16 ms·
Snowden Documents Reveal Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks
- eyeareque 13y ago"discovering that an American has been selected for surveillance must be mentioned in a quarterly report, “but it’s nothing to worry about.”" This is so bad. Just when you think it can't get any worse. The worst part is that more leaks with probably even more depressing revalations are on the way.
- r0h1n 13y ago> One classified document shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly monitor visitors to a WikiLeaks site. By exploiting its ability to tap into the fiber-optic cables that make up the backbone of the Internet, the agency confided to allies in 2012, it was able to collect the IP addresses of visitors in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google. This is real-time surveillance of website visitors & search terms to websites that governments don't like. I'm guessing it wouldn't take much for them to correlate those visitors to IP addresses, cookies, device IDs and cell tower signals to pinpoint people in real time too? Knock knock Who is it? It's the police. We know you're browsing Wikileaks right now. Edit: Looks like GCHQ's "ANTICRISIS GIRL" [0], the tool used to monitor Wikileaks visitors in real time, was based on Piwik [1] [0] https://prod01-cdn01.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/2014/02/piwik2.png https://prod01-cdn01.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/2014/02/pi... [1] http://piwik.org/ http://piwik.org/
- f_salmon 13y agoIt's "funny" how our western system hypocritically decries censorship in China, North Korea et al. when we do the exact same thing, just in a little bit more hidden/less detectable way.
- DanBC 13y agoComparing the UK to North Korea is fucking ridiculous. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-26223040 http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-26223040 http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26223180 http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26223180
- chongli 13y agoNot if you make the comparison repeatedly over time and graph the results.
- keithpeter 13y agoParent comment wasn't comparing UK to NK. Just pointing out that my Prime Minister has spoken in a luke warm sort of way about human rights in China and in a slightly more vigourous way about human rights in NK while knowing all the time that GCHQ were carrying out very detailed observation of oppositional Web sites. My perception was that the parent post was more about the hypocrisy of our political leaders than the UK being a totalitarian country. I agree that any suggestion that the UK is similar to NK is absurd. However, George Orwell did once point out that a revolution and the subsequent imposition of terror in the UK would actually be very easy to do within our legal system...
- praxeologist 13y agoHe is talking solely about how the governments treat internet users, so your comment makes as little sense as me mentioning that the British empire killed far more innocent people than NK ever did.
- DanBC 13y agoMost NK residents don't have any access. The ones that do have very heavily filtered Internet access. North Koreans who watch a prohibited tv show are executed or repeatedly raped while in prison or starved while in prison. Comparin the treatment of North Korean Internet users to the treatment of UK Internet users is obscene. It dilutes the actual point: UK government should not monitor the activities of its citizens without judicial oversight and very narrow reasons. That is an abuse of human rights and it is justifiably something to get angry about. But comparing "monitoring what people send to a website that distributes state secrets" with "forcing a woman to drown her new born baby in a bucket because she read the wrong book" is sub-optimal.
- DanBC 13y agoA less paranoid interpretation is to recognise that governments think that releasing secret documents poses a risk to the security of the country and so the government security agencies will want to know who is providing information to, not consuming information from, Wikileaks. This doesn't make it acceptable.
- tomp 13y agoWhy do they target Assange then?
- dangerlibrary 13y agoSo that he will tell them who is providing the source material...
- e12e 13y agoI'm sure this rationale could be used to justify targeting the Pirate Bay, too. And dropbox/file sharing services. And webmail services. Google docs and similar services. Blogs. (...)
- aspensmonster 13y agoSo I AM on a list! I feel so warm and fuzzy inside all of a sudden :)
- samstave 13y agoHow infiltrated is reddit. I'll wager on a scale from zero to one: 1.
- Phlarp 13y agoHow infiltrated is HackerNews? I'll wager on a scale from zero to one: 1.
- d0 13y agoWell spotted. To be honest, I'd be pissed off if I found out GCHQ had repurposed my project for this sort of thing. Not really possible to fix this situation either as "do no evil" license clauses are pointless.
- __alexs 13y agoIf it was GPL you might be able to argue that they violated the derivatives clause. I doubt it would help since this is top secret intel work and I'm sure they have legal loop holes that essentially allow them to ignore things as trivial as copyright when it suits them.
- eurleif 13y agohttps://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePo...
- __alexs 13y agos/GPL/AGPL/ Which raises the question of whether or not a program that passively wiretaps you falls under the provision of network services clause in that :)
- psykovsky 13y agoSeeing as they talk about the pirate bay as an example of a target I would suspect they care A LOT about copyright issues and would do anything in their power to distribute their source code for the greater good.
