The National Security Agency ( NSA ) is the national level intelligence agency of the US Department of Defense, under the authority of the National Intelligence Director. The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence purposes, specializing in disciplines known as intelligence signals (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with protecting US communications networks and information systems. The NSA relies on various steps to achieve its mission, which is largely clandestine.
Originating as a unit to describe coded communications in World War II, was officially established as an NSA by President Harry S. Truman in 1952. Since then, the organization has become one of the largest US intelligence organizations in terms of personnel and budget. The NSA currently conducts mass data collection worldwide and has been known to physically disrupt electronic systems as one method for this purpose. The NSA has also been suspected of being behind the attack software like Stuxnet, which is very damaging to Iran's nuclear program. The NSA, with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), maintains a physical presence in many countries around the world; The Special Collectible Service with the CIA/NSA (highly classified intelligence team) inserts tapper devices to high-value targets (such as the Presidential palace or embassy). SCS collection tactics allegedly include "strict surveillance, theft, tapping, [and] breaking and entering".
Unlike the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), both specialize in foreign human espionage, the NSA does not openly collect intelligence of human sources. The NSA is entrusted with providing assistance to, and coordination, elements of SIGINT to other governmental organizations - that are prevented by law to engage in such activities themselves. As part of this responsibility, the agency has a joint organization called Central Security Service (CSS), which facilitates cooperation between the NSA and other US defense defense components. To further ensure efficient communication between signals intelligence divisions, the NSA Director simultaneously serves as Commander of the Cyber ​​Command of the United States and as Head of the Central Security Service.
The NSA's actions have been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, including spying on anti-Vietnam war leaders and agency participation in economic espionage. By 2013, the NSA has many secret surveillance programs publicly disclosed by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor. According to leaked documents, the NSA cuts and stores communications of more than one billion people worldwide, including US citizens. The documents also reveal the NSA tracks hundreds of millions of human movements using cell phone metadata. Internationally, research has demonstrated the ability of the NSA to oversee domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries through "boomerang routing".
Video National Security Agency
History
Formation
The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced back to 28 April 1917, three weeks after the US Congress declared war on Germany in World War I. A decimal code and decoding unit was established as a Cabling and Telegraph Section, also known as the Cipher Bureau. It's headquartered in Washington, D.C. and is part of a war effort under the executive branch without the authorization of a direct Congress. During the war it was relocated within the military organization chart several times. On July 5, 1917, Herbert O. Yardley was assigned to head the unit. At that time, the unit consisted of Yardley and two civil servants. It absorbed the naval cryptanalysis function in July 1918. World War I ended on November 11, 1918, and the military cryptographic section Military Intelligence (MI-8) moved to New York City on May 20, 1919, where it continued intelligence activities as a Compilation Code Company under the direction of Yardley.
Black Space
After the dissolution of the US Army's cryptographic parts from military intelligence, known as MI-8, in 1919, the US government created the Cipher Bureau, also known as Black Chamber. The Black Chamber is the first peace-era cryptanalytic organization in the United States. Funded jointly by the Army and the State Department, the Cipher Bureau is disguised as a New York City commercial code company; it actually generates and sells such code for business use. However, his real mission is to disconnect (especially diplomatic) communication from other countries. His most notable success was at the Washington Naval Conference, where he assisted American negotiators by giving them decrypted traffic from many conference delegates, most notably Japan. The Black Chamber convinced Western Union, the largest US telegram company at the time, as well as several other communications companies to illegally give Black Chamber access to cable traffic from foreign embassies and consulates. Soon, these companies openly stopped their collaboration.
Despite the early success of the Chamber, it was closed in 1929 by US Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who defended his decision by saying, "The brothers do not read each other's letters".
World War II and consequently
During World War II, the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) was created to intercept and decipher the Axis powers' communications. When the war ended, SIS was reorganized as Army Security Agency (ASA), and was placed under the leadership of the Director of Military Intelligence.
On May 20, 1949, all cryptologic activities were centered under a national organization called the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). The organization was originally established in the US Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. AFSA is assigned to direct the Ministry of Defense communications and electronic intelligence activities, except for US military intelligence units. However, AFSA can not centralize intelligence communications and fail to coordinate with civilian agencies that share interests such as the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In December 1951, President Harry S. Truman ordered a panel to investigate how AFSA failed to achieve its objectives. The results of the investigation led to its redesign and redesign as the National Security Agency.
This body was officially established by Truman in a memorandum of October 24, 1952, which revised the National Security Agency's Intelligence Regulations (NSCID) 9. Because President Truman's memo was a secret document, the existence of the NSA was not publicly known at the time. time. Because of its very strict secrecy, the US intelligence community referred to the NSA as "No such Agent".
Vietnam War
In the 1960s, the NSA played a key role in extending US commitment to the Vietnam War by providing evidence of North Vietnam attacks on US destroyer USS Maddox during the Tonkin Gulf incident.
A secret operation, code-named "MINARET", was established by the NSA to monitor telephone communications Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker, as well as key civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and prominent US journalists and athletes who criticized the War Vietnamese. However, the project turned out to be controversial, and an internal review by the NSA concluded that its mosque tower program "can not be trusted if it is not directly illegal".
The NSA increased great efforts to secure tactical communications among US forces during the war with mixed success. The NESTOR family of compatible secure sound systems was developed extensively during the Vietnam War, with about 30,000 sets of NESTOR produced. But various technical and operational issues limit its use, allowing North Vietnam to exploit and intercept US communications.
