Snowden documents reveal NSA operation to break encryption codes
● Documents recently released by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden uncover a decade-long operation by the NSA to break personal privacy encryption codes, enabling it to spy on the emails, Internet activity, cell phone calls and business transactions of millions of people in the US and around the world.
● The 50,000 or so documents Snowden provided to the British Guardian newspaper, expose details of two highly classified programs, codenamed “Bullrun” by the NSA and “Edgehill” by its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). The information published by the Guardian and the New York Times Thursday provides further insight into the US government’s violation of core Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
● The files show how the NSA and GCHQ spy on the world’s population, running roughshod over privacy rights and collaborating with Internet providers and other companies, which falsely assure customers that their communications, online banking and medical records are not decipherable to identity thieves and governments.
● The Guardian notes: “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.”
Gawker: The NSA Is Reading All the Stuff You Think You've "Encrypted"
New York Times: N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web
Russia Today: Privacy pulverized: NSA, GCHQ can bypass online encryption, new Snowden leak reveals
Glenn Greenwald: Revealed: How US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security
Feds Beg NY Times, Pro Publica Not To Reveal That They've Inserted Backdoors Into Internet Encryption