- Last week, NATO reported that several of its public websites had been hacked. An article on the incident by Reuters explains that the attack appeared to be linked to the growing tensions in Crimea. However, the article continues, most services have since been restored. One NATO official commented on the incident by saying:
It doesn’t impede our ability to command and control our forces. At no time was there any risk to our classified networks.
- Secrecy News reports that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a classified “execute order” last June pertaining to conduct of military cyber activities. However, as the article explains, since even its title is classified, the essence of the order cannot be determined, beyond the fact that, as an “execute order,” it clearly authorized a military operation of some kind.
- According to a report by the Washington Post, the National Security Agency (NSA) has a surveillance program that allows it to record “100 percent” of a foreign country’s phone calls such that, up to a month later, the NSA can rewind and replay those calls in order to reexamine them.
The voice interpretation program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for “retrospective retrieval,” and related projects reached full capacity against the first-target nation in 2011.
- The NSA has refused requests to reveal the amount of water it is using to operate its new data center in Bluffdale, Utah, citing “matters of national security,” according to Wired.
By computing the water usage rate, one could ultimately determine the computing power and capabilities of the Utah Data Center. Armed with this information, one could then deduce how much intelligence NSA is collecting and maintaining,
said David Sherman, NSA associate director for policy and records.
- The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) practice of releasing hard copy only documents in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests is being challenged in federal court, Secrecy News reports. Jeffrey Scudder initiated the lawsuit in connection with his FOIA request for electronic copies of 419 articles from an in-house CIA journal.
- In light of allegations of corruption that have been launched against the Turkish government via Twitter and just ten days before elections, the site was blocked by the nation’s Internet watchdog, reports the Wall Street Journal. “Access to Twitter may be blocked as a last resort to avert the unjust treatment of our citizens in case of a continuation of this ignorance of the court rulings [mandating the removal of certain tweets,]” read a public statement published on the state-run Anadolu news agency.
- According to the New York Times, classified documents reveal the United States government (USG) has created backdoors into Huawei’s networks. This is particularly interesting given the USG’s open consideration of Huawei as a security threat–even going as far as to block business deals out of fear that the Chinese tech giant would create its own backdoors into US networks.
- On Friday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia visited Brooklyn Law School and shared his prediction that NSA surveillance program issues are heading to the high court, reports Bloomberg Businessweek. Although Justice Scalia stated that he didn’t want to prejudge the issue of Fourth Amendment application in cyberspace, Bloomberg reports that, when asked, the Justice said, “ooh,” and was “obviously tickled.”
anonymity, Constitution, critical infrastructure, Criticism, Current Affairs, cyber attack, education, future, Internet governance, IT security, Law, NSA, surveillance, technology
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