

MI5 feared GCHQ went 'too far' over phone and internet monitoring

Senior figures inside British intelligence have been alarmed by GCHQ's secret decision to tap into transatlantic cables in order to engage in the bulk interception of phone calls and internet traffic.

According to one source who has been directly involved in GCHQ operations, concerns were expressed when the project was being discussed internally in 2008: "We felt we were starting to overstep the mark with some of it. People from MI5 were complaining that they were going too far from a civil liberties perspective … We all had reservations about it, because we all thought: 'If this was used against us, we wouldn't stand a chance'."

The Guardian revealed on Friday that GCHQ has placed more than 200 probes on transatlantic cables and is processing 600m "telephone events" a day as well as up to 39m gigabytes of internet traffic. Using a programme codenamed Tempora, it can store and analyse voice recordings, the content of emails, entries on Facebook, the use of websites as well as the "metadata" which records who has contacted who. The programme is shared with GCHQ's American partner, the National Security Agency.

Interviews with the UK source and the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden raise questions about whether the programme:

■ Exploits existing law which was passed by parliament without any anticipation that it would be used for this purpose.

■ For the first time allows GCHQ to process bulk internal UK traffic which is routed overseas via these cables.

■ Allows the NSA to engage in bulk intercepts of internal US traffic which would be forbidden in its own territory.

■ Functions with no effective oversight.

The key law is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Ripa, which requires the home secretary or foreign secretary to sign warrants for the interception of the communications of defined targets. But the law also allows the foreign secretary to sign certificates that authorise GCHQ to trawl for broad categories of information on condition that one end of the communication is outside the UK.

According to the UK source: "Not so long ago, this was all about attaching crocodile clips to copper wires. And it was all about voice. Now, it's about the internet – massive scale – but still using the same law that was devised for crocodile clips. Ripa was primarily designed for voice, not for this level of interception. They are going round Ripa. The legislation doesn't exist for this. They are using old legislation and adapting it."

The source claimed that even the conventional warrant system has been distorted – whereas police used to ask for a warrant before intercepting a target's communications, they will now ask GCHQ to intercept the target's communications and then use that information to seek a warrant.

There is a particular concern that the programme allows GCHQ to break the boundary which stopped it engaging in the bulk interception of internal UK communications. The Ripa requirement that one end of a communication must be outside the UK was a significant restriction when it was applied to phone calls using satellites, but it is no longer effective in the world of fibre-optic cables. "The point is that this is an island," the source said. "Everything comes and goes – nearly everything – down fibre-optic cables. You make a mobile phone call, it goes to a mast and then down into a fibre-optic cable, under the ground and away. And even if the call is UK to UK, it's very likely – because of the way the system is structured – to go out of the UK and come back in through these fibre-optic channels."

Internet traffic is also liable to be routed internationally even if the message is exchanged between two people within the UK. "At one point, I was told that we were getting 85% of all UK domestic traffic – voice, internet, all of it – via these international cables."

Last year, the government was mired in difficulty when it tried to pass a communications bill that became known as the "snoopers' charter", and would have allowed the bulk interception and storage of UK voice calls and internet traffic. The source says this debate was treated with some scepticism inside the intelligence community – "We're sitting there, watching them debate the snoopers' charter, thinking: 'Well, GCHQ have been doing this for years'."

There are similar concerns about the role of the NSA. It could have chosen to attach probes to the North American end of the cables and documents shown to the Guardian by Edward Snowden suggest that key elements of the Tempora filtering process were designed by the NSA. Instead, the NSA agency has exported its computer programs and 250 of its analysts to operate the system from the UK.

Initial inquiries by the Guardian have failed to explain why this has happened, but US legislators are likely to want to check whether the NSA has sought to bypass legal or policy requirements which restrict its activity in the US. This will be particularly sensitive if it is confirmed that Tempora is also analysing internal US traffic.

The UK source challenges the official justification for the programme; that it is necessary for the fight against terrorism and serious crime: "This is not scoring very high against those targets, because they are wise to the monitoring of their communications. If the terrorists are wise to it, why are we increasing the capability?

"The answer is that you can't stop it. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we develop communications technology, the more they develop technology to intercept it. There was MS Chat – easy. Then Yahoo chat – did that, too. Then Facebook. Then Skype. Then Twitter. They keep catching up. It is good for us, but it is bad for us."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/23/mi5-feared-gchq-went-too-far

[Warlord]

GCHQ monitoring described as a 'catastrophe' by German politicians

Britain's European partners have described reports of Britain's surveillance of international electronic communications as a catastrophe and will seek urgent clarification from London.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the German justice minister said the report in the Guardian read like the plot of a film.

"If these accusations are correct, this would be a catastrophe," Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement to Reuters. "The accusations against Great Britain sound like a Hollywood nightmare. The European institutions should seek straight away to clarify the situation."

Britain's Tempora project enables it to intercept and store immense volumes of British and international communications for 30 days.

With a few months to go before federal elections, the minister's comments are likely to please Germans who are highly sensitive to government monitoring, having lived through the Stasi secret police in communist East Germany and with lingering memories of the Gestapo under the Nazis.

"The accusations make it sound as if George Orwell's surveillance society has become reality in Great Britain," said Thomas Oppermann, floor leader of the opposition Social Democrats.

Orwell's novel 1984 envisioned a futuristic security state where "Big Brother" spied on the intimate details of people's lives.

"This is unbearable," Oppermann told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. "The government must clarify these accusations and act against a total surveillance of German citizens."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/22/gchq-spying-catastrophe-german-politicans

[AlexAmore]

http://4umf.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/knockout.jpg

[HOLLYWOOD]

If anything the Germans know about spying and the FASCIST-NAZI-POLICE STATE. Now since it bothers them, are they going to do anything about? They have currently have that Communist Merkel running the show, and Mrs DDR doesn't give a fuck. She more aloof to hob nobbin with elitists from other countries.



GCHQ monitoring described as a 'catastrophe' by German politicians

Britain's European partners have described reports of Britain's surveillance of international electronic communications as a catastrophe and will seek urgent clarification from London.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the German justice minister said the report in the Guardian read like the plot of a film.

"If these accusations are correct, this would be a catastrophe," Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement to Reuters. "The accusations against Great Britain sound like a Hollywood nightmare. The European institutions should seek straight away to clarify the situation."

Britain's Tempora project enables it to intercept and store immense volumes of British and international communications for 30 days.

With a few months to go before federal elections, the minister's comments are likely to please Germans who are highly sensitive to government monitoring, having lived through the Stasi secret police in communist East Germany and with lingering memories of the Gestapo under the Nazis.

"The accusations make it sound as if George Orwell's surveillance society has become reality in Great Britain," said Thomas Oppermann, floor leader of the opposition Social Democrats.

Orwell's novel 1984 envisioned a futuristic security state where "Big Brother" spied on the intimate details of people's lives.

"This is unbearable," Oppermann told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. "The government must clarify these accusations and act against a total surveillance of German citizens."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/22/gchq-spying-catastrophe-german-politicans

[green73]

Just went up on Drudge
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/22/edward-snowden-us-china