US surveillance efforts

Dirtbox

In addition to pressuring AT&T and other carriers for data supplies, the National Security Agency has been using fake base stations named Dirtbox in its wiretapping programs, including the Boundless Informant, for more than ten years. Through Dirtbox, they simulate signals of base stations to tap into and steal data from cell-phones. As Le Monde reported, Dirtbox has enabled the United States to steal data from at least 62.5 million phones.

PRISM

The US is the one that has been impenitently using mobile phone apps as surveillance tools. Leaked documents of PRISM have revealed that the NSA sees apps as “data mines” with huge reserves of data to be harvested, and thus has been digging into these “mines” for years. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, Google Maps and even the Angry Birds app were forced to cooperate with the agency under duress. Reports several months ago show that Ireland has asked Facebook to stop transmitting data back to the US.

Irritant Horn

The US intelligence agency has also pioneered a move to steal secrets through app store. As revealed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in a project called Irritant Horn jointly initiated by the NSA and the intelligence authority of other Five Eyes countries, Google’s Play Store was compromised, and phones with Play Store app were implanted with spyware and their software vulnerabilities were exploited for the intelligence authority’s advantage. The Five Eyes have succeeded in netting massive amounts of data in this way.

Muscular

The Washington Post exposed that the NSA, along with the Government Communications Headquarters of the UK, launched a surveillance program called Muscular to frequently break into the cloud servers of Google and Yahoo. They even went so far as to intercept data and direct it to the agencies’ own database, raking in hundreds of millions of personal information records.

Stateroom

Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on the US surveillance program Stateroom show that Washington has been operating a highly secretive signals intelligence collection program in almost a hundred US embassies and consulates worldwide. An article entitled “The Filthy Hypocrisy of America’s ‘Clean’ ChinaFree Internet” in the The Intercept points out that the US vision for a clean network means a China-free and ethno-exclusive network, a nonsensical piece of hypocrisy with a clear message: If there’s going to be a world-spanning surveillance state, it better be made in the USA.

Crypto AG scandal

Another case in point is the Crypto AG scandal. The Swiss company, founded more than half a century ago and specializing in communications and information security, was actually a puppet of the CIA, and the devices it sold to over 120 countries were ironically rigged so that the CIA could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.