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(Updated: July 15, 2018) One of the most controversial NSA programs revealed by Edward Snowden was the bulk collection of domestic telephone records under the authority of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. A detailed analysis of the workings of this program was published on this weblog earlier. In 2015, Section 215 was replaced by the USA FREEDOM Act, which prohibited the collection in bulk and provided more safeguards. The NSA became much more transparant about this program, which gives the opportunity for the following explanation of how the domestic phone records program currently works. NSA is also more transparant about things going wrong: last month it revealed that it had to delete all the telephone records collected since 2015 due to technical irregularities. Screenshot from 60 Minutes from December 15, 2013, showing an NSA contact chaining tool used for the telephone records collected under Section 215. Collection under Section 215 USA PATRIOT Act The NSA started its bu...

(Updated: April 22, 2018) The current 2018 Winter Olympics , held in PyeongChang, South Korea, led to a charm offensive by neighbouring North Korea, which included the reopening of a border hotline with the South, that had been closed for almost two years. The reopening came with new photos of the fancy-looking communications equipment, which will be described here, as well as the fact that there's not just one phone line, but over 40. Unlike other hotlines, the ones between North and South Korea are mostly used for low-level practical issues. > See also: Bilateral hotlines worldwide A South Korean liaison officer speaks with his North Korean counterpart over the inter-Korean communications channel at Panmunjom, January 3, 2018 (photo: Unification Ministry - click to enlarge) The Red Cross hotline The first hotline between North and South Korea became operational on September 22, 1971. The link was the result of the first inter-Korean Red Cross meeting held on September 20, whi...

(UPDATED: January 20, 2018) Two important NSA programs, PRISM and Upstream, are based upon section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), a law that was originally scheduled to expire today. Now the US Congress has to decide whether to continue or to reform this crucial legal authority . Although PRISM became almost synonymous for NSA's alleged mass surveillance, it's actually, just like the Upstream program, targeted collection aimed at specific foreign targets. Still, many people think that these programs pull in way too many data ( incidental collection ) to be subsequently queried in an illegal way ( backdoor searches ). Here we'll show some of the complexities of these two collection programs and that there are various internal procedures and methods in order to keep collection and analysis as focussed as possible. Slide from the PRISM presentation that for the first time revealed PRISM and Upstream as part of section 702 FAA collection. Until recently, US lawmakers w...

(Updated: December 9, 2017) On the fourth Thursday of November, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day and one of the traditions is that the US president addresses members of the military services that are deployed abroad. President Trump did so for the first time last Thursday, speaking to the five branches of the US military by video teleconference from his residence Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The press photos released for this occasion offer a clear view of the communications equipment that is used by the president when being outside the White House or travelling. President Trump addresses the military from Mar-a-Lago, November 23, 2017 (click to enlarge) Video teleconferencing The big screen for video teleconferencing (VTC) is the Cisco TelePresence System EX90 with high-definition video screen and camera. The device has been modified for TEMPEST protection by CIS Secure Computing: we can see that the screen has an additional metal encasing with silver labels to prevent and de...