Church Committee Session
In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, a congressional hearing in 1975 led by Sen. Frank Church revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with the SIGINT UK intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has routinely intercepted the leading international anti-Vietnam war communications. leaders like Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock. Following the resignation of President Richard Nixon, there have been several investigations into alleged abuses of FBI facilities, the CIA and the NSA. Senator Frank Church invented previously unknown activities, such as the CIA plot (commanded by President John F. Kennedy's administration) to kill Fidel Castro. Investigations also uncovered NSA tapping on targeted US citizens.
After the Church Committee hearing, the Foreign Intelligence Oversight Act of 1978 was passed into law. This is designed to limit the practice of mass surveillance in the United States.
From the 1980s to the 1990s
In 1986, the NSA intercepted Libyan government communications for shortly after the Berlin discotheque bombing. The White House insists that the NSA interception has provided "undeniable evidence" that Libya is behind the bombing, which US President Ronald Reagan called the justification for the 1986 US bombing of Libya.
In 1999, a multi-year investigation by the European Parliament highlighted the role of the NSA in economic espionage in a report entitled 'Technology Development of Risk Monitoring and Risk of Economic Information'. That year, the NSA founded the NSA Hall of Honor, a memorial at the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland. The warning is "a tribute to pioneers and heroes who have made significant and lasting contributions to American cryptology". Employees of the NSA must retire for more than fifteen years to qualify for a memorial.
The NSA's infrastructure deteriorated in the 1990s as defense budget cuts resulted in suspension of care. On January 24, 2000, the NSA headquarters suffered a total network outage for three days caused by an overloaded network. Incoming traffic is successfully saved on the agent server, but can not be redirected and processed. The agency made emergency repairs at a cost of $ 3 million to get the system running again. (Some incoming traffic is also directed to the GCHQ of Great Britain for now.) Director Michael Hayden calls this blackout a "wake-up call" for the need to invest in agency infrastructure.
In the 1990s, the defense arm of the NSA - the Directorate of Information Assurance (IAD) - began to work more openly; The first public technical discussion by an NSA scientist at a major cryptographic conference was the presentation of J. Solinas on the efficient algorithm of Cryptography Curve Cryptography in Crypto 1997. IAD's cooperative approach to academia and industry culminated in its support for a transparent process to replace obsolescence. Data Encryption Standard (DES) with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Susan Landau's cybersecurity policy expert linked the NSA's harmonious collaboration with industry and academics in the AES election in 2000 - and Agency support for a strong selection of encryption algorithms designed by Europeans and not Americans - for Brian Snow, who is the IAD Technical Director and representing the NSA as cochairman of the Technical Working Group for the AES competition, and Michael Jacobs, who led the IAD at the time.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the NSA believes that they have received public support for the dramatic expansion of its surveillance activities. According to Neal Koblitz and Alfred Menezes, the period when the NSA was a trusted partner with academia and industry in the development of cryptographic standards began to end when, as part of a change in the NSA in the post-September 11 era, Snow was replaced as Technical Director, Jacobs retired, and the IAD could not again effectively opposed the actions proposed by the NSA's offensive arm.
War on Terror
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the NSA created a new IT system to deal with the flood of information from new technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones. ThinThread contains advanced data mining capabilities. It also has a "privacy mechanism"; supervision is stored encrypted; decryption requires a warrant. Research conducted under this program may have contributed to the technology used in the system in the future. ThinThread was canceled when Michael Hayden chose Trailblazer, which did not include ThinThread's privacy system.
The Trailblazer Project increased in 2002 and was undertaken by the International Science Application Company (SAIC), Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation, IBM, and Litton Industries. Some NSA whistleblowers complain internally about the main issues surrounding Trailblazer. This led to an investigation by Congress and the NSA and Inspector General DoD. The project was canceled in early 2004.
Turbulence began in 2005. It was developed in a small, inexpensive "test piece", rather than one big plan like the Trailblazer. It also includes offensive cyber-warfare capabilities, such as injecting malware into remote computers. Congress criticized Turbulence in 2007 for having the same bureaucratic problem with the Trailblazer. That is the realization of information processing at a higher speed in cyberspace.
Disclosure of global surveillance
The magnitude of NSA surveillance, both foreign and domestic, was disclosed to the public in a series of detailed disclosures of internal NSA documents beginning in June 2013. Most of the disclosure was leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Maps National Security Agency
Missions
The NSA's eavesdropping mission includes radio broadcasting, both from organizations and individuals, the Internet, phone calls, and other tapped communication forms. His secure communication mission includes military, diplomatic, and all other sensitive, confidential or secret communications.
According to the 2010 article on The Washington Post, "[e] that day, the collection system at the National Security Agency intercepted and stored 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other communications. small of them into 70 separate databases. "
Due to its listening task, the NSA/CSS has been heavily involved in cryptanalytic research, continuing the work of a predecessor institution that has violated many World War II codes and passwords (see, for example, Purple, the Venona project, and JN-25).
In 2004, the NSA Central Security Service and the Cyber ​​Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agreed to expand the NSA Academic Excellence Center in the Information Security Education Program.
As part of the Presidential Instruction of National Security 54/The Presidency of Homeland Security 23 (NSPD 54), signed on 8 January 2008 by President Bush, the NSA became the primary institution to monitor and protect all federal government computer networks from cyberspace. -terrorism.
Controversy and litigation
In the United States, since at least 2001, there has been legal controversy over what signals intelligence can be used for and how much freedom that the National Security Agency should use intelligence signals. The government has made, by 2015, little change in how to use and collect certain types of data, especially telephone records.
