US/Western Intelligence

This looks to be true, if it is the ShadowBrokers hacker group has just dropped a cyberbomb on the US Intel network. Amongst others the Chinese will not be amused at the confirmation of much that they probably already knew. Goodness knows how this will play out.

I have linked to ZH's take on the subject as it seems to be a good consolidation of the current information.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-08/hacker-group-releases-password-nsas-top-secret-arsenal-protest-trump-betrayal

Just hope its all BS.

You may or may not have noticed that increasing amounts of the hacking tools used by the US's NSA that were stolen last year are being let out into the wild. With a new bunch just released targetting Windows users of all types.

If you are reading this then it is probable you have a computer system. I am no network or hacking expert but I would say that the risk to our systems has just increased and it would pay us to take some kind of protective action even if we ourselves think we are too small to matter to anyone. Most if not all of us will have these activities in place but it might be worthwhile to do an update.

Take a backup of your system with Ghost or similar, store it offline. Copy all your data files, store it offline. Consider using Cloud storage. Turn your Internet gateway off when not in use. At least you will have something hopefully safe that you can go back to in emergency.

Treat anything on your system as potentially suspect from now on. The online computer world via the Internet is changing fast and not for the better, thanks to the US Government.

If reading this does not give you concern talk to someone who understands the ramifications. As a commentator in the thread linked to below said "there will be many network teams around the world who have just had their Easter holidays cancelled". They will be working against the clock to stop the hackers now.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-14/latest-shadow-brokers-leak-reveals-nsa-hacked-swift-belgium-hq#comment-9380156

Austin wrote:I wonder why these CIA Folks are so cocky , cant stop saying they are best.

He also says his had evidence that Assad did the chemical Attack

They are raised from birth to believe they are an exceptional people living in an exceptional country.

An interesting analysis of the security problems in NSA. Probably causing the recent banning of Kaspersky. This is some of it.

In 2013, an NSA contractor named Edward Snowden walked out of the agency's building in Oahu, Hawaii, carrying a USB drive full of thousands of top-secret documents. Last year, a 53-year-old Booz Allen contractor for the NSA named Hal Martin was arrested last year for taking 50 terabytes out of the agency over a period as long two decades. And Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2015, a third contract employee of the NSA in as many years took home a trove of classified materials that included both software code and other information that the agency uses in its offensive hacking operations, as well as details of how it protects US systems from hacker adversaries.

That classified data, which wasn't authorized to be removed from the perimeter of the facility where that contractor worked, was then stolen from the contractor's home computer by Russian spies, who exploited the unnamed employee's installation of antivirus software from Kaspersky, a Russian company. And while that revelation has raised yet another round of serious concerns and unanswered questions about Kremlin spying and the role of Kaspersky's widely used commercial software, it also points to a more fundamental security problem for the NSA: The own-goals it has committed, as a series of its paid employees spill some of its most sensitive secrets—including its intensely guarded and dangerous hacking techniques.


https://www.wired.com/story/nsa-contractors-hacking-tools/?utm_content=buffer64701&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

About Western Intelligence Report on China

As RIA Novosti news agency reported on May 3, 2020, the director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (AST Center) Ruslan Pukhov told RIA Novosti that the report of the Western intelligence union Five Eyes about hiding China's data on coronavirus is an attempt by Western countries, primarily the United States , to cover up their mistakes in obtaining information, as well as a classic example of intelligence based on faith, and not on facts.

Earlier, the Australian newspaper Daily Telegraph, citing a 15-page report by the Five Eye intelligence agency (USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK), wrote that China allegedly intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of a coronavirus outbreak. The document claims that China destroyed evidence of coronavirus in laboratories and refused to provide biomaterials to scientists developing the vaccine.

Chinese authorities have repeatedly stated that from the very beginning they have taken an open and responsible position regarding the publication of data on the epidemic of coronavirus infection.

