THE most important news story of 2013 - NSA regularly intercepts laptops/other electronic devices to implant malware. All iPhones now compromised too.

Way back on June 10th we had a post titled "The most important news story since Watergate."And as the year draws to a close we will update with two significant revelations from yesterday and today.

The very idea that a government organization has been collecting information for seven years on every phone call, domestic and international, that Americans make was long rumoured and dismissed as the ramblings of the tin foil hat crowd.

But it turns out it's all true.

The US National Security Agency has recorded and logged every phone call, every email, every internet post you have made and stored it. They have done this with the implicit support (and granted access by) organizations such as Facebook and Google.

What we are learning has come to us courtesy of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (who should have been Time's Person of the Year)

Since then it has come out that the NSA has hacked the phones of world leaders.

Yesterday Germany's Spielgel magazine revealed stunning revelations which exposed the spy agency's 50 page catalog of "backdoor penetration techniques"

These NSA agents, who specialize in secret back doors, are able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives - from computing centers to individual computers, and from laptops to mobile phones. For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox. And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA's specialists seem already to have gotten past them.

It gets better, because when simple penetration is not enough, the NSA adds "implants."

In cases where TAO's usual hacking and data-skimming methods don't suffice, ANT workers step in with their special tools, penetrating networking equipment, monitoring mobile phones and computers and diverting or even modifying data. Such "implants," as they are referred to in NSA parlance, have played a considerable role in the intelligence agency's ability to establish a global covert network that operates alongside the Internet.

And how are those "implants" added?

Der Spielgel reports that the NSA regularly intercepts shipments of laptops and other electronic devices in order to implant physical listening devices and install advanced malware. This process, called interdiction, can give authorities instant remote access to a subject’s computer without them being any the wiser.

Interdiction is undertaken by the NSA’s superhacker team known at Tailored Access Operations (TAO). It is not impossible to deliver malware to a target computer after the fact, but the risk is far lower if the surveillance tools can be installed before a device reaches the buyer.

TAO is reportedly able to divert a computer order from a computer manufacturer to its network of secret workshops where the modifications can be made before returning the packages to the shipping company.

But if that bombshell isn't significant enough, Jacob Applebaum (@ioerror) at the 30th Chaos Communication Congress, dropped another stunner today.

Applebaum outlined the complete and detailed description of how the NSA bugs, remotely, your iPhone.

The way the NSA accomplishes this is using software known as Dropout Jeep, which it describes as follows:

"DROPOUT JEEP is a software implant for the Apple iPhone that utilizes modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. This functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted."

The most disturbing thing, as Applebaum notes, is:

"Do you think Apple helped them build that? I don't know. I hope Apple will clarify that. Here's the problem: I don't really believe that Apple didn't help them, I can't really prove it but [the NSA] literally claim that anytime they target an iOS device that it will succeed for implantation. Either they have a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products, meaning that they are hoarding information about critical systems that American companies produce and sabotaging them, or Apple sabotaged it themselves. Not sure which one it is. I'd like to believe that since Apple didn't join the PRISM program until after Steve Jobs died, that maybe it's just that they write shitty software."

So has the NSA hacked all iPhones, or is Apple working with the NSA to by pass the need to hack and is directly installing malware on your phone? The disturbing revelations continue.

And we humbly predict the repercussions from Snowden's whistleblowing (particularly economic repercussions) will ripple across the coming decades in a more profound way than did the events of Watergate in 1974 or the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

If you follow on twitter, we will continue to re-tweet important developments on this topic.

To see youtube clips of Applebaum's full presentation, follow this link to the Zero Hedge post.

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Wed Post #2: 2013 Person of the Year - Time Magazine caves again

Time magazine's tradition of selecting a "Man of the Year" began in 1927, with Time editors contemplating newsworthy stories possible during a slow news week. The idea was also an attempt to remedy the editorial embarrassment earlier that year of not having aviator Charles Lindbergh on its cover following his historic trans-Atlantic flight. 

