Exposing the NSA’s Mass Surveillance of Americans | CYBERWAR

leaked documents reveal the scope of the

nsa's mass surveillance program we

cannot prevent terrorist attacks or

cyber threats without some capability to

penetrate digital Communications others

Unmasked A unit called tailored access

operations I don't need Mass

surveillance I need you to break into

that guy's computer their mission is to

get the ungettable if you want to hack

into systems lawfully the only game in

town is the government their targets are

secret they are very important actually

tracking down people who are then

subsequently killed and there's almost

nothing they can't

hack the National Security Agency is one

of the world's largest intelligence

agencies headquartered in Fort me

Maryland the nsa's Mandate is to collect

foreign intelligence after 911 George W

bush authorized the NSA to collect even

more including American Communications

to and from foreign

targets good morning this is a highly

classified

program that is crucial to our national

security this program shocked an NSA

senior executive named Thomas Drake

Drake is a decorated veteran who blew

the whistle on nsa's activities to the

Press he barely escaped 35 years in jail

after being charged under the Espionage

Act a law first written in

1917 Mr Drake hi Ben

yeah the National Security Agency is

focused on foreign intelligence it was

formed in 1952 people don't realize it

was not formed by an act of Congress it

was literally sign signed uh into

existence by The Stroke of a secret

presidential pen in fact the joke was it

was no such agency or never say anything

you never even referenced the actual

name people who used to work there oh I

work at DOD now I accelerate forward

internet explodes you have this rapid

transition from analog to digital and

the explosion of

data became

exponential what do you think is the

easiest way to deal with it just suck it

all so but what happened after 9/11 was

it NSA should do

better here's where you have culture and

secret meeting itself realizing it fail

but can't admit it failed it had not

prevented the next Pearl Harbor and now

NSA is literally Unleashed it's

Unleashed on an extraordinary scale a

scale we have never seen in US history

or the world all means necessary to

confront the threat who cares about the

Constitution who cares about law who

cares about the rights of us persons hey

if you've done nothing wrong I even

heard this then you should it shouldn't

matter and the Mantra was just get the

data collect it all so we can know it

all collect it all so we can know it

all Drake inspired another NSA worker to

sound the alarm this afternoon the

guardian newspapers revealed the name of

their Source in 2013 Edward Snowden

leaked tens of thousands of classified

NSA

documents the first to get published was

a secret court order forcing Verizon to

Fork over the call data of millions of

us customers the next big leak was a

PowerPoint presentation about a program

called prism the NSA boasted that prism

gave them direct access to emails video

chats and more from some of America's

biggest tech

companies the media was obsessed with

Snowden and the leaks but few people

noticed information hidden in the

documents about a top secret NSA unit

called Tao or Taylor ESS operations

until the German magazine Dar Spiegel

revealed more about it than ever before

jur Schindler is the Magazine's

award-winning National Security reporter

yeah you can call them the highly

skilled plumbers of the NSA who are able

to to get into every sort of pipe what

they are doing is getting the ungettable

they're like the special forces of the

NSA essentially yeah Special Hecker

Force I mean the whole NSA is a special

force uh but but those are the the

highly skilled handymen who who create

certain kind of tools um to to

infiltrate manipulate and sabotage every

kind of digital device you might think

of what's the relationship between

tailored access operations by the NSA

and their Mass surveillance I mean to

explain it easily I would say that mass

surveillance is like going into the to

the ocean with a huge fishing net and to

to draw everything out with whatever you

you find and uh what what the tailored

access operation units are doing is like

using the Harpoon to find special

targets and the the fishes they really

need so that that might be the the

difference so it's like U going hand in

hand and ta is pretty good at it they're

extremely good at it

yes the Snowden leaks revealed more

about tailor access operations but a lot

is still

unknown I wanted to talk to someone who

knows the NSA from the inside an Air

Force veteran and former NSA exact named

John

Harbaugh John Harbaugh ni to meet you

John please come in let's see this place

route 9B yeah why why that name by the

way so root is system level access 9B is

heximal for 911 ah so it's a it's a nod

to the fact that the

next uh 911 event is most likely going

to be cyber related route 9B which has

defense contracts aims to hunt and

pursue adversaries in side a client's

Network this is where we do all of our

hunt operations what we call it for our

clients so so what this is showing you

is is what the operator sees while

they're doing their op right so there'll

be Windows of time where they're

actually active inside the client's

Network pursuing the adversary and this

was really driven by our experiences in

the government space does it look like

this in Fort me this is

better your bio it says something like

you were the director of a super Elite

cyber operation Yeah so basically what

what that's about is what we've tried to

recreate here so my time inside the

organization I had the pleasure and the

and the fortune to be asked to run a

team of about eight individuals and that

team was focused on the most challenging

problems in cyber was that tailored

access operations so so you know there

is there there is elements of that space