- e12e 13y agoThis blanket surveillance reminds me of this interview with Pete Seeger: RetroBites: Pete Seeger - Black List https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0_IME9WsHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0_IME9WsHQ
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sentenza 13y agoOk. The GCHQ affair is making me go crazy, since as soon as i read >ANTICRISIS GIRL my brain came to a screeching halt, because I GET THE REFERENCE! I am possibly the only person on HN go get it, because it is unlikely that anybody else here is a fanatic adherent of the Eurovision Song Contest. The 2009 entry of Ukraine by Svetlana Loboda is called "Be My Valentine! (Anti-crisis Girl)" and here is a link[1]. WARNING: While not strictly NSFW, that video has a half-naked woman yelling "you are sexy bum", background dancers that can only be described as sex-legionaries and a catchy tune. She starts repeatedly screaming "anti-crisis girl" at about 2:30. Now back to meaningful discussion about total global surveillance. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA-HL-EfUbI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA-HL-EfUbI
- chippy 13y agoYour observation is spot on. The people doing the work for GCHQ and the NSA are just like us. They are geeks and technologists. They are probably members of hacker news. This is the most believable part of the fantastic film Enemy of the State - the geeks in the van doing the work.
- toyg 13y ago>The people doing the work for GCHQ and the NSA are just like us. That's the scariest part: it's the banality of evil, updated for the XXI century. Would you turn down a safe and well-paid government job? Would you be a contractor building the Death Star? (for the record, this is not a new question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iQdDRrcAOjA#t=37 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iQd... )
- logicchains 13y agoYou could always take the job and then build a tiny vulnerability into the exhaust ports. It'd be incredibly difficult for anybody to take advantage of such a vulnerability, so you'd probably get away with it.
- 13y ago
- higherpurpose 13y agoI wonder what Merkel and Hollande's new "European Internet" will do to stop GCHQ from tapping the cables like they do now and then just hand over the info to US.
- keithpeter 13y agoI'm not sure, but the fact that they want to 'do something' indicates a reaction to the status quo. In the UK, we have a sort of passive acceptance of high levels of surveillance of the home population going back to the Northern Ireland Emergency starting 1968. It will need a lot to move the politicians away from that.
- dhoulb 13y agoA suspicious man might notice a recent correlating resurgence in IRA bomb threats being bandied all over the news.
- twobits 13y agoTheir problem is that they want to tap the cables too.
- f_salmon 13y agoRelated: The Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders has the U.S. ranked #46 in their 2004 report [0] - just above Haiti and just below Romania. [0] http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php
- kennywinker 13y agoOn The Media last week had a great piece on why this index is pretty bunk http://www.onthemedia.org/story/press-freedom-not-decline/ http://www.onthemedia.org/story/press-freedom-not-decline/ OTM is a pretty great podcast, by the way. Covers lots of stuff about the Snowden leaks with a very level head.
- Zigurd 13y agoClick through to the actual WaPo article. It isn't exactly a huge endorsement of US press freedom. The article has a graph showing US press freedom bouncing between sort of OK down to "less than Lithuania" levels over a period of decades. In other words, mediocre levels of press freedom happen regularly in the US. That does not actually contradict the notion that, currently, it sucks.
- panarky 13y agoNow we know what we've speculated darkly about all long: the NSA and GCHQ actively track users who visit sites they don't like. Presumably your visit to The Intercept and First Look are similarly tracked and correlated with your other online and offline activity. I for one will visit this site and open every linked document from each IP I have access to. These tactics of mass surveillance and intimidation must be resisted.
- samstave 13y agoLaunch a bunch of t1.micros or tiny dockers or something and have them constantly curl or wget all the links. Setup a spot request with an autoscale script which will constant request spot instances from the cheapest zone where they are spawned and curl/wget to dev null then die and get a new spot spawn.
- jaibot 13y agoOr, you know, lease a VPN connection. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/
- e12e 13y agoI wonder how many of those are either run by spy agencies, or are infiltrated by spy agencies?
- dobbsbob 13y agoThey don't even need to run fake VPNs anymore, just go to the host of vpn host, get all the metadata you want http://www.wipeyourdata.com/other-data-erasing/no-logs-earthvpn-user-arrested-after-police-finds-logs/ http://www.wipeyourdata.com/other-data-erasing/no-logs-earth...
