New Snowden Documents Reveal NSA "False Flag" Operation Tactics

[Purveyor]

By Joshua M. Patton, Tue, February 25, 2014

The latest report from Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept hit the Internet this morning and contained slides using a term made popular by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones during mass-shootings and the Boston terror attack: "false flag operation." While the newly released NSA slides don’t even remotely use the term in the same way as Jones, it is surprising to see it on actual, secret government documents. The slides are from a presentation given to the NSA and other intelligence agencies by the Government Communications Headquarters in Britain and outline how it deals with online protestors or “hacktivists.”

In this case, however, “false flag operation” is not about staging a disastrous event in the real world in order to take away your guns or haul you off to FEMA camps but instead is a calculated effort by U.S. intelligence agencies to discredit a person who has not been tried or convicted of any crime.

Like Alex Jones, these people are often only guilty of expressing themselves espousing “false and damaging ‘conspiracy theories’ about the government,” according to Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor and “close Obama adviser.” These “false flag” operations involve posting damning content online and then attributing it to the person they are trying to discredit. The slides also outline covert operations in online chat rooms and the old spy standby “the honeypot” or luring the target to a place on the internet or in the real world with promises of sex.

Despite what people may think of hacktivists — like those with 4Chan or Anonymous — their method of protest is not actually hacking. Instead, they essentially flood a site with traffic so that it goes offline for a time. No data is lost or retrieved and all it does is cause a little inconvenience to the site’s users. In fact, unless the site loses more than $5000 in business (or the denial of service attack actually causes physical harm to someone), it’s not even illegal.

MORE...

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/technology/internet/new-snowden-documents-reveal-nsa-false-flag-operation-tactics

[Fawke Em]

1. Cue the rolling, laughing smiley brigade.

[SolutionisSolidarity]

3. Don't forget smarmy and transparently disingenuous.

They appear to be mid transition from "you're just stupid and paranoid" to "old news, move along, nothing to see here".

[sabrina 1]

5. Lol, and expect a 'fuck Alex Jones' somewhere in the thread.

ANything but talk about the issues ....

[bvar22]

8. Annnnnd.... here they ARE!

As predictable as a clock.

[Fawke Em]

11. Wait... doesn't one of them have a "They're Back"

thing to post?

[sabrina 1]

28. Lol, you don't have to be a fortune teller. Talking points for the purpose of distraction.

Or attack the SOURCE with lots of links to how horrible it is, but never, ever address the substance.

So much energy and probably money to try to cover up information of malfeasance. Wouldn't it be cheaper to simply stop doing things they have to work so hard to hide?

[Maedhros]

31. Deny - Disrupt - Degrade - Deceive

[bobduca]

26. Here ya go

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024560097#post86

Right on time, like clockwork.

[sabrina 1]

35. Lol, it gets boring when it becomes so predictable, doesn't it?

[Cali_Democrat]

2. "luring the target to a place on the internet or in the real world with promises of sex"

[flamingdem]

4. Sounds like someone/s

would like to lure eyeballs to their new website!

omg, omg, omg, omg, omg, omg, etc.

[Cali_Democrat]

6. $$$$$$$

Follow the money!!!!

[Cha]

7. Bullseye!

[flamingdem]

9. Oh Gggggg!

[sabrina 1]

46. Sounds like someone doesn't want to talk about the substance of the revelations. Thanks for the demo

of how this whole thing works. That's what you were doing, right?

[bvar22]

10. DURec for the Whistle Blowers!!+

*Rampant Government Secrecy and Democracy can not co-exist.

*Persecution of Whistle Blowers and Democracy can not co-exist.

*Government surveillance of the citizenry and Democracy can not co-exist.

*Secret Laws and Democracy can not co-exist.

*Secret Courts and Democracy can not-co-exist.

*Our Democracy depends on an informed electorate.

You either believe in Democracy,
or you don't.
It IS that simple.

[ReRe]

18. Thank you...

... That's what it is. Democracy. You believe in it, or you don't. Day and night. There's no gray area. No "Yeah, but..."s. No middle of the effing road. No free passes, just because you "call" yourself a Democrat.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

58. Bravo!

[pragmatic_dem]

12. meanwhile some Russian kid...

steals millions of credit cards from Target and no one notices a massive fucking uptick in packets to E. Europe originating from Target.

Just don't get caught downloading too many documents at once - Holder will be all over your ass and you will pay.

Shitty spy programs. Real unemployment 15 to 17%, sending high tech knowledge to communist China, and we are pissing away 20-30 billion a year spying on ourselves and can't even detect the finacial rape of 100,000,000 customers.

