Documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published by the Intercept yesterday evening show that the US has been hacking into the computers of foreign system administrators in their effort to identify and track down terrorists.
The first step, according to the posts, is to collect IP addresses that are believed to be linked to a network’s sys admin. An IP address is a series of numbers allocated to every computer that connects to the Internet. Using this identifier, the NSA can then run an IP address through the vast amount of signals intelligence data, or SIGINT, that it collects every day, trying to match the IP address to personal accounts.
“What we’d really like is a personal webmail or Facebook account to target,” one of the posts explains, presumably because, whereas IP addresses can be shared by multiple people, “alternative selectors” like a webmail or Facebook account can be linked to a particular target. You can “dumpster-dive for alternate selectors in the big SIGINT trash can” the author suggests. Or “pull out your wicked Google-fu” (slang for efficient Googling) to search for any “official and non-official e-mails” that the targets may have posted online.
What the NSA is looking for:
The NSA wants more than just passwords. The document includes a list of other data that can be harvested from computers belonging to sys admins, including network maps, customer lists, business correspondence and, the author jokes, “pictures of cats in funny poses with amusing captions.” The posts, boastful and casual in tone, contain hacker jargon (pwn, skillz, zomg, internetz) and are punctuated with expressions of mischief. “Current mood: devious,” reads one, while another signs off, “Current mood: scheming.”
The administrators in question are not suspected of any wrongdoing. However, getting control of their computers unlocks the key to personal private information that the NSA says can be used to track down terrorists. Laws governing surveillance of foreigners are much less strict than laws governing the surveillance of Americans. However, identifying administrators in the first place is not an exact science. Therefore, there is no guarantee that the NSA won't wind up hacking the computer of an American citizen. That will open a whole new can of worms for the NSA.
And the practice will only continue to undermine US relations with its allies at a time when they need to come together over the situations in Ukraine, Syria, and Iran. Putin, the KGB man, doesn't even need to do any spying of his own. He simply has to sit back and let the Western alliance formed after World War II to combat the expansion of Communism in Eastern Europe crack and collapse.
Yet despite the serious damage that the NSA has done and continues to do to our allies, and despite the New York Times reporting today on how it is damaging the economy, there is nothing in any of the main papers about any efforts on the part of the Obama administration to repair the damage to our relations with allies as a result of these revelations. There is a general belief around the world, given the recent Security Council resolution, that Russia's occupation of Crimea, regardless of the merits of their concerns, is illegal and a violation of international law. But the West will not be able to present a credible united front without the administration working overtime to repair the damage from the NSA and working on no-spy agreements with its NATO allies.
After that comes the next step -- strengthening intelligence sharing among our NATO allies. The tragic 9/11 attacks could have been prevented had our law enforcement and intelligence agencies properly shared information that could have been used to prevent these attacks. By strengthening our system of international alliances, improving our system of sharing intelligence instead of alienating allies, and presenting a united front against Putin, the West can more effectively counter Putin's next moves in Eastern Europe before situations get out of hand like they did in Crimea.
Sanctions, even ones that are targeted against Putin's power base, are going to need time in order to take effect. In the meantime, the best deterrent is a show of unity and strength along with looking for ways to ease tensions between the West and Russia.