Columbia Engineers Make World’s Smallest FM Radio Transmitter

A team of Columbia Engineering researchers...

led by Mechanical Engineering Professor James Hone and Electrical Engineering Professor Kenneth Shepard, has taken advantage of graphene’s special properties—its mechanical strength and electrical conduction—and created a nano-mechanical system that can create FM signals, in effect the world’s smallest FM radio transmitter. The study is published online on November 17, in Nature Nanotechnology. (more) (what was transmitted)

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DRTBOX and the DRT surveillance systems

(Updated: November 29, 2013)

In recently published screenshots from NSA's BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool about France, Spain, Norway and Afghanistan we see the mysterious term DRTBOX. For example, the screenshot for Norway presents 33 million telephony metadata, which were collected from mobile phone networks by a facility designated US-987F and processed/analysed by DRTBOX:

Unlike what it seems, DRTBOX is not a codename, but part of a wireless surveillance system, made by a company generally known as DRT. This article will show that this company manufactures a range of sophisticated surveillance and tracking devices, used by US law enforcement and signals intelligence agencies.



Digital Receiver Technology, Inc.

DRT is the abbreviation of Digital Receiver Technology, Inc. This company was formerly known as Utica Systems, Inc. and founded in 1980 in Frederick, Maryland, to produce devices for what was called the "Communications Surveillance Community". The company developed a solid reputation for communication equipment based on Digital Signal Processing (DSP).

In October 1997, the company adopted its current name and moved to a new plant in Germantown in April 1998. DRT was purchased by Boeing in December 2008 and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of this major US military contractor. DRT continued its production of state-of-the-art DSP-based equipment and was described as a "key supplier in the growing SIGINT market" in 2009.

In 2010, Boeing also acquired Argon ST and combined with DRT this created a "SIGINT powerhouse", giving Boeing a competitive advantage in the SIGINT market, according to market analysts. In 2011, both acquisitions were consolidated into the new Electronic & Mission Systems (E&MS) division of the Boeing company.

In fall 2012, DRT moved to a new facility in the Milestone area of Germantown. This facility comprises 135,000 sq. ft. with approximately 50,000 sq. ft. dedicated to equipment manufacture, and the remainder dedicated to offices and engineering development laboratories:

The headquarters of Digital Receiver Technology, Inc. in Germantown, MD.
(photo: www.drti.com)

Currently, the company's homepage only advertises miniature multi-format wireless communications scanners to be used by the wireless industry for measurement and testing purposes. As an example, the website shows two products from the 4300-series.

But: "Due to the sensitive nature of our work, we are unable to publicly advertise many of our products". This is followed by contact information for commercial customers and for "all other" customers, which are obviously government agencies. Latter can contact DRT through a mail address and also by calling toll free: "(866) DIRTBOX" - a clear hint to the DRTBOX mentioned in the NSA screenshots.

Just like many other military contractors in recent years, DRT also removed information about national security related products from its website. Between 2003 to 2009, earlier versions of DRT's homepage frankly said:

"DRT designs and manufactures advanced electronic equipment to support the missions of the US Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and law enforcement communities. The current product line includes a variety of portable and rack-mounted wireless communications receivers capable of processing a variety of modern wireless protocols. For more information about these products, please contact DRT."

Law enforcement

A good example of the devices which DRT manufatures and develops for use by law enforcement agencies is given by the company itself, in trying to open new markets.

In 2010, Boeing, on behalf of its subsidiary DRT, submitted a statement (pdf) before the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in reaction to an inquiry regarding contraband cell phone use in prisons. The statement says that:

"DRT has developed a device that emulates a cellular base station to attract cell phones for a registration process even when they are not in use. During this registration process calls are not disrupted. All calls, including 911 calls, are released, including those made from the contraband cell phones. The DRT device identifies cell phones as “not of interest” or “of interest” (i.e., the contraband cell phones).

Cell phones not of interest, such as those belonging to prison personnel or commercial users in the area, are returned to their local network. Cell phones of interest are forced to transmit so that the DRT device can locate them by calculating a line of bearing.

In one mode of operation, the DRT device then returns the cell phone to its network, permitting it to send and receive calls. In another mode of operation designed for use by federal law enforcement entities, the cell phone can be locked onto the DRT device, preventing its contraband use."

Boeing wanted NTIA to recommend to Congress that the Communications Act of 1934 should be modified in order to allow prison officials and state and local law enforcement to use these kinds of cell phone management, prevention or location technologies. Currently, only federal agencies, like the FBI, are allowed to use devices that jam or block wireless communications. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensing should also apply, for which Boeing delivered a similar statement in 2012.


Prison pilots

In December 2010, DRT participated in a pilot at the Maryland Correctional Institution-Jessup (MCIJ). After sensors were placed, DRT collected data showing when cell phones were turned off, turned on and registered with the nearest cell phone tower. Data were send to a laptop used to record the data and the company then analyzed the time and length of messages over the course of the pilot. A portable sensor was used to identify particular cells that had a high probability of cell phone usage within.

In 2012, DRT was selected to develop and implement a Managed Access System (MAS) for the California State Prison system. A MAS is used to allow authorized cell phones to connect to the standard carrier networks, while preventing unauthorized cell phones (like from inmates) from connecting to the carrier networks.


Other usage

The aforementioned Boeing statement claimed that DRT's cell phone management, prevention and location technologies could also provide important benefits in a wide variety of law enforcement situations outside the prison context. For example, Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams and other paramilitary tactical units could effectively control wireless communications by suspects in a building during a raid.

Boeing carefully described only those future applications for which regulations have to be changed - trying not to admit that DRT systems are already used at the federal level for decades. They provide agencies like FBI with some powerful tools (DRT devices can be used to perform a man-in-the-middle attack), although they are expensive and must be operated by highly trained law enforcement personnel.

