US authorised NSA to spy on Pakistan among 193 countries

WASHINGTON: US spy agency, National Security Agency (NSA), had been authorised to spy on most countries and some international bodies and political parties, Geo News reported Tuesday.

Under a 2010 certification approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), NSA was permitted to spy on 193 foreign governments as well as foreign factions, political organisations and other entities, Washington Post reported.

According to the certification, the agency would require new certification approved by the court to permit such surveillance under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.

Sparing Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with whom US has broad no-spying arrangements, the NSA was allowed to spy on 193 countries including Pakistan.

The list also includes two factions of foreign nations Palestinian Authority; Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus on NSA’s radar.
What was most shocking revelation was the fact that under the FISA court certification NSA was even authorised to spy on foreign-based political organisations including the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) from Pakistan and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from India.

The list also includes the Amal movement of Lebanon, Bolivaria Continental Coordinator, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and te National Salvation Front.

Besides foreign countries, governments and political organisations NSA was also authorised to spy on international bodies such as the UN, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank and many others.

US lawmakers pass bill to curb NSA

WASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives approved late Thursday a bill that would restrict the electronic surveillance powers of the National Security Agency (NSA).The margin was wide, 293 to 123, for the bill attached to the defense budget for 2015, which begins October 1.For now, however, the bill will have no effect on the NSA as it has not been debated by the Senate.

But the message from the lower house is clear.

It wants to embrace a court ruling and bar the National Security Agency from using personal electronic information from US citizens without a prior court order.

As it currently stands, under the so-called Prism program, the NSA focuses on foreign targets on the Internet via Facebook, Gmail and other services.

But the NSA has acknowledged it used information taken from the servers of such companies, without approval from a judge.

The Constitution and US laws require that the government obtain a court order before searching among data of US citizens.

Thursday´s amendment would bar the NSA from carrying out any search without a court order, including information from Americans, even if their communications were picked up inadvertently. The bill would bar the NSA and the CIA from including secret "back doors" allowing the NSA to skirt coded gateways and gain access to users´ personal data. The NSA is accused of having done this for several years. A year after the revelations made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Congress is still debating how to reform US surveillance programs.

NSA denies exploiting ´Heartbleed´ vulnerability

WASHINGTON: The US National Security Agency on Friday denied a report claiming it was aware of and even exploited the "Heartbleed" online security flaw to gather intelligence.

The stern denial came amid growing panic among Internet users about the newly exposed flaw, after a report by Bloomberg News said the spy agency decided to keep quiet about the matter to more easily gather intelligence.

"NSA was not aware of the recently identified vulnerability in OpenSSL, the so-called Heartbleed vulnerability, until it was made public in a private-sector cybersecurity report," NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said in an email.

"Reports that say otherwise are wrong."OpenSSL is online-data scrambling software commonly used to protect passwords, credit card numbers and other data sent via the Internet.

A White House official also denied that any US agency was aware of the bug before it was revealed by security researchers earlier this month.

"Reports that NSA or any other part of the government were aware of the so-called Heartbleed vulnerability before April 2014 are wrong," White House national security spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement.

"This administration takes seriously its responsibility to help maintain an open, interoperable, secure and reliable Internet.

"If the federal government, including the intelligence community, had discovered this vulnerability prior to last week, it would have been disclosed to the community responsible for OpenSSL.

"Bloomberg, citing two people said to be familiar with the matter, said the NSA was able to make Heartbleed part of "its arsenal" to obtain passwords and other data, without making public a vulnerability which could affect millions of Internet users.

The report said the secretive intelligence agency has more than 1,000 experts devoted to ferreting out these kinds of flaws and found the Heartbleed glitch shortly after its introduction.

The agency then made it part of its "toolkit for stealing account passwords and other common tasks," the report said.

NSA was already in the spotlight after months of revelations about its vast data-gathering capabilities, along with partner intelligence agencies.

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden indicated that the NSA has been able to collect data from millions of phone records and Internet conversations as part of its intelligence gathering.

NSA officials argue they use such data only to help root out suspected terrorists. President Barack Obama has ordered reforms that would halt government bulk collection of telephone records, but critics argue this does not go far enough to protect civil liberties.

NSA leaks fuelled needed debate on spying: Snowden

WASHINGTON: Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden said on Monday he has no regrets over his leaks about mass surveillance programs, saying they sparked a needed public debate on spying and data collection.
Snowden, who spoke via video link from Russia to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, said he revealed the programs of the US National Security Agency and other such services to foster "a better civic understanding" about what had been secret programs.
He said his decision to leak documents to journalists "wasn't so I could single handedly change the government; what I wanted to do was inform the public so they could provide their consent to what we should do."
Snowden, a former NSA contractor who has been in hiding in Russia and has been charged in the United States with espionage, maintained that "every society in the world has benefited" from the debate on surveillance.
"Regardless of what happens to me, this is something we have a right to know," he said on the link with members of the American Civil Liberties Union, who noted that the hookup was routed through seven proxy servers to keep his location secure.
Snowden, who appeared against a backdrop of a giant copy of the US constitution, said the NSA programs have fundamentally altered the rights outlined in the charter.
"The interpretation of the constitution has been changed from 'no unreasonable searches and seizures,' to 'any seizure is fine, just don't search it,'" he said.
Snowden said he chose to speak to SXSW because he believes it is important to encourage technology companies to make changes to stem mass surveillance.
"The people who are in the room in Austin right now, they are the folks who can really fix things through technical standards," he said.
Snowden said more companies should adopt robust encryption that is built into communications without users having to use complex technical tools.
He maintained that if encryption is too complex, "people aren't going to use it; it has to happen automatically, it has to happen seamlessly."
If online communications are fully encrypted at all stages, Snowden said, bulk data collection would become too difficult for intelligence agencies.
He also said the NSA and other agencies have devoted too many resources to this type of bulk collection and not enough to traditional methods to catch criminals and terrorists.
"We've had tremendous intelligence failures because we are monitoring everybody's communications, instead of suspects," he said.
He cited the Boston marathon bombings as an example, saying "if we hadn't spent so much on mass surveillance, if we followed traditional models, we might have caught" the suspects.
Congress needs watchdog:
One of the questions came via Twitter from Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, who thanked Snowden and asked how to make an intelligence oversight system more accountable.
Snowden said "the key factor is accountability" and that Congress needed a watchdog because it failed to adequately oversee the NSA.
"We can't have officials who can lie to the Congress and not face any consequences," he said. "We need a watchdog that watches Congress."
Documents leaked by Snowden in 2013 revealed widespread surveillance of individuals and institutions in the United States and around the world.
He received temporary asylum in Russia in August a move that infuriated the United States and was a key factor behind President Barack Obama's decision to cancel a summit with counterpart Vladimir Putin last year.