But perhaps, I am being a bit unfair, they couldn't detect Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan cheating us out of trillions either.

Holder and Clapper should get the first annual Snowden Transparency Award for putting their goddamn noses where they don't belong and then lying about it.

What sort of person feels safe letting government agents record everything they do and everything they spend?

Like Blanche DuBois, I guess the pro-spying crowd depends on the kindness of strangers.

[blackspade]

16. Good point.

I thought they were supposed to be protecting 'Mercans?
Apparently just those that pay for the protection.
Everyone else is just a target for the NSA and the 1%.

[pragmatic_dem]

19. There's only a few points in USA

where all traffic flows in and out and NSA/CIA/FBI is recording them all.

$450 million estimated total cost to Target, ultimately passed on to consumers.

It's like being billed twice - once for taxes, once to pay for shit ruined because by Gov. misspent taxes spying on Sierra Club.

Sad part is many consumers will just pay their monthly charges using automatic bill pay and never notice the charges.

This spying program is a fucking sick joke and a dark smelly stain on the current administration.

BTW - Has anyone seen Holder lately? I think they are going to send out an Amber Alert on the guy - "Elderly man in nice suit, last seen spying on head shops in Denver, call 1-800-White-House if seen.

Or, maybe he's just kicking back, lighting up a bowl.

[sabrina 1]

48. They missed the Boston bombers also. And I know we are not supposed to mention that.

So what ARE they doing with all the 'metadata'? The Boston bombers were not that hard to keep an eye on. They were even WARNED about them. All those explanations about how this 'works' apparently didn't work when lives were at stake.

But then again, if the REAL purpose of spying on Americans is for Corporate Interests, you would have to excuse them if the missed an actual terror plot.

They must think we are stupid. They DO think we are stupid.

[KoKo]

54. They missed the Boston Bombers even when Putin warned them...

so..what else are we to think but that this is to benefit Corporate Interests/MIC.

[Maedhros]

36. Point of information: Target breach was most likely perpetrated by organized crime,

not some script kiddie.

[pragmatic_dem]

40. very possible - script was written by a kid (at least as determined so far)...

But it is difficult to imagine the operation succeeding without some help/consulting from the author of that code.

All I know is that the more top heavy we get with this goddamn police state, the more pain and suffering these programs are going to inflict. In cases of gross negligence there is going to be so much ass covering to protect the $billion dollar feed trough we will probably never know the truth about anything until someone like Snowden turns the light on so we can see the roaches scuttle under the floor boards.

People say they want justice, then set the right example by putting Clapper (and possible Holder) on trial for lying to Congress.

Seems like above certain pay grade you are allowed to walk into the Congress, leave a giant shit in the middle of the Rotunda and Congress will remark about how lovely it smells.

-------------
The malware used to hack into Target’s credit card system may have been written by a 17-year old Russian teen, although investigators don’t think the programmer was involved in the actual security breach that may have also affected high-end retailer Neiman Marcus.

Los Angeles-based software intelligence company IntelCrawler reports the data breach was caused by an “off-the-shelf” malware called BlackPOS, and that the teenager who originally invented BlackPOS likely was not the perpetrator in the theft.

http://business.time.com/2014/01/20/russian-teen-suspected-as-author-of-target-hacking-code/

[Maedhros]

53. The infection vector was extremely sophisticated.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/02/email-attack-on-vendor-set-up-breach-at-target/

The breach at Target Corp. that exposed credit card and personal data on more than 110 million consumers appears to have begun with a malware-laced email phishing attack sent to employees at an HVAC firm that did business with the nationwide retailer, according to sources close to the investigation.

Cyber attack.Last week, KrebsOnSecurity reported that investigators believe the source of the Target intrusion traces back to network credentials that Target had issued to Fazio Mechanical, a heating, air conditioning and refrigeration firm in Sharpsburg, Pa. Multiple sources close to the investigation now tell this reporter that those credentials were stolen in an email malware attack at Fazio that began at least two months before thieves started stealing card data from thousands of Target cash registers.

[KoKo]

55. Interesting Info...Thanks...

Somehow naming the software "BlackPOS" is When one is creating Black Ops software that can steal credit card info. Sounds like the kid has the mindset of our Military and NSA who use cute names for their own Software Spy Ops.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

13. HOW TYPICAL -- LYING ABOUT THE NSA -- BUT NUTCASE KOOKS WILL ALWAYS BELIEVE

Seriously, this was NOT the NSA's presentation. It was a presentation TO the NSA by the GCHQ, which is BRITAIN'S signal intelligence service.