At the FBI, the DRT systems are likely operated by the Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU), which is a highly secretive division specialised in intercept technology. DITU is also responsible for collecting data from US internet companies under NSA's PRISM program. For these federal agencies, a presentation about DRT devices was given at the 10th FED TECH Interagency Technical Training Conference, held in San Diego in January 2010:

In this schedule we see "DRT Box" again, but apart from a LinkedIn-profile, this term is rarely found and therefore it's not really clear what it stands for. At first glance it seems that DRTBox simply refers to box-like surveillance devices, but if we look at the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshots, we see that the actual data collection is done by facilities designated by SIGADs and that DRTBOX is in the same section as for example XKEYSCORE, which means DRTBOX is probably an integrated indexing and analysing system for wireless communications data, just like XKEYSCORE is for internet data.



Signals Intelligence

Where the FBI uses systems from Digital Receiver Technology domestically, the NSA is most likely the main customer for use abroad. On a website for Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Electronic Warfare (EW), DRT is listed as a provider of:
- SIGINT Design Engineering Services
- SIGINT Consulting Services
- Communications ESM Systems
- COMINT Systems
- RF Receivers

DRT products for signals intelligence missions include high performance Software Definable Receiver (SDR) and transceiver products, including multi-channel platforms for man-portable, mobile and even airborne applications, aboard RC-135 Rivet Joint, Combat Sent or Cobra Ball aircraft.

From various public job descriptions it becomes clear that DRT devices are widely used in tactical ground operations, where they are part of the equipment used by SIGINT/EW collection teams assigned to field deployed Special Forces Groups. These are so-called Low Level Voice Intercept (LLVI) devices.

DRT systems are also used as remote controlled collection systems, with the surveillance devices installed at fixed locations, like in areas where there's widespread hostile cell phone or radio use. The collected data go to ONEROOF, which is NSA's main tactical SIGINT database, containing raw and unfiltered intercepts.


DRT SIGINT products

A job description for a SIGINT Systems Engineer (job location: Fort Meade) requires "experience working with SIGINT systems, especially on systems utilizing Digital Receiver Technology (DRT) Series 1000 and 2000 equipment" and also familiarity "with the software used to control the DRT systems". Software used for the 1000 series product line is called Alaska.

More specific designations of DRT devices from the 1000-series can be found in various other job resumes, reading like "SIGINT/EW collection and exploitation systems, to include the DRT-1101A/1301B/1501, MINI-EXPIATION, HIDRAH, LOGGERHEAD, Harris Suite (STINGRAY, KINGFISH, BLACKFIN, GOSSAMER), AR-8200, Explorer/Scout, and the PRD-13v2/ISSMS".

The DRT1101A was a second generation wireless communications receiver developed by DRT around the year 2000. DRT's former website described the device as follows:

"The DRT1101A provides a compact, yet powerful, test and measurement capability for a variety of first and second generation wireless standards. The system also possesses the capability to detect and extract cellular FAX signals. The system is based on an industry-standard bus format, and uses the latest in digital signal processing (DSP) and microprocessor technology."

Another device from the 1000-series is the DRT1301C, which is used by Special Operations Forces:

"The DRT1301C, manufactured by Digital Receiver Technology, Inc., is a portable, ruggedized radio designed for operations in tactical and/or harsh environments. It provides a miniature yet powerful surveillance capability. The radio has a frequency range of 20-3000 MHz and operates against a variety of analog and digital wireless standards. The transmitter has a power output range of <1 W (standby) to 75 W (48 channels, 3 tuners); it weighs 10.5 lb and measures 3 in. (H) by 8.5 in. (W) by 11.2 in. (D)."

An example of a DRT device from the 2000-series is the DRT2101A, which was described as:

"a compact wideband tuner system consisting of up to eight wideband tuner modules, each covering the 0.5 MHz to 3 GHz frequency band. Each tuner module has a 30-MHz instantaneous bandwidth and can be operated in either an independently or coherently tuned mode under software control. The tuner module is factory configured to provide a high-level analog baseband output."

The Internet Archive also contained this picture of the DRT2101A device:

See also the description and the picture of DRT's Wireless Processor Module 2 (WPM2) in the Internet Archive.

The tactical deployed DRT systems are mainly used for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's very well possible that the equipment was also used at the joint NSA-CIA Special Collection Service (SCS) unit in the US embassy in Berlin, which intercepted the mobile phone of German chancellor Merkel.

Low Level Voice Intercept equipment being used during a field operation.
It's not clear whether the device in the video is from DRT,
but it's certainly very similar.

Links
- Volkskrant.nl: De DRT2101A: het apparaat waarmee de NSA telefoons afluistert
- List of 217 part numbers from Digital Receiver Technology, Inc.
- Presentation about Digital receiver technology for RWR, ESM and ELINT applications (pdf)
- Washington Institute: Stabilizing Iraq: Intelligence Lessons for Afghanistan
- Journal of Electronic Defense: What's New in SIGINT software?
- Overview: Toward a Universal Radio Frequency System for Special Operations Forces (pdf)

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U.N. - End Excessive Electronic Spying

A U.N. General Assembly committee on Tuesday called for an end to excessive electronic surveillance and expressed concern at the harm such scrutiny, including spying in foreign states and the mass collection of personal data, may have on human rights.

The U.N. General Assembly's Third Committee, which deals with human rights issues, adopted the German and Brazilian-drafted resolution by consensus. It is expected to be put to a vote in the 193-member General Assembly next month.
"For the first time in the framework of the United Nations this resolution unequivocally states that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online," German U.N. Ambassador Peter Wittig told the committee.

The United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand - known as the Five Eyes surveillance alliance - supported the draft resolution after language that had initially suggested foreign spying could be a human rights violation was weakened to appease them. (more)

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TUMs Solves Wireless Security Headache. Warning: explanation gives headache.

Researchers at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have proven that wireless communications can be made more secure through a novel approach based on information theory."

The method is counter-intuitive and involves information theory and zero capacity channels. "The scheme uses two physical channels – that is, frequency bands in a wireless system – that are inherently useless, each being incapable of securely transmitting a message," says TUM.

Intuitively, combining one zero-capacity with another zero-capacity should result in zero capacity. “But in this case,” Schaefer explains, “it’s as if we’re getting a positive result from adding zero to zero. We find that we are able to ‘super-activate’ the whole system, meaning that combining two useless channels can lead to a positive capacity to transmit confidential messages securely.”

Superactivation is not unknown in quantum theory. It's the combining of zero capacity quantum channels to produce a channel with positive capacity; but is not yet applicable to current technology. But what Boche and Schaefer have achieved "is," says Boche, "the first example of super-activation – where zero plus zero is greater than zero – in classical communication scenarios.”

Huh?

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Why Care About the NSA?

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Protesters Capture Government Surveillance Van

The Security Service of Ukraine, the nation’s intelligence agency, have its white mini-van back, courtesy of the Berkut anti-riot police officers.

Demonstrators seized the van during a protest rally on the evening of Nov. 25, suspecting that it contained sophisticated equipment for eavesdropping on telephone conversations of protest leaders.

The taking of the van prompted clashes last night between police and protesters. After a 30-minute standoff, punctuated by fighting, the demonstrators recovered evidence from the van and the police reclaimed it.

Opposition lawmaker Mykola Kniazhytsky posted a picture of a passport, car tag numbers and what he said were technical listening devices found in the van on his Facebook page. Opposition leaders promised to analyze the recordings and release their findings. 


 
Equipment believed to be listening devices found in the white mini-van that SBU officers were using while parked near European Square.

That left officials trying to explain what the van was doing at the protest site...

 

License plates that protesters say they found inside a van used by SBU officers that was parked near European Square...

According to eyewitnesses, protesters overtook the van, prompting hundreds of riot police to descend on the scene, triggering the violent clashes. An SBU officer in the van eventually escaped with police help, while the leaders of the demonstration took to the stage in triumph after police backed off about 9 p.m. (more) (video footage)

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Indonesia Posts Truth About Government Spying

Indonesia's former spy chief has said intelligence agencies tapping the phones of national leaders is "normal", and dismissed as an overreaction Jakarta's furious response to reports Australia spied on the president's calls. (more)

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Smart TVs Lie to You

So-called "smart TVs" have hit the marketplace, essentially turning TVs into computers that let watchers search for videos, install applications or interact with ads. But that connectivity may be a two-way street, as manufacturer LG investigates claims that its line of smart TVs is collecting data on its customers. 

According to an LG corporate video, "LG Smart Ad analyses users' favorite programs, online behavior, search keywords and other information to offer relevant ads to target audiences. For example, LG Smart Ad can feature sharp suits to men or alluring cosmetics and fragrances to women." 

But what happens when your online behavior trends just a bit naughtier than clothes or cosmetics? Meghan Lopez talks to RT web producer Andrew Blake about spying smart TVs and other trending tech topics in this week's Tech Report. (more)

In  other news...
LG has admitted it continued collecting data on viewing habits even after users had activated a privacy setting designed to prevent it.

The TV manufacturer has apologized to its customers and said it would issue an update to correct the problem. (more)

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DIY Surveillance in India Shows Eye-Popping Growth

India's electronic surveillance market - currently at Rs 10 billion ($160,393,125.35 USD) — is growing at a rate of 25% per year as a growing number of people opt for DIY surveillance. 
Cameras are being installed everywhere — outside buildings to prevent burglaries, in cars to keep track of whether the chauffeur is giving unauthorized lifts, inside homes so that people can keep an eye on everything from nannies to grannies. Even the pet dog has a watchful eye on him, as does the teen. 
When it comes to security, privacy concerns go out the window - the one with the CCTV attached. (more)

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Not to be Out-Spooked by the NSA...

The FBI is expected to reveal Thursday that because of the rise of Web-based e-mail and social networks, it's "increasingly unable" to conduct certain types of surveillance that would be possible on cellular and traditional telephones.

FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni will outline what the bureau is calling the "Going Dark" problem, meaning that police can be thwarted when conducting court-authorized eavesdropping because Internet companies aren't required to build in backdoors in advance, or because technology doesn't permit it.

Any solution, according to a copy of Caproni's prepared comments obtained by CNET, should include a way for police armed with wiretap orders to conduct surveillance of "Web-based e-mail, social networking sites, and peer-to-peer communications technology." (more)

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Shop Owner Installs Surveillance Cameras to... watch the police!?!?

A Miami convenience store owner is fed up with his employees and customers being allegedly harassed by police. So he installs surveillance video to get evidence against the local cops. (more)

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Help The OSS Society Pass a Law (It's easy.)

What is The OSS Society?
The Office of Strategic Services Society celebrates the historic accomplishments of the OSS during World War II, the first organized effort by the United States to implement a centralized system of strategic intelligence and the predecessor to the US intelligence and special operations communities. It educates the American public regarding the continuing importance of strategic intelligence and special operations to the preservation of freedom in this country and around the world.

Why pass a law?
The OSS was the World War II predecessor to the U.S. intelligence and special operations communities. It was founded and led by the legendary General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the only American to receive our nation's four highest military honors, including the Medal of Honor. President Roosevelt called General Donovan his "secret legs."

When General Donovan died in 1959, President Eisenhower said: "What a man! We have lost the last hero."

It's time to honor the "last hero" and all the heroes of the OSS with the Congressional Gold Medal. (more)

Click each link below to show support...
S. 1688 and H.R. 3544: A bill to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), collectively, in recognition of their superior service and major contributions during World War II.

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Bond Car Submarines at Auction

A car that transformed into a submarine in the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me" has been sold at a London auction for 550,000 pounds ($865,000).

