Snowden's Latest: Secret Automatic Internet Weapon Deployed To Covertly Attack Innocent Targeted Individuals

Ever question validity of online polls, comments under web articles, vote-downs, or even article page view counts that for some authors, determines their financial compensation? Wonder no more. Internet deception is a reality. Spies have been busy with their new secret toy, a weapon that manipulates all those intrusions, unwanted one that Targeted Individuals know only too well – and more, according to Glenn Greewald at Intercept, thanks to human rights hero Edward Snowden.

Pesky human rights defender Snowden at it again

“The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist,” says Greenwald today.

“The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call.

GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) created the tools, providing some of the most startling propaganda and internet deception methods iin Snowden’s archive, according to Greewald.

“Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG’s use of “fake victim blog posts,” “false flag operations,” “honey traps” and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.“

Underhanded, Invasive Weaponry To Keep Us All Safe

As the U.K. Parliament today debates a fast-tracked bill to provide the government with greater surveillance powers, one Prime Minister David Cameron justified as an “emergency” to “help keep us safe,” a top-secret GCHQ document called “JTRIG Tools and Techniques” provided a comprehensive, birds-eye view of “just how underhanded and invasive this unit’s operations are,” Greenwald says.

The document—available in full here— explaining the tool is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG’s “weaponised capability” when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker’s buffet for wreaking online havoc.

“The “tools” have been assigned boastful code names. They include invasive methods for online surveillance, as well as some of the very techniques that the U.S. and U.K. have harshly prosecuted young online activists for employing, including ‘distributed denial of service’ attacks and ‘call bombing,’” Greenwald explains. “But they also describe previously unknown tactics for manipulating and distorting online political discourse and disseminating state propaganda, as well as the apparent ability to actively monitor Skype users in real-time—raising further questions about the extent of Microsoft’s cooperation with spy agencies or potential vulnerabilities in its Skype’s encryption.

Greenwald provides the following list of how JTRIG describes its capabilities:

• “Change outcome of online polls” (UNDERPASS)

• “Mass delivery of email messaging to support an Information Operations campaign” (BADGER) and “mass delivery of SMS messages to support an Information Operations campaign” (WARPARTH)

• “Disruption of video-based websites hosting extremist content through concerted target discovery and content removal.” (SILVERLORD)

• “Active skype capability. Provision of real time call records (SkypeOut and SkypetoSkype) and bidirectional instant messaging. Also contact lists.” (MINIATURE HERO)

• “Find private photographs of targets on Facebook” (SPRING BISHOP)

• “A tool that will permanently disable a target’s account on their computer” (ANGRY PIRATE)

• “Ability to artificially increase traffic to a website” (GATEWAY) and “ability to inflate page views on websites” (SLIPSTREAM)

• “Amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (Youtube)” (GESTATOR)

• “Targeted Denial Of Service against Web Servers” (PREDATORS FACE) and “Distributed denial of service using P2P. Built by ICTR, deployed by JTRIG” (ROLLING THUNDER)

• “A suite of tools for monitoring target use of the UK auction site eBay (www.ebay.co.uk)” (ELATE)

• “Ability to spoof any email address and send email under that identity” (CHANGELING)

• “For connecting two target phone together in a call” (IMPERIAL BARGE)

Some of the tactics are said to be “in development.” JTRIG, however, touts that “most” of them are “fully operational, tested and reliable.”

“We only advertise tools here that are either ready to fire or very close to being ready,” JTRIG says.

It urges its GCHQ colleagues to think big regarding Internet deception:

“Don’t treat this like a catalogue,” JTRIG says. “If you don’t see it here, it doesn’t mean we can’t build it.”

The document appears in a massive Wikipedia-style archive used by GCHQ to internally discuss its surveillance and online deception activities. The page indicates it was last modified in July 2012, and had been accessed almost 20,000 times.

GCHQ refused to provide any comment on the record beyond its standard boilerplate, in which it claims that it acts “in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework” and is subject to “rigorous oversight.” But both claims are questionable.

British watchdog Privacy International filed pending legal action against GCHQ over the agency’s use of malware to spy on internet and mobile phone users.

Several GCHQ memos published last fall by The Guardian revealed that the agency was eager to keep its activities secret not to protect national security, but because “our main concern is that references to agency practices (ie, the scale of interception and deletion) could lead to damaging public debate which might lead to legal challenges against the current regime.” And an EU parliamentary inquiry earlier this year concluded that GCHQ activities were likely illegal.

Hear No Evil, See No Evil

As for oversight, serious questions have been raised about whether top national security officials even know what GCHQ is doing. Chris Huhne, a former cabinet minister and member of the national security council until 2012, insisted ministers were in “utter ignorance” about even the largest GCHQ spying program, Tempora, not to mention “their extraordinary capability to hoover up and store personal emails, voice contact, social networking activity and even internet searches.”

In an October Guardian op-ed, Huhne wrote that “when it comes to the secret world of GCHQ and the [NSA], the depth of my ‘privileged information’ has been dwarfed by the information provided by Edward Snowden to The Guardian.”

Source: Intercept