Wednesday, December 11, 2013

'Mass telephone record gathering necessary' - NSA chief



The mass collection of telephone data is necessary to monitor communications between terrorist suspects, the head of a US spy agency said Wednesday.

General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, defended the bulk gathering of metadata on phone calls, saying, "there is no other way that we know of to connect the dots."
The NSA collects information about which phone numbers are involved and the duration of calls, but not any information from actual conversations.


He told senators at a hearing that ending the mass collection programme "is absolutely not an option."
Members of Congress have called for greater restraints on US spying programmes after media reports in recent months revealed mass surveillance of telephone and internet records and spying on international leaders' mobile communications.

Former government contractor Edward Snowden began providing information about the extent of US spying efforts to the media earlier this year, prompting outrage from US allies and civil libertarians.
US President Barack Obama has said the US is to unveil "self restraints" on surveillance in the coming weeks after an internal review.

NSA uses cookies to track surveillance targets
US National Security Agency is secretly using "cookies" – an Internet tool that allows advertisers to track consumers – and location data to pinpoint potential targets for hacking and surveillance.

According to the internal NSA presentation, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by The Washington Post, when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the agency's technique provides the opportunity to similar tracking by the government.
The presentation also suggests that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations.

Presentation shows that the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, are using the small tracking files or "cookies" that advertising networks place on computers to identify people browsing the Internet.
The intelligence agencies have found particular use for a part of a Google-specific tracking mechanism known as the “PREF” cookie, which contains numeric codes that enable websites to precisely identify a person's browser.

Moreover, cookies allows NSA to single out an individual's communications in the immense amount of Internet data in order to send out software that can hack that person's computer.
Commercial tracking tools like "cookies", created for identification and targeting consumers with advertisements, were stumbling-stone for privacy advocates for years.

But the online ad industry has always insisted that its practices are safe for users' privacy and benefit consumers by serving them ads that are more likely to be of interest to them.
The revelation that the NSA is using these commercial technologies could shift that debate, handing privacy advocates a new argument for reining in commercial surveillance.

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