NSA spies on ME? New US spying exposed!

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Joseph Menn (Reuters)

This is a National Security Agency (NSA) data gathering facility in Bluffdale, about 25 miles (40 kms) south of Salt Lake City, Utah, Dec. 17, 2013 (Reuters/Jim Urquhart).

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Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program

Joseph Menn (Reuters), San Francisco, Feb. 16, 2015 edited by WQ

This is why I've been saying for how long? (TI)

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, and other top manufacturers.

This gives the agency the means to spy, steal from, violate the civil liberties of, and eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former spying operatives.

That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.

• Your hard drives are RIDDLED with NSA SPYWARE The NSA does not care about who it spies on...The agency spread its performance-corrupting and data-exposing spy tools through compromised watering hole...back doors are left open for other spies and hackers, such as China and Iran, to exploit (theregister.co.uk)

Who will report the unbiased truths?

Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen, and Algeria.

[No one in the U.S. uses computer parts by SanDisk, Micron, Seagate, Toshiba, Western Digital, or other top manufacturers, right? Wrong. We use more of these than anybody. Do you know the manufacturers of your internal computer parts? Of course, not. Open it and have a look.]

The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said.
 

Spy infected computers around the world due to NSA (Kaspersky Lab/reut.rs/1L5knm0)

   
The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to illegally attack Iran's alleged uranium enrichment facility, a violent act of war and subterfuge.

The NSA is the agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence on behalf of the United States government and black budget projects.

A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky's analysis was correct, and that people still in the intelligence agency valued these spying programs as highly as Stuxnet.

Another former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it.
 
NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines declined to comment. (What a surprise).
 
Kaspersky published the technical details of its research on Monday, which should help infected institutions detect the spying programs, some of which trace back as far as 2001.

The disclosure could further hurt the NSA's surveillance abilities, already damaged by massive leaks by former contractor Edward Snowden. Snowden's revelations have hurt the United States' relations with some allies and slowed the sales of (contaminated) U.S. technology products abroad.
 
The exposure of these new spying tools could lead to greater backlash against Western technology, particularly in countries such as China. More

• NSA spied through Seagate, SanDisk, Micron hardware, Russian... (bizjournals.com) According to the Kaspersky tech report, the U.S. spying apparatus known as the NSA spies with malicious software in the fundamental firmware, which launches each time a computer... 
• Kaspersky says NSA planted Stuxnet-type cyberweapon(s) in hard drives... (techtimes.com) That means YOUR hard drive, too, even if you built your own computer, nerd. Did you make your own parts from scratch? No, obviously not. Were you exploited? Yes, obviously. 
• The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives (Engadget)
• Millions of computers compromised by U.S. spyware... (telegraph.co.uk)

Where can anyone get real news?

How the NSA, CIA, FBI, NSC spy on me.

We are spun and lied to daily by the "mainstream" media. Where can we go? If you want honest news about north America, you better go outside the country to get it. The BBC is sold out, but the Guradian, Telegraph, Register, Daily Mail used to be reliable, and RT (Ruptly Russian news), Al Jazeera English and other outlets can still tell truths that the AP, FOX, CNN, MSNBC, and other U.S.-based outlets dare not touch without getting a visit from their internally-implanted spies and handlers. Listen to Pacifica Free Speech Radio. Read the Intercept (firstlook.org/theintercept) with Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill, which gives voice to Ed Snowden, Julian Assange, Chelsea Bradley Manning, and other whistle blowers, particularly former insiders at the CIA and the U.S. military-industrial complex.