The Five Eyes are not the same

As the expert recalled, the Five eyes system (“Five Eyes” - Ed.) Is a legacy of World War II, it was created when British intelligence was still strong, and a real exchange of information took place between the five Anglo-Saxon countries.
"Then it made some sense. Now, 75 years after the end of World War II, this system is largely outdated and means that the Americans are simply sharing the leftovers from their table with their allies. All the other four eyes are practically nothing they don’t see it. This is far from a partnership, and the Americans, with the help of their information, feed their satellites, since they themselves practically do not get anything real, "said Pukhov.

“The day is not far off when the Americans will abandon this format and switch to situational agreements. First of all, on a bilateral basis,” the analyst predicts.

In his opinion, one cannot seriously say that Five eyes came to the same conclusions in the said report. "Obviously, everyone else simply does not have the opportunity to extract this information or verify it on their own. They are forced to take the Americans’s word for word. This is definitely not a product of the work of five intelligence services, but a purely American narrative. The signatures of the other participants in the report are put to give the information more solidity." , - the expert emphasized.

The classic "intelligence on faith"

Pukhov drew attention to the fact that China, which is better than other countries in coping with the pandemic, is coming out of the crisis in gain, the United States against this background is trying to make him guilty.

“We see that many governments were not ready to fight the coronavirus, and China was the best one. It not only defeated the pandemic, but also received tremendous economic benefits and political dividends. The Chinese have proven their effectiveness and will get stronger from this crisis. Americans we must contrast our perception in the world of successful China that the Chinese are to blame for everything, "he stressed.

"This report is a classic example of faith-based intelligence - intelligence based on faith, not facts. It is not about intelligence, not about establishing truth, but about ideology, this is a struggle of points of view," the expert explained.

Intelligence miss

Pukhov is convinced that Western countries are trying to justify their mistakes in obtaining information by a report of intelligence services on the concealment by China of data on the coronavirus.

If you discover that China was not saying anything, or say that you discovered, then this furious question will disappear by itself: why did not Trump even itch when the infection has already crossed all borders. So because he was misled.

"If you get away from emotions and turn to the facts, it will become obvious that this pandemic is very similar to what we saw over the years with infections that were among animals," the expert said. So, he recalled that in previous cases of the epidemic caused by SARS-CoV coronaviruses in 2002-2003 and MERS-CoV in 2015, neither a vaccine nor specific treatment methods have been developed.

"This kind of infection (like COVID-19 - ed.) Is not surprising, the new is just the scale. China is a closed society, they naturally kept the information - but there is intelligence for that. The Americans blame the Chinese for what they tell them “They didn’t reveal their soul,” but do they do it themselves? The Americans themselves “slammed” everything, - the analyst says.

"They are trying to accuse China of concealment - maybe the Chinese should have presented all the maps of their military formations? Why is there such an accusation? Intelligence agencies have such a task - to obtain information. If they themselves could not get it, and the intelligence tool became dull, this is a problem Americans, not Chinese, "the expert concluded.

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4014585.html

Well, duh. They're called afro-fluorescent for a reason. Why just a few nights ago I isekai'd one with my beater on my way home.

16 US intelligence agencies are a nightmare for the world community

American intelligence will take its toll not by skill, but by numbers

Specific state institutions - intelligence and counterintelligence, united under the general name of "special services" - are designed to steal the secrets of hostile countries or competing powers and to protect their own secrets.→

Today, even the poorest state in the Third World does not feel like it has achieved full national sovereignty until it creates its own secret service. As a result, the spy business has become one of the largest enterprises of the twentieth century, growing uncontrollably at a tremendous speed. Therefore, no one, including the state that finances the special services, knows how much it costs to maintain them and how many people work there.

This is partly because intelligence agencies use accounting methods that, if used by ordinary civilian businesses, would result in criminal prosecution. Another reason is that they work in cooperation with other, but equally interested services, and in doing so use each other's staff. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to establish the exact number.

