(Nov 4, 2023)
President Biden has been deeply involved in the U.S. response to the Israel-Hamas war — one of the thorniest challenges of his presidency so far — receiving briefings at least once per day and speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several times a week.
The big picture: Biden is leaning on a tight circle of trusted aides and officials. Here‘s a look at who‘s in the room when major decisions are being made.
In addition to publicly warning on March 7 about a possible attack, U.S. officials said they had privately told Russian officials about the intelligence pointing to an impending attack. It is not clear how much information the United States gave Russian officials beyond what was in the public warning.
American intelligence agencies have a “duty to warn” potential targets of dangers when they learn of them.
The United States had warned Iran of a possible attack ahead of twin bombings in January that killed scores and wounded hundreds of others at a memorial service for Iran’s former top general, Qassim Suleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike four years before.
The assessment, compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and described to CNN by three sources who have seen it, says that about 40-45% of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions Israel has used have been unguided. The rest have been precision-guided munitions, the assessment says.
Fourteen Eyes agreement countries
Fourteen Eyes (or 14 Eyes) refers to the intelligence group that consists of the Five Eyes member countries plus:
– Belgium
– Denmark
– France
– Germany
– Italy
– The Netherlands
– Norway
– Spain
– Sweden
These countries participate in SIGINT sharing as third parties. The official name of the Fourteen Eyes is the SIGINT Seniors of Europe (SSEUR), which has existed in one form or another since 1982. Similar to the UKUSA Agreement, its original mission was to uncover information about the USSR.
A SIGINT Seniors Meeting is attended by the heads of the SIGINT agencies (NSA, GCHQ, BND, the French DGSE, etc.) and is where they can share intelligence and discuss related issues. While this group has many of the same members as the “Nine Eyes”, it is a different group. According to leaked documents, the Fourteen Eyes is not a formal treaty but rather an agreement made between SIGINT agencies.
(August 15, 2022)
The Five Eyes (FVEY) surveillance alliance includes the following countries:
– Australia
– Canada
– New Zealand
– United Kingdom
– United States
(…)
The Nine Eyes countries include:
– 5 Eyes countries +
– Denmark
– France
– Netherlands
– Norway
(…)
The 14 Eyes surveillance countries include:
– 9 Eyes countries +
– Germany
– Belgium
– Italy
– Sweden
– Spain
Who among us has not considered shoving a camera into our underwear… but for the greater good… on the public’s dime?
(August 23, 2023)
The Smart Electrically Powered and Networked Textile Systems (SMART ePANTS) program represents the largest single investment to develop Active Smart Textiles (AST) that feel, move, and function like any garment. Resulting innovations stand to provide the Intelligence Community (IC), Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies with durable, ready-to-wear clothing that can record audio, video, and geolocation data.
(Mar 27, 2021)
In the short term, Europe may be able to shrug off the illegality of its data-sharing practices under the GDPR, and please privacy advocates with adequacy reviews, but in the long term the violation of Europe’s own data privacy crownpiece is sure to harm its international credibility.
(14.06.2023)
In a joint written testimony from the Biden administration witnesses, the NSA, FBI and CIA all cited Section 702’s usefulness for cybersecurity.
(13.06.2023)
Officials from U.S. intelligence agencies backed reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ahead of a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday. One official characterized a potential lapse or „unusable“ modifications to Section 702 as „grave national security risks.“ The support for full reauthorization came as 21 advocacy groups joined on a letter urging reform of Section 702. Meanwhile, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a report regarding purchases of commercially available personal information by the U.S. intelligence community.
„Der Regierung wäre es nie erlaubt worden, Milliarden Menschen dazu zu verpflichten, jederzeit Geräte zur Standortüberwachung bei sich zu haben, ihre sozialen Interaktionen aufzuzeichnen oder lückenlose Aufzeichnungen ihrer Lesegewohnheiten vorzuhalten“, fasst das Office of the Director of National Intelligence zusammen. Doch Smartphones, vernetzte Fahrzeugen, Webtracking, das Internet der Dinge und „andere Innovationen“ hätten die gleichen Folgen, ohne dass die Regierung etwas tun müsse.
