Why Google made the NSA (2) — Medium

Knowledge is Power

Given all this it is hardly surprising that in 2012, a few months after Highlands Forum co-chair Regina Dugan left DARPA to join Google as a senior executive, then NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander was emailing Google’s founding executive Sergey Brin to discuss information sharing for national security. In those emails, obtained under Freedom of Information by investigative journalist Jason Leopold, Gen. Alexander described Google as a “key member of [the US military’s] Defense Industrial Base,” a position Michele Quaid was apparently consolidating. Brin’s jovial relationship with the former NSA chief now makes perfect sense given that Brin had been in contact with representatives of the CIA and NSA, who partly funded and oversaw his creation of the Google search engine, since the mid-1990s.

In July 2014, Quaid spoke at a US Army panel on the creation of a “rapid acquisition cell” to advance the US Army’s “cyber capabilities” as part of the Force 2025 transformation initiative. She told Pentagon officials that “many of the Army’s 2025 technology goals can be realized with commercial technology available or in development today,” re-affirming that “industry is ready to partner with the Army in supporting the new paradigm.” Around the same time, most of the media was trumpeting the idea that Google was trying to distance itself from Pentagon funding, but in reality, Google has switched tactics to independently develop commercial technologies which would have military applications the Pentagon’s transformation goals.

Yet Quaid is hardly the only point-person in Google’s relationship with the US military intelligence community.

One year after Google bought the satellite mapping software Keyhole from CIA venture capital firm In-Q-Tel in 2004, In-Q-Tel’s director of technical assessment Rob Painter — who played a key role in In-Q-Tel’s Keyhole investment in the first place — moved to Google. At In-Q-Tel, Painter’s work focused on identifying, researching and evaluating “new start-up technology firms that were believed to offer tremendous value to the CIA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.” Indeed, the NGA had confirmed that its intelligence obtained via Keyhole was used by the NSA to support US operations in Iraq from 2003 onwards.

A former US Army special operations intelligence officer, Painter’s new job at Google as of July 2005 was federal manager of what Keyhole was to become: Google Earth Enterprise. By 2007, Painter had become Google’s federal chief technologist.

That year, Painter told the Washington Post that Google was “in the beginning stages” of selling advanced secret versions of its products to the US government. “Google has ramped up its sales force in the Washington area in the past year to adapt its technology products to the needs of the military, civilian agencies and the intelligence community,” the Post reported. The Pentagon was already using a version of Google Earth developed in partnership with Lockheed Martin to “display information for the military on the ground in Iraq,” including “mapping out displays of key regions of the country” and outlining “Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, as well as US and Iraqi military bases in the city. Neither Lockheed nor Google would say how the geospatial agency uses the data.” Google aimed to sell the government new “enhanced versions of Google Earth” and “search engines that can be used internally by agencies.”

White House records leaked in 2010 showed that Google executives had held several meetings with senior US National Security Council officials. Alan Davidson, Google’s government affairs director, had at least three meetings with officials of the National Security Council in 2009, including White House senior director for Russian affairs Mike McFaul and Middle East advisor Daniel Shapiro. It also emerged from a Google patent application that the company had deliberately been collecting ‘payload’ data from private wifi networks that would enable the identification of “geolocations.” In the same year, we now know, Google had signed an agreement with the NSA giving the agency open-ended access to the personal information of its users, and its hardware and software, in the name of cyber security — agreements that Gen. Alexander was busy replicating with hundreds of telecoms CEOs around the country.

Complete story at - Why Google made the NSA — Medium

Censorship Alert: the Alternative Media Getting Harassed by the NSA | New Eastern Outlook

Google’s Safe Browsing List that blocks websites and flags them as containing malware is increasingly used as mechanism for the censoring of independent media and the falsification of history. It is an alarming development that, left unchallenged, puts the survival of any independent newspaper, blog, TV or radio station at risk.. Over the past months the list has apparently been used to target websites critical of U.S.’ involvement in the wars in the Middle East, U.S.’ involvement in Ukraine and independent media who are publishing material that is critical of Zionism.