But the author, being a thoroughly anti-American, tries to make this somehow into some NSA thing. Which is typical of this extremist kook and his equally rabid anti-American fans, on this site and elsewhere.

If you want a NON-BULLSHIT way of expressing the exact same story, you'd read this:

British spies cyberattacked Anonymous hackers, Snowden docs reveal

A British spy agency waged cyberattacks against the online chat rooms of Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists, documents leaked by Edward Snowden (pdf) and obtained by NBC News reveal. And they used computerized “weapons” similar to those used by the hacktivists themselves to do it.

In a PowerPoint presentation created for the 2012 NSA conference SIGDEV, slides show that Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s NSA counterpart, used denial of service (DoS) attacks against IRC chat rooms used by Anonymous and LulzSec. The mission, dubbed Rolling Thunder, was carried out by GCHQ’s special spy unit Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and is said to have scared off some 80-percent of the IRC chat room users.

Launched in 2011, Rolling Thunder came in response to Anonymous’s late-2010 “Operation: Payback” campaign against PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and others, which was itself launched in retaliation for these companies’ blockage of donations to WikiLeaks. The hacktivists used a downloadable tool known as the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, or LOIC, to wage distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks – which are similar to DoS attacks – against targeted websites.

Will the kooks acknowledge that the NSA had no part in this? Doubtful. Like the Tea Party, they're too proud for facts.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[blackspade]

17. Anti-American?

Whatever.


Take your authoritarian schpeal back to 'conservative democrat' land.....

[ReRe]

20. Exactly...

...they need to go make their own website. If I don't like what's on the radio or TV, I turn the channel. Some people just stay tuned in and raise hell about what's on.

[Maedhros]

32. Q: What do you call a conservative Democrat?

A: A Republican.

[randome]

24. They won't touch your post with a 10 foot pole.

Facts are not wanted in threads like this.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[sabrina 1]

29. How do you feel about the NSA spying on every, single American?? Polls show Americans are

very, very disturbed to find out that their OWN GOVERNMENT is spying on them. Amazingly most Americans actually do care about their 4th Amendment rights, they actually believed, until now, that they were protected by the Constitution of the US. It's been very disconcerting to find out that those who swore to defend and protect it haven't taken that oath seriously at all.

What do you think about having your Constitutional rights violated by a Govt agency whose job was supposed to be to protect those rights.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

37. Thank you for your service, sister

Even if Cali_Democrat is correct that Greenwald and this author are misrepresenting the story to impugn the NSA, the fact still remains that the NSA spies on people.

Yours is a worthy redirect from the issue at hand, and I commend you for it.

[Maedhros]

33. You should familiariize yourself with the Five Eyes program.

Were you familiar with it, you would know that the members of the Five Eyes coalition (US - UK - Canada - Australia - NZ) get around restrictions on spying on one's own citizens by essentially contracting out the work to one of the other Five Eyes participants.

Thus, methods detailed as being used by GHGQ could very well be used against U.S. citizens and the results given to the NSA. That makes the GHGQ documents quite relevant.

[G_j]

41. thank you

I wonder why the all-knowledgable debunkers didn't get that already...

[ConservativeDemocrat]

42. So your conspiracy theory is that the British are actively targeting U.S. citizens?

In underhanded attempts to tarnish the reputation of fine upstanding citizens like Joseph Farah, Alex Jones, and Glenn Beck?

Even though in the classified GCHQ power-point slide talking about, essentially "how to troll in online forums", there is not a single reference (no reports, no cases, no programs, no nada) to this ever being done anywhere?

Boy, many things "Could very well" be true. For instance, you Maedhos, "Could very well" be a Republican who is trying to convince Democrats that a substantial minority of our party is going batshit crazy, by writing all sorts of nonsensical conspiracy theories on the D.U. But let me say that I, don't believe that. I actually think you're completely in earnest. Which is unfortunate.

No. If you want to draw an inescapable conclusion, it's this: if the NSA was actually doing anything terrible, it would be in the data-set of Snowden's epic heist (where he lied to friends and coworkers in order to install password loggers to download gigabytes worth of top secret information). And Greenwald, in his increasingly unhinged anti-Americanism, would have put that front and center.

But they're not, so he hasn't been able to.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Maedhros]

52. You should familiarize yourself with the Five Eyes program.

Then you might not embarrass yourself with posts like the one you just made.

I know that conservatives are naturally a bit out-of-touch and are apparently incapable of using Google to find information, so I have done it for you.

