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Gandalf Grey
Guest
NSA Likely Reading Windows Software In Your Computer
By Sherwood Ross
Created Oct 17 2007 - 10:05am
Sooner or later, a country that spies on its neighbors will turn on its own
people, violating their privacy, stealing their liberties.
President Bush's grab for unchecked eavesdropping powers is the culmination
of what the National Security Agency(NSA) has spent forty years doing unto
others.
And if you're upset by the idea of NSA tapping your phone, be advised NSA
likely can also read your Windows software to access your computer.
European investigative reporter Duncan Campbell claimed NSA had arranged
with Microsoft to insert special "keys" in Windows software starting with
versions from 95-OSR2 onwards.
And the intelligence arm of the French Defense Ministry also asserted NSA
helped to install secret programs in Microsoft software. According to
France's Strategic Affairs Delegation report, "it would seem that the
creation of Microsoft was largely supported, not least financially, by NSA,
and that IBM was made to accept the (Microsoft) MS-DOS operating system by
the same administration." That report was published in 1999.
The French reported a "strong suspicion of a lack of security fed by
insistent rumours about the existence of spy programmes on Microsoft, and by
the presence of NSA personnel in Bill Gates' development teams." It noted
the Pentagon was Microsoft's biggest global client.
In the U.S., Andrew Fernandez, chief computer scientist with Cryptonym, of
Morrisville, N.C., found Microsoft developers had failed to remove debugging
symbols used to test his software before they released it.
Inside the code Fernandez found labels for two keys, dubbed "KEY" and
NSAKEY". Fernandez, though, termed it NSA's "back door" into the world's
most widely used operation system. He said this makes it "orders of
magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer." Microsoft
called the report "completely false."
Apparently, agenices of the military-industrial complex take on a life of
their own. NSA, for example, has long engaged in commercial espionage
eavesdropping on European businesses to benefit U.S. firms, according to
William Blum, author of "Rogue State"(Common Courage Press).
NSA achieves this through ECHELON("E") -- an intelligence cartel dominated
by the U.S. with Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada as junior
partners. Launched in the 1970s to monitor Cold War data, "E" morphed into
"a network of massive, highly automated interception stations covering the
globe," Blum said.
Using "E", NSA has spied on German and French businesses which, as a result,
have come off second best against their American competitors. Among
companies targeted were Thomson S.A., of Paris, Airbus Industrie of Blagnac
Cedex, France, and the German wind generator-manufacturer Enercon. "We know
this technology("E") is there and it is being used on us," Josef Tarkowski,
former head of counter-espionage for the German government told The London
Sunday Times Internet Edition.
"Like a mammoth vacuum cleaner in the sky," Blum documents, NSA's
continuously orbiting satellites "sucks it all up:home phone, office phone,
cellular phone, email, fax, telex?satellite transmissions, fiber-optic
communications traffic, microwave links?voice, text, images." These are then
processed by high-powered computers at Ft. Meade, Md., NSA headquarters.
Billions of messages are sucked up daily, Blum writes, including those by
presidents, prime ministers, the UN Secretary-General, the pope, the Queen
of England, transnational corporation executives, and foreign embassies.
It's been estimated "E" sifts through 99.9999 percent of all global
communications to get at the 0.0001 percent that is of interest to it.
Each of the English-speaking partners, Blum asserts, "is breaking its own
laws, those of other countries, and international law -- the absence of
court-issued warrants permitting surveillance of specific individuals is but
one example."
"E" works by mining for key words that are extracted by computers and passed
along to humans for evaluation.
Some NSA activities came to light during the countdown to the U.S. invasion
of Iraq in 2003. At the time, the U.S. listened in on the private
conversations of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, UN weapons inspectors in
Iraq, and on the deliberations about Iraq of all members of the UN Security
Council. It also spied on organizations such as Christian Aid and Amnesty
International. Earlier, it was said to have spied on U.S. Senator Strom
Thurmond(R.-S.C.)
Less well known has been E's spying on foreign firms. In 1998, German wind
generator-maker Enercon developed a cheaper way to generate electricity from
wind power, but its U.S. rival, Kenetech, said it had patented a
near-identical process, and got a court order to ban Enercon sales in the
U.S., reporter Blum writes. NSA's role was exposed when one of its employees
revealed he had stolen Enercon's secrets by tapping telephone and computer
links between its research and production units.
Again, NSA, with CIA aid, Blum and other sources say, obtained covert
information from French Airbus Industrie that enabled its U.S. rivals Boeing
and McDonnell Douglas to win a $1 billion contract. "The same agencies also
eavesdropped on Japanese representatives during negotiations with the U.S.
in 1995 over auto parts trade," Blum added.
