NSA spies on every cell phone company in the world, new data shows
December 5, 2014 Leave a comment
By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The United States National Security Agency has spied on virtually every cell phone manufacturer and provider in the world in an attempt to uncover security weaknesses that can be exploited for surveillance, according to newly leaked data. It also appears that the NSA has worked to sabotage the technical security features of commercial telecommunications systems in order to be able to spy on their users. The documents were released on Thursday by The Intercept’s Ryan Gallagher, who said he acquired them from American defector and former NSA computer technician Edward Snowden. The documents reveal the existence of an NSA project codenamed AURORAGOLD, which appears to have been operational since at least 2010. It has targeted telephone companies in virtually every country in the world, including in the US, as well as in nations closely aligned with Washington, such as Australia, Germany, United Kingdom, France and New Zealand. The project has been carried out by at least two separate NSA units, whose existence appears to have been publicly disclosed for the first time. One is the Wireless Portfolio Management Office, which is tasked with outlining and implementing the NSA’s strategy for penetrating wireless telecommunications systems. The other is the Target Technology Trends Center, whose mission is to track the development of emerging communications technologies so as to detect security innovations that could prevent the NSA from spying on their users. The leaked documents show that, as of late spring of 2012, the NSA had collected detailed technical information on nearly 70 percent of the world’s cellular telecommunications networks and was preparing to spy on the email accounts of their employees. The goal was to acquire technical blueprints and other planning papers that could help the NSA penetrate those networks. According to Gallagher, the broad scope of AURORAGOLD appears to be aimed at “ensuring virtually every cellphone network in the world is NSA-accessible”. But the publication quotes leading cellphone security experts who express strong skepticism over the NSA program. One of them, the University of Virginia’s Karsten Nohl, warns against any policy that aims to deliberately install security vulnerabilities on telecommunications networks. “Once NSA introduces a weakness, a vulnerability, it’s not only the NSA that can exploit it”, he says. Another security expert, F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen, cautions that criminals and spies from every country could be among AURORAGOLD’s “inadvertent beneficiaries”. The Intercept spoke to an NSA spokeswoman, who said the Agency was committed to ensuring “an open, interoperable and secure global Internet”. But she declined to discuss AURORAGOLD.
Irish police mole helped entire IRA leadership avoid capture in 1974
December 8, 2014 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
The former intelligence director of the Provisional Irish Republican Army has claimed that an informant within the Irish police helped the entire leadership of the militant organization avoid capture during a raid in 1974. The raid was conducted in December of 1974 by Garda Síochána, the police force of the Republic of Ireland, in the village of Feakle, County Claire, in western Ireland. On the day of the raid, the entire leadership of the Provisional IRA was taking part in a secret meeting with Protestant clergy, which had been pursued by the separatist organization following the so-called pub bombings in the English cities of Guildford and Birmingham. The bombings were meant to take the war in Northern Ireland to the British mainland, but were eventually deemed disastrous to the image of the IRA. Nearly 30 people died in the bombings, while hundreds were injured, many of them seriously. The secret meeting between the IRA’s leadership and Protestant clergy was part of a wider negotiation campaign between republican separatists and pro-British loyalists, which eventually led to a ceasefire that lasted until the start of 1975. However, an informant had given the Garda accurate information about the meeting location between the IRA senior command and Protestant clergy, and the agency’s Crime and Security Branch planned to swoop on the meeting and arrest the republican militants. However, in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian, the IRA’s former director of intelligence, Kieran Conway, said the IRA leadership managed to escape arrest thanks to “a tip-off from high-placed figures within the Garda”. Conway joined the IRA in 1970 and became director of its intelligence wing in 1974. He left a year later and joined again in 1981 during the hunger strikes by republican prisoners. He left for good in 1993, in protest against the IRA’s decision to sign the Downing Street Declaration, which formed the basis of the IRA’s eventual decision to decommission its weapons and enter the political process. Conway also told The Guardian that the IRA had the support of “prominent members of the Irish establishment” including mainstream politicians, senior bankers, stockbrokers and journalists. Many of these supporters provided safe houses for members of the IRA in affluent neighborhoods of Irish capital Dublin, he claimed. Conway was speaking to promote his recently published book, called Southside Provisional: From Freedom Fighter to the Four Courts. This is not the first time allegations have surfaced about IRA moles inside the Irish Garda. In 2011, an Irish government investigation unearthed intelligence reports claiming that an informant within the agency helped the IRA plan the killings of a judge and two senior British police officers in the 1980s.
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Garda Síochána, Garda Síochána Crime and Security Branch, history, Ireland, Kieran Conway, News, Provisional IRA, UK