Forwarding wiretaps
On December 16, 2005, The New York Times reported that, under pressure from the White House and with the executive order of President George W. Bush, the National Security Agency, in an effort to thwart terrorism, has tapped a phone call that conducted to persons abroad, without obtaining a warrant from the United States Foreign Intelligence Oversight Tribunal, a secret tribunal created for that purpose under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
One such surveillance program, authorized by the US Signal Intelligence Guidelines 18 of President George Bush, is the Highlander Project undertaken for the National Security Agency by the 513 US Military Intelligence Brigade. NSA delivers telephone conversations (including cell phones) obtained from monitoring stations land, air and satellite to various US Army Military Signal Officers, including the 201 Military Intelligence Battalion. Conversations of US citizens are intercepted, along with people from other countries.
Supporters of the surveillance program claim that the President has executive authority to order such action, arguing that legislation such as FISA are sidelined by the President's Constitutional powers. In addition, some argue that FISA is implicitly overridden by subsequent legislation, Authorization for the Use of Military Forces, despite the Supreme Court's verdict in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld forbids this view. In the case of August 2006 ACLU v. NSA , US District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor concluded that the NSA's unsecured surveillance program is illegal and unconstitutional. On 6 July 2007, Circuit Court of Appeal Circuit 6 dismissed the decision on the grounds that the ACLU has no position to file a lawsuit.
On 17 January 2006, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit, CCR v. Bush, against George W. Bush's Presidency. The lawsuit challenges the National Security Agency's (NSA) supervision of people in the US, including CCR email interception without getting a warrant first.
In September 2008, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class action lawsuit against the NSA and several high-ranking Bush administration officials, charged the "illegal and unconstitutional vehicle control vehicle communications" program, based on documentation provided by former AT & ; Technician T Mark Klein.
As a result of the US Freedom Act authorized by Congress in June 2015, the NSA must close its mass mobile surveillance program on November 29th of the same year. The USA Freedom Act prohibits the NSA to collect metadata and phone call content unless it has a warrant for terrorism investigations. In this case the agency should ask the telecom company for the record, which will only be stored for six months.
Monitoring AT & amp; T internet
In May 2008, Mark Klein, a former employee of AT & T, alleges that his company has worked with the NSA to install Narus hardware to replace the Carnivore FBI program, to monitor network communications including traffic between US citizens.
Data excavation
The NSA was reported in 2008 to use its computational capabilities to analyze "transactional" data regularly obtained from other government agencies, which collect it under the authority of their own jurisdictions. As part of this effort, the NSA now monitors large volumes of domestic email data, web addresses from internet searches, bank transfers, credit card transactions, travel records, and phone data, according to the current and former intelligence officials interviewed by The Wall Street Journal . The sender, recipient, and email subject line may be included, but the message or phone call content is not.
A 2013 advisory group for the Obama administration, seeking to reform the NSA's reconnaissance program following the disclosure of documents released by Edward J. Snowden. mentioned in 'Recommendation 30' on page 37, "... that the National Security Council staff should manage interagency processes to regularly review US Government activities on attacks that exploit vulnerabilities previously unknown in computer applications." Retired cyber security experts Richard A. Clarke was a member of the group and stated on April 11 that the NSA had no knowledge of Heartbleed.
Illegally procured evidence
In August 2013 it was revealed that an IRS 2005 training document showed that NSA's interception and eavesdropping, both foreign and domestic, were supplied to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and illegally used to launch criminals. investigation of US citizens. Law enforcement agencies are geared to hide how investigations begin and create traces of seemingly legal investigations by retrieving the same evidence in other ways.
Barack Obama Administration
In the months leading up to April 2009, the NSA tapped into the communication of US citizens, including a member of Congress, although the Justice Department believes that the tapping was unintentional. The Justice Department then takes action to fix the problem and bring the program to conform with existing law. US Attorney General Eric Holder continued the program in accordance with his understanding of the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, without explaining what had happened.
A poll conducted in June 2013 found results shared between Americans about the collection of confidential NSA data. The Rasmussen report found that 59% of Americans disagreed, Gallup found that 53% disagreed, and Pew found that 56% supported NSA data collection.
Section 215 collection of metadata
On April 25, 2013, the NSA obtained a court order requiring Verizon Business Network Services to provide metadata for all calls in its system to the NSA "daily" for a three month period, as reported by The Guardian on June 6 2013. This information includes "the number of both parties on the call... location data, the duration of the call, the unique identifier, and the time and duration of all calls" but not "[t] he content of the conversation itself". The order relies on the so-called "business record" provisions of the Patriot Act.
In August 2013, after the Snowden leak, new details about the NSA's data mining activities were revealed. Reportedly, the majority of incoming or outgoing emails from the United States are caught on the "communications link selected" and automatically analyzed for other keywords or "selectors". Unmatched email deleted.
The utility of massive metadata collections in preventing terrorist attacks is debatable. Many studies have revealed that such webs are ineffective. One such report, issued by the New America Foundation concludes that after an analysis of 225 terrorism cases, the NSA "has no real impact in preventing acts of terrorism."
The program defender said that while metadata alone can not provide all the necessary information to prevent attacks, it ensures the ability to "connect the dots" between suspected foreign numbers and domestic numbers at the speed of only capable NSA software. One of the benefits of this is that it can quickly determine the difference between suspicious activity and real threats. For example, NSA's Director-General Keith B. Alexander mentioned at the annual Cybersecurity Summit in 2013, that a metadata analysis of domestic phone call records after the Boston Marathon bombings helped determine that rumors of follow-up attacks in New York were unfounded.