The sale price was below the auction house's initial estimate price of 650,000 to 950,000 pounds — perhaps because the vehicle (a distinctively-shaped white Lotus Esprit) cannot be driven on the road, although it is said to be a fully operational submarine. (more)

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Screenshots from BOUNDLESSINFORMANT can be misleading

Over the last months, a number of European newspapers published screenshots from an NSA tool codenamed BOUNDLESSINFORMANT, which were said to show the number of data that NSA collected from those countries.

Most recently, a dispute about the numbers mentioned in a screenshot about Norway urged Snowden-journalist Glenn Greenwald to publish a similar screenshot about Afghanistan. But as this article will show, Greenwald's interpretation of the latter was wrong, which also raises new questions about how to make sense out of the screenshots about other countries.


Norway vs Afghanistan

On November 19, the website of the Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet published a BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot which, according to the paper, showed that NSA apparently monitored 33 million Norwegian phone calls (although actually, the NSA tool only presents metadata).

The report by Dagbladet was almost immediatly corrected by the Norwegian military intelligence agency Etteretningstjenesten (or E-tjenesten), which said that they collected the data "to support Norwegian military operations in conflict areas abroad, or connected to the fight against terrorism, also abroad" and that "this was not data collection from Norway against Norway, but Norwegian data collection that is shared with the Americans".

Earlier, a very similar explanation was given about the data from France, Spain and Germany. They too were said to be collected by French, Spanish and German intelligence agencies outside their borders, like in war zones, and then shared with NSA. Director Alexander added that these data were from a system that contained phone records collected by the US and NATO countries "in defense of our countries and in support of military operations".

Glenn Greenwald strongly contradicted this explanation in an article written for Dagbladet on November 22. In trying to prove his argument, he also released a screenshot from BOUNDLESSINFORMANT about Afghanistan (shown down below) and explained it as follows:

"What it shows is that the NSA collects on average of 1.2-1.5 million calls per day from that country: a small subset of the total collected by the NSA for Spain (4 million/day) and Norway (1.2 million).

Clearly, the NSA counts the communications it collects from Afghanistan in the slide labeled «Afghanistan» — not the slides labeled «Spain» or «Norway». Moreover, it is impossible that the slide labeled «Spain» and the slide labeled «Norway» only show communications collected from Afghanistan because the total collected from Afghanistan is so much less than the total collected from Spain and Norway."

Global overview

But Greenwald apparently forgot some documents he released earlier:

Last September, the Indian paper The Hindu published three less known versions of the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT global overview page, showing the total amounts of data sorted in three different ways: Aggregate, DNI and DNR. Each results in a slightly different top 5 of countries, which is also reflected in the colors of the heat map.

In the overall (aggregated) counting, Afghanistan is in the second place, with a total amount of over 2 billion internet records (DNI) and almost 22 billion telephony records (DNR) counted:

The screenshot about Afghanistan published by Greenwald only shows information about some 35 million telephony (DNR) records, collected by a facility only known by its SIGAD US-962A5 and processed or analysed by DRTBox. This number is just a tiny fraction of the billions of data from both internet and telephone communications from Afghanistan as listed in the global overview.


Differences

With these big differences, it's clear that this screenshot about Afghanistan is not showing all data which NSA collected from that country, not even all telephony data. The most likely option is that it only shows metadata from telephone communications intercepted by the facility designated US-962A5.

That fits the fact that this SIGAD denotes a sub- or even sub-sub-facility of US-962, which means there are more locations under this collection program. Afghanistan is undoubtedly being monitored by numerous SIGINT collection stations and facilities (like US-3217, codenamed SHIFTINGSHADOW which targets the MTN Afghanistan and Roshan GSM telecommunication companies), so seeing only one SIGAD in this screenshot proves that it can never show the whole collection from that country.

This makes that Greenwald's argument against the data being collected abroad is not valid anymore (although there maybe other arguments against it). Glenn Greenwald was asked via Twitter to comment on the findings of this article, but there was no reaction.


More questions

The new insight about the Afghanistan data means that the interpretation of the screenshots about other countries can be wrong too. Especially those showing only one collection facility, like France, Spain and Norway (and maybe also Italy and The Netherlands), might not be showing information about that specific country, but maybe only about the specific intercept location.

This also leads to other questions, like: are this really screenshots (why is there no classification marking)? Are they part of other documents or did Snowden himself made them? And how did he make the selection: by country, by facility, or otherwise?

There are many questions about NSA capabilities and operations which Snowden cannot answer, but he can answer how exactly he got to these documents and what their proper context is. Maybe Glenn Greenwald also knows more about this, and if so, it's about time to tell that part of the story too.



Links and Sources
- Volkskrant.nl: Bespioneerde de NSA ons of hebben wij zelf afgeluisterd?
- MatthewAid.com: Greenwald’s Interpretation of BOUNDLESSINFORMANT NSA Documents Is Oftentimes Wrong
- Dagbladet.no: NSA-files repeatedly show collection of data «against countries» - not «from»
- WSJ.com: Europeans Shared Spy Data With U.S.
- Cryptome.org: Some thoughts and explanations about the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT numbers

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REPORT: Corporate Espionage Against Nonprofit Organizations

How common is corporate espionage against nonprofits?
Most of the cases of corporate espionage we know about in recent years have been uncovered by accident. There has been no comprehensive, systematic effort by federal or state government to determine how much corporate espionage is actually occurring, and what tactics are being used. It is likely that corporate espionage against nonprofits occurs much more often than is known. 

Get the "T"

Who actually conducts the espionage?
When a nonprofit campaign is so successful that it may impair a company’s profits or reputation, companies may employ their own in house espionage capabilities, or they may retain the services of an intermediary with experience in espionage...

The intermediary may hire a private investigations firm that either has multiple espionage capacities or that specializes in the particular kind of intelligence needed – such as human intelligence and the infiltration of nonprofits, or electronic or physical surveillance. These private investigations firms may subcontract out espionage to experienced operatives, which gives corporations access to specialized talent while further increasing the level of plausible deny-ability...

