Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

The NSA Has Inserted Its Code Into Android OS, Or Three Quarters Of All Smartphones

Over a decade ago, it was discovered that the NSA embedded backdoor access into Windows 95, and likely into virtually all other subsequent internet connected, desktop-based operating systems. However, with the passage of time, more and more people went “mobile”, and as a result the NSA had to adapt. And adapt they have: as Bloomberg reports, “The NSA is quietly writing code for Google’s Android OS.”
Is it ironic that the same “don’t be evil” Google which went to such great lengths in the aftermath of the Snowden scandal to wash its hands of snooping on its customers and even filed a request with the secretive FISA court asking permission to disclose more information about the government’s data requests, is embedding NSA code into its mobile operating system, which according to IDC runs on three-quarters of all smartphones shipped in the first quarter? Yes, yes it is.
Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano confirms that the company has already inserted some of the NSA’s programming in Android OS. “All Android code and contributors are publicly available for review at source.android.com.” Scigliano says, declining to comment further.
From Bloomberg:
Through its open-source Android project, Google has agreed to incorporate code, first developed by the agency in 2011, into future versions of its mobile operating system, which according to market researcher IDC runs on three-quarters of the smartphones shipped globally in the first quarter. NSA officials say their code, known as Security Enhancements for Android, isolates apps to prevent hackers and marketers from gaining access to personal or corporate data stored on a device.Eventually all new phones, tablets, televisions, cars, and other devices that rely on Android will include NSA code, agency spokeswoman Vanee’ Vines said in an e-mailed statement. NSA researcher Stephen Smalley, who works on the program, says, “Our goal is to raise the bar in the security of commodity mobile devices.”

Read more: http://www.infowars.com/the-nsa-has-inserted-its-code-into-android-os-or-three-quarters-of-all-smartphones/

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Communications Companies Required By FISA Law To Lie About Surveillance

(NaturalNews) What do Google, AOL, Skype, Facebook, Apple, Hotmail and Yahoo all have in common? They have all been caught turning over private user data to the government's spy agency, the NSA. All these companies routinely turn over the emails, voice calls, text chats, photos, files and even logins and passwords of their users, including Americans.

"There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal," journalist Glenn Greenwald recently told Piers Morgan (who knows all about spying and hacking people's private data). "And that is to destroy privacy and anonymity not just in the United States but around the world."

Tech companies rush to issue (false) denials

Immediately after these revelations surfaced over the past few days, all these companies began denying any involvement with the NSA. "Google CEO Larry Page and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg are denying reports that depict two of the Internet’s most influential companies as willing participants in a secret government program that gives the National Security Agency unfettered access to email and other personal information transmitted on various online services," reports the San Francisco branch of CBS News.

But what nobody is yet revealing is that all these companies are required by law to LIE to their own customers about secret government surveillance.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Spy state shock: Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, AOL, Apple all secretly sharing private user communications with NSA

(NaturalNews) In a week that has already been rocked by one explosive government spy scandal involving the NSA scooping up phone call data and geographic locations of Verizon customers, another scandalous discovery has just erupted that's sure to "wake up" millions of Americans who have been living in denial.

"The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time," reports the Washington Post in an explosive investigative article.

Top secret documents obtained by the Washington Post show that nearly all the top internet services -- Microsoft Hotmail, Google Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, AOL, Apple, Youtube and PalTalk -- are all sharing ALL your user communications with the federal government. Dropbox is reportedly "coming soon."

As the Washington Post explains:

Through a top-secret program authorized by federal judges working under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. intelligence community can gain access to the servers of nine Internet companies for a wide range of digital data. Documents describing the previously undisclosed program, obtained by The Washington Post, show the breadth of U.S. electronic surveillance capabilities in the wake of a widely publicized controversy over warrantless wiretapping of U.S. domestic telephone communications in 2005.

The types of data these services allow the government to surveil include emails, audio chats, video chats, text chats, photos, usernames, passwords, file transfers, VoIP sessions and much more. Users of Google Drive will be shocked to learn that the NSA has full access to all their private files stored on Google Drive. In effect, these services take every communication initiated by their users and turn it over to the NSA. All these internet services are operating in conspiracy with a criminal government that believes there are absolutely no limits to its power and that it can spy and snoop on all Americans.

When you are calling friends on your iPhone, or chatting over Skype, or emailing someone on Gmail or Yahoo Mail, everything you type, speak, attach or send is being systematically siphoned up, databased and tracked by the U.S. government.

This is all revealed in "PRISM slide #4," which was leaked to the Washington Post. Here's the slide image, just in case it gets yanked from WashPo: