Laura Poitras Citizenfour Snowden Documentary Film Maker Director Sues US Government Over Repeated Harassments

""The Oscar-winning documentary film-maker Laura Poitras is suing the US government demanding to know why she has repeatedly been subjected to “Kafkaesque harassment” at airports across the world.

Poitras, 51, said she had been held at borders more than 50 times between 2006 and 2012, often for hours at a time. At various times she alleges being told by officials that she was on a “no fly” list, having her electronic equipment confiscated and not returned for 41 days, and being threatened with handcuffs for taking notes. The latter incident took place when she was working on a film about the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Poitras said she was launching the legal action, which demands the release of all documentation held on her tracking, targeting and questioning by agencies over the six year period, following the failure of a 2013 freedom of information request.

“I’m filing this lawsuit because the government uses the US border to bypass the rule of law,” said the film-maker in a statement, The Intercept reported. “This simply should not be tolerated in a democracy. I am also filing this suit in support of the countless other less high-profile people who have also been subjected to years of Kafkaesque harassment at the borders. We have a right to know how this system works and why we are targeted.”

Poitras has previously said she was placed on the Department of Homeland Security’s watch list in 2006 after returning home to the US following work on My Country, My Country. She says airport security told her officials had assigned her the highest “threat rating” possible, even though she had never been charged with a crime. She was repeatedly stopped until 2012, when the journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about her experiences.

Poitras’s reporting on the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, along with work by Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Barton Gellman contributed to the Pulitzer prize for public service won jointly by the Washington Post and the Guardian in 2014. Her film on Snowden, Citizenfour, won the 2015 Oscar for best documentary.""

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/14/citizenfour-director-laura-poitras-sues-us-harassment-edward-snowden

Edward Snowden Charges Stand Despite Recent NSA Telephone Surveillance Ban

""The White House refused to reconsider its legal pursuit of Edward Snowden on Monday, while it sought to take credit for outlawing the bulk telephone surveillance programme he revealed.

Obama administration spokesman Josh Earnest rejected the argument that the imminent passage of legislation banning the practice meant it was time to take a fresh look at the charges against the former National Security Agency contractor.

“The fact is that Mr Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the US government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them,” Earnest told the Guardian at the daily White House press briefing.

“That’s why we believe that Mr Snowden should return to the United States, where he will face due process and have the opportunity to make that case in a court of law.”

Earnest refused to comment on whether Snowden could be allowed to employ a whistleblower defence if he choose to return voluntarily, something his supporters have argued is impossible under current Espionage Act charges.

“Obviously this is something that the Department of Justice would handle if they are having [those conversations],” said Earnest. “The thing I would put out is that there exists mechanisms for whistleblowers to raise concerns about sensitive national security programmes.”

“Releasing details of sensitive national security programmes on the internet for everyone, including our adversaries to see, is inconsistent with those protocols that are established for protecting whistleblowers,” he added.

But the White House placed itself firmly on the side of NSA reform, when asked if the president was “taking ownership” of the USA Freedom Act, which isexpected to pass Congress later this week.

“To the extent that we’re talking about the president’s legacy, I would suspect [it] would be a logical conclusion from some historians that the president ended some of these programmes,” replied Earnest.

“This is consistent with the reforms that the president advocated a year and a half ago. And these are reforms that required the president and his team to expend significant amounts of political capital to achieve over the objection of Republicans.”

The administration also avoided four separate opportunities to warn that the temporary loss of separate Patriot Act surveillance provisions that expired alongside bulk collection on Sunday night had put the safety of Americans at risk, as some have claimed.""

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/charges-against-edward-snowden-stand-despite-telephone-surveillance-ban

Kaspersky Proofs Continue Pointing to NSA as Creators of 'Equation Group' Master Hacks

""Kaspersky has carried out an involved study of the Equation Group and made it look like it is probably the work of the US government.

Before it was an NSA 'style' threat, now it looks much more likely to be an NSA sourced threat, thanks to some commonality with other online security menaces.

The Kaspersky report refers to the use of Backsnarf, which is an unusual and uncommon word, that we have seen before.

The term, and others like it, appear in Snowden leaked documents that have been sourced from the NSA.

There are other clues that it is a US entity that is involved. For example time stamps associated with attacks suggest that it is nine to five, monday to friday staffers who operate in US timezones who are responsible.

It would seem unreasonable to suppose that an average malicious anchor who is not on a government salary would be inclined to work at the weekend. So this is another clue. The code is said to be of good quality, but we can't say that that provides any clue about its creator.

We have asked Kaspersky if it wants to actually finger the NSA as the Equation Group and it did not. It said that it did not want to pin it on the agency, but did concede that there does appear to be a strong link between Stuxnet and Equation.

"We are not able to confirm the conclusions that journalists came up with. Kaspersky Lab experts worked on the technical analysis of the group's malware, and we don't have hard proof to attribute the Equation Group or speak of its origin," it said in a statement.

"With threat actor groups as skilled as the Equation team, mistakes are rare, and making attribution is extremely difficult. However we do see a close connection between the Equation, Stuxnet and Flame groups."