By the end of the year, it was decided that a cover story featuring Lindbergh as the Man of the Year would serve both purposes.

The guideline for choosing a person to profile has supposedly been the person (or group) who, for better or worse, had the biggest effect on the news that year.

Since 1927 individual people, classes of people, the computer ("Machine of the Year" in 1982), and "Endangered Earth" ("Planet of the Year" in 1988) have all been selected for the special year-end issue. 

Despite the magazine's frequent statements to the contrary, the designation is often regarded as an honor, and spoken of as an award or prize, simply based on many previous selections of admirable people. However Time magazine points out controversial figures such as Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957) and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) have also been granted the title for their impacts.

In 1999, the title was changed to Person of the Year. However, the only women to specifically win the renamed recognition have been "The Whistleblowers" (Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins, in 2002) and Melinda Gates (jointly with Bill Gates and Bono, in 2005).  Before that, four women were granted the title as individuals, as "Woman of the Year" – Wallis Simpson (1936), Soong May-ling (1937), Queen Elizabeth II (1952) and Corazon Aquino (1986). 

Time's choice for Person of the Year became highly politicized in 1979. As a result of the public backlash it received from the United States for naming the Ayatollah Khomeini Man of the Year in 1979, Time has shied away from using figures that are controversial in the United States. 

Time's Person of the Year 2001, immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, was New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, although the stated rules of selection, the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news, made Osama bin Laden a more likely choice. 

The issue that declared Giuliani the Person of the Year included an article that mentioned Time's earlier decision to elect the Ayatollah Khomeini.  The article also discussed the 1999 rejection of Hitler as "Person of the Century." In that article Time seemed to imply that Osama bin Laden was a stronger candidate than Giuliani,  just as Adolf Hitler was a stronger candidate than Albert Einstein.

Yet despite logical arguments to the contrary, both Bin Laden Hitler were not selected.

(The December 31, 1999 issue named Albert Einstein the "Person of the Century". Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi were chosen as runners-up). 

Regrettably, since the 1979 backlash over choosing Ayatollah Khomeini, Time Magazine appears to regularly cave-in to political pressure when making their 'Person of the Year' selections.

And given the intense US government pressure on both foreign governments and the media about treating Edward Snowden as a criminal and a traitor, it comes as no surprise which way Time has gone for their 2013 selection.

This year Time has chosen Pope Francis.

Just like in 2001, Time has let us down. There is no doubt who really had the biggest effect on the year's news… and that's Edward J. Snowden.

And no amount of whitewashing will change that.

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Thur Post #1: Infographic - How the NSA tracks your every movement

(Click on image to enlarge)

As we posted the first time we covered the NSA, this topic is hands down THE most important issue since Watergate.

That little "entertaining" cell phone in your back pocket, which you are so addicted to thanks to all its apps, videos, messaging function and all other cool bells and whistles, that you can't possibly live without? It is simply the definitive NSA tracking beacon used to find where you are at any given moment. The following infographic explains how the NSA does just that…

(hat tip Zerohedge)

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Sunday Post #2: Heml.is... the app designed to be 'NSA-proof'

In just 36 hours, users contributed $100,000 to fund an app designed to get around state spy agencies like the US National Security Agency (NSA). Swedish tech entrepreneurs, including Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, successfully crowdfunded the planned iOS and Android app named Heml.is, Swedish for "secret".

The creators claim, "We're building a message app where no one can listen in, not even us". The project seeks to provide an alternative to services offered by major tech companies, which they say "have been forced to open up their systems and hound out information about their users".

According to the website, the app will be free to download, but users will have to pay to unlock certain features. A release date has not yet been set.

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Monday Post #1: The most important news story since Watergate.

If you follow our twitter feed, you know we have had a keen interest in the PRISM whistleblower story going on in the United States right now.

This may well be THE most important news story since Watergate in the early 1970s.

The very idea that a government organization has been collecting information for seven years on every phone call, domestic and international, that Americans make was long rumoured and dismissed as the ramblings of the tin foil hat crowd.

