Category Archives: DayPages
DayPage: Headlines and the AM Radio Crisis
DayPage: How Far the NSA Gets Into Your Stuff
The following rush transcript probably contains errors and/or omissions…
Just How Far the NSA Gets Into Your Stuff
DayPage 09/06/2013
DayPage – I’m Rex Latchford… more leakage from the NSA’s exiled contractor Edward Snowden. Published in the NY Times and the Guardian. The extent to which the Government has broken encryption methods used routinely on the Internet, and devised how to do so in real time has been known for some time by many, but as with previous revelations, the NSA’s own documents are more convincing to skeptics and provide some previously only suspected detail.
The entire list of how the details of NSA’s cryptanalysis for snooping Internet and other electronic data has been published by The Guardian’s website, theguardian.com, as images of documents marked “Top Secret”.
The Guardian writes:
The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments. The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – “the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet”.
Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with “brute force”, and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves. Through these covert partnerships, the agencies have inserted secret vulnerabilities – known as backdoors or trapdoors – into commercial encryption software.
Suggesting how to deal with this new information, and the new world of Total Global Surveillance in which we find ourselves, the Guardian writes:
The primary way the NSA eavesdrops on internet communications is in the network. That’s where their capabilities best scale. They have invested in enormous programs to automatically collect and analyze network traffic. Anything that requires them to attack individual endpoint computers is significantly more costly and risky for them, and they will do those things carefully and sparingly.
Leveraging its secret agreements with telecommunications companies – all the US and UK ones, and many other “partners” around the world – the NSA gets access to the communications trunks that move internet traffic. In cases where it doesn’t have that sort of friendly access, it does its best to surreptitiously monitor communications channels: tapping undersea cables, intercepting satellite communications, and so on.That’s an enormous amount of data, and the NSA has equivalently enormous capabilities to quickly sift through it all, looking for interesting traffic. “Interesting” can be defined in many ways: by the source, the destination, the content, the individuals involved, and so on. This data is funneled into the vast NSA system for future analysis. The NSA collects much more metadata about internet traffic: who is talking to whom, when, how much, and by what mode of communication. Metadata is a lot easier to store and analyze than content. It can be extremely personal to the individual, and is enormously valuable intelligence.
The NSA also devotes considerable resources to attacking endpoint computers. This kind of thing is done by its TAO – Tailored Access Operations – group. TAO has a menu of exploits it can serve up against your computer – whether you’re running Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, or something else – and a variety of tricks to get them on to your computer. Your anti-virus software won’t detect them, and you’d have trouble finding them even if you knew where to look. These are hacker tools designed by hackers with an essentially unlimited budget. What I took away from reading the Snowden documents was that if the NSA wants in to your computer, it’s in. Period.
That’s it for today’s DayPage, and there will be more in future DayPages. All monitored, of course, by the NSA.
Daypage is produced by Peter Patriot. The Producer is Minka Bito. It’s a production of radio infoweb. [REDACTED] …even though nothing is safe. We’ll see you on the next DayPage…
DayPage: Headlines and Syrian War Drumbeat Echoes
DayPage: Bombing for Compliance – Stoning for Submission
The following rush transcript probably contains errors and/or omissions…
Bombing for Compliance – Stoning for Submission – Fork in the Road
Rex Latchford here with another daypage. The U.S. is apparently at its’ wits end over its inability to control the narrative. Unable to control the drip-drip-drip leaking of NSA details — most recently about the NSA’s burgeoning budget, making it the most funded intelligence organization in the US, — and also the countless millions the NSA has paid to the nations telecommunications firms to purchase domestic telecommunications data — such as voice phone call content, web surfing habits, emails, text messages, photos, instant messages and more — all in an end-run around basic U.S. rights.
[BBC News Summary Clip]
The biggest story is the story still being skirted by the government and lamestream media. It’s that Democracy, Capitalism, Free Markets, Due Process, and other foundational concepts that make up the world we have come to take for granted cannot function in a world of total, global surveillance in which we suddenly find ourselves. How will the world respond? Will we meekly lay down and accept totalitarian government, complete with big-brother and war disinformation straight out of Orwell’s 1984 playbook, or will we insist on continuing the direction of civilization, hopefully to a more peaceful and prosperous world not just for the elite, but for everyone?
DayPage: Feds and Weed – NSA Black Budget
The following rush transcript probably contains errors and/or omissions…
Feds and Weed – NSA Black Budget
Rex and actualities tell the story of weed’s sudden emergence from decades of prohibition. Despite the good news for pot-heads, Rex warns that the sudden development may be an indication that the U.S. government wishes to subdue the population with marijuana so it can continue its rampage of illegal across the globe, and with its self-destructive surveillance of the American people.
The Big Brother Awards were handed out to the two biggest privacy violators in Amsterdam, and although the winners were close to home, the NSA did get an honorable mention.