In February Kaspersky researchers claimed to have uncovered one of the biggest, if not the biggest, threat actor that it has seen in two decades.

The security firm dubbed this outfit the Equation Group, and its toolbox 'the Death Star of the Malware Galaxy', and explained that the tools of its trade have hallmarks and themes similar to those of Stuxnet.

Words were not minced. Kaspersky described the group as a "powerful threat actor" that is "unique almost in every aspect of their activities".

The group is sophisticated and well-resourced, and uses complex tools to hide itself in "an outstandingly professional way".

In one incident the group infected targets by switching out legitimate CD Roms with spiked ones at a conference. This makes it sound like a very organised, and perhaps connected outfit.

The tools, a range of trojans, have been named EquationLaser, EquationDrug, DoubleFantasy, TripleFantasy, Fanny and GrayFish. Of these, Fanny, is described as the standout.

Two of these trojans, or modules, can be found deeply inserted in as many as a dozen different makes of hard drive that are sold and shipped to international waters.

The malware is so deeply inserted into the firmware that it can survive wipes, and "resurrect" itself indefinitely. Additional 'implants' add to the mix and can grab and store encrypted passwords, for example.

Costin Raiu, director of the global research and analysis team at Kaspersky Lab, said: "Another dangerous thing is that, once the hard drive gets infected with this malicious payload, it is impossible to scan its firmware.

"To put it simply: for most hard drives there are functions to write into the hardware firmware area, but there are no functions to read it back. It means that we are practically blind, and cannot detect hard drives that have been infected by this malware."

The Fanny trojan is used to fill in the spaces in systems, and launch attacks in unconnected and hard to reach places. Kaspersky said that the 'air-gap filler' is USB-based, and can let attackers move between otherwise unconnected networks.

Thousands of victims lie at the feet of the group, according to Kaspersky, and they include state targets, governments, security developers, telecoms, aerospace and energy industries, along with the military, Islamic activists and the media.

Kaspersky didn't name a likely source  then, but found a lot of links to Stuxnet, which is often linked to the NSA.

"There are solid links indicating that the Equation group has interacted with other powerful groups, such as the Stuxnet and Flame operators, generally from a position of superiority," adds Kaspersky.

A Reuters report makes the NSA link, and we asked the agency if it wanted to make comment in response. It did. 

"We are aware of the recently released report. We are not going to comment publicly on any allegations that the report raises, or discuss any details," an NSA spokesperson told The INQUIRER. 

"The US. Government calls on our intelligence agencies to protect the United States, its citizens, and its allies from a wide array of serious threats - including terrorist plots from al-Qaeda, ISIL, and others; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; foreign aggression against ourselves and our allies; and international criminal organisations."

We asked some of the hard drive firms that Kaspersky said have been infiltrated by the Equation Group for their take on the news, and at least one told us that it has not heard specific allegations about any backdoor action.""

Kaspersky traces the Equation Group and its activities back to 2001:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2395638/kaspersky-fingers-nsa-style-equation-group-for-hard-drive-backdoor-epidemic

United States of America is it's Own Worst Enemy Troll: Edward Snowden Chimes in on International Government Surveillance Cyber Warfare Against the Public Globally

""After a year punctuated by hacks and data breaches, most notably a cyberattack against Sony, President Barack Obama used part of his State of the Union address on Tuesday to mention the growing threat to cybersecurity. “No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids,” he said.

The president’s speech came a week after the White House outlined a cybersecurity policy proposal that calls for more information sharing between the private sector and government, an increase in penalties for hacking and an update in the standards for when companies have to report that their customers’ data has been compromised.

Yet in a recent interview on PBS’s Nova, Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who leaked a large number of classified documents about government surveillance, argued that one of the biggest threats to American cybersecurity may actually be ourselves.

“When the lights go out at a power plant sometime in the future,” Snowden said, “we’re going to know that that’s a consequence of deprioritizing defense for the sake of an advantage in terms of offense.”

In the interview, Snowden argued that Stuxnet, a digital virus that the U.S. and Israel allegedly used to attack Iran’s nuclear program in 2007, was a tipping point in the history of cyberconflict and led to a proliferation of attacks. “I think the public still isn’t aware of the frequency with which these cyberattacks, as they’re being called in the press, are being used by governments around the world,” he said. “We really started this trend in many ways.”

It’s impossible to know how many cyberattacks have been carried out by or against the U.S. But the numbers appear to be rising. In 2013, U.S. military and federal government computers were invaded 46,605 times, up from 26,942 in 2009, according to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Underscoring Snowden’s point: Der Spiegel released a trove of documents earlier this week, which revealed that the NSA broke into North Korea’s computer network in 2010, out of fear of the country’s growing cybercapabilities. That’s why the FBI was quick to accuse North Korea of carrying out the Sony hack, which eventually led to the leak of sensitive internal documents and partially canceled the release of The Interview.

When “we start engaging in these kind of behaviors,” Snowden said, “we’re setting a standard. We’re creating a new international norm of behavior that says this is what nations do.”""

Continue Story:

http://www.newsweek.com/snowden-cyber-war-america-its-own-worst-enemy-301175