NSA, GCHQ Have Secret Access To German Telecom Networks – Report – 14 September 2014

US and UK intelligence services have secret access points for German telecom companies’ internal networks, Der Spiegel reports, citing slides created in the NSA’s ‘Treasure Map’ program used to get near-real-time visualization of the global internet.

The latest scandal continues to evolve around the US’ NSA and the British GCHQ, both of which appear to be able to eavesdrop on German giants such as Deutsche Telekom, Netcologne, Stellar, Cetel and IABG network operators, according to Der Spiegel’s report based on material disclosed by Edward Snowden.

The Treasure Map program, dubbed “the Google Earth of the Internet,” allows the agencies to expose the data about the network structure and map individual routers as well as subscribers’ computers, smartphones and tablets. The German telecoms had “access points” for technical supervision inside their networks, marked as red dots on such a map, shown on one of the leaked undated slides, Spiegel reports, warning it could be used for planning sophisticated cyber-attacks.

Read the full story at: www.rt.com /  link to original article

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NSA, CIA, FBI Sued For Refusing To Disclose Mandela Records – 26 March 2014

Transparency activist Ryan Shapiro is suing three government agencies for failing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests he filed in an attempt to uncover details about any role the United States played in the 1962 arrest of Nelson Mandela.

Shapiro — a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a noted FOIA researcher — filed a lawsuit Monday morning in Washington, DC against the US National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Defense Intelligence Agency after his requests for details about the anti-apartheid activist were rebuked by the US government. He is already suing the Central Intelligence Agency for the same reason.

The US has long been rumored to have played an instrumental role in the 1962 arrest of Mandela, and his name remained on a government terror watch list until 2008 — more than a decade after he completed his term as the first president of South Africa after spending decades behind bars.

Read the full story at: www.rt.com / link to original article

Business Insider – Michael Kelley – NSA Whistleblower Says The Feds Are Gathering Data On Nearly Every US Citizen – 18 August 2012

The U.S. government has been collecting data on nearly every U.S. citizen and assembling webs of their relationships, National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney told the Hackers On Planet Earth(HOPE) conference last week.

Binney worked for the Defense Department’s foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he “could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution,” according to a statement he made in court records.