CHAPTER 11
THE TECHNIQUES EXAMINED SO FAR FIT into what should be regarded as tactical considerations. They relate to matters affecting individual, small companies, or corporations. What will be considered here are strategic issues that are associated with global surveillance. There are numerous companies with names like Global Surveillance Associates or Global Surveillance Systems. Such names are a tribute to a growing acceptance of the notion that being able to establish global surveillance is both necessary and inevitable. Thus, the term has become part of marketing strategies for enterprises devoted to facilitating universal surveillance of almost all human activity.
The origins of an international system for global surveillance can be traced back to the first years after World War II when the UK and the United States forged the UKUSA Agreement. Later, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were invited to join them, and in 1971 they created a global surveillance network code-named ECHELON.
This became the focus of international attention in 2013 with the revelations of an NSA contractor, Edward Snowden. Snowden released an enormous cache of documents that he collected while working at the agency. Many of these documents were court orders, memos, and policy documents regarding surveillance activities. It was the Snowden disclosures that presented a picture of the larger network of global surveillance that included the communications of prominent leaders of the anti-Vietnam war movement. There were also stories about spying not only in the United States but also overseas. The names of secret surveillance systems such as PRISM and Tempora became household words. Coupled with controversies associated with the 1972 Watergate break-in, there was a storm of criticism focused on all intelligence organizations and activities.
The five members of the UKUSA Agreement together became known as the “Five Eyes.” Their overall objective was to achieve total information awareness, something that could now be accomplished by use of the internet and a variety of analytical tools. The NSA’s director, Keith B. Alexander, confirmed that the agency was collecting and storing all telephone records of every American citizen. The Utah Data Center (UDC) was created to help store the enormous quantity of data drawn from emails, phone calls, text messages, and cellphone location data. This included conversations from over a billion users from all around the world. Its storage capacity is counted in exabytes, a previously unknown quantity. The UDC is also known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center.
While its precise mission is so secretive that nothing can be told about it, it does support the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI). The USC is in Camp Williams near Bluffdale, Utah and its work is supervised by the NSA. Many of the programs used by UDC and its collaborative entities undertake data mining from central servers and internet backbones. There is no limit to what can be picked up and it is impossible to predict what agencies or nations will be encompassed by its global reach.
While UDC is part of the NSA network, other agencies such as the United States Department of Justice and the FBI are closely involved with its operations and can call upon its services as they pursue a variety of surveillance objectives. Information gathered through these programs is passed to law enforcement authorities in order to initiate criminal investigations of US citizens. By manipulating the sources employed, it is possible to hide the provenance of this information. In the past, this could not have been done. Through the top secret Venona intercepts program of the 1940s, information was gathered about the espionage work of Alger Hiss, Ted Hall, and others, but that information could not be used in prosecutions. Another unfortunate side effect of these innovations is that the so-called red line between domestic and foreign intelligence operations no longer has the same impact.
All necessary orders to this work are signed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (FISA). Numerous foreign intelligence agencies, such as Britain’s GCHQ, are part of these operations. Several telecom providers, including AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth, routinely share information about their customers. In 2008, there were reports about the existence of a program known as the “Quantico circuit” through which the federal government was given access to a “backdoor” into the Verizon network.
Among the many documents released by Snowden, there were indications that these programs were less about deterring terrorist attacks than about acquiring data about business, economics, and stability of nations that might be rivals of the United States. Many critics complain that the NSA never prevented any terrorist attacks while NSA Director Michael Hayden insisted their surveillance programs had disrupted fifty-four terrorist attacks. Hayden also admitted that the NSA steals secrets not to make anyone rich, but to make everyone safe. These allegations and boasts lack the specificity that would provide a comprehensive answer to these questions but it is obvious that many of the efforts advanced economic espionage, diplomatic initiatives, and social control. During questioning in US Senate hearings, NSA officials have argued that it is crucial that all conversations by American citizens should be stored and be available at any time that information is needed for a federal investigation.
XKeyscore is an international surveillance tool used by intelligence analysts to go through massive databases in order to locate specific emails, online chats, or browsing history of almost anybody who is suspected of being a national security threat. Tempora, the UK’s global surveillance program actually intercepts fiber-optic cables used by the internet. The NSA uses a surveillance program known as PRISM that can reach into the servers of Microsoft, Google, AOL, YouTube and others to examine messages that have already reached the party for which they were intended.