Die Art und Weise, wie US-Geheimdienste Daten aus verbundenen Fahrzeugen, Webbrowser-Aktivitäten und Smartphones sammeln und nutzen, steht zunehmend im Fokus. Dabei besteht die Gefahr, dass die unregulierte Verbreitung und der Verkauf von privaten Informationen amerikanischer Bürgerinnen und Bürger deren Privatsphäre bedroht. Der Bericht wurde vom Büro des Direktors der nationalen Geheimdienste (ODNI) veröffentlicht.
(27 January 2022, approved for release by ODNI on 5 June 2023)
(U) EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
(U) There is today a large and growing amount of what the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) refers to as “Commercially Available Information” (CAI). As the acronym indicates, and as we use the term in this report, CAI is information that is available commercially to the general public, and as such, is a subset of publicly available information (PAI). We do not use the term CAI to include, and we do not address in this report, commercial information that is available exclusively to governments. The volume and sensitivity of CAI have expanded in recent years mainly due to the advancement of digital technology, including location-tracking and other features of smartphones and other electronic devices, and the advertising-based monetization models that underlie many commercial offerings available on the Internet. Although CAI may be “anonymized,” it is often possible (using other CAI) to deanonymize and identify individuals, including U.S. persons.
(…)
Today, in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, CAI includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained, if at all, only through targeted (and predicated) collection, and that could be used to cause harm to an individual’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.
(…)
(U) A May 2014 report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) provides a similar account:
(U) Data brokers collect data from commercial, government, and other publicly available sources. Data collected could include bankruptcy information, voting registration, consumer purchase data, web browsing activities, warranty registrations, and other details of consumers’ everyday interactions.
(…)
1.3. (U) Examples of CAI. We do not attempt a comprehensive description of the scope and scale of data that are available as CAI, or the relevant markets, in part because they are so large and so dynamic. However, a few examples of CAI offerings will illustrate the current nature of available offerings:
• (U) “Thomson Reuters CLEAR is powered by billions of data points and leverages cutting-edge public records technology to bring all key content together in a customizable dashboard.”
• (U) LexisNexis offers more than “84B records from 10,000+ sources, including alternative data that helps surface more of the 63M unbanked/underbanked U.S. adults.”
• (U) Exactis has “over 3.5 billion records (updated monthly)” in its “universal data warehouse.”
• (U) PeekYou “collects and combines scattered content from social sites, news sources, homepages, and blog platforms to present comprehensive online identities.”
(…)
As the FTC explained in its May 2014 report:
(U) Data brokers rely on websites with registration features and cookies to find consumers online and target Internet advertisements to them based on their offline activities. Once a data broker locates a consumer online and places a cookie on the consumer’s browser, the data broker’s client can advertise to that consumer across the Internet for as long as the cookie stays on the consumer’s browser. Consumers may not be aware that data brokers are providing companies with products to allow them to advertise to consumers online based on their offline activities. Some data brokers are using similar technology to serve targeted advertisements to consumers on mobile devices.
(…)
2.2. (U) Examples of CAI Contracts. The IC currently acquires a large amount of CAI. Unclassified IC and other contracts for CAI can be found at Sam.Gov, a U.S. government website that allows searching by agency or sub-agency and by keywords, among other things. By way of example only, this website shows that the following agencies have, have had, have considered, or are considering the following contracts or proposals related to CAI:
• (U) The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with ZeroFox for social media alerting (15F06721P0002431)
• (censored)
• U) The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for social media reports on individuals who are seeking a security clearance (HHM402-16-SM-CHECKS), and with LexisNexis for “retrieval of comprehensive on-line search results related to commercial due diligence from a maximum number of sources (news, company, public records, legal, regulatory financial, and industry information),” among other things (HHM402-21-Q-0094)
• (U) The U.S. Navy with Sayari Analytics, Inc. for access to its database that “contains tens of thousands of previously-unidentified specific nodes, facilities and key people related to US sanctioned actors including ‘2+3’ threats to national security” (N0001518PR11212)
• (U) Various offices within the Treasury Department for access to Banker’s Almanac (RFQ-FIN-55100-21-0010)
• (U) The Department of Defense (DOD) for access to Jane’s online (W31P4Q17T0009)
• (U) The Coast Guard with Babel Street for “Open Source Data Collection, Translation, Analysis Application” (70Z08419QVA044).