Corporations may also hire the services of experienced nonprofit infiltrators who may pose as volunteers, to scout out workplaces and to steal documents left unattended or unguarded. Corporate spies may also plant bugs to obtain and transmit verbal communication. Both offices and homes may be targeted for the gathering of physical intelligence. (more)

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Corporate Espionage Infographic

Infographic via David Schilling, Industry Tap.

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Recent Technological Innovations Have Completely Changed the Game of Espionage

According to the FBI, competitors criminally seek economic intelligence by aggressively recruiting employees and conduct economic intelligence through bribery, cyber attacks, theft of property, dumpster diving and wiretapping.  

They also establish seemingly-innocent business relationships between foreign companies and U.S. industries to gather economic intelligence, including trade secrets. 

Technologies Used for Espionage

Many of the technologies now used for espionage are just updated versions of previous technology: smaller, lighter and orders of magnitude more powerful.

• Spying Equipment
• Spy Cameras
• Lock Picks
• Computer Hacking
• Network Intrusion
• Video Pen Cameras
• Miniature Cameras
• Mobile Phone Spy Gadgets
• Call Recorders
• SIM Card Readers
• Stun Guns Looking Like Cell Phones
• Telebugs
• Bionic Ear Boosters
• Voice Changers
• Audio Jammers
• Wireless Video Cameras
• Pinhole Video Cameras
• Google Glass type sunglasses, or glasses that record video, pictures and sound
• Asset Tracking Devices
• GPS Tracking Devices

Equipment to Protect You from Spies

• Cellphone Detectors
• Bug Detectors
• Thermal Vision
• Surveillance Cameras (more)

And, of course, us.

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Audio Surveillance Laws (Party Consent) by State

Click here for statutes.

Click to enlarge.

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Mass Surveillance Is Big Business: Corporations Are as Good at Spying as Governments

Data is the currency of surveillance, and it's not just the NSA and GCHQ looking to cash in. As a newly released cache of documents and presentation materials highlights, the private surveillance industry is booming. More shocking is that many firms claim in their own corporate PowerPoints that they've got capabilities that rival that of the government giants.

The document trove, called the Surveillance Industry Index (SII) and released by Privacy International, and contains 1,203 documents from 338 companies in 36 countries, all of which detail surveillance technologies...
 
Of course, that world isn't open to average consumers, which is why SII—and previously, Wikileaks' Spy Files, among others—is eye-opening. What's even more concerning than systems that guarantee "complete data inflow from all networks" is who's buying it. And while all the brochures I've read so far are careful to specify that surveillance tech is only for legal data collection, "legal" is a very fluid term worldwide...

There's a very good reason that the UN High Commissioner called privacy a human right earlier this year: The vast tools available to people with enough money and network access are more capable of accessing private information than ever before...

"There is a culture of impunity permeating across the private surveillance market, given that there are no strict export controls on the sale of this technology, as there on the sale of conventional weapons," Matthew Rice, a research consultant with Privacy International, told The Guardian. (more)

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Business Espionage - IKEA Snooping Investigation Continues

French police are questioning top executives of the Swedish furniture chain IKEA after allegations that the company illegally used police files to spy on staff and customers.

The arrests of the chief executive officer of IKEA France, Stefan Vanoverbeke, his predecessor, and the chief financial officer, come after more than a year and a half of investigations.

Police searched the company’s head office outside Paris 11 days ago. (more)

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Snooping on Credit Cards with Shopping Carts

Researchers at the University of Surrey, UK have successfully used readily available and inexpensive electronic components, combined with a shopping cart antenna, to eavesdrop on NFC and HF RFID contactless communication.

The shopping cart did not perform as well as a small inductive loop antenna (that could be concealed with the electronics in a backpack) but neither are likely to arouse suspicion. 

The researchers say that the eavesdropping distance can be as much as 100cm but is dependant on the strength of the magnetic field generated by the victims device. 

Companies like VISA, Mastercard and Google who have already developed platforms for contactless payments can now add eavesdropping to the existing security threats of skimming and relay attacks. Original paper here (PDF).

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Five Eyes, 9-Eyes and many more

(Updated: November 21, 2013)

On November 2, The Guardian published a lenghty article about the Snowden-leaks, which said that besides the close intelligence-sharing group of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New-Zealand, known as 5-Eyes, there are also groups called 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes.

According to The Guardian, the first consists of the 5-Eyes countries plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway and the latter adding another five European nations. This caused some embarrassment, as especially France and The Netherlands were heavily opposed to NSA's eavesdropping operations.

For almost everyone the existance of these 'Eyes' came as a surprise, but as this article will show, there are also 3-, 4-, 6-, 7-, 8-, 9- and 10-Eyes communities. They were created for restricting access to military and intelligence information to respective numbers of coalition nations. These 'Eyes' are used as handling instructions and often supported by dedicated communication networks.

- Many new 'Eyes' - The CFBL Network - Two different 9-Eyes? -

- The 14-Eyes and 3rd and 4th party partners - The 6, 8 and 10 Eyes - The 5, 4 and 3 Eyes -

- CENTRIXS networks - Conclusion -

Many new 'Eyes'

First we take a look at what The Guardian wrote about the 9-Eyes and other intelligence-sharing groups:

"The NSA operates in close co-operation with four other English-speaking countries - the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - sharing raw intelligence, funding, technical systems and personnel. Their top level collective is known as the '5-Eyes'.

Beyond that, the NSA has other coalitions, although intelligence-sharing is more restricted for the additional partners: the 9-Eyes, which adds Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway; the 14-Eyes, including Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden; and 41-Eyes, adding in others in the allied coalition in Afghanistan."

In a similar article, The New York Times also mentioned these two new Eyes-groups, but without naming the participating countries, and instead of the 41-Eyes, adding NACSI, the NATO Advisory Committee for Special Intelligence:

"More limited cooperation occurs with many more countries, including formal arrangements called Nine Eyes and 14 Eyes and Nacsi, an alliance of the agencies of 26 NATO countries".

