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CIA panel to suggest no punishment for spying on Senate Intelligence Committee

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Widespread_US_Police_Surveillance_Is-219f71accff4c57da00fcb7272c025e4CIA officials accused of tampering with a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the agency’s use of torture will not be punished, The New York Times reported.

After several years, the Senate investigation’s findings were finally released earlier this month, causing a public stir with exhaustive descriptions of CIA torture methods and a conclusion that the agency received little or no useful information using the techniques.

But the 6,000-plus page document had a fraught path to existence, highlighted by a public feud between the Senate and the CIA over accusations that the agency had searched a computer network being used by Senate staffers conducting the investigation.

Reportedly, the CIA was looking to see if investigators had gotten hold of documents the agency claimed were off limits.

In its own review of the matter, the CIA inspector general cited three CIA technology officers and two lawyers as culpable of ordering the clandestine searches. The accused have defended the actions as lawful, and even said CIA Director John Brennan condoned the searches.

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Navy spy "fish" could be operational next year

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navy_surveillanceby Mike Hixenbaugh

It looks like a fish, sort of. l

It swims like one too, if you squint. l

It’s even named after a fish – OK, a Disney one.

The Navy is hoping that’ll be enough to get the little swimmer into enemy territory undetected to patrol and protect U.S. ships and ports from harm.

Project Silent Nemo is under way this week at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, where a team of civilian engineers and military officers are testing the capabilities of a 5-foot, 100-pound experimental robot that’s designed to look and swim like a bluefin tuna.

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China Plans to Take Over the World with Global Network of Surveillance Satellites

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

If it went ahead the plan could see more than 50 observation satellites in orbit within two years, The South China Morning Post reported. This would put the country’s satellite surveillance capabilities on a par, or greater than, the US.

The paper said support for the massive upscale was fuelled by China’s frustration over the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370.

After a three-week search satellites have been unable to locate for certain debris from the disappeared plane, which was carrying mainly Chinese passengers on a scheduled flight to Beijing.

Read more from this story HERE.

Krauthammer: End to NSA’s Bulk Data Collection ‘A Calculated Risk’

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

By Fox News.

Charles Krauthammer told viewers Tuesday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that “we are taking a calculated risk” when it comes to reports that President Obama is expected to call for an end to the NSA’s bulk data collection program.

“Look, I’m sympathetic to the idea that we have to find a compromise,” the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor said. “I think it’s probably one you have to have given the mood of the country…but if we get a second attack, we’re going to go violently in the other direction.”

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NSA Chief: I’d Love 15 Minutes Alone With Snowden

By Greg Richter and Cathy Burke.

National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander says that if he had 15 minutes alone with NSA leaker Edward Snowden, he’d make sure he knew how much damage Snowden has done to the United States and its allies.

“I’m not a violent person. I’m not going to try to beat him up or anything,” Alexander said Tuesday on “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel. “I am hugely disappointed that someone that signed a document that said I can be trusted with top-secret data couldn’t be,” he told host Brett Baier.

Alexander said he would tell Snowden, who is living under temporary political asylum in Russia, that he has been a “huge disappointment,” and might also tell him some of the classified problems he has caused so he knows “the significant damage to our nation and to our allies.”

Snowden has made some “huge mistakes” that “will haunt him for the rest of his life,” Alexander said.

Alexander, who leaves his post at the end of this week, said his agency knows what information Snowden was able to take via computer thumb drive. Some that he has not released would hurt military operations and could endanger lives, he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Poll: Overwhelming Majority Believe News Monitoring Not the Government’s Job

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Photo Credit: TownHallBy now you’ve heard about the FCC “study” that would have put government bureaucrats into newsrooms all over the country in order to monitor how news is gathered. Luckily, that study was killed thanks to the work of conservative media and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who exposed and spoke out against it.

Now, a new Rasmussen Report shows an overwhelming majority of Americans do not believe it is the government’s job to monitor news content.

Read more this story HERE.

Report: NSA Used Radio Waves, Hacked into Over 100k Computers Worldwide

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world — but not in the United States — that allows the US to conduct surveillance on those machines, The New York Times reported yesterday (Jan 14).

The Times cited NSA documents, computer experts and US officials in its report about the use of secret technology using radio waves to gain access to computers that other countries have tried to protect from spying or cyberattacks. The software network could also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks, the Times reports.