An objective of this massive high-tech operation is to ensure that the state can know the most important information about each person. This means being able to display that person’s social connections, people with whom they may travel, the destinations to which they travel, their hobbies, or their reading preferences. This can all be accomplished by studying their phone calls, emails, or text messages. During the Cold War, the KGB, the Romanian Securitate, and other intelligence organizations would often require suspects to sit in a room for several days and write a complete autobiography charting their development from childhood on up to that very day. Often they would be required to do the autobiography a second or even a third time. The result would generally be a document at least three hundred pages long. With all of the data routinely gathered by the NSA, the computers can now provide a complete picture of our personal, professional, religious, and political affiliations without any active contribution from the subject.
There is an aspect of most investigations that is focused on financial matters. Referred to by the catchphrase “follow the money,” this is based on an assumption that simply by determining who sends money to whom, you can understand what is happening. In recognition of this, the NSA created a branch known as “Follow the Money” (FTM). This branch has the capability to monitor all banking transactions to include international payment and credit card transactions. The NSA uses its financial data bank to store this data so it will be available for analysts.
Through FTM, the NSA can monitor the global flow of money and systematically gather important financial intelligence. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, illegal international arms traffic, already a major trade, expanded to include almost any weapons in the massive Soviet arms storehouse. A major hub in this burgeoning trade was the Kolbasna arms depot in the Dniester Moldovan Republic, the USSR’s largest armament storehouse. Guarded at the front, the back gates were almost always open for shipments to global destinations. The only way to understand this weapons trade was by going through the financial transfers of the buyers and sellers.
Because of the social distancing associated with COVID restrictions, more companies are forced to do business over a digital network rather than in face-to-face meetings. Even traditional brick and mortar businesses have been forced to increase digital transactions as customers pay online and have the purchases delivered. Online purchases through Amazon and eBay are now the modern norm. Not surprisingly, digital skimming has become a major threat to all business establishments. The FTM system has also facilitated surveillance of cybercrime.
For every online transaction, the company has to secure and maintain personal data about the customer. This data has enormous value and is often marketed online as a commodity in its own right. Every person who has an account with Amazon has surrendered their bank card information and verification codes along with basic information such as names, physical addresses, email accounts, and phone numbers.
The actual theft takes place at the user’s computer and it is possible that he will not realize what has happened for months. During this period, hackers have free use of credit and debit cards. This information can easily be sold on the dark web. Those who get this data are able to steal millions of dollars from users around the world.
Even a novice can use this technique in order to steal from unwary card holders. By going to the dark web, you can purchase toolkits that provide professional level training for digital skimming. A transaction begins when a user downloads a website for an e-commerce company as he prepares to make a purchase. If a hacker has penetrated the e-commerce site and entered a skimmer code, information entered by the customer automatically goes to the hacker, who can then sell that information. Hackers can create lookalike domain names to convince users they really are communicating with Norton Anti-Virus or even their own bank. Fake checkout pages can be created at the very end of the buying process in order to rob clients who believe they have completed their purchase. From the first key strokes, the hackers have stolen valuable information that will be used to rob naïve users. Sophisticated hackers often employ “automated bots” that can run thousands of transactions each second in an effort to find valid username/password combinations.
These actions often lead to identity theft. If you are a victim of identity theft someone else will use your personal identifiable information to gain financial advantage. This has involved the purchases of automobiles, personal luxury items, or even homes. Personal identifiable information can include your name, your date of birth, your social security number, and your driver’s license number. If the hacker manages to get the user’s electronic signatures, fingerprints, or passwords there is no limit to the amount of damage that a victim can incur. The individual victim does not always know that he has been targeted for identity theft. Many data breaches are massive, such as attacks on Facebook, but not all of the stolen data is used. The better your credit rating, the more likely it is that your information will be used.
When people steal identities in order to do things that are illegal, this is referred to as criminal identity theft. There have been numerous cases of people who manage to get copies of professional certification documents of doctors, lawyers, or other professionals. These are people who might have decided to skip medical school but practice medicine anyway. With the assortment of WebMd and other sites offering medical advice, it is not impossible to fake being a doctor. As long as you limited yourself to relatively simple cases and refer seriously ill patients to a specialist, your fraud might not be detected.
While professional hackers are most often associated with identity theft and are constantly involved in this activity, they are not the only ones to steal an identity. Some of the others are undocumented immigrants seeking to hide their status. There are also people who have massive debts and are hiding from collection agents, as well as people who just want to become anonymous or start a new life. Some of the people who do this are not motivated by avarice or any desire to steal money. Quite often they simply want to live another person’s life. Known as posers, they will lurk in social networks, using the photograph a person they wish they looked like and creating stories that will help them gain acceptance by friends of the person they are impersonating.