Leaked documents show capabilities of new surveillance technologies
November 21, 2011 Leave a comment
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By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A trove of hundreds of documents, obtained by participants in a secretive surveillance conference, displays in unprecedented detail the extent of monitoring technologies used by governments around the world. The Wall Street Journal, which obtained the leaked documents, says they number in the hundreds; they were reportedly authored by 36 different private companies that specialize in supplying government agencies with the latest surveillance hardware and software. They were among dozens of vendors that participated in an unnamed conference near Washington, DC, in October, which attracted interested buyers from numerous government agencies in America and beyond. The Journal, which has uploaded scanned copies of the leaked documents, says that many include descriptions of computer hacking tools. The latter enable government agencies to break into targeted computers and access data stored in hard drives, as well as log keystrokes by the targeted computers’ users. Other applications target cellular telecommunications, especially the latest models of so-called ‘smartphones’; one vendor in particular, Vupen Security, gave a presentation at the conference, which describes how its products allow for electronic surveillance of cell phones by exploiting security holes unknown to manufacturers. Some of the most popular products at the conference related to what the industry calls “massive intercept” monitoring, namely large-scale software systems designed to siphon vast amounts of telephonic or email communications data, or to capture all Internet exchanges taking place within a country’s computer network. One conference participant, California-based Net Optics Inc., bragged in its presentation about having enabled “a major mobile operator in China” to conduct “real-time monitoring” of all cell phone [and] Internet content on its network. The stated goal of the surveillance was to “analyze criminal activity” and “detect and filter undesirable content”. Read more of this post
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Chinese technology firm denies it had access to Dutch government’s phone calls
April 21, 2021 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
According to the newspaper De Volkskrant, which accessed the 2010 Capgemini report, the consultants cautioned KPN against purchasing more equipment from Huawei. They told KPN bosses that the Chinese firm had “unlimited access” to the content of phone conversations by subscribers through Huawei-built hardware and software that was already present in the Dutch company’s telephone system. These included Holland’s then-Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, and virtually every government minister. The report claimed that privacy standards existed in theory, but there was no mechanism in place to ensure that they were being followed.
On Tuesday, Huawei issued strong denials of the De Volkskrant report. The firm’s chief operating officer in the Netherlands, Gert-Jan van Eck, said that the Capgemini report allegations, as reported by the newspaper, were “just not [technically] possible”. Van Eck added that such claims were “patently untrue” and represented “an underestimation of the security of the interception environment” that Huawei was operating under in Europe. The Dutch government has made no comment on the De Volkskrant report.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 April 2021 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with China, Huawei Technologies, Jan Peter Balkenende, Netherlands, News, telecommunications industry, telephone surveillance