Warrants for wiretaps? Constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure by government agents? Silly formalities the conspiracy theorists alleged.

But it turns out these aren't the ramblings of wing nuts.

 It turns out it's all true.

The NSA has recorded and logged every phone call, every email, every internet post you have made and stored it. They have done this with the implicit support (and granted access by) organizations such as Facebook and Google.

It's all been saved, waiting for the day you come under 'suspicion' of having done 'something' in the future.  At which point all of this data will be brought up and analyzed.

As investigative journalists report on what whistleblowers are telling us, the growing awareness of the intrusions of America's National Security Agency (NSA) into the everyday lives of Americans is of profound significance.

If you haven't been following this story, go to this link for a video interview with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'

From The Guardian newspaper, an editorial by the author of The Pentagon Paper titled "Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America":

In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an "executive coup" against the US constitution.

Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.

The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa – but that unconstitutionally sweeping warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, almost totally deferential to executive requests. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: "It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp."

For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is nonsense – as is the alleged oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. Not for the first time – as with issues of torture, kidnapping, detention, assassination by drones and death squads –they have shown themselves to be thoroughly co-opted by the agencies they supposedly monitor. They are also black holes for information that the public needs to know.

The fact that congressional leaders were "briefed" on this and went along with it, without any open debate, hearings, staff analysis, or any real chance for effective dissent, only shows how broken the system of checks and balances is in this country.

Obviously, the United States is not now a police state. But given the extent of this invasion of people's privacy, we do have the full electronic and legislative infrastructure of such a state. If, for instance, there was now a war that led to a large-scale anti-war movement – like the one we had against the war in Vietnam – or, more likely, if we suffered one more attack on the scale of 9/11, I fear for our democracy. These powers are extremely dangerous.

There are legitimate reasons for secrecy, and specifically for secrecy about communications intelligence. That's why Bradley Mannning and I – both of whom had access to such intelligence with clearances higher than top-secret – chose not to disclose any information with that classification. And it is why Edward Snowden has committed himself to withhold publication of most of what he might have revealed.

But what is not legitimate is to use a secrecy system to hide programs that are blatantly unconstitutional in their breadth and potential abuse. Neither the president nor Congress as a whole may by themselves revoke the fourth amendment – and that's why what Snowden has revealed so far was secret from the American people.

In 1975, Senator Frank Church spoke of the National Security Agency in these terms:

"I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

The dangerous prospect of which he warned was that America's intelligence gathering capability – which is today beyond any comparison with what existed in his pre-digital era – "at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left."

That has now happened. That is what Snowden has exposed, with official, secret documents. The NSA, FBI and CIA have, with the new digital technology, surveillance powers over our own citizens that the Stasi – the secret police in the former "democratic republic" of East Germany – could scarcely have dreamed of. Snowden reveals that the so-called intelligence community has become the United Stasi of America.

So we have fallen into Senator Church's abyss. The questions now are whether he was right or wrong that there is no return from it, and whether that means that effective democracy will become impossible. A week ago, I would have found it hard to argue with pessimistic answers to those conclusions.

But with Edward Snowden having put his life on the line to get this information out, quite possibly inspiring others with similar knowledge, conscience and patriotism to show comparable civil courage – in the public, in Congress, in the executive branch itself – I see the unexpected possibility of a way up and out of the abyss.

Pressure by an informed public on Congress to form a select committee to investigate the revelations by Snowden and, I hope, others to come might lead us to bring NSA and the rest of the intelligence community under real supervision and restraint and restore the protections of the bill of rights.

Snowden did what he did because he recognised the NSA's surveillance programs for what they are: dangerous, unconstitutional activity. This wholesale invasion of Americans' and foreign citizens' privacy does not contribute to our security; it puts in danger the very liberties we're trying to protect.

And lest you think in Canada we are immune: NSA Spying On Canadians, CSEC Capable Of Similar Surveillance - Expert

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