These new revelations seem to be confirmed by what is said in an informative 2012 paper (pdf) about Canada and the Five Eyes Intelligence Community:

"The Five Eyes sigint community also plays a ‘core’ role in a larger galaxy of sigint organizations found in established democratic states, both west and east. Five Eyes ‘plus’ gatherings in the west include Canada’s NATO allies and important non-NATO partners such as Sweden. To the east, a Pacific version of the Five Eyes ‘plus’ grouping includes, among others, Singapore and South Korea. Such extensions add ‘reach’ and ‘layering’ to Five Eyes sigint capabilities."

This text suggests that there are several western Five Eyes 'plus' groups, one of which sounds like the 14-Eyes mentioned by The Guardian. The eastern Five Eyes 'plus' refers to the 10-Eyes group, which will be described down below.

The existance of these hitherto unknown Eyes-groups came as a surprise, because it was generally assumed that NSA only had two kinds of partners for sharing signals intelligence:

- 2nd Party: the Five Eyes based upon the UKUSA-Agreement of 1946
- 3rd Party: a range of countries that have bilateral agreements with NSA



The CFBL Network

The term 9-Eyes could already be found in some other sources. One is an extensive article by the French weblog Zone d'Intérêt about the NATO exercise Empire Challenge 2008 (EC08), in which a number of operational and testing networks were used. One of them is the Combined Federated Battle Laboratories Network (CFBLNet), which is for research, development and testing on command, control, communication, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems.

The CFBL network consists of an unclassified (black) backbone network (the Blackbone) with transporting the encrypted traffic of several classified and unclassified enclaves as its main purpose. The main secure domains on the CFBL Blackbone are:

- The CFBLNet Unclassified Enclave (CUE), which is unclassified, but traffic is secured using 128 bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption.

- The Four-Eyes Enclave (FEE), which is a classified enclave at the SECRET level, accessible for USA, GBR, CAN and AUS only. This enclave was moved from behind the BLUE enclave to the Blackbone in 2006.

- The 6-Eyes or BLUE Enclave, which is a classified enclave at the SECRET level, accessible for the Five Eyes plus NATO (see paragraph about 6, 8 and 10-Eyes)

- The 9-Eyes or NATO RED Enclave, which is also a classified enclave at the SECRET level, accessible for the NATO members of the Five Eyes plus France, Germany, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands and Norway. This enclave was established in 2006 for classified initiatives among NATO members.

- The Initiative Enclaves, which are created temporarily to support specific initiatives and are classified according to the initiative requirements.

We can see these parts of the CFBL Network mentioned in this slide about the networks used in the EC08 exercise:

The various networks involved in Empire Challenge 2008 (EC08)
(COI = Community of Interest, CFE = CENTRIXS Four Eyes,
DDTE = Distributed Development and Test Enterprise)
(full presentation: EC08 Networks (pdf), May 2008)

The 9-Eyes countries are also listed in a table in a NATO standardization document (pdf) from 2010. There we see that from the 4-Eyes only the US, the UK and Canada are part of the 9-Eyes, which makes sense, as Australia is not a NATO partner:

This table lists the groups of nations to which some specific multi-national intelligence and reconnaissance information can be released. This is shown by using the dissemination markings or handling instructions: REL NATO, REL 4-EYES, REL 9-EYES.

The famous Five Eyes term also has its origins in the former NSA dissemination marking EYES ONLY, which defined which 'eyes' may see certain material. Accordingly, documents authorized for release to the five UKUSA-countries were initially marked as AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY.

In conversations, allied intelligence personnel adopted the term "Five Eyes" as a shorthand because it was much easier to say. This term became widely used and even got its own abbreviation: FVEY, which is now used in REL FVEY, after the EYES ONLY marking was being replaced by the REL TO [country/coalition designator] format.

A classification line showing the REL FVEY marking

Two different 9-Eyes?

If we compare the nine members of the CFBLNet NATO domain with the 9-Eyes countries mentioned in The Guardian article, we see some differences:

CFBLNet/NATO:
USA, GBR, CAN, FRA, DEU, ITA, NLD, NOR, ESP

The Guardian:
USA, GBR, CAN, AUS, NZL, FRA, DNK, NLD, NOR

From the European NATO countries, France, The Netherlands and Norway are in both lists. The Guardian adds Denmark and the non-NATO members of the Five Eyes, which leaves Germany, Italy and Spain out.

Especially Germany and Italy not being included in this apparently close alliance seems strange, as both countries participate in other coalition groups and are both considered to be 3rd party partners of NSA. Maybe this explains Germany being "a little grumpy at not being invited to join the 9-Eyes group" as The Guardian read in GCHQ documents.

Unfortunately, The Guardian failed to provide any context or even a time period for their 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes listings, which makes it quite difficult to find an explanation for the different membership countries of these groups.

At first sight it seems there are two different 9-Eyes groups: one apparently closely related to NSA, and another one as a sharing group in the CFBLNet environment. But as 9-Eyes is used as a handling instruction for classified information, it has to be perfectly clear to which group of countries information marked REL 9-EYES may be released. Therefore we have to assume there can be only one 9-Eyes group at a time.

The 9-Eyes NATO group of the CFBL network was first mentioned in 2008 and still comprised the same nations in 2012. In the meantime, Sweden also became a full member of CFBLNet, but not being a NATO member, it wasn't included in the 9-Eyes sharing group.

The CFBLNet countries in 2009, with three of the Five Eyes countries (yellow line),
six European NATO countries and the NATO organization (black line),
six NATO guest nations (dotted line) and two non-NATO countries.
(source: NATO Education and Training Network (pdf), 2012)

One option to explain the differences between the two 9-Eyes could be changing membership, with countries added or removed on an annual basis depending on their participation in the CFBLNet. But this also wouldn't fit with the Guardian's list, as Australia and New Zealand are no NATO-members and Denmark is not a fully participating member nation of the CFBL network.

