The National Security Agency is involved in industrial espionage and will take intelligence regardless of its value to national security, the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has told a German television network.

In a lengthy interview broadcast on the public broadcaster ARD TV on Sunday, Snowden said the NSA did not limit its espionage to issues of national security and cited the German engineering firm Siemens as one target.

“If there's information at Siemens that's beneficial to US national interests – even if it doesn't have anything to do with national security – then they'll take that information nevertheless,” Snowden said in the interview conducted in Russia, where Snowden has claimed asylum.

Snowden also told the German public broadcasting network he no longer had possession of any documents or information on NSA activities and had turned everything over to select journalists. He said he did not have any control over the publication of the information.

Questions about US government spying on civilians and foreign officials arose last June, when Snowden leaked documents outlining the widespread collection of telephone records and email to media outlets including the Guardian.

Reports that the NSA monitored Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone have added to anger in Germany, which has been pushing for a “no-spy” agreement with the US, a country it considers to be among its closest allies.

Snowden also talked about US reports that his life was in danger for leaking the documents. But he said that he sleeps well because he believes he did the right thing by informing the public about the NSA's activities.

"There are significant threats but I sleep very well," he said before referring to a report on a US website that he said quoted anonymous US officials saying his life was in danger.
"These people, and they are government officials, have said they would love to put a bullet in my head or poison me when I come out of the supermarket and then watch me die in the shower," Snowden said.

Snowden's claim the NSA is engaged in industrial espionage follows a New York Times report earlier this month that the NSA put software in almost 100,000 computers around the world, allowing it to carry out surveillance on those devices and could provide a digital highway for cyberattacks.

The NSA planted most of the software after gaining access to computer networks, but has also used a secret technology that allows it entry even to computers not connected to the internet, the newspaper said, citing US officials, computer experts and documents leaked by Snowden.

The newspaper said the technology had been in use since at least 2008 and relied on a covert channel of radio waves transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards secretly inserted in the computers. Frequent targets of the programme, code-named Quantum, included units of the Chinese military and industrial targets.

Snowden faces criminal charges after fleeing to Hong Kong and then Russia, where he was granted at least a year's asylum. He was charged with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national security information and giving classified intelligence data to an unauthorised person.

The letters NSA form one acronym that has barely been out of the news over the last few months. Since the exposés of Edward Snowden began in June, 2013, the National Security Agency has understandably and rightly been the focus of a lot of negative attention. With the former CIA employee and NSA contractor Snowden having released documents that prove conclusively that the NSA has been engaging in completely unconstitutional activity, on a massive scale, and in order to collect information that cannot conceivably be described as related to national security, it has been a damning time for the image of agencies of US government.

In Britain, The Guardian newspaper has printed a significant amount of the information released by Snowden, yet this is apparently only a trivial proportion of all the files that Snowden has in his possession. According to statements made by Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, before the British Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee, the newspaper has in fact published only 1 percent of the documents provided by Snowden.

Thus, one can expect more revelations to come. It perhaps shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise then that in the last twenty-four hours another story has broken which clearly demonstrates the lengths to which the National Security Agency has gone to collect personal data. Not for the first time, the NSA has demonstrably teamed up with British intelligence to collect information which will raise more than an eyebrow from many members of the public.

NSA monitors “dozens of smartphone apps”

Over the past few years, the National Security Agency and British intelligence collaborated to collect and store user data generated by what has been described as “dozens of smartphone apps”. There are many popular applications involved, but the trivial nature of these apps has been underlined by the media with reference to the fact that one of them was the popular video game Angry Birds.

This information has been confirmed by The New York Times – usually a pretty conservative publication – which has seen documents confirming this. The newspaper has also outlined that it was carried out as part of a wider program involving the monitoring of smartphone applications. According to the information published by The New York Times, the agencies targeted “leaky apps”, which apparently includes some of the most popular mobile phone applications, operated by millions of smartphone users.

While the Obama administration has responded to the revelations regarding the NSA, the general consensus of critical observers has been that the response has been extremely modest and insignificant. Meanwhile, this latest story will dismay those who are passionate about privacy and recognize that it is a basic right enshrined in the US constitution.

The extent of the collaborated efforts of the NSA and GCHQ to acquire and collate this information has huge implications. Not merely for the present, although that is true enough, but technological developments that are just around the corner will make this even more significant.

The Internet of Things

By now, many readers will be well aware of the so-called ‘Internet of Things’. This concept refers to a future point where virtually every household object is connected to the Internet. This is still a mooted concept rather than a physical reality, but already we are seeing electricity meters that can be operated manually from outside the home via mobile phone applications. CES 2014 showcased similarly ‘intelligent’ washing machines, and eventually is it proposed that even lightbulbs will be connected to this Internet of Things.

This may sound like something from a Philip K. Dick short story, but the reality is that it’s just around the corner. It is hard to say precisely how long it will take to build the Internet of Things, but certainly it would be a reasonable assumption to suggest that there will be significant developments towards it by the end of this decade. By 2020, given that we’re already seeing prototypes appear now, the concept of the ‘smart’ household appliance should be a commonly understood one, and by then many of us, if not quite most, will have at least some of them in our homes. I consider that to be a conservative estimate.

