How the NSA & FBI made Facebook the perfect mass surveillance tool

[G4JC]

The National Security Agency and the FBI teamed up in October 2010 to develop techniques for turning Facebook into a surveillance tool.

Documents released alongside security journalist Glenn Greenwald’s new book, “No Place To Hide,” reveal the NSA and FBI partnership, in which the two agencies developed techniques for exploiting Facebook chats, capturing private photos, collecting IP addresses, and gathering private profile data.


According to the slides below, the agencies’ goal for such collection was to capture “a very rich source of information on targets,” including “personal details, ‘pattern of life,’ connections to associates, [and] media.”

NSA documents make painfully clear how the agencies collected information “by exploiting inherent weaknesses in Facebook’s security model” through its use of the popular Akamai content delivery network. The NSA describes its methods as “assumed authentication,” and “security through obscurity.”

The slide below shows how the NSA and U.K. spy agency GCHQ also worked together to “obtain profile and album images.”

Two months ago, following a series of Facebook-related NSA spying leaks, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg stated in a blog post that he’s “confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the U.S. government.”
According to a report by The Intercept, the above slides do not reveal the NSA’s Facebook surveillance program in full. The report states that the NSA also “disguises itself as a fake Facebook server” to perform “man-in-the-middle” and “man-on-the-side” attacks and spread malware [below].


As we wrote at the time, the “NSA’s Facebook targeting is reportedly a response to the declining success of other malware injection techniques. Previous techniques included the use of “spam emails that trick targets into clicking a malicious link.”


Following the report, released in March, Zuckerberg said, “When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.”


Zuckerberg claimed he disapproved of the NSA’s actions and said that he’s spoken to president Barack Obama by phone to “express [his] frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future.”


VentureBeat has reached out to both Akamai and Facebook for comment on the matter.

How the NSA & FBI made Facebook the perfect mass surveillance tool | VentureBeat | Social | by Harrison Weber

Of course the good news is you can always stop using Facebook. You can then help you and your friends move to more secure and open-source solutions... https://prism-break.org/en/all/#social-networks

 

[Tintin]

Aaaaaaah! It's the mark of the Beast, we're all going to die! Aaaaaaah.

 

[wisebeardman]

don't forget the morons who will rush out and wait in a line 48hrs to buy the latest government spy device (cell phone)

 

[GodIsSalvation]

Yawn, figured this out years ago and everyone called me a "conspiracy theorist".

Honestly, you don't need Edward Snowden to figure that one out.

 

[ThomistColin]

Umm....shouldn't this be in the Conspiracies and Corruption forum?

 

[Desdichado]

I know the offspring of an Air Force officer who told me their father forbids them and their siblings from using Facebook for this reason and many others.

Forget social networking sites. Just do what they did before about a decade ago and network with those around you. Intelligence agencies, terrorist groups, organized crime, and certain unjust businesses with connections to the other three will have less to go on that way.

 

[Desdichado]

Umm....shouldn't this be in the Conspiracies and Corruption forum?

Just like a Thomist. Categorizing...things.

 

[Nautilus]

people want to spy on my facebook I honestly dont care. enjoy the music videos, movie trailers and stupid quotes i post. or the non-sensical ramblings of my friends and i. I really have nothing to hide since you know its facebook and you don't post anything online you wouldnt mind the rest of the world seeing anyways.

 

[AgeofKnowledge]

So your innocence gives the government the "right" to invade everyone's privacy and violate the fourth amendment to the Constitution in your apathetic estimation?

In Friedrich Dürrenmatt's novella "Traps," which involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers in a mock-trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. "An altogether minor matter," replies the prosecutor. "A crime can always be found"... or concocted if need be.

As Canadian privacy expert David Flaherty stated, "There is no sentient human being in the Western world who has little or no regard for his or her personal privacy; those who would attempt such claims cannot withstand even a few minutes' questioning about intimate aspects of their lives without capitulating to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters."

Your privacy can be invaded if the government compiles an extensive dossier about you. With the disclosure of your personal information and secrets, the potential for harm increases exponentially as your political, religious, social positions and personal activities and information is spread to others. This certainly does include the government. For what is legal today, may not be tomorrow. What is socially acceptable today, may not be tomorrow. Your innocence today, may be your guilt tomorrow. And really, what can you do once it is been gathered and disclosed to the relevant government organs and interested parties.

As Daniel Solove points out, "The problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. By accepting this assumption, we concede far too much ground and invite an unproductive discussion about information that people would very likely want to hide. As the computer-security specialist Schneier aptly notes, the nothing-to-hide argument stems from a faulty "premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong." Surveillance, for example, can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.

But now the government has large dossiers of everyone's activities, interests, reading habits, finances, and health. What if the government leaks the information to the public? What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly?

What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts? What if the government doesn't protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you? Even if you have nothing to hide, the government can cause you a lot of harm.

"But the government doesn't want to hurt me," some might argue. In many cases, that's true, but the government can also harm people inadvertently, due to errors or carelessness."

people want to spy on my facebook I honestly dont care. enjoy the music videos, movie trailers and stupid quotes i post. or the non-sensical ramblings of my friends and i. I really have nothing to hide since you know its facebook and you don't post anything online you wouldnt mind the rest of the world seeing anyways.