Unless The Guardian misinterpreted the Snowden-documents, it seems quite unlikely that their 9-Eyes could be the same as the NATO 9-Eyes on the CFBL network, but it seems also unlikely that there are two groups called 9-Eyes at the same time. The best guess at this moment would be that the Guardian's 9-Eyes was a group that only existed somewhere before the NATO group was formed.


There's also the Multinational Interoperability Council (MIC), which is a forum for identifying interoperability issues and articulating actions to enhance coalition operations. It started in 1999 as the Six Nation Council and now has seven members: the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. It might be this group which is called 7-Eyes.

Also interesting is Alliance Base, which was the cover name for a secret Counterterrorist Intelligence Center (CTIC) that existed between 2002 and 2009. It was based in Paris and was a cooperation between six countries: the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, France and Germany. There's no indication this group was designated by a number of 'Eyes'.



The 14-Eyes and 3rd and 4th party partners

Now let's take a look at the 14-Eyes community, which was revealed for the first time by The Guardian. Looking at the number and the participating countries, it comes very close to CFBLNet, which had 13 full members (12 nations + the NATO organization) since 2010. But there are also some differences again:

CFBLNet members:
USA, GBR, CAN, AUS, NZL, FRA, DEU, NLD, NOR, ESP, ITA, SWE

The Guardian:
USA, GBR, CAN, AUS, NZL, FRA, DEU, DNK, NLD, NOR, ESP, ITA, BEL, SWE

These lists are very similar, except that Denmark and Belgium, which are on the Guardian's list, are not a (full) member of CFBLNet. Maybe these two countries joined CFBLNet only very recently, and in that case the 14-Eyes could refer to this group. It does show though that these NATO countries (and Sweden) are cooperating in additional information-sharing initiatives.

The exact purpose of such a cooperation in the 14-Eyes group isn't clear. The New York Times only says that the nations comprising the 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes groups have formal arrangements with NSA, which is something that also makes a country a traditional 3rd party partner.

According to Snowden-documents, about 30 countries have this status, but so far only the names of Germany, France, Austria, Denmark, Belgium and Poland were published. Some other sources say that Norway, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, South-Korea, Taiwan, Israel and South Africa are 3rd party partners too.

If we compare this to the 14-Eyes, we see that only France, Germany, Norway, Italy, Belgium and probably Spain are known 3rd party partners. Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands are not, but it's assumed they had or have less formal arrangements for exchanging raw and finished SIGINT and cryptologic information with NSA. This also applies to Finland and Taiwan, and therefore these countries are sometimes called 4th party partners.

It seems there are roughly three possibilities:

A. All countries of the 14-Eyes (and subsequently those of the 9-Eyes) are actually 3rd party partners, because of having formal arrangements with NSA. Which means Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands must have acquired that position in recent years. Grouping them in two 'Eyes' would only make sense if that's for some specific initiatives.

B. Countries belonging to the 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes have a more close relationship with NSA and are therefore somewhere in between the 2nd party and the 3rd party nations. This is what both papers suggest, but it seems not very likely that relationships like these allow that much of (formal) refinement.

C. The 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes are groups created for specific goals and consist of the Five Eyes with some additional 3rd and 4th party nations, depending on whether their participation is needed for achieving those goals.

In 2010, France was apperently ready to join the Five Eyes, but at the last moment the Obama White House said no.

The CFBL Network

The Combined Federated Battle Laboratories Network (CFBL or CFBLNet) is a distributed Wide Area Network (WAN), which allows for the testing of new multinational information-sharing capabilities before they're transitioned to the actual operational networks which are used worldwide to support Combatant Command operations. CFBLNet enables the sharing and exchange of information on experimentation and interoperability testing.

Each member nation operates several "Battle Lab" sites which are hook into the CFBLNet backbone at a national Point-of-Presence (PoP). In 2012 there were 247 sites divided over 12 countries. The backbone traffic is secured with TCE621 (in Europe) and TACLANE E100 (or KG-175 in the US) network encryptors. The Multinational Information Sharing Program Management Office (MNIS PMO) maintains day-to-day control and coordination of the network.

Every year, also several other NATO countries participate or observe as guest nations in one or more CFBLNet initiatives at existing lab sites.

The CFBLNet grew out the network designed to support the US Joint Warfighter Interoperability Demonstrations (JWID), which used to build a support network for the period of the demonstrations and tear it down afterwards. In 1999, the JWID exercise used, for the first time, a permanent infrastructure that became what is now called the Combined Federated Battle Lab Network (CFBLNet), as established by the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Board (NC3B) in 2001.

The 6, 8 and 10 Eyes

Creating separate access groups for coalition operations, and describing them with a certain number of 'Eyes' can be traced back to the early years of this century. The first occasion seems to have been the Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration 2003 in which also non-traditional partner countries were added to the communications network used by the UKUSA and NATO coalition.

Information sharing between different groups of coalition partners required that separate domains had to be created within one network: in 2003, the 5-Eyes countries and the NATO organization comprised the 6-Eyes domain, while these six members plus four Pacific Rim nations (Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Singapore) comprised the 10-Eyes domain. Each domain had its own Type-2/3DES-encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) which ran over a network secured by classified Type-1 encryption algorithms.

Slide with an overview of the 6-Eyes and 10-Eyes network domains
(full presentation: Agile Coalition Environment (pdf), 2003)

The 2004 edition of the Joint Warfighter Interoperability Demonstration also involved South-Korea, officially known as the Republic of Korea (ROK). To this end, three separate domains within CFBLNet were created and organized into two classification levels named 6-Eyes and 8-Eyes. The 8-Eyes domain consisted of the 6-Eyes countries plus NATO and ROK. The ROK domain was cryptographically isolated from the rest of CFBLNet by using TACLANE encryptors with Type-1 algorithms.