We can now quite reasonably suspect that the British and United States governments will try to obtain massive amounts of information from the Internet of Things. Of course, there is a certain broadcast media tendency to dismiss such notions as paranoia. The government wouldn’t want to bother collecting data on how often you turn your lightbulbs on, don’t be ridiculous…of course, they almost certainly would, and the media could have said exactly the same thing about collecting data from Angry Birds…

The latest revelations really indicate the incredible extent to which this program has been implemented. This has been a systematic attempt to ‘hoover up’ as much data as is physically possible. Nothing has been sacrosanct, nothing too trivial, and certainly nothing too private.

There must now be a push from Americans in particular to ensure that the government respects the constitutional rights which have been enshrined as the basis of the nation for generations. As a Briton, I can assure you that we don’t have any such constitutional rights, but US citizens do and it should be considered essential for them to ensure that their government respects these sacred rights in the medium to long-term. Otherwise, a few years down the line it may be impossible to do anything in your own home and for it to remain truly private.

That might sound alarmist, but that is simply the reality of the situation.

February 6, 2014 -- (TRN) -- Edward Snowden, the former contractor at the National Security Agency took with him multiple "Doomsday" packages of information when he departed the country and began revealing how intensely the US Government is spying on its own citizens. He has the personal home info for all Elected Officials, Law Enforcement, Judges, Bankers, Corporate Boards of Directors and more!



At a classified briefing for members of Congress which took place on Wednesday, members found out that Snowden took with him:

a complete roster of absolutely every employee and official of the entire US Government.
The names, home addresses, unlisted personal home telephone and personal cellular phone numbers, dates of birth and social security numbers of every person involved in any way, with any department of the US Government.
The files include elected officials, Cabinet appointees, Judges, and **ALL** law enforcement agency employees including sworn officers.
Similar files with the personal information of EVERY government contractor and all employees of that contractor!
Similar files with all the personal information of EVERY Bank Corporation, their operating officers and their Boards of Directors, including all current and former members of the Federal Reserve
Similar files with all the personal information about anyone holding any type of license from the Government such as Doctors, Lawyers, Stock Brokers, Commodities Traders . . . . and many more.
Similar files with all the personal information of EVERY non-bank Corporation in the U.S., including their operating officers and Boards of Directors.



Snowden has made it clear that if he is arrested, if he vanishes, or if he "dies" from any cause whatsoever, ALL of the information in his possession will be published publicly.



TRN has confirmed that, working through Julian Assange and his "WikiLeaks" organization, copies of the encrypted data have already been distributed to more than one-thousand, two hundred (1200) web sites around the world. Those sites have agreed to conceal the information until such time as contact with Snowden is "lost." Once contact is lost, the sites have been told they will receive the Decryption keys via CD ROM, E-mail and P2P / Bit-Torrent file transfer. Once the decryption keys are sent, the sites have been instructed to wait a specific amount of time to confirm Snowden's disappearance, arrest or death and upon expiration of that time period, to publish the decrypted materials.



Making the situation all the more dire for the government is that Snowden has made clear he will release some of the information under certain "other" circumstances. For instance, if Martial Law is declared in the US or if any elections are canceled for any reason, all the government employee info goes out. If an economic collapse takes place, all the Banker/Stock Broker/Commodities Trader information goes out. If Corporations start hyper-inflating prices, all the information about them, their officers and Board of Directors will go out.



Snowden literally has the most powerful people in the United States in an inescapable stranglehold. If any of the things articulated above take place, everyone throughout the country will know exactly who to blame and exactly where they live. One can only speculate that under the right conditions, it might not be long until those responsible for the problems of our country, faced consequences for their actions; consequences delivered one at a time, in the dark of night, when there is no help . . . . and no escape.



Leading members of the House Armed Services Committee emerged from the classified briefing “shocked” at the amount of information he reportedly took with him beyond the NSA surveillance programs.



Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the Armed Service panel’s Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee and also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the briefing on the defense consequences of Snowden’s leaks was “very highly classified,” and therefore details couldn’t be discussed.



Thornberry did say that lawmakers “left the briefing disturbed and angered” after hearing that the leaks by the former Booz Allen Hamilton employee “went well beyond programs associated with the NSA and data collection.”



He characterized the leaks as so severe that they “compromise military capability and defense of the country” and “could cost lives” — while they “will certainly cost billions to repair.”



“His actions were espionage, plain and simple,” Thornberry said.



Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) read his statement rather than making comments on the fly “because of the seriousness of this issue and the sensitivity” of the information they’d just heard.



“Ed Snowden isn’t a whistleblower; he’s a traitor,” McKeon said.



No matter what opinion people hold of the data collection programs, he added, people should be “shocked and outraged to find that a substantial amount of the information has nothing to do with the NSA.”



SOURCE:

Partial sourcing from: pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/02/05/lawmakers-...owden-defense-leaks/