In addition to doubts about its effectiveness, many people argue that metadata gathering is an unconstitutional infringement of privacy. By 2015, the collection process remains legal and is based on the decision of Smith v. Maryland (1979). A major opponent of data collection and legality is US District Judge Richard J. Leon, who issued a report in 2013 in which he stated: "I can not imagine more" arbitrary "and" arbitrary invasions "than technology and high technology collecting and storing personal data on virtually every single citizen for query purposes and analyzing it without prior judicial consent... Of course, such programs violate the 'privacy level' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. "
On May 7, 2015, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act was false and that the NSA program that had collected large numbers of American telephone records was illegal. It states that Article 215 can not be clearly interpreted to allow the government to collect national telephone data and, as a result, end on June 1, 2015. This decision "is the first time a high-level court in the regular justice system has reviewed the NSA's record telephone program." The replacement law known as the US Freedom Act, which will allow the NSA to continue to have mass access to the citizen metadata but provided that the data will now be kept by the company itself. This change will have no effect on the procedures of other bodies - beyond the collection of metadata - which has allegedly challenged the Fourth Amendment of America, including upstream collection, many techniques used by the Agency to collect and store data/US communications directly from the backbone of the Internet.
Under the Hulu program, the NSA pays telecommunications companies between 9 and 95 million dollars to collect data from them. While companies like Google and Yahoo! claiming that they do not provide "direct access" from their servers to the NSA except under court orders, the NSA has access to email, phone calls, and mobile data users. Under this new regulation, telecommunications companies maintain mass user metadata on their servers for at least 18 months, to be provided on request to the NSA. This decision made the mass storage of certain phone records in the NSA data center illegal, but it did not decide on the Constitutionality of Article 215.
Increase of Fourth Amendment
In an unclassified document, it was revealed that 17,835 telephone lines were on the "incorrect" warning list from 2006 to 2009 in violation of compliance, which marked this phone line for daily monitoring. Eleven percent of these monitored telephones meet the agency's legal standards for "reasonably articulated suspicion" (RAS). The NSA tracks the location of hundreds of millions of mobile phones per day, making it possible to map people's movements and relationships in detail. The NSA has been reported to have access to all communications made through Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL, Skype, Apple and Paltalk, and collects hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal email accounts and instant messages every year. It has also successfully weakened many encryption used on the Internet (by collaborating with, forcing or otherwise infiltrate many technology companies to leave "backroom" into their systems), so much of the encryption is inadvertently susceptible to various forms of attack..
Domestically, the NSA has been proven to collect and store phone call metadata records, including more than 120 million Verizon US customers, and intercept large amounts of communication via the internet (Hulu). The position of government law is dependent on the secret interpretation of the Patriot Act whereby overall US communications can be considered "relevant" to terrorism investigations if it is expected that even a small minority may be related to terrorism. The NSA also supplies foreign intercepts to the DEA, IRS and other law enforcement agencies, who use this to initiate criminal investigations. The federal agency was then instructed to "create" an investigative trail through parallel construction.
The NSA also spies on influential Muslims to obtain information that can be used to discredit them, such as the use of pornography. The targets, whether domestic or abroad, are not suspected of any crime but have religious or political views considered "radical" by the NSA.
According to a report in The Washington Post in July 2014, depending on the information provided by Snowden, 90% of those placed under US supervision are ordinary Americans, and not the intended target. The newspaper said it had checked documents including emails, text messages and online accounts supporting the claim.
Congressional oversight
Although the White House claims that these programs have congressional oversight, many members of Congress are unaware of the existence of NSA programs or secret interpretations of the Patriot Act, and are consistently denied access to basic information about them. The US Foreign Intelligence Oversight Tribunal, a secret tribunal assigned to organize NSA activities, according to its chief judge, was unable to investigate or verify how often the NSA violated even its own secret rules. Since then it has been reported that the NSA violated its own rules on data access thousands of times a year, many of these violations involving large-scale data interception. NSA officers have even used tapping data to spy on love interest; "Most NSA violations are self-reported, and each instance results in the administrative action of termination."
The NSA has "generally ignored specific rules to disseminate information of United States people" by illegally sharing its intercepts with other law enforcement agencies. The FISA Court of Appeal in March 2009, issued by the court, stated that protocols that limit data requests have been "so frequent and systematically violated that it can be fairly said that an important element of the whole... this regime has never functioned effectively." In 2011 the same court noted that the "volume and nature" of NSA's mass foreign Internet tapping was "fundamentally different from what was believed by the court". Email contact lists (including US-owned residents) are collected at various foreign locations to work around the illegality of doing so on US soil.
The legal opinion about the NSA's mass collection program has been different. In mid-December 2013, US District Judge Richard Leon ruled that the "almost-Orwellian" program might violate the Constitution, and wrote, "I can not imagine more" arbitrary "and" arbitrary invasions "than this systematic and high-tech collection. and the retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for the purpose of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial consent. Obviously, such programs violate the 'degree of privacy' that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.Indeed, I have little doubt that the authors of our Constitution, James Madison, who warns us to be careful 'to reduce the freedom of people with gradual and silent incarnation by those in power,' will be appalled. '
Later that month, US District Judge William Pauley decided that the collection of NSA phone records was legitimate and valuable in the war on terrorism. In his opinion, he writes, "The mass telephone metadata gathering program is a wide web that can find and isolate the thin contacts among suspected terrorists in a sea of ​​seemingly disconnected data" and notes that similar data collections before 9/11 might prevent the attack.