Google’s Safe Browsing List translates into the blocking of websites which allegedly contain malware. Instead of showing the website one is presented with a red-colored Google page that warns that the URL in question has been blocked because it contains malware. Ultimately, being flagged on the list can also result in the removal of the flagged websites from Google’s search engine. Being flagged, blocked or removed from search engines can have devastating results for independent journalists and media who are struggling to finance investigative journalism, rather than regurgitating alternative versions of Reuters and other major news agencies. The targeting of independent media and journalists is especially noteworthy when one considers Google’s close cooperation with the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA).

Incestuous Relationships between Google, Apple, Microsoft, their Subsidiaries, and the NSA.

Google’s close cooperation with the NSA is a well-documented fact. An article from May 7, entitled ”Is Google in cahoots with the NSA? Email leak reveals close relationship”, published in Tech Times, reveals that the close cooperation between Google and the NSA was documented long before NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told the world what most who cared to investigate already knew. The article quotes emails between NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt from 2011 and 2012. Tech Times states:

”In the mails, the Google executives sound friendly and cooperative. Alexander’s emails hint at the importance of ´Google’s participation in refinement, engineering and deployment of solutions`to cyber threats”.

The article also details the fact that the NSA chief had invited CEOs of key companies including Google, Apple, and Microsoft to classified briefings. What is important about these three key corporations cooperation with the NSA is that they are economically interrelated with most other, commercial Internet providers, including web-hosting companies, firms which provide Internet security products, as well as advertising companies who sell advertising on everything from blogs over smaller independent media to major corporate newspapers. The following are recent examples, which demonstrate how this incestuous relationship translates into the targeting of independent media, censorship and the falsification of history.

October 6, nsnbc received an e-mail from the Internet security provider SiteLock, warning that there was a serious malware issue pertaining some articles published in nsnbc. SiteLock stressed that the issue had to be resolved within 72 hours if nsnbc international wanted to avoid being added to Google’s Safe Browsing List and have the site withdrawn from nsnbc’s web-host, which among many other web hosts is a business partner of Site Lock.

Complete story at - Censorship Alert: the Alternative Media Getting Harassed by the NSA | New Eastern Outlook

Fearing NSA, Writers in USA and Worldwide Avoiding controversy, keyword Searches | Informed Comment

By Juan Cole | Jan. 6, 2015 |

PEN America | “Global Chilling”

PEN America writes: “Global Chilling: The Impact of Mass Surveillance on International Writers is a new report demonstrating the damaging impact of surveillance by the United States and other governments on free expression and creative freedom around the world.

The report’s revelations, based on a survey of nearly 800 writers worldwide, are alarming. Concern about surveillance is now nearly as high among writers living in democracies (75%) as among those living in non-democracies (80%). The levels of self-censorship reported by writers living in democratic countries are approaching the levels reported by writers living in authoritarian or semi-democratic countries. And writers around the world think that mass surveillance has significantly damaged U.S. credibility as a global champion of free expression for the long term…”

EXCERPTS FROM THE PDF TEXT:
KEY FINDING

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Writers in democratic and non-democratic countries are equally worried about levels of government surveillance in their countries. Vast majorities of writers around the world said they were “very” or “somewhat” worried about levels of government surveillance in their countries, including 75% in countries classified as “Free” by Freedom House, 84% in countries classified as “Partly Free”, and 80% in “Not Free” countries. These levels are consistent with the findings of PEN’s October 2013 survey of U.S. writers, which showed that 85% of American writers were very or somewhat worried about current levels of government surveillance. The high level of concern among U.S. writers mirrors that of writers living in the other four countries that make up the “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom), 84% of whom are very or somewhat worried about government surveillance. Writers are not outliers when it comes to their level of concern about government surveillance.

Eighty percent of Americans surveyed in a Pew Research Center poll released on Nov. 12, 2014, agree that Americans should be worried about the government’s monitoring of phone calls and internet communications.

Complete story at - Fearing NSA, Writers in USA and Worldwide Avoiding controversy, keyword Searches | Informed Comment

Brazil builds its own fiber optic network to avoid the NSA

This past week Brazil announced that it will be building a 3,500-mile fiber-optic cable to Portugal in order to avoid the grip of the NSA.

What’s more, they announced that not a penny of the $185 million expected to be spent on the project will go to American firms, simply because they don’t want to take any chances that the US government will tap the system.

It’s incredible how far now individuals, corporations, and even governments are willing to go to protect themselves from the government of the Land of the Free.

The German government, especially upset by the discovery of US spying within its borders, has come up with a range of unique methods to block out prying ears.

They have even gone so far as to play classical music loudly over official meetings so as to obfuscate the conversation for any outside listeners.

They’ve also seriously contemplated the idea of returning back to typewriters to eliminate the possibilities of computer surveillance.

More practically, the government of Brazil has banned the use of Microsoft technologies in all government offices, something that was also done in China earlier this year.

Complete story at - Brazil builds its own fiber optic network to avoid the NSA

M of A - Germany Getting Ready To Divorce U.S. Ally

From recent talks and discussions in Germany I conclude that the U.S. is losing more and more support and sympathies. The admiration of earlier times has turned into disgust. While a lot of higher politicians and some journalists still cling to some (well paid) myth of U.S. friendship the party base in all political parties as well as the general public has changed its opinion.

The NSA spying headlines are only one, though important issue. Consider how you would feel about such an intrusive "ally":

• German intelligence employee arrested on suspicion of spying for US on Bundestag NSA committee
• NSA whistleblowers testify in Bundestag inquiry, disclose ‘totalitarian’ surveillance
• Germany NSA's main target, claims ex-staffer
• Irked by N.S.A., Germany Cancels Deal With Verizon
• German parliament drops US telecom firm Verizon over links to NSA spying
• NSA Turned Germany Into Its Largest Listening Post in Europe
• Report: NSA targeted German privacy activist
• NSA targets Tor administrators and people searching for privacy tools, reports claim

The German constitution, as interpreted by the constitutional court, defines privacy as a basic human right. That the U.S. is so casually violating the basic human rights of all German citizens is met with utter disgust. Even the paid and trained Atlantic Council (a U.S. lobby) trolls in German news-site comments have problem defending this issue.

But the NSA spying is not the only problem. The economic breakdown after 2008 clearly had its roots in the United States and is, in Germany, blamed on lax U.S. regulations. And while Germany itself pressed for a change in government in Ukraine the outbreak of violence, the bloody coup and the fighting in the east is considered as "Fuck the EU" U.S. intervention in European affairs.

It may still take a decade or more but my sense is that the U.S.-German alliance in on its way to an unfriendly divorce. Something that 15 years ago seemed unthinkable.

Complete story at - M of A - Germany Getting Ready To Divorce U.S. Ally

ZCommunications » Emails Reveal Close Google Relationship With NSA

Email exchanges between National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt suggest a far cozier working relationship between some tech firms and the U.S. government than was implied by Silicon Valley brass after last year’s revelations about NSA spying.

Disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency’s vast capability for spying on Americans’ electronic communications prompted a number of tech executives whose firms cooperated with the government to insist they had done so only when compelled by a court of law.

But Al Jazeera has obtained two sets of email communications dating from a year before Snowden became a household name that suggest not all cooperation was under pressure.

On the morning of June 28, 2012, an email from Alexander invited Schmidt to attend a four-hour-long “classified threat briefing” on Aug. 8 at a “secure facility in proximity to the San Jose, CA airport.”

“The meeting discussion will be topic-specific, and decision-oriented, with a focus on Mobility Threats and Security,” Alexander wrote in the email, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the first of dozens of communications between the NSA chief and Silicon Valley executives that the agency plans to turn over.

Complete story at - ZCommunications » Emails Reveal Close Google Relationship With NSA

The 4th Media » An Urgent Alert! General Clark as Deadly Messenger to Ukraine: Why & For What?

“Oh my God, I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it! You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

That’s the dialogue that accompanies the final scene of the classic movie Planet of the Apes, starring the fine actor Charlton Heston. As Heston’s character (Taylor) finally escapes from Ape Society, he is seen riding a horse along a beach with his female, human companion. A wide shadow appears in front of the horse Heston is riding and he is seen dismounting. He then falls to his knees overcome by grief, pounding the sand whilst uttering the dialogue above. The camera then cuts to the top third of the Statue of Liberty, the remainder buried in the sand.

News that General Wesley Clark, USA (Ret.) visited the Ukraine at the behest of the National Security Advisor there-and also a senior member of Ukraine’s parliament—should be a cause for alarm.

A nonprofit foundation was involved in this exercise (more below). There is a sense of open, almost joyful viciousness in all this pro-war, anti-Russian sentiments on opinion pages and television broadcasts. It is certainly racist and demeaning in tone. Such is the first step in convincing the public that the “transgressor” is equivalent to a retrovirus.

Complete story at - The 4th Media » An Urgent Alert! General Clark as Deadly Messenger to Ukraine: Why & For What?

Here's the software that helps Edward Snowden avoid the NSA

(I was hoping for a bigger story here, but it's a start...)

Edward Snowden hasn't escaped the NSA's watchful eyes purely by exploiting lax security -- he also uses the right software. He communicates with the media using Tails, a customized version of Linux that makes it easy to use Tor's anonymity network and other tools that keep data private. The software loads from external drives and doesn't store anything locally, so it's relatively trivial for Snowden and his contacts to discuss leaks without leaving a trace.

The underlying technology isn't completely original, and it's not perfect; Tails' open source code and anonymous developer base help resist pressure to include spy-friendly back doors, but there are still potential security holes. Users also have to be careful with their choices of internet services while using Tails, as the wrong ones could give the whole game away. Even with those concerns in mind, the software is a big help to Snowden, journalists and others that want to keep their conversations under wraps with a minimum of effort.

Complete story at - Here's the software that helps Edward Snowden avoid the NSA

‘US annexed the whole world through global spying' – Assange — RT News

The media has been overwhelmed by talk of Crimea joining Russia, but all are ignoring the fact that the 'Five Eyes' intelligence alliance, principally the US, has annexed the whole world through their spying, said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Speaking at the WHD.global conference on Wednesday, Assange – who has been living under asylum in Ecuador's embassy in London since 2012 – pointed out that there is a need for independent internet infrastructure for countries to maintain sovereignty to resist US control over the majority of communications. The annual conference is dedicated to global surveillance and privacy matters.

“To a degree this is a matter of national sovereignty. The news is all flush with talk about how Russia has annexed the Crimea, but the reality is, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, principally the United States, have annexed the whole world as a result of annexing the computer systems and communications technology that is used to run the modern world,” Assange said.

“So it’s a matter of national sovereignty. If there is not at least some national network that can be maintained in a moment of economic or political conflict with the United States, then there is simply too much leverage on nation states to be able to effectively defend the interests of their peoples.”

Assange noted that the revelations leaked by Edward Snowden on NSA and GCHQ spying have caused a new wave of resistance against US control, shifting the geopolitical forces in Europe.

Complete story at - ‘US annexed the whole world through global spying' – Assange — RT News

Beware the surveillance reform Trojan horse: what's not in the new NSA laws?

This week was undoubtedly a turning point in the NSA debate. Edward Snowden said it himself on Monday, as some of the NSA's most ardent defenders, including the House Intelligence Committee and the White House, suddenly released similar proposals endorsing the end of the NSA's bulk collection of phone records as we know it.

Stopping the government from holding onto of all Americans' phone metadata would undoubtedly be a good thing for American privacy, but if you read between the legislative lines, the government might not be curtailing mass surveillance so much as permanently entrenching it in American law.

Rep Justin Amash, one of the NSA's leading critics in the House, said of the Intelligence Committee bill: "It doesn't end bulk collection but actually puts more Americans in danger of having their constitutionally protected rights violated." While the Obama plan is undoubtedly more promising, with court requests and much more, Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union has several important questions about the proposal that need to be answered before anyone will really be able to judge. And the Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez detailed why neither of these proposals are as good as the USA Freedom Act, which may now be getting boxed out.

To be sure, neither of the two new proposals would actually "end mass surveillance", as this National Journal headline proclaimed, or even "end bulk collection" entirely, as most of the other reports suggest. Even the authors know it: the title of the House Intelligence bill was the "End Bulk Collection Act" for just one day before it was changed, perhaps because, as Techdirt's Mike Masnick wrote, "[Rep Mike] Rogers and his staff realized that … was so bogus that they couldn't go forward."

Complete story at - Beware the surveillance reform Trojan horse: what's not in the new NSA laws? | Trevor Timm | Comment is free | theguardian.com