The current budget of the Central Intelligence Agency is classified. But it is known that in 1998 it officially amounted to about $27 billion.

Same story with the National Security Agency. But in 2014, his budget was officially $45 billion.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation disbursed only $8.12 billion in 2014.

And these are just three secret services. And the USA has 16 of them!

MULTIPLYING ESSENCES WITH MONEY

How many people actually work in them? And how many in other services subordinate to them? And what is the number of their informants? A million, two, ten? We will never know this.

One thing is clear: any group of this magnitude has tremendous power and is very concerned about its survival. And given that such communities live freely in a period of international tension, it must be admitted that any detente is the approach of their collapse.

Therefore, all 16 special services strive to maintain the degree of the Cold War in international relations. Since it is on this degree that careers, salaries, vacation trips to exotic countries, pensions, the high standard of living of employees and the financing of the special services itself depend.

American intelligence agencies justify their existence in peacetime with the promise of timely warning of an impending threat to national security. And it does not matter at all whether this threat is real or invented. As was the case, for example, with the discovery by US intelligence of biological weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the so-called Rumsfeld test tube).

The US secret services protected themselves from the normal healthy reaction of the homegrown and world public by shrouding their activities in a dense veil of secrecy. That allows them to stop any criticism of them with a simple remark that cannot be disputed: “You are mistaken because you don’t know what really happened, but we can’t tell you, because it’s a secret!”

“Still, there is hope,” says Philip Knightley, a recognized authority on secret service researchers. “The intelligence community may eventually even outgrow itself. Already out of the control of governments, it can transcend the limits of its own control.

Now the special services are supplying such a volume of information, photographic materials and computer data that the number of intelligence officers who are able to understand and generalize all this is rapidly declining. Soon they, too, will drown in the flow of information. Even a high-speed supercomputer will not help. The NSA is already having real difficulty extracting material from its computers that consumers want.”

FROM DIFFERENCE TO COORDINATION

In December 2004, the US Congress - at the suggestion of President George W. Bush and at the insistence of the commission investigating the causes and circumstances of the September 11, 2001 tragedy - approved the assignment of interagency status to the National Counterterrorism Center. Prior to that, he was only an integral part of the CIA.

As the US intelligence community adapted to the pressing challenges of counterterrorism, all 16 intelligence services were mandated to share information among themselves and with law enforcement on the ground. Previously, this was prohibited in order to preserve the secrecy of the privacy of Americans.

In other words, the legal barriers between intelligence and counterintelligence, between military and civilian intelligence services, and between surveillance of US citizens and covert intelligence operations abroad were destroyed. These partitions have been in operation since 1974, after the “Watergate scandal” and the removal of President Nixon from power.

NOMENCLATURE KING OF INTELLIGENCE

Congress subordinated the intelligence services to a single center of interdepartmental coordination (along with maintaining their departmental subordination). And at the head of the new system - National Intelligence (NR) - he put the "nomenklatura king." This is the label the American secret services stuck to the director of HP.

On April 21, 2005, career diplomat John Negroponte became the first "king". When he left the throne in January 2007, Michael McConnell, a retired vice admiral and former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), took over.

He ruled the spy supercommunity for two years, and in January 2009 he was replaced by another sailor - the "full" Fleet Admiral Dennis Blair. And on January 21, 2021, Madame Avril Haynes was appointed head of HP by President Joseph Biden.

The powers vested in the director of HP are extremely limited. He can redistribute financial resources between special services only within 5% of the budget of each of them. And to move personnel from one service to another - only in agreement with their leadership.

A fair degree of autonomy remained only with the intelligence services of the Pentagon. Which is quite logical: in 2004, when the law on intelligence reform was passed, its owner was the powerful Donald Rumsfeld, who defended a number of privileges for his fiefdom.

Thanks to him, the NSA and a number of other special services remained in the structure of the Ministry of Defense. And the special forces of the Ministry of Defense, in general, without the consent of the director of HP, can conduct covert operations on the territory of foreign states.

