Revealed: The NSA’s Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security by Jeff Larson, ProPublica, Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times, and Scott Shane, The New York Times.
From the story:
The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents.
The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.
Many users assume — or have been assured by Internet companies — that their data is safe from prying eyes, including those of the government, and the N.S.A. wants to keep it that way. The agency treats its recent successes in deciphering protected information as among its most closely guarded secrets, restricted to those cleared for a highly classified program code-named Bullrun, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.
Read the full story for the details.
If that weren’t bad enough, consider this report from The NSA has cracked the secure internet: 3 things to know about the latest Snowden leaks by Jeff John Roberts:
Despite Thursday’s detailed revelations, the precise scope of the government’s power to break encryption is not clear. This is in part because the New York Times and Guardian did not publish all that they know. While the government asked the news agencies not to publish the stories, they only withheld certain details.
So, rather than a corrupt government withholding information from the public, the press decides it wants to withhold information as well?
That’s rather cold comfort from the defender’s of the public’s right to know.
I understand why Glenn Greenwald has been releasing the Snowden documents in dribs and drabs.
You can see the evidence for yourself. Watch the news cycles. As one set of Snowden leaks starts to die off, suddenly there is another release from Greenwald.
Glenn is forty-six (46) now so he may be able to stay in the headlines for another nineteen years and retire to write books with more Snowden leaks. It’s a meal ticket.
The news media needs to choose sides.
It can side with inevitably corrupt governments and their venal servants or choose to side with the public.
Members of the public need to make their choices as well.