Official responses
At the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March 2013, Senator Ron Wyden called on National Director of Intelligence James Clapper, "does the NSA collect any type of data at all at millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper replied, "No, Sir... Unconsciously, there are cases where they might accidentally collect, but not on purpose." This statement came under scrutiny a few months later, in June 2013, details of the PRISM surveillance program were published, indicating that "the NSA seems to be able to gain access to servers from nine Internet companies for a variety of digital data." Wyden says that Clapper has failed to provide "direct answers" in his testimony. Clapper, in response to criticism, said, "I answered in a way that I think is most honest, or at least honest." Clapper adds, "There is an honest difference about what semantics are - when someone says 'collection' to me, which has a special meaning, which may have different meanings for him."
NSA whistler-blower Edward Snowden also reveals the presence of XKeyscore, a confidential NSA program that allows agencies to search large databases of "metadata as well as the content of email and other internet activities, such as browser history," with the ability to search by "name, phone number, IP address, keywords, the language where the internet activity is performed or the type of browser used. " XKeyscore "provides technological capabilities, if not the legal authority, to target even US people for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant if some identifying information, such as their email address or IP, is known by analysts."
Regarding the need for this NSA program, Alexander stated on June 27 that the NSA's mass Internet and Internet eavesdropping has been instrumental in preventing 54 terrorist "events", including 13 events in the US, and in all but one of these cases has given the beginning of a tip for " reveal the flow of threats ". On July 31, NSA Deputy Director John Inglis acknowledged to the Senate that this tapping was unimportant in stopping a terrorist attack, but "close" to vital in identifying and punishing four San Diego men for sending US $ 8,930 to Al-Shabaab, a militia conducting terrorism in Somalia.
The US government has aggressively sought to ignore and oppose the Fourth Amendment case filed against it, and has provided retroactive immunity to ISPs and telecoms participating in domestic surveillance. The US military has admitted blocking access to parts of the Guardian website for thousands of defense personnel across the country, and blocked all website Guardian websites for personnel stationed throughout Afghanistan, Central East, and South Asia.
The United Nations report in October 2014 condemned mass surveillance by the United States and other countries for violating several international treaties and conventions that guarantee the right of core privacy.
Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA
In 2015, the Wikimedia Foundation and several other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the NSA, Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA , for violations of their First and Fourth Amendment user rights by the Agency's mass surveillance program such as Hulu. The suit was originally dismissed, but was later found to have a legal and legal standing for his complaint by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and returned. The case is pending further proceedings at the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.
Responsibility for international ransomware attacks
Exploitations, EternalBlue, believed to have been created by the NSA, were used in WannaCry's worldwide ransomware attacks in May 2017. The exploits have been leaked online by hacking group The Shadow Brokers nearly a month before the attack. A number of experts have pointed fingers at the NSA that did not reveal the underlying vulnerability, and lost control of the EternalBlue attack tool that exploited it. Edward Snowden said that if the NSA had "personally revealed the defects used to attack hospitals when they found it, not when they lost it, [attacks] might not happen". One of the founders of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, stated that he joined "with Microsoft and other industry leaders saying this was a big government mistake... when the NSA found it, they should have told Microsoft so they could quietly issue patches and really persuade people, long before that became a big problem. "
Operation
Operations by the National Security Agency can be divided into three types:
- Overseas collection, which is under the responsibility of the Global Access Operations (GAO) division.
- Domestic collection, which is under the responsibility of the Special Sources Operations (SSO) division.
- Hacking operation, which is under the responsibility of the Customized Access Operations (TAO) division.
Collection abroad
Echelon
"Echelon" was created in the Cold War incubator. Today is a legacy system, and some NSA stations are closed.
The NSA/CSS, in combination with equivalent institutions in the United Kingdom (Government Communications Headquarters), Canada (Communications Security Company), Australia (Defense Signaling Directorate), and New Zealand (Public Security Bureau of Communication), otherwise known as the UKUSA group, are reported to become the operating command of the so-called ECHELON system. His capabilities allegedly include the ability to monitor the vast majority of the world's transmitted phone, fax, and civil-traffic traffic.
During the early 1970s, the first of what became more than eight large satellite communication antennas was installed in Menwith Hill. Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell reported in 1988 on the "ECHELON" surveillance program, the extension of the UKUSA Agreement on SIGINT's global intelligence signal, and details of how the wiretapping operation worked. On November 3, 1999, the BBC reported that they received confirmation from the Australian Government about the existence of a powerful "Echelon" code-named "spy ring" that could "eavesdrop on every phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet "with Britain and the United States as the main protagonists. They affirm that Menwith Hill "is directly linked to the headquarters of the US National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade in Maryland".
The US NSA Signal Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) strongly prohibits the interception or collection of information about "... US persons, bodies, companies or organizations...." without explicit legal written permission of the United States Attorney General when the subject is outside country or Foreign Intelligence Oversight Court while inside the US border. The related Echelon activities, including their use for motives other than national security, including political and industrial espionage, receive criticism from countries outside the UKUSA alliance.
Other SIGINT operations abroad
The NSA is also involved in planning to blackmail people with "SEXINT", intelligence gained about potential sexual activity and preference targets. Those who are targeted do not commit a clear crime or they are accused.
To support the facial recognition program, the NSA tapped "millions of images per day".