(U) In addition, DIA has provided the following information about a CAI contract in an unclassified and publicly-available paper sent to Congress on January 15, 2021:
(U) DIA currently provides funding to another agency that purchases commercially available geolocation metadata aggregated from smartphones.
……………………………………
The report was completed in January 2022 but only recently declassified. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon asked the ODNI for the report.
“Congress needs to pass legislation to put guardrails around government purchases, to rein in private companies that collect and sell this data, and keep Americans’ personal information out of the hands of our adversaries,” Wyden said in a statement Monday in response to the report.
Since the Space Force’s inception three years ago, there’s been some tension between the newest military service and spy satellite agencies over who’s responsible for acquiring satellite imagery and ISR products and providing actionable information to military commanders.
4. The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.
5. The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors – from local cops to media to state government.
6. Thousands upon thousands of official “reports” flowed through the FITF and the FBI’s San Francisco field office.
(August 15, 2022)
The Five Eyes (FVEY) surveillance alliance includes the following countries:
– Australia
– Canada
– New Zealand
– United Kingdom
– United States
(…)
The Nine Eyes countries include:
– 5 Eyes countries +
– Denmark
– France
– Netherlands
– Norway
(…)
The 14 Eyes surveillance countries include:
– 9 Eyes countries +
– Germany
– Belgium
– Italy
– Sweden
– Spain
(Mar 27, 2021)
In the short term, Europe may be able to shrug off the illegality of its data-sharing practices under the GDPR, and please privacy advocates with adequacy reviews, but in the long term the violation of Europe’s own data privacy crownpiece is sure to harm its international credibility.
(August 15, 2022)
The Five Eyes (FVEY) surveillance alliance includes the following countries:
– Australia
– Canada
– New Zealand
– United Kingdom
– United States
(…)
The Nine Eyes countries include:
– 5 Eyes countries +
– Denmark
– France
– Netherlands
– Norway
(…)
The 14 Eyes surveillance countries include:
– 9 Eyes countries +
– Germany
– Belgium
– Italy
– Sweden
– Spain
(August 15, 2022)
The Five Eyes (FVEY) surveillance alliance includes the following countries:
– Australia
– Canada
– New Zealand
– United Kingdom
– United States
(…)
The Nine Eyes countries include:
– 5 Eyes countries +
– Denmark
– France
– Netherlands
– Norway
(…)
The 14 Eyes surveillance countries include:
– 9 Eyes countries +
– Germany
– Belgium
– Italy
– Sweden
– Spain
(today)
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently started convening an informal team of representatives from a handful of relevant spy agencies to study, and potentially plot a course for, the reauthorization of the sweeping warrantless program allowed under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, two sources familiar with the effort told The Record. The powers are due to sunset in December 2023 unless lawmakers act.
Congress last extended the life of the surveillance powers — which allow the federal government to collect the emails and electronic communications of foreign intelligence targets from U.S. companies like Google, but also incidentally vacuum up the personal data of Americans — in early 2018.
(23. Juni 2010)
Am Montag, den 22.Juni, veröffentlichte die Washington Post auf ihrer Webseite den neunundsiebzig Seiten langen Bericht des „Unterausschusses für Nationale Sicherheit und Auswärtige Angelegenheiten“ mit dem Titel „Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan“, für den der Leiter des Ausschusses, der Republikaner John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), verantwortlich zeichnete (1, 2).
Der „Unterausschuss für Nationale Sicherheit und Auswärtige Angelegenheiten“ ist ständiger Teil des „Ausschuss für Aufsicht und Reform der Regierung“ des Repräsentantenhauses.
Die Veröffentlichung des Berichts fällt mit den Machtkämpfen um die Kompetenzen der CIA, der Geheimdienste des US-Verteidigungsministeriums und den eigenmächtigen Spionagediensten des US-Militärs (wie diejenigen des General Petraeus) um die Kontrolle der Oberhoheit in den besetzten Gebieten zusammen, in denen sich Geschäfte mit Hilfe korrupter Politiker in mehrfacher Milliardenhöhe abwickeln lassen – die Möglichkeiten zum Geldverdienen reichen von der Opiumproduktion, den Rüstungsgeschäften und Waffenhandel, Lizenzen für die Ausbeutung der Rohstoffe, Aufträge für die Bauunternehmen bis hin in alle Bereiche des öffentlichen Lebens einer Gesellschaft. Es geht um die reine Ausbeutung eines Landes.
