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PRISM

NSA built 'Google-like' search engine for metadata

posted onAugust 26, 2014
by l33tdawg

The National Security Agency built a "Google-like" search engine to give domestic and international government agencies access to details of billions of calls, texts and instant messages sent by millions of people, according to The Intercept.

The search engine, called ICReach, had behind it roughly 850 billion pieces of metadata in 2007 on calls made largely but not exclusively by foreign nationals, the report said.

Cryptography experts pen open letter against NSA surveillance

posted onJanuary 27, 2014
by l33tdawg

The pressure on the US government to reform the NSA’s surveillance programs is growing. Apple, Google, and Microsoft all called for change last month alongside a petition from international authors calling for an end to mass surveillance. President Obama announced big changes to government surveillance programs, but most of them centered around the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records, not its spying on internet communications. In an open letter published on Friday, more than 50 cryptography experts are asking the US government to make more changes to protect privacy.

Obama promises to curtail NSA PRISM snooping

posted onJanuary 20, 2014
by l33tdawg

Barack Obama has announced reforms to somewhat limit and examine US National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, in order to win back trust following spying revelations made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Obama said in a speech today that he will issue presidential directives promising a number of key changes to how US intelligence agencies collect and examine data.

NSA's snooping dragnet has little impact on terrorism

posted onJanuary 14, 2014
by l33tdawg

The US government, through its National Security Agency, keeps records of every single phone call made by every single phone in the country – and probably almost anything that travels over the internet. The oft-repeated rationale is that this kind of bulk data collection has the power to prevent terrorist attacks and keep the US safe.

How the NSA (may have) put a backdoor in RSA's cryptography: A technical primer

posted onJanuary 6, 2014
by l33tdawg

There has been a lot of news lately about nefarious-sounding backdoors being inserted into cryptographic standards and toolkits. One algorithm, a pseudo-random bit generator, Dual_EC_DRBG, was ratified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2007 and is attracting a lot of attention for having a potential backdoor. This is the algorithm that the NSA reportedly paid RSA $10 million in exchange for making it the default way for its BSAFE crypto toolkit to generated random numbers.

Noted speaker, Mikko Hypponen, cancels RSA talk in protest to NSA collaboration allegations

posted onDecember 24, 2013
by l33tdawg

In a letter to Joseph Tucci, and Art Coviello, F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen says he is canceling his talk at the 2014 RSA Conference, due to the company's deal with the NSA.

Mikko Hypponen, a widely known security expert and speaker, has given many presentations at the RSA Conference over the years. However, his talk scheduled for the 2014 RSA Conference in February, "Governments as Malware Authors" isn't going to happen.

NSA phone surveillance program likely unconstitutional, federal judge rules

posted onDecember 17, 2013
by l33tdawg

A federal judge in Washington ruled on Monday that the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency is likely to violate the US constitution, in the most significant legal setback for the agency since the publication of the first surveillance disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.