The ramifications of The Intercept’s latest story – in this instance, concerning the NSA’s Sentry Eagle program, described by the online publication as “an umbrella term that the NSA used to encompass its most sensitive programs ‘to protect America’s cyberspace’” – provide a stark reminder to readers that, much like the recent news regarding the CIA’s spying on the primary government entity responsible for its oversight: the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), virtually the entire world’s living in a surveillance state where those doing the surveilling are above and beyond the law.
What else may readers discern or surmise when, after more than a year-long deluge of public protestations followed-up with enhanced privacy claims by foreign governments, international telco/telecom firms, and the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter, et al, this weekend’s Intercept story comprehensively documents how these sovereign states and leading technology firms are all, still, extensively in bed with our government, whether they like it or not; willingly or otherwise?
Then again, if the public’s learned nothing about the ulterior motives of our country’s status quo, is it not becoming a matter of basic fact that our military-industrial-surveillance state plays both sides of the field as a matter of course, simply to justify their existence and their never-ending expansion, like a cancer upon our society?
Or, are we imagining the reported, inconvenient truths that include ongoing U.S. foreign policy that does as much as it can to destroy social stability in targeted areas of the globe, much like The Intercept documents it in their most recent story, excerpted below, regarding how our surveillance state is, in fact, hard at work destroying the stability of technology as it undermines security protocols, worldwide, to achieve its over-arching effort to “collect it all?” Meanwhile, the hacking reports throughout our country’s I.T. infrastructure – couched in conjecture and false allegations that, upon a closer read of these stories, confirms that actual knowledge of the identities of the bad guys is nonexistent – escalate with every passing day.
The truth is there’s no longer a need to “connect the dots.” It’s all there, right in front of us.
Regardless of whether it’s institutionalized fearmongering by the likes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, which manifests itself in its outright manufacturing of hundreds of convoluted, entrapment-supported, domestic and foreign terrorism incidents to justify its massively-expanded surveillance efforts here in America and abroad; or, the NSA undermining security protocols, worldwide, to support its efforts to “collect it all,” isn’t it always about the same things in our greed-filled world? (Our status quo’s ongoing self-enrichment.)
Again, are we just imagining the inconvenient truth that all of these manmade, socioeconomic nightmares–i.e.: literally, centuries of ongoing economic transgressions that continue to privatize profits for the one percent while socializing losses for everyone else; climate change; and outright wars playing out before us on the world stage, virtually everywhere one bothers to look these days—are, in fact, little more than poorly obfuscated, wealth extraction scams fomented by the one percent?
There is, indeed, a method to the status quo’s madness, as The Intercept documents their latest Snowden-NSA document leak story, delineating yet more over-arching truths concerning how the NSA deliberately undermines I.T. network security and personal privacy, everywhere–while contradicting itself by claiming that the defense of those same types of networks, here at home, are a critical raison d’etre–in this weekend’s must-read…
Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
By Peter Maass and Laura Poitras
The Intercept
October 10th, 2014 4:10PM
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(continued from above)
The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
The documents, leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, also indicate that the agency has used “under cover” operatives to gain access to sensitive data and systems in the global communications industry, and that these secret agents may have even dealt with American firms. The documents describe a range of clandestine field activities that are among the agency’s “core secrets” when it comes to computer network attacks, details of which are apparently shared with only a small number of officials outside the NSA.
“It’s something that many people have been wondering about for a long time,” said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, after reviewing the documents. “I’ve had conversations with executives at tech companies about this precise thing. How do you know the NSA is not sending people into your data centers?”
Previous disclosures about the NSA’s corporate partnerships have focused largely on U.S. companies providing the agency with vast amounts of customer data, including phone records and email traffic. But documents published today by The Intercept suggest that even as the agency uses secret operatives to penetrate them, companies have also cooperated more broadly to undermine the physical infrastructure of the internet than has been previously confirmed.
In addition to so-called “close access” operations, the NSA’s “core secrets” include the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to weaken their encryption systems; the fact that the NSA spends “hundreds of millions of dollars” on technology to defeat commercial encryption; and the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to penetrate computer networks, possibly without the knowledge of the host countries. Many of the NSA’s core secrets concern its relationships to domestic and foreign corporations…
(Bold type is diarist's emphasis.)
As also noted in the story, which is well worth a thorough read, "The documents describe a panoply of programs classified with the rare designation of 'Exceptionally Compartmented Information,' or ECI, which are only disclosed to a 'very select' number of government officials."
At the end of the day, are we to believe that a surveillance state that spies on the staffers of the very governing body that oversees it (the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence), apparently, with tacitly sanctioned authority to do so by the White House, is not infiltrating domestic technology and telco/telecom companies to have its way with them, too?
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As referenced in The Intercept's story, above, some of the documents discussed in it "appear in a new documentary, CITIZENFOUR, which tells the story of the Snowden disclosures and is directed by Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras." Director Steven Soderbergh is the film's executive producer. The film opened in very limited release this weekend; it will open "wide," later this month.
Here's a link/excerpt to The Guardian's quite newsworthy (in its own right) review of CITIZENFOUR...
Citizenfour review – Poitras' victorious film shows Snowden vindicated
Laura Poitras’ documentary disentangles NSA surveillance and plots the story of Edward Snowden in Hong Kong and Moscow
• Glenn Greenwald working with second leaker
• Snowden’s girlfriend living with him in Moscow
Spencer Ackerman
The Guardian
Saturday 11 October 2014 08.54 EDT
Citizenfour must have been a maddening documentary to film. Its subject is pervasive global surveillance, an enveloping digital act that spreads without visibility, so its scenes unfold in courtrooms, hearing chambers and hotels. Yet the virtuosity of Laura Poitras, its director and architect, makes its 114 minutes crackle with the nervous energy of revelation...
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...But surreptitiously, Poitras has been a commander of a stream of disclosures for 16 months that have forced the NSA into a new and infamous era. Citizenfour demonstrates to the public the prowess that those of us who have worked with her on the NSA stories encountered. Her movie, the culmination of a post-9/11 trilogy that spans a dark horizon from Iraq to Guantánamo, is a triumph of journalism and a triumph for journalism.
At its heart, Citizenfour is the story of how Snowden’s disclosures unfolded through Poitras’ eyes, from the first communications Snowden sends Poitras, hinting at what is to come, until Snowden sees himself vindicated through emulation. (The film is named for a pseudonym Snowden used with Poitras.) The time before Poitras meets Snowden is symbolized by a car travelling through a pitch-black tunnel, barely illuminated by the glowing red lights on the ceiling, until sunlight bursts in when she and her colleagues Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill arrive in Hong Kong for their fateful encounter...
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...While often portrayed as arrogant, especially by self-interested surveillance bureaucrats, Snowden tells Poitras, Greenwald and MacAskill that he wants journalists and not himself to decide what ought to be public. He is possessed with an uncanny calm as he is about to become forever targeted. Yet Snowden’s eyes redden and his shoulders stoop when he grasps the burden he is placing on his family and girlfriend – with whom he is now reunited in Russia, a place in which he never intended to live...
LAURA POITRAS' CITIZENFOUR DOCUMENTARY TRAILER
...The film leaves many questions unanswered, such as Wikileaks’ role in Snowden’s drama – Julian Assange is briefly on camera – and Snowden’s circumstances in the authoritarian Russia that has granted him asylum. But Citizenfour shows Snowden vindicated when the film confirms that Greenwald, Poitras and their investigative partner Jeremy Scahill are working with a new security whistleblower, one apparently inspired by Snowden...
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