DIRECT NEWS INPUT SEARCH
British Spies Seek to Control the Internet |
17 Jul 2014: posted by the editor - Internet news, United States, United Kingdom | |
From "The Intercept" by Glenn Greenwald based on Snowden leaks The revelations cover a range of surveillance tools that are used to spy and collect information and as well as to disrupt individuals computers and to attack websites using the very same tools that the same state has imprisoned hackers for. Here is a summary of the key findings from the site: The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, "amplif" sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be "extremist". The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. The tools were created by GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG's use of "fake victim blog posts", "false flag operations", "honey traps" and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users. But as the U.K. Parliament currently debates a fast-tracked bill to provide the government with greater surveillance powers, one which Prime Minister David Cameron has justified as an "emergency" to "help keep us safe", a newly released top-secret GCHQ document called "JTRIG Tools and Techniques" provides a comprehensive, birds-eye view of just how underhanded and invasive this unit's operations are. The document—available in full here—is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG's "weaponised capability" when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker's buffet for wreaking online havoc The "tools" have been assigned boastful code names. They include invasive methods for online surveillance, as well as some of the very techniques that the U.S. and U.K. have harshly prosecuted young online activists for employing, including "distributed denial of service" attacks and "call bombing", But they also describe previously unknown tactics for manipulating and distorting online political discourse and disseminating state propaganda, as well as the apparent ability to actively monitor Skype users in real-time—raising further questions about the extent of Microsoft's cooperation with spy agencies or potential vulnerabilities in its Skype's encryption. Here's a list of how JTRIG describes its capabilities: • "Change outcome of online polls" (UNDERPASS) Tags: GCHQ, spying, Internet, surveillance |
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