Here is an overview of the program:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement

Here are some additional sources on intelligence-swapping between the U.S. and its allies:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/europe/for-western-allies-a-long-history-of-swapping-intelligence.html?_r=0

“The other services don’t ask us where our information is from and we don’t ask them,” Mr. Snowden said in the interview, conducted by the documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher, and published this week in the German magazine Der Spiegel. “This way they can protect their political leaders from backlash, if it should become public how massively the private spheres of people around the globe are being violated.”
...
Another allegation, reported by The Guardian newspaper, is that the Government Communications Headquarters, the British surveillance center, tapped fiber-optic cables carrying international telephone and Internet traffic, then shared the information with the N.S.A. This program, known as Tempora, involved attaching intercept probes to trans-Atlantic cables when they land on British shores from North America, the report said.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/07/10/2276191/snowden-five-eyes/#

The fact that the United States spies on other countries shouldn’t come as a surprise. Nor should the fact that it in turn cooperates on gathering electronic intelligence with many of these same countries, a detail many of Snowden’s other recent leaks have focused on. Soon after the initial revelation that the U.S. intelligence community is widely collecting metadata from its own citizens communications and the actual content of foreign online exchanges, the exploits of U.K.’s own General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) came to light as a by-product. Both GCHQ’s receipt of information the NSA collects on British citizens and its own alleged tapping of fiber-optic cables to gather data have been brought before the public’s judgment since then.
...
What the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia all have in common is joint membership in an organization known colloquially as “The Five Eyes.” In a 1943 agreement — not even officially acknowledged until 2005 and declassified in 2010 — the U.S. and Britain agreed to share signal intelligence between themselves and the Dominions of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Under the terms of the pact, formally known as the UKUSA Agreement, electronic information collected in the course of espionage can be passed freely among themselves, circumventing the normal controls against foreign sharing that intelligence usually possesses.

http://benswann.com/snowden-leaks-more-nsa-working-directly-with-canadas-spy-agency-the-five-eyes/

Among the piles of information National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has released to media outlets and the public, is revelations that are not only NSA officials, but also the NSA’s counterparts in other countries like Australia and Britain, scanning the phones, computers and cameras of millions. Coming into the fold of worldwide surveillance is north of the border in Canada.

Seemingly never ending, Snowden published more information Monday, revealing that the Canadian spy agency ‘Communications Security Establishment Canada’ (CSEC) has been working hand-in-hand with the NSA. CBC News broke the story, but decided to release limited information on the matter. However, what has been released is enough to make even the smallest privacy rights advocates cringe.

[Maedhros]

62. You were complaining that the article was about GHGQ's activities and not the NSA.

Seriously, this was NOT the NSA's presentation. It was a presentation TO the NSA by the GCHQ, which is BRITAIN'S signal intelligence service.

Further, you implied that any concerns that the techniques described in the article amounted to nothing more than "conspiracy theory."

I countered by demonstrating that the Five Eyes program, for example, involves extensive cooperation between the intelligence communities of the participating allied nations. While I absolutely did NOT state, as you erroneously claim, that "the NSA also used this kind of active deterrence," I did suggest that such close cooperation between US and UK intelligence agencies makes the discussion of GHGQ's methods relevant to a discussion of the NSA.

Why can't you go find some conservative board? We're not buying your arguments here.

[HangOnKids]

61. Ouch! Looks like the reality based community got a time out.

[Maedhros]

63. I don't think I would have voted to hide that.

It serves to show how incoherent his argument is.

He starts out complaining that the article is irrelevant to a discussion of the NSA: (DENY)

Seriously, this was NOT the NSA's presentation. It was a presentation TO the NSA by the GCHQ, which is BRITAIN'S signal intelligence service.

Then, when presented with a reason that it is relevant, he claims "conspiracy theory": (DISRUPT)

So your conspiracy theory is that the British are actively targeting U.S. citizens?

and follows that up with personal attacks: (DEGRADE)

Boy, many things "Could very well" be true. For instance, you Maedhos, "Could very well" be a Republican who is trying to convince Democrats that a substantial minority of our party is going batshit crazy, by writing all sorts of nonsensical conspiracy theories on the D.U. But let me say that I, don't believe that. I actually think you're completely in earnest. Which is unfortunate.

After being presented with evidence that yes, indeed, GHGQ has actively targeted U.S. citizens, he tries to misrepresent the nature of the exchange: (DECEIVE)

The topic is not information sharing. The topic is Britain's SIGINT service using DDOS attacks to deter criminals.

You stated that the NSA also used this kind of active deterrence. As "evidence", you keep talking about "Five Eyes", which is information sharing of some sensitive data among intelligence services of allied countries - not active deterrence.