The 5, 4 and 3 Eyes

The long-standing and close intelligence-sharing community of the Five Eyes was downsized on two occasions. First in 1985, when New Zealand refused US nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered ships to visit its ports. As a result, the island was cut out of most intelligence arrangements led by the US. Some SIGINT was still being shared, but New Zealand got no American HUMINT or military intelligence anymore, except for operations in which it's actually participating.

Things not to be shared with New Zealand, were 4-Eyes only now. Staying outside most of the allied military operations, New Zealand was also not connected to the CENTRIXS Four Eyes (CFE) network, which was created in 2001 and is extensively used for operational coordination between the remaining four partners: Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the US.

For information sharing and exchange between these nations, there's also a separate network codenamed STONEGHOST, which is maintained by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). This network was previously called Intelink-C, which runs over it, and is now sometimes referred to as Q-Lat or Quad link. Information restricted to the 4-Eyes partners is marked with their respective country codes or the abbreviation thereof: ACGU.

A document showing the REL TO USA ACGU marking (source)

For collaborative planning at the strategic level there's another network called Pegasus (until 2010: GRIFFIN), which provides secure e-mail, chat and VoSIP communications for the 5-Eyes partners, as the military cooperation between the US and New Zealand was restored again in 2007.

Another sub-group of the Five Eyes was formed when Canada didn't join the US in the 2003 war against Iraq. With New Zealand also not formally engaging, the 5-Eyes were now reduced to just 3-Eyes: the United States, Great Britain and Australia.
The relationship between these three countries became closer as both Britain and Australia were granted an upgrade of their intelligence access by president George W. Bush: both countries were granted (temporary and limited) access to America's classified SIPRNet for certain joint missions. This also reflects their bigger SIGINT collecting capabilities, compared to those of Canada and New Zealand.

CENTRIXS networks

The main US-led multinational coalition networks are called CENTRIXS, which stands for Combined ENTerprise Regional Information eXchange System. It's a secure wide area network (WAN) architecture, which can be established according to the demands of a particular coalition exercise or operation. CENTRIXS supports intelligence and operations information sharing at the SECRET REL TO [country/coalition designator] level. Some important CENTRIXS networks are:

- CENTRIXS Four Eyes (CFE) for the US, Britain, Canada and Australia.
- CENTRIXS-J for the United States and Japan.
- CENTRIXS-K for the United States and South-Korea.
- CENTRIXS-ISAF (CX-I) which is the US component of the Afghan Mission Network to share critical battlefield information among 50 coalition partners.
- CENTRIXS-GCTF (CX-G) is the US coalition network in Afghanistan to share information among more than 80 Troop Contributing Nations.

The countries connected to CENTRIXS-ISAF can be recognized as the 41-Eyes of the allied coalition in Afghanistan mentioned by The Guardian. This group grew slowly and was called 43-Eyes in 2010, when the NATO exercise Empire Challenge 2010 (EC10) changed its "main participating security domain" to "an International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) equivalent 43-Eyes domain".

Probably also because of the steadily increasing number of coalition partners, shareable information is not marked with REL [..] EYES anymore, but with REL ISAF and REL GCTF.

Slide showing the complexity of multi-national information sharing
(full presentation: MultiNational Information Sharing (pdf), 2011)

Conclusion

We have seen that designations consisting of a number of 'Eyes' are used as a dissemination marking or handling instruction showing among which group of countries specific military or intelligence information may be shared.

The Guardian and the New York Times listed various 'Eyes' and some other groups in a way that suggests a hierarchy of how close their relationship with NSA would be: first the Five Eyes community, followed by 9-Eyes, 14-Eyes, NACSI, and with the 41-Eyes Afghanistan coalition being the loosest kind of cooperation.

A scheme like this looks attractive, but is at least partially misleading. For sure the Five Eyes are cooperating in the closest way, but the other groups have different scopes. NACSI is more like an advisory working group of NATO than an alliance of signal intelligence agencies, and the 41/43-Eyes community is for sharing battlefield information between members of the Afghanistan coalition.

Regarding the 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes communities, it's now up to journalists who have access to the Snowden-documents to provide more detailed information about whether they really represent more close alliances with NSA, or whether they're just 'working groups' of selected 3rd and 4th party nations, like most of the other 'Eyes' communities.



Summary of all known 'Eyes'

- 3-Eyes: USA, GBR, AUS
- 4-Eyes: USA, GBR, CAN, AUS (ACGU)
- 5-Eyes: USA, GBR, CAN, AUS, NZL (FVEY)
- 6-Eyes: USA, GBR, CAN, AUS, NZL, NATO
- 7-Eyes: USA, GBR, CAN, AUS, FRA, DEU, ITA (MIC?)
- 8-Eyes: USA, GBR, CAN, AUS, NZL, NATO, ?, South-Korea
- 9-Eyes: USA, GBR, CAN, FRA, DEU, ITA, NLD, NOR, ESP (CFBLNet)
- 9-Eyes: Five Eyes + FRA, DNK, NLD, NOR (Guardian)
- 10-Eyes: USA, GBR, CAN, AUS, NZL, NATO, Japan, South-Korea, Thailand, Singapore
- 14-Eyes: Five Eyes + FRA, DNK, NLD, NOR, DEU, ESP, ITA, BEL, SWE (Guardian)
- 41-Eyes: ISAF-countries in ? (Guardian)
- 43-Eyes: ISAF-countries in 2010



Links and Sources
- Privacy International report: Eyes Wide Open (pdf)
- DailyDot.com: How the NSA ranks its international spying partners
- Disa.mil: Multinational Information Sharing (MNIS)
- Article in French about Empire Challenge 2008
- The 2004 listing of Country Code Trigraphs and Coalition Tetragraphs (pdf)
- About Canada and the Five Eyes Intelligence Community (pdf)
- Far-Reaching Scenario Reflects Changing World (2003)
- Combined Operations Wide Area Network (COWAN)/Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System (CENTRIXS) (pdf)
- The 1999 DMS GENSER Message Security Classifications, Categories, and Marking Phrase Requirements (pdf)

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