- e12e 13y agoWell, if they already have most of that data (ip/connection metadata from backbone isps) -- and the provider/target site is small enough that traffic analysis is enough to defeat the vpn -- all bets are off anyway. This is a basic problem with VPNs -- you need to assume all data going in and out is logged -- if you're the only one visiting omghowcanimakebombsforeal.com at any given hundreds of a second -- then you're pretty much done for.
- dwbond 13y agoThat screenshot of how they tracked WikiLeaks visitors... isn't that Piwik? Edit: Oh never mind, should have kept on reading.
- hrrsn 13y agoAnd the Wiki software they're running is MediaWiki. Viva la Open Source!
- sneak 13y agoI guess that bitcoin donation to wikileaks I sent a few years back means I should probably dump my computer's bios and ssd firmware physically out of flash with a logic analyzer and compare it with others of the same model. Fuck.
- sentenza 13y agoI know this guy, let's call him hypothetical Fritz, who was seen talking in public to a WL spokesperson after an event a few years back. I don't know if he should be worried, but from listening to him when he talks of it, I know that he is.
- grey-area 13y agoI find it really interesting that a huge number of GCHQ internal training documents, giving away an awful lot about their operations and systems, was available on demand with no logging to poorly vetted contractors at US sites. They don't even know what he took. Contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton are a huge, soft target with a constantly changing roster of workers. That lack of any significant firewall between the allies, combined with a huge army of contractors in the US with top secret access, means China/Russia etc have probably had access to this information for years, if not decades, and could feed CGHQ and the NSA misinformation at will, because they'll know exactly what their capabilities and aspirations are.
- DanBC 13y agoAn ex director of GCHQ has said how disappointed he was at the poor control of information the NSA had. The way he said it made it sound like things were going to change.
- aspensmonster 13y ago>Illustrating how far afield the NSA deviates from its self-proclaimed focus on terrorism and national security, the documents reveal that the agency considered using its sweeping surveillance system against Pirate Bay, which has been accused of facilitating copyright violations. The agency also approved surveillance of the foreign “branches” of hacktivist groups, mentioning Anonymous by name. Good to know that the NSA is on top of that Pirate Bay threat! I was worried for a little bit. Good thing they're keeping tabs on script kiddies too. And of course WikiLeaks; that's just information terrorism. Better go ahead and classify them all as malicious foreign actors: >any communication with a group designated as a “malicious foreign actor,” such as WikiLeaks and Anonymous, would be considered fair game for surveillance. >When NSA officials are asked in the document if WikiLeaks or Pirate Bay could be designated as “malicious foreign actors,” the reply is inconclusive: “Let us get back to you.” There is no indication of whether either group was ever designated or targeted in such a way. Knowing Greenwald, I've got a suspicion that he already knows the answer to that question. Gonna go grab some popcorn. Y'all want anything from the concession stand? EDIT: Notice of course that it doesn't really matter if the NSA classifies any of them as malicious foreign actors or not. They can always count on the GCHQ to scrape up US citizens' data for them: https://prod01-cdn01.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/2014/02/piwik2.png https://prod01-cdn01.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/2014/02/pi... That blue spot on the "Visitor Countries" map looks familiar...
- lolwu0339 13y agoI wish they'd release the investigation into TPB. I'm affiliated with a popular search engine site... I want to find out how paranoid I should be >_< I wouldn't be suprised if the owners of TPB were still the original founders in addition to other people.
- e12e 13y ago> Good to know that the NSA is on top of that Pirate Bay threat! As I've mentioned in another comment already, this reminds me of Pete Seeger's comments on the (anti-communist) Black List: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0_IME9WsHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0_IME9WsHQ
- e12e 13y agoAh, page 19 (18 for context) of this presentation is kind of interesting: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/02/18/psychology-new-kind-sigdev/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/02/18/psych... Firefox: browser of choice for neurotic introverts! (I use Firefox:) Actually that whole slide deck is interesting. Watch how "Squeaky Dolphin" help us go from "real-time" monitoring of likes on facebook and youtube/blogger views to splunk powered(?)[1] "Battle Damage Assessment Demonstrator - City Activity"... [1] Slide 26-32. Splunk is namedropped, wonder if NSA are big customers of http://www.splunk.com http://www.splunk.com ? I guess all PR is good PR...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- hooande 13y agoThese findings illustrate the difference between surveillance and a surveillance state. The GCHG and by relation the NSA had plenty of information about who visited or donated to Wikileaks, but did not act on any of that information [1]. These documents could easily be construed as a vote of confidence for the agencies in question. People love to throw around the phrase "Orwellian" these days, but his seminal work does not appear to be relevant here. We all know that the government could be surveilling us at any time. We should all be afraid of it taking widespread action based upon that information. This day has not come yet. The government can listen to what you say and watch what you do all they want. The moment they move from surveilling to censoring, from watching to interfering, the average citizen will come down on them with righteous fury. No one is coming to your door or telling you what lawful websites you can and can't look at or what you can say to people. It's a testament to the strength of our ideals that government agents can tap your phone and hear you say how much you hate them, and yet still not lift a finger against you [1]. Keeping an eye on quasi-legal websites and organizations is the government's job. Using force to harm them is a line that we cannot allow them to cross. There are many, many more documents that have yet to come to light and I'm sure that this community will be the first to point out any serious abuses of power. [1] "That we know of"
- sergiosgc 13y agoAssuming that the government reaction would be to beat down your door is naive. The government knows, as you do, that down that path lies insurrection. Beating down doors and imprisoning dissidents is a crude tool. There are other tools for influencing individuals and controlling society, much more targeted, silent and insidious.