The Sunday Times also reported Thomas-CSF, a French electronics maker, lost
a $1.4 billion deal to supply Brazil with radar because the U.S. intercepted
details of the negotiations and passed them to Raytheon, the U.S. firm that
makes the Patriot missile. Raytheon won the contract.
"E" is headquartered on British soil on a 560-acre base at Menwith Hill, in
North Yorkshire, the largest listening post in the world, taken over by NSA
in 1966. As well, the U.S. operates an enormous radar and communications
complex at Bad Aibling, near Munich, that is also an NSA intercept station,
and a dozen signals intelligence bases in Japan.
NSA also read other peoples' mail by inking a secret agreement with Crypto
AG, a Swiss maker of encryption technology, to rig their machines before
sale so that when foreign governments used the random encryption key the
enciphered message would be clandestinely transmitted to NSA.
The result: when Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia and more than 100 other
countries sent messages to their embassies, trade offices, and armed forces
around the world via telex, fax, and radio, NSA spooks could read them. NSA,
by the way, employs some 30,000 workers and, if it were a private
corporation, would rank among the top 50 on the "Fortune 500." It's budget,
of course, is secret but it's a bet NSA is cheerfully gobbling up umpteen
billions of your tax dollars every year. Of course, other countries today
emulate NSA's activities. China, for example, is said to have hacked into
British defense and foreign policy secrets and the German weekly Der Spiegel
recently reported German computers at the chancellery, and foreign,
economic, and research ministries are infected by Chinese espionage
programs.
Rather than shutting down or curbing NSA activities, President Bush is
expanding NSA's role. Even if a rubber stamp Congress goes along, not
everybody approves. The American Bar Association, our largest lawyer group,
has denounced Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program.
"The issue is whether the president can unilaterally conduct secret
surveillance, taking into his hands the awesome power to invade privacy,"
ABA President Michael Greco said.
Greco may be upset because the Bill of Rights declares: "The right of people
to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants
shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things
to be seized."
But what did George Washington know compared to George Bush?
_______
About author Sherwood Ross is an American reporter who has worked for major
American newspapers and magazines as well as international wire services. To
comment on this article or arrange for speaking engagements:
sherwoodr1@yahoo.com [1]
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Sherwood Ross
Created Oct 17 2007 - 10:05am
Sooner or later, a country that spies on its neighbors will turn on its own
people, violating their privacy, stealing their liberties.
President Bush's grab for unchecked eavesdropping powers is the culmination
of what the National Security Agency(NSA) has spent forty years doing unto
others.
And if you're upset by the idea of NSA tapping your phone, be advised NSA
likely can also read your Windows software to access your computer.
European investigative reporter Duncan Campbell claimed NSA had arranged
with Microsoft to insert special "keys" in Windows software starting with
versions from 95-OSR2 onwards.
And the intelligence arm of the French Defense Ministry also asserted NSA
helped to install secret programs in Microsoft software. According to
France's Strategic Affairs Delegation report, "it would seem that the
creation of Microsoft was largely supported, not least financially, by NSA,
and that IBM was made to accept the (Microsoft) MS-DOS operating system by
the same administration." That report was published in 1999.
The French reported a "strong suspicion of a lack of security fed by
insistent rumours about the existence of spy programmes on Microsoft, and by
the presence of NSA personnel in Bill Gates' development teams." It noted
the Pentagon was Microsoft's biggest global client.
In the U.S., Andrew Fernandez, chief computer scientist with Cryptonym, of
Morrisville, N.C., found Microsoft developers had failed to remove debugging
symbols used to test his software before they released it.
Inside the code Fernandez found labels for two keys, dubbed "KEY" and
NSAKEY". Fernandez, though, termed it NSA's "back door" into the world's
most widely used operation system. He said this makes it "orders of
magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer." Microsoft
called the report "completely false."
Apparently, agenices of the military-industrial complex take on a life of
their own. NSA, for example, has long engaged in commercial espionage
eavesdropping on European businesses to benefit U.S. firms, according to
William Blum, author of "Rogue State"(Common Courage Press).
NSA achieves this through ECHELON("E") -- an intelligence cartel dominated
by the U.S. with Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada as junior
partners. Launched in the 1970s to monitor Cold War data, "E" morphed into
"a network of massive, highly automated interception stations covering the
globe," Blum said.