The Times reported that the technology, used by the agency for several years, relies on radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted covertly into the computers. The NSA calls the effort an “active defence” and has used the technology to monitor units of the Chinese Army, the Russian military, drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime US partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, the Times reported.

Among the most frequent targets of the NSA and US Cyber Command, the Times reported, has been the Chinese Army. The United States has accused the Chinese Army of launching regular attacks on American industrial and military targets, often to steal secrets or intellectual property. When Chinese attackers have placed similar software on computer systems of American companies or government agencies, American officials have protested, the newspaper reported.

Read more from this story HERE.

German Magazine Claims NSA Hacking Unit Uses ‘James Bond-style Spy Gear to Obtain Data

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

A German magazine, citing internal documents, claims the NSA’s hacking unit uses James Bond-style spy gear to obtain data, including intercepting computer deliveries and outfitting them with espionage software.

Der Spiegel’s revelations relate to a division of the NSA known as Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, which is painted as an elite team of hackers specializing in stealing data from the toughest of targets.

Citing the internal documents, the magazine said Sunday that TAO’s mission was “Getting the ungettable,” and quoted an unnamed intelligence official as saying that TAO had gathered “some of the most significant intelligence our country has ever seen.”

“During the middle part of the last decade, the special unit succeeded in gaining access to 258 targets in 89 countries — nearly everywhere in the world,” the report said. “In 2010, it conducted 279 operations worldwide.”

Der Spiegel said TAO had a catalog of high-tech gadgets for particularly hard-to-crack cases, including computer monitor cables specially modified to record what is being typed across the screen, USB sticks secretly fitted with radio transmitters to broadcast stolen data over the airwaves, and fake base stations intended to intercept mobile phone signals on the go.

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Canada Allowed Widespread NSA Surveillance at 2010 G20 Summit

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Photo Credit: REUTERSCanada allowed the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct widespread surveillance during the 2010 Group of 20 summit in Toronto, according to a media report that cited documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp is the latest potential embarrassment for the NSA as a result of Snowden’s leaks, although it remains unclear precisely what information the agency was looking for during the summit.

Snowden has already revealed the agency spied on close allies such as Germany and Brazil, prompting heated diplomatic spats with Washington.

The CBC report, first aired late on Wednesday, cited briefing notes it said showed the United States turned its Ottawa embassy into a security command post during a six-day spying operation by the top-secret U.S. agency as President Barack Obama and other world leaders met that June.

Reuters has not seen the documents and cannot verify their authenticity. One of the bylines on the CBC report was Glenn Greenwald, the U.S. journalist who has worked with Snowden on several other NSA stories.

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Russian Spy Agency Seeks To Expand NSA-Style Internet Surveillance

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Photo Credit: The Guardian Russian authorities are moving to expand surveillance of the Internet by requiring service providers to store all traffic temporarily and make it available to the top domestic intelligence agency.

Under an order drafted by the Communications Ministry, providers would have to install equipment that would record and save all Internet traffic for at least 12 hours and grant the security services exclusive access to the data.

President Vladimir Putin has tightened his grip over Russia since his election to a third term in March 2012 amid a wave of opposition protests, and security is being stepped up further before the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

The draft order, made public on Monday, is likely to deepen concerns over tighter surveillance of the Internet, where debate is much freer than in Russia’s conventional media and which security officials have said should be better controlled.

Russia drew global attention concerning a similar spying program in the United States and Britain after granting former U.S. intelligence agency contractor Edward Snowden temporary asylum.

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Corker: Lawmakers Learn More about NSA from Newspaper than Briefings

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Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) is demanding a new round of briefings on U.S. domestic surveillance operations.

In a blistering critique of past briefings, Corker argued lawmakers learning more on the front page of the newspaper than behind closed doors with security officials.

In a Wednesday letter to the White House, Corker said briefings by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency (NSA) chief Gen. Keith Alexander and others have not provided a full account of U.S. surveillance.

Briefings have “generally been limited to simply discussing the facts underlying specific public disclosures” of domestic surveillance operations, he said.

“As a result, members of Congress regularly read new revelations on the front pages of various newspapers,” Corker wrote.

Read more from this story HERE.