- higherpurpose 13y agoWho gave the order to monitor Wikileaks and its visitors? What I'd like to see at the very least is that these agencies get reformed to the point where if we do find out about an abuse of theirs, we can put pressure on the so called "oversight committees" who clearly aren't doing their jobs, to uncover exactly who monitored Wikileaks and who gave the order to do it. And then fire them. Right now even if there was such a pressure on them, there's probably no way to link to who did it, because NSA and GCHQ seem to be run in a very chaotic way and that's on purpose, so there are no ties for specific operations to anyone.
- zimbatm 13y agoPiwik works in the same way as Google Analytics and uses an injected JavaScript to report the stats back to the server. If they didn't modify Piwik a lot it means that the script should be visible and the address of the server too. Just tested, not seeing any suspicious JavaScript tags from inside the UK.
- lolwu0339 13y agoJavascript is only needed for more detailed information about their browser. The analytics appear to collect only header information and the ip address suggesting that they don't require Javascript to be injected.
- kyro 13y agoI am not surprised one bit. Not directly related to the article, but more to the issue at large: One thing many people fail to realize is that humans can be terribly, terribly corrupt. There are those among us who, without a drop of guilt or compassion, would take the life of another. Given the means, we are capable of carrying out some heinous acts. Many believe that there is some moral or ethical boundary that these spy agencies will not cross. That given all the information that's been leaked, all the lies that've been exposed, there is still an area of corrupt behavior that is off-limits. I have no doubt in my mind that there are those within these agencies that have abused their access to information for political, financial, and personal benefit, eg insider trading, selling damaging information to political candidates, suppressing journalists, etc. I'm not sure if it'll ever be brought to the public light, but I'm certain it's happened and is happening. The stuff that we read about is peanuts.
- chippy 13y ago>I am not surprised one bit. I think this is something that Hollywood movies such as Enemy of the State promotes. So that when it does come out non of us are surprised it really exists. We should just make sure that our lack of surprise doesn't turn into disinterest and apathy.
- logicchains 13y agoThe proportion of sociopaths is usually estimated to be at least around 1%, so that's almost 70 million potential guilt-free killers out there, 3 million of them American.
- nctalaviya 13y agoI am not impressed with this news.
- oskarth 13y agoI don't know about you guys, but these two quotes together with the events in the life of Assange seems to paint some picture. According to the Post, officials “realized that they have what they described as a ‘New York Times problem’” – namely, that any theory used to bring charges against Assange would also result in criminal liability for the Times, The Guardian, and other papers which also published secret documents provided to WikiLeaks. USA [...] urged other nations with forces in Afghanistan [...] to consider filing criminal charges against J.A. [...] focus the legal elements of national power upon non-state actor Assange, and the human network that supports Wikileaks (from https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/2014/02/assange_pressure.png https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/2014/02/as...) Not that this came as a surprise for people who read things outside NYT.
- Torn 13y agoIn particular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_A...
- fredgrott 13y agoAre we surprised by this? What Snowden taught us, the lesson we all have now, is that those with that level of internet/computer skills are not citizens of a single country but RATHER citizens of the Internet and its our actions that determine the future of the internet and its freedom.
- at-fates-hands 13y agoThe interesting thing is this is getting massive headlines here, but when the IRS targets conservative groups, there's barely a peep. I'd say government overreach is starting to get to a fever pitch. People have good reason to fear their government and that's pretty scary.