Using "E", NSA has spied on German and French businesses which, as a result,
have come off second best against their American competitors. Among
companies targeted were Thomson S.A., of Paris, Airbus Industrie of Blagnac
Cedex, France, and the German wind generator-manufacturer Enercon. "We know
this technology("E") is there and it is being used on us," Josef Tarkowski,
former head of counter-espionage for the German government told The London
Sunday Times Internet Edition.
"Like a mammoth vacuum cleaner in the sky," Blum documents, NSA's
continuously orbiting satellites "sucks it all up:home phone, office phone,
cellular phone, email, fax, telex?satellite transmissions, fiber-optic
communications traffic, microwave links?voice, text, images." These are then
processed by high-powered computers at Ft. Meade, Md., NSA headquarters.
Billions of messages are sucked up daily, Blum writes, including those by
presidents, prime ministers, the UN Secretary-General, the pope, the Queen
of England, transnational corporation executives, and foreign embassies.
It's been estimated "E" sifts through 99.9999 percent of all global
communications to get at the 0.0001 percent that is of interest to it.
Each of the English-speaking partners, Blum asserts, "is breaking its own
laws, those of other countries, and international law -- the absence of
court-issued warrants permitting surveillance of specific individuals is but
one example."
"E" works by mining for key words that are extracted by computers and passed
along to humans for evaluation.
Some NSA activities came to light during the countdown to the U.S. invasion
of Iraq in 2003. At the time, the U.S. listened in on the private
conversations of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, UN weapons inspectors in
Iraq, and on the deliberations about Iraq of all members of the UN Security
Council. It also spied on organizations such as Christian Aid and Amnesty
International. Earlier, it was said to have spied on U.S. Senator Strom
Thurmond(R.-S.C.)
Less well known has been E's spying on foreign firms. In 1998, German wind
generator-maker Enercon developed a cheaper way to generate electricity from
wind power, but its U.S. rival, Kenetech, said it had patented a
near-identical process, and got a court order to ban Enercon sales in the
U.S., reporter Blum writes. NSA's role was exposed when one of its employees
revealed he had stolen Enercon's secrets by tapping telephone and computer
links between its research and production units.
Again, NSA, with CIA aid, Blum and other sources say, obtained covert
information from French Airbus Industrie that enabled its U.S. rivals Boeing
and McDonnell Douglas to win a $1 billion contract. "The same agencies also
eavesdropped on Japanese representatives during negotiations with the U.S.
in 1995 over auto parts trade," Blum added.
The Sunday Times also reported Thomas-CSF, a French electronics maker, lost
a $1.4 billion deal to supply Brazil with radar because the U.S. intercepted
details of the negotiations and passed them to Raytheon, the U.S. firm that
makes the Patriot missile. Raytheon won the contract.
"E" is headquartered on British soil on a 560-acre base at Menwith Hill, in
North Yorkshire, the largest listening post in the world, taken over by NSA
in 1966. As well, the U.S. operates an enormous radar and communications
complex at Bad Aibling, near Munich, that is also an NSA intercept station,
and a dozen signals intelligence bases in Japan.
NSA also read other peoples' mail by inking a secret agreement with Crypto
AG, a Swiss maker of encryption technology, to rig their machines before
sale so that when foreign governments used the random encryption key the
enciphered message would be clandestinely transmitted to NSA.
The result: when Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia and more than 100 other
countries sent messages to their embassies, trade offices, and armed forces
around the world via telex, fax, and radio, NSA spooks could read them. NSA,
by the way, employs some 30,000 workers and, if it were a private
corporation, would rank among the top 50 on the "Fortune 500." It's budget,
of course, is secret but it's a bet NSA is cheerfully gobbling up umpteen
billions of your tax dollars every year. Of course, other countries today
emulate NSA's activities. China, for example, is said to have hacked into
British defense and foreign policy secrets and the German weekly Der Spiegel
recently reported German computers at the chancellery, and foreign,
economic, and research ministries are infected by Chinese espionage
programs.
Rather than shutting down or curbing NSA activities, President Bush is
expanding NSA's role. Even if a rubber stamp Congress goes along, not
everybody approves. The American Bar Association, our largest lawyer group,
has denounced Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program.
"The issue is whether the president can unilaterally conduct secret
surveillance, taking into his hands the awesome power to invade privacy,"
ABA President Michael Greco said.
Greco may be upset because the Bill of Rights declares: "The right of people
to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants
shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things
to be seized."
But what did George Washington know compared to George Bush?
_______
About author Sherwood Ross is an American reporter who has worked for major
American newspapers and magazines as well as international wire services. To
comment on this article or arrange for speaking engagements:
sherwoodr1@yahoo.com [1]
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson