Der Spiegel has a new piece out on the NSA's monitoring of credit cards. Also, from Yochai Benkler, "the National Intelligence University, based in Washington, DC, offers a certificate program called the denial and deception advanced studies program." Also, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch holds fire to the feet of tech leaders.
Der Spiegel:
The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions...
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The information from the American foreign intelligence agency, acquired by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, show that the spying is conducted by a branch called "Follow the Money" (FTM). The collected information then flows into the NSA's own financial databank, called "Tracfin," which in 2011 contained 180 million records.
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[E]ven intelligence agency employees are somewhat concerned about spying on the world finance system, according to one document from the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ concerning the legal perspectives on "financial data" and the agency's own cooperations with the NSA in this area. The collection, storage and sharing of politically sensitive data is a deep invasion of privacy, and involved "bulk data" full of "rich personal information," much of which "is not about our targets," the document says.
Original documents
here.
Thanks to Fran1, some German text explaining just how ausgepisst they are:
Claus Heckling, from 9/9, on the monitoring of Swift: Jan-Philipp Albrecht, a Green Justice expert calls it open lawbreaking, but Manfred Weber of the Christian Democrats is said that the agreement could continue assuming that the rules of the game were actually maintained. Looks like that may have to be revised.
Also this by Claus Hecking on the 13th. The termination of the Swift agreement for international financial transactions may be terminated.
Spiegel credits O Globo for the Swift revelations. See here, where you can find out how zangado the Brazilians are at the prospect that Petrobras' oil finds may have been known ahead of time by the NSA.
Kevin Gosztola's take:
Documents from Snowden also showed Tracfin contains data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), which is a Brussels-based network that âthousands of banks in the world use to send transaction information securely.â SWIFT was a âtarget,â and the NSA managed to access data from SWIFTâs âtailored access operationsâ by reading âSWIFT printer traffic from numerous banks.â
This information builds off what was already known and reported by New York Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen in 2006 about the United States governmentâs use of financial records from SWIFT in investigations of alleged domestic or foreign terrorists. That story highlighted how the CIA and Treasury Department were collecting data without âcourt-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactionsâ and were âinstead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as SWIFT.â
Story also reported on
Techcrunch.
Greenwald has an article on Keith Alexander. Here's the bridge of the Starship EnterPrize:
Greenwald links an interesting piece by Yochai Benkler:
The spate of new NSA disclosures substantially raises the stakes of this debate. We now know that the intelligence establishment systematically undermines oversight by lying to both Congress and the courts. ...
...
The National Intelligence University, based in Washington, DC, offers a certificate program called the denial and deception advanced studies program. That's not a farcical sci-fi dystopia; it's a real program about countering denial and deception by other countries. The repeated misrepresentations suggest that the intelligence establishment has come to see its civilian bosses as adversaries to be managed through denial and deception.
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch grills tech leaders on why they were such wussies in confronting the USG.
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Last update: 10:22 AM Pacific.