US military and intelligence computer networks
From the Snowden revelations we learned not only about NSA data collection projects, but also about many software tools that are used to analyze and search those data. These programs run on secure...
View ArticleNew Zealand and XKEYSCORE: not much evidence for mass surveillance
Since March 5, The New Zealand Herald and the website The Intercept published a number of stories based on top secret documents regarding New Zealand. These stories followed last year's claims by...
View ArticleThe National Security Agency in 2002
During the past year, a number of slides from a 2002 NSA presentation titled "National Security Agency: Overview Briefing" were disclosed as part of the Snowden-leaks.This presentation as a whole would...
View ArticleTorus: the antenna to significantly increase satellite interception
(Updated: April 15, 2015)At three satellite facilities, in Britain, Cyprus and New Zealand, there's a special antenna that allows NSA's partner agencies a significant increase in their capability to...
View ArticleSome equipment that connects NSA with its foreign partners
A close look at a unique photo of NSA computer equipment revealed the names of five countries: Tunisia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy. The devices are routers, but it's not certain what...
View ArticleGerman BND didn't care much about foreign NSA selectors
(Updated: May 15, 2015)Over the last couple of weeks, the German foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) was accused of helping the NSA by carelessly or even deliberately entering...
View ArticleNew details about the joint NSA-BND operation Eikonal
(Updated: May 31, 2015)This weblog first reported about the joint NSA-BND operation Eikonal on October 15, 2014, but meanwhile interesting new details became available from the hearings of the German...
View ArticleA mysterious Tektron secure telephone
Recently, a mysterious telephone was offered for sale at eBay. The device was made by the little-known company Tektron Micro Electronics, Inc. from Hanover, Maryland, and seems to be a secure phone for...
View ArticleWikileaks published some of the most secret NSA reports so far
(Updated: June 30, 2015) Last Tuesday, June 23, the website Wikileaks (in cooperation with Libération and Mediapart) published a number of NSA-documents showing that between 2006 and 2012, NSA had been...
View ArticleThe phones of the Dutch Prime Minister
(Updated: November 7, 2014)With last year's news of NSA eavesdropping on the mobile phone of German chancellor Angela Merkel in mind, Dutch onlinemedia assumed it was big news that the Dutch prime...
View ArticleNew IP phones in the White House
From a recent photo from the Oval Office, we learn that, probably last May, new telephones for non-secure calls have been installed in the White House. They replace older ones, that were used there...
View ArticleNew phones aboard Air Force One
(Updated: July 24, 2014)The location that best represents Top Level Telecommunications in every sense of the word is probably Air Force One, the aircraft that carries the president of the United...
View ArticleWhat if Google was an intelligence agency?
(Updated: September 15, 2014)This time we present an article written in cooperation with the French weblog about intelligence and defence Zone d'Intérêt in which we compare the data collection of...
View ArticleAnother "red phone" for the Israeli prime minister
(Updated: April 21, 2015)In an earlier posting on this weblog we took a look at the phones used by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which included an eye-catching red one. In some more...
View ArticleNSA's Foreign Partnerships
(Updated: March 10, 2015)For fulfilling its task of gathering foreign signals intelligence, the National Security Agency (NSA) is cooperating with partner agencies from over 35 countries all over the...
View ArticleAbout STELLARWIND and other mysterious classification markings
(Updated: May 16, 2015)Last week, on September 6, the US Justice Department released a declassified version of a 2004 memorandum about the STELLARWIND program.The memorandum (pdf) is about the legality...
View ArticleNSA's Strategic Mission List
One of the most important documents that has been disclosed as part of the Snowden-leaks is also one of the least-known: the Strategic Mission List from January 2007, which provides a detailed list of...
View ArticleThe German operation Eikonal as part of NSA's RAMPART-A program
(Updated: May 30, 2015)Just over a week ago, the regional German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the regional broadcasters NDR and WDR came with a story saying that between 2004 and 2008, the German...
View ArticleThe phones of the Dutch Prime Minister
(Updated: November 7, 2014)With last year's news of NSA eavesdropping on the mobile phone of German chancellor Angela Merkel in mind, Dutch onlinemedia assumed it was big news that the Dutch prime...
View ArticleFAIRVIEW: Collecting foreign intelligence inside the US
(Updated: September 7, 2015)On August 15, The New York Times and Pro Publica published a story in which the big US telecommunications company AT&T was identified as a key partner of the...
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