The expansion of the illegal settlements in the occupied territories flies in the face of US interests and policy. The settlements are supported by the US Congress in many cases because of intimidation by the Israel Lobby. US-supplied weapons defend the settlements that are obstructions to a permanent peace agreement and which prevents the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. I therefore maintain that Israel and the Israel Lobby, by achieving congressional acquiescence on this critical issue, indeed controls the US Middle East policy on this most important element.
And finally
On September 5, 2012 the Guardian, the New York Times, and ProPublica all published stories with the latest revelations based on documents released by Edward Snowden. These articles, based on NSA budget documents, confirmed not only that the NSA was attempting to nullify any and all attempts to maintain encrypted privacy on the Internet, but that in fact they, and the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ, had substantially succeeded in doing so.
"Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and securityJames Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald
Guardian Weekly, 5 September 2013
" NSA and GCHQ unlock encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records
" $250m-a-year US program works covertly with tech companies to insert weaknesses into products
" Security experts say programs 'undermine the fabric of the internet"
Readers are encouraged to read these articles, as well as the comments attached to them. The Guardian's version of it can be seen here.
"Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with "brute force", and -- the most closely guarded secret of all -- collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.
Through these covert partnerships, the agencies have inserted secret vulnerabilities -- known as backdoors or trapdoors -- into commercial encryption software."
According to the article, the "covert partnerships" between the NSA, the GCHQ and commercial Internet companies was not always a partnership entered into knowingly by the privat e companies.
"To help secure an insider advantage, GCHQ also established a Humint Operations Team (HOT). Humint, short for "human intelligence" refers to information gleaned directly from sources or undercover agents.
This GCHQ team was, according to an internal document, "responsible for identifying, recruiting and running covert agents in the global telecommunications industry.""
The implications of such back doors installed in Internet communications systems was spelled out by Stephanie Pell, "a former prosecutor at the US Department of Justice and non-resident fellow at the Center for Internet and Security at Stanford Law School":
" [An] encrypted communications system with a lawful interception back door is far more likely to result in the catastrophic loss of communications confidentiality than a system that never has access to the unencrypted communications of its users." [emphasis added]
The question for the subject at hand, mainly Israeli spying on US agencies and individuals, is "Do the Israeli-related firms that are involved in the NSA's surveillance also have access to these encryption breakthroughs described in the NSA budget?" Obviously the NSA works hand-in-glove with the UK's GCHQ. Does the same level of cooperation extend to Israel, if only inadvertently by way of the numerous Israeli firms involved?
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