Real Time Regional Gateway is a data collection program that was introduced in 2005 in Iraq by the NSA during the Iraq War which consists of collecting all electronic communications, saving it, then searching and analyzing it. It is effective in providing information about Iraqi insurgents who have avoided less comprehensive techniques. This "sums it all up" strategy introduced by the NSA director, Keith B. Alexander, is believed by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian to be a model for the comprehensive worldwide mass communication archives that the NSA is involved as of 2013.
A special unit of the NSA placed a target for the CIA for extrajudicial killings in the Middle East. The NSA has also spied extensively on the EU, the UN and many governments including allies and trading partners in Europe, South America and Asia.
In June 2015, WikiLeaks published a document showing that the NSA was spying on French companies.
In July 2015, WikiLeaks published a document showing that the NSA spied on the German federal department since the 1990s. Even the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her predecessor's phone have been intercepted.
BoundlessInformant
Edward Snowden revealed in June 2013 that between February 8 and March 8, 2013, the NSA collected approximately 124.8 billion telephone data items and 97.1 billion computer data items worldwide, as shown in the graph of an internal NSA tool called Code Boundless Informant. Initially, it was reported that some of these data reflect wiretapping on citizens in countries such as Germany, Spain and France, but later, it became clear that the data were collected by European institutions during military missions abroad and then shared with the NSA.
Passing encryption
In 2013, reporters discovered a secret memo claiming the NSA was created and encouraged to implement the EC Double ECBG encryption standard containing built-in vulnerabilities in 2006 to the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States (NIST), and International Organization for Standardization (aka ISO ). This memo seems to give confidence in previous speculation by cryptographers at Microsoft Research. Edward Snowden claims that the NSA often passes encryption altogether by lifting information before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted.
The XKeyscore rules (as specified in the xkeyscorerules100.txt file, sourced from the German NDR TV station and the WDR, which claims to have quotes from the source code) reveal that the NSA tracks users of software tools that enhance privacy, including Tor; anonymous email services provided by MIT Computer Science and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and readers of Linux Journal .
Back of software
Linus Torvalds, founder of the Linux kernel, jokes during the LinuxCon keynote on September 18, 2013, that the NSA, who is the founder of SELinux, wants a backdoor in the kernel. However, later, Linus's father, Member of the European Parliament (MEP), revealed that the NSA actually did this.
When my oldest son was asked the same question: "Is he approached by the NSA about backdoors?" he said "No", but at the same time he nodded. Then he is legally free. He has given the right answer, everyone understands that the NSA has approached him.
IBM Notes is the first widely adopted software product to use public-key cryptography for server-client authentication and servers and for data encryption. Until US laws governing encryption were changed in 2000, IBM and Lotus are prohibited from exporting Notes versions that support symmetric encryption keys that are longer than 40 bits. In 1997, Lotus negotiated an agreement with the NSA that allowed export of a version that supported a stronger key with 64 bits, but 24 bits were encrypted with a special key and included in the message to provide a "workload reduction factor" for the NSA. This strengthens the protection for users of Notes outside the US against private sector industry espionage, but not against spies by the US government.
Routing boomerang
Although it is assumed that foreign transmissions ending in the US (such as non-US citizens accessing US websites) are subject to non-US citizens to NSA supervision, recent research on boomerang routes has raised new concerns about the NSA's ability to oversee domestic traffic internet from foreign countries. Boomerang routing occurs when Internet transmissions originate and end up in one other transit state. Research at the University of Toronto states that about 25% of Canada's domestic traffic can be subject to NSA control activities as a result of a boomerang route from a Canadian Internet service provider.
Hardware installs
A document inserted in the NSA file released with Glenn Greenwald No Place to Hide book explains how the TAO operations of other agents and NSA units gain access to the hardware. They intercept routers, servers and other network hardware that are sent to targeted organizations for monitoring and installing confidential implant firmware to them before they are delivered. This is described by NSA managers as "some of the most productive operations in TAO because they place access points into difficult target networks around the world."
Computers confiscated by the NSA due to interdiction are often modified with a physical device known as Cottonmouth. Cottonmouth is a device that can be inserted into a computer's USB port to make remote access to the targeted machine. According to the Customized Adjustment Operations group implant catalog (NSA), after implanting Cottonmouth, the NSA may establish Bridging (network) "that allows the NSA to load exploit software onto a modified computer and enable the NSA to relay intercomputer commands and data and device implants soft. "
Domestic collection
The NSA's mission, as set out in Executive Order 12333 in 1981, was to collect information that was "foreign intelligence or counter intelligence" while not "obtaining information about the domestic activities of Americans". The NSA has stated that it relies on the FBI to gather information about foreign intelligence activities within the borders of the United States, while limiting its own activities in the United States to embassies and missions of foreign countries. The emergence of the NSA's 'Directorate of Domestic Surveillance' was soon revealed as a hoax in 2013.
The NSA's domestic surveillance activities are limited by the requirements imposed by the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. The Foreign Intelligence Oversight Court, for example, was held in October 2011, citing some of the precedents of the Supreme Court, that the fourth Prohibition of Change against unreasonable search and seizures applies to the content of all communications, regardless of how, for "personal personal communication is the same as a personal document. " However, this protection does not apply to non-U.S. people outside the US borders, so that the NSA's overseas oversight efforts are subject to much less restrictions under U.S. law. Specific requirements for domestic surveillance operations are contained in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), which does not extend protection to non-US nationals outside the US territory.
