from the but-we-won't-abuse-our-position dept.
The National Security Agency has been warrantlessly sifting through Americans' international Internet traffic on behalf of the FBI in order to identify malicious hackers since 2012, according to the New York Times, ProPublica, and The Intercept:
The revelation calls into question previous statements made by senior U.S. officials about a claimed lack of ability to detect cyberattacks within the United States. During his time as director of the NSA, for instance, Keith Alexander continually lobbied for more cybersecurity powers, but did not mention the scope of those already obtained by the agency. In March 2014, the then-NSA director told a cybersecurity conference at Georgetown University: "An attack on Wall Street or an exploit going against Wall Street — NSA and Cyber Command would probably not see that. We have no capability there. Against everything that's been said, the fact is we don't have the ability to see it."
The Times report, an embargoed copy of which was shared with The Intercept because co-founder Laura Poitras contributed to it, also reveals that the FBI negotiated in 2012 to use the NSA's surveillance capabilities to monitor Internet traffic passing over "chokepoints operated by U.S. providers through which international communications enter and leave the United States." The NSA would reportedly send the intercepted traffic to a "cyberdata repository" maintained by the bureau in Quantico, Virginia.
Original Submission
Related Stories
Wired and others report that ProPublica has become the first "major" news outlet to launch a version of the site using Tor:
On Wednesday, ProPublica became the first known major media outlet to launch a version of its site that runs as a "hidden service" on the Tor network, the anonymity system that powers the thousands of untraceable websites that are sometimes known as the darknet or dark web. The move, ProPublica says, is designed to offer the best possible privacy protections for its visitors seeking to read the site's news with their anonymity fully intact. Unlike mere SSL encryption, which hides the content of the site a web visitor is accessing, the Tor hidden service would ensure that even the fact that the reader visited ProPublica's website would be hidden from an eavesdropper or Internet service provider.
"Everyone should have the ability to decide what types of metadata they leave behind," says Mike Tigas, ProPublica's developer who worked on the Tor hidden service. "We don't want anyone to know that you came to us or what you read."
ProPublica accepts news tips using a SecureDrop hidden service. The recent move to include a Tor hidden site was motivated by concerns that Chinese readers could be put at risk by reading reports about the country's Web censorship.
The site can be reached at: propub3r6espa33w.onion
ProPublica often collaborates with The New York Times, NPR, PBS, The Intercept and others to publish stories. Here are a few ProPublica stories that have made it to our front page:
Somebody's Already Using Verizon's ID to Track Users
Fines Remain Rare as Health Data Breaches Multiply
NSA Monitors Americans' International Internet Traffic to Hunt Hackers for FBI
Fairview: AT&T's Collaborative Relationship with NSA Revealed
Psychology Practice Revealed Patients' Mental Disorders in Debt Lawsuits
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @03:18AM
I knew I shouldn't have downloaded that free OS from Ireland!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @01:19PM
Not to worry. Judging from the OPM hack they're not very good at it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @03:45AM
They protect us from the bad man.
The bad man watches us while we
PPPPP EEEEE EEEEE PPPPP EEEEE EEEEE
P P E E P P E E
PPPPP EEEEE EEEEE PPPPP EEEEE EEEEE
P E E P E E
P EEEEE EEEEE P EEEEE EEEEE
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Saturday June 06 2015, @06:27AM
Pardon me for asking, but isn't just about every aspect of that illegal, going against both the intent and letter of several laws, the Constitution, and the mandates of both agencies?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @02:04PM
Yeah, so?
Regards,
The US Government
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Saturday June 06 2015, @04:54PM
Seems you didn't get the memo. We're no longer a nation of laws; laws are irrelevant save for those the men who govern us wish to bring down. We are now a nation of men, not of laws.
...and we've been that way for a while, now, in fact....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:48AM
No, because once your data leaves the borders of the US, the constitution no longer applies to it.
And if major trunk lines just happen to briefly cross into, say, Canada, before continuing on to the next US city...
(Score: 3, Informative) by kadal on Saturday June 06 2015, @02:10PM
Or as Schneier [schneier.com] puts it,
the NSA is operating a signature-based intrusion detection system on the Internet backbone
He links to this really good blog piece: http://webpolicy.org/2015/06/04/nsa-cybersecurity/ [webpolicy.org]