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Leak: NSA Has Cracked Most Encryption Technologies
The National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) can crack almost all encryption software. That includes almost all the encryption protocols on email and other online communications, documents leaked by Edward Snowden reveal.
The
two agencies have been able to insert secret vulnerabilities into
popular encryption programs to make them easier to crack, the documents stated.
The NSA actually spent $250 million a year on a program to bribe
technology companies to give its spooks access to encryption protocols,
which corresponds to the millions Storyleak has documented as being siphoned into corporations that spy on the public.Undermining Encryption with Project Bull Run
Worse, the documents reveal what seems to be an all-out war on encryption and the very idea of privacy itself. The NSA has apparently been trying to undermine encryption for 10 years and succeeded in cracking most encryption software in 2010.The total cost of the effort to destroy encryption now comes to $254.9 million a year. That might be larger than the Prism program Snowden exposed. Disturbingly, the program is called Bull Run, which refers to the first major battle of the American Civil War.
This money was used to create a major new processing system called SIGDEV, which can crack most encrypted Internet data. Part of SIGDEV relies on the vulnerabilities inserted into the various programs.
The GCHQ’s activities are equally disturbing; they include special team designated to come up with the capability to read all messages sent via Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Facebook. They call these the big four in Internet communications providers.
GCHQ is also working to crack the Virtual Private Network technologies used by many private companies and organizations. GCHQ also hopes to crack the codes used by 15 major Internet companies and 300 Virtual Private Networks.
This looks like a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It’s hard to see how the apologists for the surveillance industrial complex are going to justify this. The program is clearly designed to deprive citizens of a basic right to privacy not to detect terrorists.
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