JOKER IN THE DECK

So, let's start in order.

1. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Formed in 1947 by President Harry Truman. It is an independent department, not part of any ministries. Until 2004, the director of the CIA was ex officio the interagency head of the American intelligence community; he currently reports to the "King of Intelligence" HP.

The CIA supplies the US government and military command with intelligence information from abroad, as well as coordinating the efforts of other agencies in the field of intelligence gathering abroad.

The CIA obtains information both through an extensive network of agents and with the help of various technical means. Their development and implementation is carried out by his own department of science and technology, nicknamed by the Tseraushniks as a "magician's shop".

Since the 21st century, the CIA has been placing a special stake in obtaining intelligence on strengthening the role of the human factor. This is because the September 11 attacks and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exposed the weakness of the CIA's agents abroad, especially in Muslim countries.

At present, the recruitment of agents in the countries of the Near and Middle East is being accelerated. However, not only there. For the leadership of the CIA believes that there are enemies and unfriendly regimes nearby - in the underbelly of the United States: in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Nicaragua.

The headquarters of the CIA is located in Langley, in the Washington suburb of McLean, Virginia (in the professional jargon "Company", "Langley", "Firm").

Gina Cheri Haspel was the head of the CIA from 2018-2021, the first woman in American history to hold this position.

According to The Washington Post, experienced and qualified CIA officers often go to work in private intelligence structures due to low salaries. There they make up 20% of employees, and they account for 49% of the payroll. At one time, ex-CIA director George Tenet complained about this.

From the directive documents of the CIA obtained by the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, it is known that today, when hiring applicants, more and more importance is attached to the ideological factor: political reliability, devotion to American ideals and values. Those who have a penchant for profit and alcohol, unrestrained sex, political adventures or domestic intrigues, should be weeded out uncompromisingly.

SPIES - BURN THE DRUGS!

2. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). An autonomous division of the United States Department of Justice. Its creation in 1908 was revolutionary: never before had there been a nationwide federal law enforcement agency in the United States. And law enforcement, search and investigative functions were performed by the police at the municipal and state levels.

The FBI is the federal police force that detects and stops crimes under federal jurisdiction. And there are more than 200 articles. More than a century of history of the FBI is a chronicle from the provincial robbers Bonnie and Clyde to the international terrorist bin Laden.

Currently, the FBI officially has 35,000 employees in 56 regional branches in metropolitan areas. And also in more than 400 offices in rural areas and small towns of America.

FBI members (they are called "agents" or "G-men", that is, "state people", "servicemen" - from G-man, Government man) also work abroad as part of US embassies, consulates and other foreign missions. There they perform counterintelligence functions, acting as "legal attaches" with diplomatic passports. What is no different from the Tseraushniks, who are engaged in reconnaissance "under the roof" of the American embassies.

Today, the FBI combines two main areas in its work: law enforcement and anti-terrorism. Fighting corruption, so-called white-collar crime, civil rights violations, etc., the FBI simultaneously carries out counterintelligence and intelligence to protect the United States from the terrorist threat from outside and from within. The bureau is also entrusted with the task of combating espionage on American soil.

There are two main differences between the FBI and the CIA.

First, FBI officers are part of the law enforcement agencies and are empowered to make arrests and arrests. The CIA does not have these powers.

Secondly, the FBI works only on the territory of the United States, while the CIA works all over the world, except for its own country.

Despite its role as the leading counterintelligence agency, the FBI does not have a monopoly in the United States on the fight against espionage. Other subjects of the national spy community are also involved in counterintelligence. And sometimes they don’t even consider it necessary to let the FBI know about their operations.

The director of the FBI is appointed for a ten-year term not by the Minister of Justice, but personally by the President of the United States, with subsequent confirmation of the candidacy by the Senate.