Presidential Supervision Program
George W. Bush, president during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, approved the Patriot Act shortly after the attack to take anti-terrorist security measures. Title 1, 2, and 9 special steps to be taken by the NSA. These titles provide increased domestic security to terrorism, surveillance procedures, and improved intelligence, respectively. On March 10, 2004, there was a debate between President Bush and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Acting Prosecutor James Comey. The Attorney General is not sure if the NSA program can be considered constitutional. They threatened to resign over the matter, but in the end the NSA program continued. On March 11, 2004, President Bush signed a new authorization for mass surveillance of Internet records, in addition to surveillance of telephone records. This allows the president to be able to override laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Oversight Act, which protects civilians from mass surveillance. In addition, President Bush also signed that mass surveillance measures are also retroactive.
Program PRISM
Under the PRISM program, which began in 2007, the NSA collects Internet communications from overseas targets from nine major US based Internet-based communications service providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. The data collected includes email, video and voice chats, videos, photos, VoIP chats like Skype, and file transfers.
Former NSA director General Keith Alexander claims that in September 2009 the NSA prevented Najibullah Zazi and his friends from carrying out terrorist attacks. However, this claim has been disputed and no evidence presented suggests that the NSA had any role in preventing terrorist attacks.
Hacking operation
In addition to the more traditional ways of eavesdropping to collect intelligence signals, the NSA is also involved in hacking their computers, smart phones and networks. This operation is performed by the Customized Access Operations division (TAO), which has been active since at least 1998.
According to the magazine Foreign Policy , "... The Customized Access Operations Office, or TAO, has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecom systems for nearly 15 years, generating some of the best and most reliable intelligence. which is going on inside the People's Republic of China. "
In an interview with Wired magazine Edward Snowden said the Customized Access Operations division inadvertently caused a Syrian Internet outage in 2012.
Organizational structure
The NSA is led by the Director of the National Security Agency (DIRNSA), who also serves as Chief of the Central Security Service (CHCSS) and the US Ceylon Command Commander (USCYBERCOM) and is the highest ranking military official. organization. He is assisted by the Deputy Director, who is the highest ranked civilian in the NSA/CSS.
The NSA also has the Inspector General, the head of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the General Counsel, the head of the General Counsel Office (OGC) and the Compliance Director, who is the head of the Office of Compliance Director (ODOC).
Unlike other intelligence organizations such as the CIA or DIA, the NSA has always been very reluctant about its internal organizational structure.
In the mid-1990s, the National Security Agency was organized into five Directorates:
- The Directorate of Operations, which is responsible for SIGINT collection and processing.
- Directorate of Technology and Systems, which develops new technologies for SIGINT collection and processing.
- The Information System Security Directorate, responsible for communication and information security missions of the NSA.
- The Planning, Policy and Program Directorate, which provides staff support and general direction for the Agency.
- The Directorate of Support Services, which provides logistical and administrative support activities.
Each of these directors consists of several groups or elements, designated by a letter. There is, for example, Group A, which is responsible for all SIGINT operations against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and G Group, which is responsible for SIGINT associated with all non-communist countries. These groups are divided into units designated by additional numbers, such as unit A5 for breaking Soviet code, and G6, becoming offices for the Middle East, North Africa, Cuba, Central and South America.
Directorate
By 2013, the NSA has about a dozen directorates, designated by letters, though not all publicly known. Directorates are divided into divisions and units starting with letters from the parent directorate, followed by numbers for divisions, sub-units or sub-units.
The main elements of the NSA's organizational structure are:
- F - The Directorate is only known from the F6 unit, the Special Collection Service (SCS), which is a joint program created by the CIA and the NSA in 1978 to facilitate clandestine activities such as tapping computers around the world, using the expertise of both agency.
- G - The only known directorate of the G112 unit, the office that manages the Senior Span platform, is attached to the U2 spy plane. (IAD), which guarantees the availability, integrity, authentication, confidentiality and non-rejection of national security and telecommunications and information systems (national security systems).
- J - The only known directorate of J2 unit, Cryptology Intelligence Unit
- L - Installation and Logistics
- M - Human Resources
- Q - Security and Cons of Intelligence
- R - Directorate of Research, conducting research on intelligence signals and information assurance for the Government of the U.S.
- S - Signal Directive Direction (SID), which is responsible for the collection, analysis, production and dissemination of intelligence signals. The directorate is headed by a director and deputy director. SID consists of the following divisions:
- S1 - Customer Relations
- S2 - Analysis and Production Center, with the following Product Line:
- S2A: South Asia, S2B: China and Korea, S2C: International Security, S2E: Middle East/Asia, S2F: International Crime, S2G: Counter-proliferation, S2H: Russia, S2I: Counter- S2J: Weapons and Space, S2T: The Current Threat
- S3 - Data Acquisition, with this division for the main collection program:
- S31 - Cryptanalysis and Exploitation Service (CES)
- S32 - Customized Access Operations (TAO), which hacked into a foreign computer for virtual world espionage and reportedly is "the largest and arguably the most important component of the NSA's Large Signal Intelligence Directorate (SIGINT), consisting of over 1,000 military and civil computer hackers, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer hardware and software designers, and electrical engineers. "
- S33 - Global Access Operations (GAO), which is responsible for cutting off of satellites and other international SIGINT platforms. A tool detailing and mapping information collected by this unit is Code-name Boundless Informant.
- S34 - Collection Strategy and Terms Center
- S35 - Special Source Operations (SSO), which is responsible for domestic collection programs and compartments, such as the PRISM program. Special Sources Operations are also mentioned in connection with the FAIRVIEW collection program.