This entire sequence of posts is a perfect example of this:

[pragmatic_dem]

43. a conservative posting in all caps? must be apologizing for spying or global warming...

yes, of course, spying this time.

[Marr]

44. As you've already been told, the GCHQ and NSA have long history of working

together very closely. There were several big stories that came out last year on the topic; including huge payments to the GCHQ from the NSA for services they provide.

These documents were, as you admit, part of a presentation by the GCHQ to the NSA. This isn't like sharing kitten pictures.

Your suggestion that this information is irrelevant or has nothing to do with US intelligence because it originated with the GCHQ is laughable.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

47. Your hollering about the matter does exactly nothing to bolster your point

The headline should not have been crafted in the way it was--it's inaccurate, and it invites people like you to attack the entire article. NSA and The rest of the "5 eyes" share information (somewhat) freely, and they get ideas from one another. They also outsource domestic nasty business to one another so that they can claim they're not spying on their own citizens. Here' same recent example:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/nsa-sanctions-australias-spying-on-us-law-firm-representing-a-foreign-country/

We don't have direct evidence that NSA has done this, but the smart money fully assumes they do. What do you think the purpose of the presentation was in the first place? We do have documentary evidence that NSA does much worse things than this, so it's no stretch at all to assume the NSA does the same, unless they've rejected it for their own internal reasons.

The headline shouldn't have been written the way it was. This in no way exonerates NSA, and the short article still makes a decent vignette of the culture of white, English-speaking international surveillance cooperation. Tempest in an all-caps teapot.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

50. Why does the NSA need to be "exonerated" from a lie?

And to reiterate my point upthread, with Greenwald having Snowden's treasure trove of tens of thousands of NSA documents, why is there "smart money" on the NSA doing this? Do you think Greenwald is protecting the NSA?

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[1awake]

51. Anyone defending the NSA (this story aside) is NOT for America.

But the author, being a thoroughly anti-American, tries to make this somehow into some NSA thing. Which is typical of this extremist kook and his equally rabid anti-American fans, on this site and elsewhere.

The people are America, not the Government. You need to learn that.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

56. The NSA was instrumental in catching Osama bin Laden

You need to learn that.

Oh. And this whole "The American Government is not MY government, Barack Obama is not MY President" thing you have going on is flat out unpatriotic.

Despite what you might think, the American people choose their government and their leaders. You need to learn that too.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[1awake]

57. lol, your very inventive.

Obama IS my president, even though I am totally against a significant portion of what he does... or does not do in some areas. I have served my country in various forms during my life... have you?

Your also mistaking patriotism for "blind" patriotism.. which is pathetic as well as fascist. I love my country, which is to say I love the American people. As long as the government doesn't abuse them, or the constitution, I will include them in that. But like I said... America is it's people... not the government. You need to learn that.

[blkmusclmachine]

14. 9/11???

[ReRe]

21. Exactly...

... how did they miss that?

They didn't.

[blackspade]

15. Not remotely suprised

The intelligence services are hopelessly corrupt.
Sometimes I think the Human race would be better off still banging rocks together.

[ReRe]

22. Corruptocracy

... that's what we have now, instead of Democracy.

[blackspade]

23. Roger that.

[CFLDem]

25. I'm not sure I believe him anymore.

Last edited Wed Feb 26, 2014, 02:31 PM - Edit history (1)

Who's to say he's not just making evidence up?

[tridim]

27. Just have faith!

Snowjob would never lie from his glorious new homeland.

[sabrina 1]

30. If that were the case, I suppose Clapper et al would have told us, but on the contrary they have

confirmed that the documents are real, 'stolen' so I guess you can believe they are. Thank the gods for Whistle Blowers. Someone has to watch the watchers.

[Maedhros]

34. Yes - if any of this was fabricated, the news of that fact would be immediately and ubiquitously

blanketed on every network and cable news broadcast in the known universe.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

39. I was thinking about that. Maybe NSA decided not to comment on anything

Then no one will know what is made up and what is real.

I really HATE complexities of modern life. Why can't we just go back to pre-Columbian agrarian society?

[El_Johns]

45. "Like Alex Jones" = little poison pill. Alec Jones mixes nutty stuff with serious stuff in order to

discredit the serious stuff.

[Junkdrawer]

65. [phone]

Good to see someone is paying attention.

[Drunken Irishman]

49. Boston! Newtown! READ UP ON IT, SHEEPLE!

[jsr]

60. Recommend

[KoKo]

64. another.....

[wildbilln864]

66. k & r! n/t