3. Intelligence service of drug control. He is in charge of issues related to drug smuggling, drug mafia, etc. Conducts large-scale operations outside the United States. It has (officially) nearly 11,000 employees in 86 offices in 62 countries.

PENTAGON SUPPORT

4. National Security Agency (NSA). Created in 1952 as an autonomous division of the Pentagon. The most numerous, but also the most secret American intelligence service, about which there are many legends in the West.

In the US, pranksters decipher the NSA abbreviation as No Such Agency ("There is no such agency"). The second option is Never Say Anything (“Never say anything”). Wits from the operational and technical department of the KGB of the USSR deciphered the name of the NSA as the Agency "Don't Talk!". And all because one of the main directions of its activity is wiretapping of the air in order to intercept audio information.

The headquarters of the NSA is located in Fort Meade, Maryland, about halfway between Washington and Baltimore. From there comes the control of the entire global listening network of the NSA, which is armed with satellites, aircraft, ships and ground stations for interception and tracking. They completely control the radio, telephone lines, computer and modem systems. Systematize and analyze the radiation of fax machines. As well as signals coming from radars and missile guidance systems around the globe.

The Maryland structures of the NSA (officially) employ more than 20 thousand specialists. What makes this organization the largest public employer. More than 100,000 troops are deployed at NSA bases and stations around the world.

The administration of the agency to all its employees upon receipt of the question "Where do you work?" recommends answering without going into details: "In the Ministry of Defense."

The NSA is dealing with an incredibly huge influx of information. According to its experts, there are about 1 quadrillion bits of information in the collections of the US Library of Congress. Using the technologies available to the agency, it is possible to completely fill these funds every three hours.

The NSA keeps its achievements in the strictest confidence. But sometimes, based on the principle “Beat your own, so that strangers are afraid,” he leaks information to the lured mass media.

So, in 1980, the Washington Post, allegedly criticizing the vulnerability of the agency, published a conversation between the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Alexei Kosygin, which they conducted by radiotelephone from their ZiLs on the way to suburban dachas.

In 1988, information that led to the identification of the Libyans involved in the bombing of a Pan American jet over Scotland that killed 270 people.

In 1994, a report showed how bugs planted by NSA techies managed to locate billionaire Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

There are other facts that cannot be classified as leaks.

As a result of intelligence and operational-technical measures carried out by the KGB of the USSR, it was possible to find out that in the mid-1990s, 40 tons of equipment installed on the roof of the US Embassy building on the Garden Ring, allowed NSA experts, among other things, to listen to all the negotiations conducted by members of the Moscow government from their fixed telephones.

ON EARTH, IN THE SKY AND ON THE SEA

5. Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (RUMO). It was created in 1961 by the decision of President John F. Kennedy at the suggestion of the head of the Pentagon, Robert McNamara.

This special service in its profile corresponds to the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Its staff (officially) is 16.5 thousand "bayonets", and during the war it becomes the main intelligence agency as part of the Joint Intelligence Center, which includes intelligence services of the most diverse departmental subordination. This was the case, for example, during Operation Desert Storm in the Kuwaiti-Iraqi theater of operations in 1990-1991.

In 1992, the DIA included previously autonomous intelligence services: the Center for Medical Intelligence of the Armed Forces, as well as the Center for Rocket and Space Intelligence.

DIA employees are dispersed in 140 countries. They present their conclusions and recommendations not only to the military command and executive power structures, but also to the Congress in the person of the committees on the affairs of the armed forces.

The DIA, which, in the words of Langley's skeptics, "knows that it operates in the shadow of the more powerful CIA," has developed a traditional rivalry with this agency, as their functions overlap in many areas.

The director of the RUMO is traditionally a lieutenant general, which corresponds to the Russian military rank of colonel general.

6. Intelligence Corps of the Ground Forces. In the US Army, ground reconnaissance units appeared at the dawn of American history - in the Continental Army of George Washington, which was formed in 1775.