(23. Juni 2010)
Am Montag, den 22.Juni, veröffentlichte die Washington Post auf ihrer Webseite den neunundsiebzig Seiten langen Bericht des „Unterausschusses für Nationale Sicherheit und Auswärtige Angelegenheiten“ mit dem Titel „Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan“, für den der Leiter des Ausschusses, der Republikaner John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), verantwortlich zeichnete (1, 2).
Der „Unterausschuss für Nationale Sicherheit und Auswärtige Angelegenheiten“ ist ständiger Teil des „Ausschuss für Aufsicht und Reform der Regierung“ des Repräsentantenhauses.
Die Veröffentlichung des Berichts fällt mit den Machtkämpfen um die Kompetenzen der CIA, der Geheimdienste des US-Verteidigungsministeriums und den eigenmächtigen Spionagediensten des US-Militärs (wie diejenigen des General Petraeus) um die Kontrolle der Oberhoheit in den besetzten Gebieten zusammen, in denen sich Geschäfte mit Hilfe korrupter Politiker in mehrfacher Milliardenhöhe abwickeln lassen – die Möglichkeiten zum Geldverdienen reichen von der Opiumproduktion, den Rüstungsgeschäften und Waffenhandel, Lizenzen für die Ausbeutung der Rohstoffe, Aufträge für die Bauunternehmen bis hin in alle Bereiche des öffentlichen Lebens einer Gesellschaft. Es geht um die reine Ausbeutung eines Landes.
Following the House’s passage – on a broadly bipartisan basis – of legislation to repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq (2002 AUMF), five members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (a minority of the minority) are seeking to delay its companion bill’s movement out of committee and onto the Senate floor.
The delay comes after five GOP senators asked for a public hearing with the secretaries of Defense and State as well as a classified briefing with those departments and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence before the panel votes on repealing 1991 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force (AUMF).
Lawmakers started the hearing by criticizing Amazon representatives, who they said were invited to testify and whose servers were used to launch the cyberattack, for declining to attend the hearing.
Neuberger notably said the attack, which compromised „9 federal agencies and about 100 private companies,“ was launched from inside the United States.
SolarWinds shares are down 1.4%. Two security names closely tied to the hack, FireEye (FEYE -3.2%) and CrowdStrike (CRWD -2.5%), are also in the red.
The US government‘s probe into the devastating SolarWinds breach is likely to take „several months“ at least, according to the top White House cybersecurity official, speaking to reporters Wednesday in the Biden administration‘s first public assessment of the gravity of the suspected Russian spying campaign.
Senators voted 84-10 to confirm Haines, who appears to be the only Cabinet official Biden will get confirmed on the first day of his administration.
(21.12.2020)
Morell has no place in a Biden-Harris administration. His nomination would send a chilling message to torture survivors and other victims of grave injustice that the United States government, including the Biden administration, does not uphold its own stated principles. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) from the Senate Intelligence Committee has said about Morell: “No torture apologist can be confirmed as CIA director. It’s a nonstarter.” We agree and urge the President-elect not to nominate Morell.
We also oppose Avril Haines, another toture apologist, as Director of National Intelligence. Since she has already been nominated, we ask Senators to oppose her confirmation.
(24.12.2020)
It was painful enough to live through the U.S invasion of Iraq that caused untold devastation and human misery for no justifiable reason.
Now we are again reminded of the grim Bush legacy with President-elect Biden’s nomination of Avril Haines for Director of National Intelligence.
Haines is expected to withstand scrutiny during the Senate confirmation process for her role in the drone program, as well as her approval of a CIA review board decision in 2015 not to discipline agency personnel for intruding in computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee when it was investigating the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program. Haines was also part of the team that redacted the committee’s report on the program.
Nach einem schweren Hackerangriff auf Behörden und Institutionen in den USA ist nach wie vor unklar, wer dahinter steckt.
Trump’s comments in the form of Twitter posts on Saturday went against comments his secretary of state made less than 24 hours earlier.