- T - Technical Directorate (TD)
- Directorate of Education and Training
- Directorate of Corporate Leadership
- Directorate of Foreign Affairs, acting as a liaison with foreign intelligence services, counter-intelligence centers and UKUSA partners.
- Acquisition and Procurement Directorate
- The Information Sharing Service (ISS), headed by a head and a deputy head.
In 2000, a leadership team was formed, consisting of Directors, Deputy Directors and Director of Signal Intelligence (SID), Information Security (IAD) and Technical Directorate (TD). Other major NSA division leaders became associate directors of senior leadership teams.
After President George W. Bush started the Presidential Supervision Program (PSP) in 2001, the NSA created the 24-hour Metadata Analysis Center (MAC), followed in 2004 by the Advanced Analysis Division (AAD), with the mission of analyzing content, internet metadata and metadata telephone. Both units are part of the Signal Intelligence Directorate.
The 2016 proposal will incorporate the Signal Intelligence Directorate with the Directorate of Information Assurance to the Directorate of Operations.
NSANet
NSANet is an abbreviation of the National Security Agency Network and is an official NSA intranet. This is a secret network, for information up to the TS/SCI level to support the use and sharing of intelligence data between the NSA and signal intelligence services from four other countries from the Five Eyes partnership. NSANet Management has been delegated to Central Security Service Texas (CSSTEXAS).
NSANet is a very secure computer network consisting of fiber-optic communication channels and satellites that are almost completely separated from the public Internet. This network allows NSA personnel and civil and military intelligence analysts anywhere in the world to have access to the agency's systems and databases. This access is strictly controlled and controlled. For example, each keystroke is recorded, activity is randomly audited and download and print documents from NSANet are recorded.
In 1998, NSANet, along with NIPRNET and SIPRNET, had "significant problems with poor search capabilities, unorganized data and old information". In 2004, the network reportedly used more than twenty commercial operating systems off the shelf. Some universities conducting highly sensitive research are allowed to connect with it.
Thousands of internal Top Secret NSA documents taken by Edward Snowden in 2013 are stored in "file-sharing locations on the NSA's intranet site"; so, they can be easily read online by NSA personnel. Everyone with TS/SCI permission has access to these documents as system administrators, Snowden is responsible for removing accidentally misplaced documents that are misplaced to safer storage locations.
Watch center
The NSA retains at least two watch centers:
- National Security Operations Center (NSOC), which is the current operating center and NSA focal point for time-sensitive SIGINT reporting for US SIGINT Systems (USSS). The center was founded in 1968 as the National SIGINT Watch Center (NSWC) and renamed the National SIGINT Operations Center (NSOC) in 1973. The NSA's "Nerve Center" earned its current name in 1996.
- NSA/CSS Threat Operation Center (NTOC), which is the main NSA/CSS partner for the Department of Homeland Security response to cyber incidents. NTOC establishes a direct network awareness and characterization threats ability to forecast, warn, and attribute malicious activity and enable coordination of Computer Network Operations. NTOC was established in 2004 as a Joint Assurance and Signals Intelligence project.
Employee
The number of NSA employees is officially classified but there are some sources that provide estimates. In 1961, the NSA had 59,000 military and civilian employees, growing to 93,067 in 1969, of which 19,300 worked at the headquarters at Fort Meade. In the early 1980s the NSA had about 50,000 military and civilian personnel. By 1989 this number had grown again to 75,000, of which 25,000 worked at NSA headquarters. Between 1990 and 1995, the NSA's budget and workforce were cut by a third, leading to a loss of experience.
As of 2012, the NSA says more than 30,000 employees work at Fort Meade and other facilities. In 2012, John C. Inglis, deputy director, said that the total number of NSA employees was "between 37,000 and one billion" as a joke, and stated that the agency "is probably the largest introverted entrepreneur." In 2013 Der Spiegel states that the NSA has 40,000 employees. More broadly, it has been described as the world's only mathematical mathematical company. Some NSA employees are part of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) workforce, the agency that provides the NSA with intelligence satellite signals.
In 2013 about 1,000 system administrators worked for the NSA.
Security personnel
The NSA received criticism in the early 1960s after two agents defected to the Soviet Union. Investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the special subcommittee of the United States House Committee on Armed Services revealed a case of serious ignorance in personnel security regulations, prompting former personnel directors and security directors to step down and lead to adoption. strict security practices. Nevertheless, a security breach occurred only one year later when in the July 23, 1963 issue of
On the same day, NSA clerk scribes committed suicide because an ongoing investigation revealed that he had sold secret information to the Soviets regularly. The reluctance of Congressional homes to look into these matters has prompted a journalist to write, "If a series of similar tragic errors occur in every ordinary governmental body, an aroused society will insist that those responsible are censured, demoted his position, or being fired. " David Kahn criticized NSA's tactics for concealing his actions as arrogant and blind faith of Congress in exercising his body rights as shortsighted, and showing the need for Congressional oversight to prevent abuse of power.
Edward Snowden's leak of PRISM presence in 2013 caused the NSA to institutionalize a "two-person rule", in which two system administrators must be present when someone accesses certain sensitive information. Snowden claims he suggested such a rule in 2009.
Polygraphing
The NSA conducts an employee's polygraph test. For new employees, this test is intended to find spies of enemies applying to the NSA and to disclose any information that may compel the applicant into coercion. As part of the latter, historically EPQs or "embarrassing personal questions" about sexual behavior have been included in the NSA's polygraph. The NSA also conducted five years of re-examination p
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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