The NSA’s Black Budget is out, uncovering the vast profits being handed to telecommunications firms in return for illegal collection and transmission of customer data to the NSA.
From Democracy Now!
Documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed the CIA has mushroomed into the largest U.S. spy agency with a nearly $15 billion budget as it expands intelligence, cybersabotage and overseas covert operations. On Thursday, The Washington Post published details about the so-called black budget of the nation’s 16 spy agencies. Altogether the spy agencies requested nearly $53 billion last year. More than half the money was split between the CIA, the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. The documents also reveal the NSA is paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to U.S. telephone and Internet companies for clandestine access to their communications networks. In addition, the black budget revealed that the United States has carried out counterintelligence operations against the governments of Israel and Pakistan, as well as Iran, Russia, China and Cuba.
DayPage: Times Still Down – Drumbeat of War is Deafening
The following rush transcript probably contains errors and/or omissions…
Times Still Down – Drumbeat of War is Deafening
[transcription of unscripted performance] Live from New York, and high atop InfoWeb Broadcast Center, it’s DayPage, and I’m Rex Latchford. And, it’s another day of attacks on the New York Times. It seems to be a war in cyberspace. The drumbeat of war is echoing, of course, everywhere throughout our reality today, but the New York Times in unavailable to our computers here in the studio, as DayPage is underway. We’re going to look at the headlines in the Washington Post instead.
[headlines followed, not transcribed here]
“Ahh the drumbeat of war. Those jungle drums, echoing in my head.”
“… you know, I don’t talk much about the March on Washington, but I was there. Yeah, I’m an old fart, but I was a kid then… but still, I was there… I saw it… and I saw Resurrection Village… On the Mall in Washington D.C., and it was quite a sight. Racisim was worse then than it is now, if you can believe it…”
[blurbs from the Opinion Section of the Washington Post]
[regarding looming war on Syria] “… most of the wars in the past [decades] have been undeclared wars in the legal sense. And, why should we start doing anything new at this time? The Federal Government has acted illegally in almost every way imagineable in our lifetimes – why should they start obeying the law now? Laws are only for citizens, for the little people. The big and the powerful people can do anything they want, right? Well, unfortunately, look around you… look to your left, look to your right, probably one of those people actually believes that. This is a problem, folks.
[more headlines]
Well I guess… good news today. The Guardian is still publishing… the U.K. Government hasn’t taken them down. Julian Assange still hasn’t been extradited to Sweden “for questioning”. Bradley Manning hasn’t been put to death. I guess there are some good things out there, but nevertheless, it does appear as thought the drumbeat of war is relentless at this point. The lamestream media is falling in line. And, it appears the government will do anything to distract our attention from the global total surveillance state they have created. It’s an environment in which free markets, capitalism… democracy… simply cannot survive. There can be only one outcome, and that’s economic destruction. So, fasten your seatbelts! And that’ll be it for another DayPage. It’s a production of Radio InfoWeb, and I’ll see you tomorrow for another installment of DayPage, at DayPage.net.
Those Jungle Drums of War!
Ringing in my head! Can there be no peace? Aiieeeeeee! 
Illustration by Heather Watts
DayPage: News Sites Down – Someday Never Comes
The following rush transcript probably contains errors and/or omissions…
News Sites Down – Someday Never Comes
At live air time (6:30 AM Eastern) the New York Times website, and those of several other news sources were inaccessable from our studios — possibly due to the DNS/DDoS accacks reported elsewhere in the media.
Rex covers the story, as well as a video featuring Julian Assange to support his pitch to win a seat in the Australian Senate.
Rex moves on to a prediction for the future: The U.S. Government will not negotiate on the illegal bulk data collection. The collection will continue. As President Obama has offered, there may be attempts to persuade us to be more comfortable about it. This stubborn refusal will lead to more economic ruin in the United States, and globally. Democracies and Capitalist economies cannot function in the face of total global surveillance. The economic damage may not come right away; it may come in bits and pieces. The total extent of the damage could equal or exceed the damage done by the 9/11 attacks (regardless of why may have been responsible for those). The damage will be greatest to those in power. For the rest of us, it may mark the dawning of a new day in which we are no longer ruled by fear and intimidation.
DayPage: NSA Surveillance Scandal Lives On In Europe
The following rush transcript probably contains errors and/or omissions…
NSA Surveillance Scandal Lives On In Europe
While reviewing headlines in Der Spiegel’s Online English edition, Rex finds that the NSA Surveillance story still has legs in Europe. Europeans, it seems, are less keen on the idea of total surveillance than Americans. But, with the whiff of disinformation in the air (Snowden denies credit for discolsures in London’s Independent said to make such disclosures appear damaging), and the drumbeat of war against Syria, it the U.S. Government seems bent on turning attention away from the NSA’s bulk collection of data at all costs. Translation: “we’re not going to stop snooping” (unless?).