SolarWinds, the company at the center of the attack, has not yet blamed any one country.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said the breach makes a clear case for the work of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission and the cyber provisions that made it into the annual defense policy bill passed by the House and Senate.
“This is the most important bill on cyber ever passed by Congress, and that’s why I’m really hoping that the president will either sign the bill or let it become law without a signature, because there is so much critically important material in the bill,” King said during an annual summit hosted by Defense One.
Der Angriff weitet sich stetig aus. Nicht nur werden immer mehr Betroffene bekannt, darunter die US-Atombehörde und der Softwarehersteller Microsoft, es wurde zudem offenbar weitere Software für die laut US-Behörden sehr ausgefeilten Angriffe manipuliert.
The massive defense bill that President Donald Trump is threatening to veto contains provisions for increased cybersecurity, which has taken on significantly more importance in the wake of a massive cyberattack on federal agencies at the hands of suspected Russian hackers.
The National Defense Authorization Act includes pay raises for America‘s soldiers, modernizations for equipment and provisions to require more scrutiny before troops are withdrawn from Germany or Afghanistan.
„As I said in a news briefing, Election Day was ‘just another Tuesday on the Internet,’“ he wrote. „Normal sorts of scanning and probing were happening, but we did not see any successful attacks or damaging disruptions.“
Yet hackers were arms deep in a slew of federal agencies. The infiltration, believed to have been conducted by the Russians, appears to have compromised the Departments of Energy, State, Defense, Homeland Security, Treasury and Commerce. His name did not appear in CNN’s story about CISA and the hack published Thursday.
(17.12.2020)
The compromise of multiple US federal networks following the SolarWinds breach was officially confirmed for the first time in a joint statement released earlier today by the FBI, DHS-CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
„Over the course of the past several days, the FBI, CISA, and ODNI have become aware of a significant and ongoing cybersecurity campaign,“ the US intelligence agencies said …
But two officials said their calls for declassification have been met with opposition from within the intelligence agencies, with some objecting that such a release would be too close to Election Day.
Mr. Ratcliffe, like Maj. Gen. Willoughby before him, seems to think his job is to serve only his boss, who requires that everyone agree with him at all times. As General MacArthur is often quoted: if you control intelligence, you control decision-making.
Geheimdienstkoordinator John Ratcliffe und FBI-Direktor Christopher Wray wandten sich am Abend direkt an die Amerikaner: „Wir stehen hier vor Ihnen, um Ihnen zu sagen, dass wir das im Griff haben und um Sie mit dem mächtigsten Werkzeug zu versorgen, das wir haben, um diese Versuche zu bekämpfen: Wahrheit und Information“, sagte Ratcliffe.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said late Wednesday that voter registration information had been obtained by Iran and Russia in an attempt to undermine confidence in the 2020 election.
(07.10.2020)
– Recent declassifications by DNI John Ratcliffe: „I thought it was a outrageous, appalling and blatant act of politicization that he released, very selectively, some intelligence that was provided then to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is right now engaged in, I think, a very partisan effort to try to debunk the necessary investigative efforts of the FBI that looked into Russian interference in the 2016 election.“
(30.09.2020)
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified unverified Russian intelligence despite concerns being raised by the CIA and National Security Agency, according to people briefed on the matter.
Career officials in the intelligence agencies were concerned about declassifying the information because it was unverified and they believed it could reveal sources and methods. Ratcliffe overrode those concerns and sent the document to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Tuesday, the people sa
Ned Price, a former CIA analyst who served as a senior director on the Obama administration’s National Security Council staff and is not involved in the Biden campaign, offered another explanation. In an interview with RCP, Price said the most recent assessment claiming that China wants Biden to win isn’t convincing because it relies on open-source public comments from Chinese officials, not more penetrating intelligence.
An official in Ratcliffe’s office, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said on Saturday the office was “concerned about unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information following recent briefings”.
The move drew a heated rejoinder from House Democrats, who have focused on foreign efforts to sway the presidential election in 2016 and again this year.
„I believe this approach helps ensure, to the maximum extent possible, that the information ODNI provides the Congress in support of your oversight responsibilities on elections security, foreign malign influence, and election interference is not misunderstood nor politicized,“ Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe wrote in a letter to congressional committee heads.