Today, the Ground Forces Intelligence Corps consists of 12 reconnaissance brigades and one military reconnaissance group. Each of these formations includes from one to five reconnaissance battalions.

7. Intelligence Directorate of the Naval Forces. Established in 1882, naval intelligence only made itself known seriously in 1898, when the United States declared war on Spain, following the Spanish attack on the battleship Maine off Havana.

This intelligence service reached its heyday during the Second World War. And although the US Navy underwent a significant reduction after the war, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, using his unquestioned authority as a combat "sea wolf", managed to maintain a high number of naval intelligence.

8. Directorate of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance of the Air Force. In its current form, this intelligence service appeared in mid-2007. Its personnel are dispersed at 72 air bases both in the United States and abroad. The directorate includes several tactical air wings, the National Aerospace Intelligence Center (at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio) and other components.

9. Intelligence Directorate of the Marine Corps. Interacts with the intelligence services of the US Navy and the Coast Guard.

The Marine Corps is the most modest in number, but the most combat-ready branch of the US Armed Forces: 200 thousand military personnel and 40 thousand reservists (officially). Since the American Revolutionary War, the Marine Corps has been widely used in combat. And also serves to protect military facilities and government agencies - from the White House to US embassies abroad.

10. National Geospatial-Intelligence Administration. Its staff consists of specialists in geodesy, cartography, oceanography, computer and telecommunications technology. It was this intelligence service, armed with the most modern electronic equipment at that time, that took pictures of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, which provoked the Cuban Missile Crisis.

11. National Aerospace Intelligence Directorate. Coordinates the collection and analysis of intelligence from spy aircraft. This intelligence service is a product of the American-Soviet rivalry in space exploration. President Eisenhower approved the concept of its creation following the launch by the Soviet Union of the first artificial Earth satellite in 1957. In a fully formalized form, the department appeared in 1961, shortly after a spy plane piloted by Gary Powers was shot down over the territory of the USSR.

DIPLOMATS CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT INTELLIGENCE

12. Bureau of Intelligence and Research, US Department of State. Analyzes information from abroad that influences the development of United States foreign policy. The bureau (officially) employs two to three hundred elderly analysts with considerable experience in scientific and diplomatic work.

However, age is not an obstacle to traveling abroad at the request of the CIA residencies, lodging in the capitals of foreign countries. The Bureau of Intelligence of the State Department willingly supplies (of course, for a fee) the achievements of its employees to all subjects of the national intelligence community, as well as to foreign state institutions.

The Bureau is headed by one of the US Under Secretary of State.

AND JOINING THE SPY COMMUNITY Dwarfs…

The Department of Homeland Security, whose functions include the comprehensive prevention of terrorist attacks on US soil, is a giant "echo" formation created in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001.

The departments included in it are customs, immigration, border guards, etc. - (officially) have 225 thousand employees.

13. Department of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security. Its task is to help ensure the security of the border and its infrastructure, prevent epidemics of infectious diseases and terrorist attacks, including by homegrown radicals.

14. Coast Guard Intelligence Agency. Designed to promote the security of seaports, the fight against drug trafficking and illegal immigration, as well as the conservation of biological resources in the territorial waters of the United States.

15. Intelligence Agency of the US Department of Energy. Conducts an analysis of the state of foreign nuclear weapons, deals with the problems of their non-proliferation. As well as issues of US energy security, storage of nuclear waste, etc.

16. Financial Intelligence Unit of the US Department of the Treasury. Collects and processes information of interest to the financial policy of the United States. As well as information related to the financing of terrorist activities, financial enterprises of hostile "rogue states", the financing of the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction, etc.

The activities of the spy supercommunity are controlled by the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress - the House of Representatives and the Senate. And the budgets are approved by the committees of the chambers on budget appropriations.

https://nvo-ng-ru.translate.goog/spforces/2022-09-29/1_1208_intelligence.html?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en