 

[wisebeardman]

people want to spy on my facebook I honestly dont care. enjoy the music videos, movie trailers and stupid quotes i post. or the non-sensical ramblings of my friends and i. I really have nothing to hide since you know its facebook and you don't post anything online you wouldnt mind the rest of the world seeing anyways.

I feed disinformation.... they think I am a super rich 1%'er with 25 wives 134 cars and 265 homes.

 

[Nautilus]

snipped

What if? What if? What if? Maybe? Seriously, as if there aren't better things I can do in my life, than worry about some possible future fearmonger version of the future where the "what transformer are you?" quiz i just took might one day land me in jail?
Sorry if thats the best argument you have, its kind of pathetic.

 

[Desdichado]

What if? What if? What if? Maybe? Seriously, as if there aren't better things I can do in my life, than worry about some possible future fearmonger version of the future where the "what transformer are you?" quiz i just took might one day land me in jail?
Sorry if thats the best argument you have, its kind of pathetic.

Your faith in humanity is all at once inspiring and frightening.

 

[Drett]

I am a Muslim. They bug my house.

 

[Nautilus]

Your faith in humanity is all at once inspiring and frightening.

its not faith in humanity i have very little of that. im just not terrified of every imagined boogeyman people post on here as news.

 

[AgeofKnowledge]

Careless apathetic people who simply cede away instrumental rights secured for them by the sacrifice of others, such as the right to privacy, are a pathetic disgrace. Which is why I write my legislature about such things and support organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I'm a Cold War veteran and I remember what it was like in the Soviet Union last century when the right to privacy was simply removed from much of the globe for a great many people. I remember the overflowing gulags filled with people who never committed an actual criminal act. They were thought criminals and speech criminals who were political and religious prisoners convicted of article 58 for thinking, saying, and writing things those in power did not like.

Their privacy had been violated by government organs like the KGB and they were sentenced to hard work prisons for ten and twenty-five years where most did not survive for even the most trivial political and religious opinions... even for failing to report their neighbors who attended a small underground Christian church or held to democratic principles.

As Wikipedia points out: "Article 58 was carte blanche for the secret police to arrest and imprison anyone deemed suspicious, making for its use as a political weapon. A person could be framed: The latter would arrange an "anti-Soviet" incident in the person's presence and then try the person for it. If the person pleaded innocence, not having reported the incident would also make them liable to imprisonment."

The loss of liberty is occurring slowly but surely in the West like a frog being boiled on a stove top as the heat is ever so slowly increased degree by degree. Those of us who care work to slow it down but can't stop it because of people like yourself. People who don't care and never lift so much as a finger to stop it. Fools who instead stoop to belittling those that do work to maintain a privacy shield of protection for them.

Read this guy's book: The Gulag Archipelago - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What if? What if? What if? Maybe? Seriously, as if there aren't better things I can do in my life, than worry about some possible future fearmonger version of the future where the "what transformer are you?" quiz i just took might one day land me in jail?
Sorry if thats the best argument you have, its kind of pathetic.

 

[AgeofKnowledge]

It's worse than that. Though he's obviously ignorant of the historical and present dangers of not protecting the right to privacy for societal members he apparently doesn't care either.

Your faith in humanity is all at once inspiring and frightening.

 

[Nautilus]

I dont care because people overplay it. If I honestly thought the government spying on social media consisted of a serious issue then maybe. But how in the first place does the government spying on a website, which in the first place, never offered any claim to privacy represent a threat? If someone is fooliash enough to believe anything they post online is private then they deserve whatever they get.

 

[SonInMe]

The government has been spying on us since...Saul.

You have been made a number already by many government forced sanctions...social security...driving license...license plates....phone numbers.

By the way the phone was tapped long before cell phones.

I understand its an invasion of privacy and being an evil christian conservative married white guy with a job, no less, I am a primary target of this administration but I really do not have anything to hide...other than a 6 month supply of donuts.

 

[GodIsSalvation]

The government has been spying on us since...Saul.

You have been made a number already by many government forced sanctions...social security...driving license...license plates....phone numbers.

By the way the phone was tapped long before cell phones.

I understand its an invasion of privacy and being an evil christian conservative married white guy with a job, no less, I am a primary target of this administration but I really do not have anything to hide...other than a 6 month supply of donuts.

Lol, you shouldn't have posted that, Michelle might get ya for them donuts brother.

 

[AgeofKnowledge]

Another problem is that the government maps social graphs to see how people of interest relate to each other, and subsequently investigates their friends, followers, and others in their networks. You could be under investigation for conspiracy with respect to something you thought was one thing but was actually another and find yourself with an indictment and being pressured to plea on a misdemeanor to avoid a felony trial despite your being innocent because of dirt someone in your network was doing. That's real world what can happen when the government is allowed free access to your information and social contacts.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/government-finds-uses-social-networking-sites

https://ssd.eff.org/

The government has been spying on us since...Saul.

You have been made a number already by many government forced sanctions...social security...driving license...license plates....phone numbers.

By the way the phone was tapped long before cell phones.

I understand its an invasion of privacy and being an evil christian conservative married white guy with a job, no less, I am a primary target of this administration but I really do not have anything to hide...other than a 6 month supply of donuts.