right because if you're in cyber and you

do all of cyber then you're doing all of

those types of things mhm and so the

bosses could come in and say we have a

significant National event I need you

guys to be able to do this in the next

12 hours I could walk into that space

and say hey guys I need five minutes I

would give them what we would call the

op order this is what we need to achieve

we need we need to achieve it the next

12 24 48 hours and I could walk away and

I KN I knew when I came back no matter

what time of day how long they were

working on it they would get done and it

was it was that kind of again it was

that kind of teamwork teamwork that

really Drew people and it's a very

similar thing to the special ops

Community right and it does sound like a

a military chain of command yeah I mean

NSA is a very military

organization to build a team like Tao

the NSA has to hire highly skilled

hackers so how does it head hunt them to

find out I asked Chris seoan he's a

privacy activist with the American civil

liberties

Union who are they and where where's the

NSA recruiting them from the government

wants people who can get a security

clients more so than ever particularly

you know after Snowden and after uh uh

Chelsea Manning they want people who who

they know or are going to play by the

rules they want people who cannot easily

be blackmailed so I think you know NSA

tries to recruit the best and brightest

from computer science programs around

the country and in particular computer

security programs like Carnegie melan

that have probably the most

sophisticated offensive cyber security

programs in Academia in the United

States and their students are are

heavily recruited both by NSA but also

you know by Silicon Valley they're

competing for the same people so they're

competing for the same people and the

problem that NSA has is they can't pay

the same kind of money right they're not

going to be able to offer the smoothies

and massages and and sort of perks of

life that Google and Facebook can but

they have something that those companies

don't what they have is a monopoly on

violence right in the same way that if

you want to like repel out of

helicopters and shoot people in the head

you want to you go join the Special

Forces if you want to hack into systems

lawfully the only game in town is the

the government and in in many other

walks of life you would be you would be

a criminal you would be a stalker you'd

be a bad person but when you go to NSA

suddenly you get to wrap yourself on the

flag and do it for king and

country if Tao can legally do things no

one else can who are they hacking and

why not much is known about who tailored

access operations hacks but the Snowden

leaks reveal one major Target Osama Bin

Laden Tao hacked into the mobile phones

of Al qada operatives in the hunt for

bin Laden as reported by The Washington

Post the unit's work also led to the

capture of 40 insurgents in

Afghanistan Ryan Gallagher is an

investigative reporter at The Intercept

where he has covered the role of

surveillance in the ongoing war on

terror how did Tao and how does Tao fit

into the war on

terror well they are very important I

mean people don't necessarily think of

surveillance even as a as a thing being

integral to what the military is doing

on the ground but it is it's absolutely

vital what the tailored axis guys are

doing for instance is because they're so

skilled at actually you know breaking

into systems and going after like what

they would refer to as hard targets

people who are elusive or you know

skilled like dodging surveillance they

are very important actually tracking

down people who are then subsequently

killed or captured in past years

probably rendered and through the um the

black sits program that was going on

through the Bush Administration so they

are very um entwined with these physical

kind of kinetic they call it operations

on the ground so are they basically the

Commandos of the NSA you could put it

like that yeah I mean they're kind of

it's may be sort of glorifying them a

little bit but I mean essentially these

guys are just sort of like geeky nerds

do can to do that sort of Commando type

role they're

facilitating um military operations on

the ground by hacking into targets

they're actually directly you know able

to track people who are then like killed

and say a drone strike so what they do

yeah it's it is like kind of Commando

work but they are also um you know

providing assistance on the ground to

real Commando types who are out there

try to kill

people in the hunt for bin Laden Tao

reportedly used what the unit calls impl

spy devices installed in Mobile phones

or other

Hardware implants are just some of the

tools that appear in elak document

called the ant catalog which lists other

spy gear at Tao's

disposal security researchers Michael

Osman Joe Fitzpatrick and Dean Pierce

decided to build some of these spy tools

themselves the media kind of saw it and

reported on bits and pieces of it and

said oh look at this thing this is Magic

and I think all of us looked at it and

said oh yeah I know how I would do that

yeah I know how to do that Joe recreated

a graphics card that can see what's

running on a computer's active

memory and Dean rigged a phone so it

picks up the mobile traffic in the area

Mike reproduced ragem a tiny chip

implanted in a computer video cable to

reflect information via radar when this

is installed I can point one antenna at

it and that's transmitting a signal and

then my other anten is also pointed at

it and it's receiving the Reflection by

measuring that reflection ction I can on

my laptop recover information that's

going over the cable and what I get is a

video image a screen image uh from the

target computer system and it this is an

example of something where an implant is

required getting an implant into a piece

of Hardware like a video cable requires

physical

access but planting bugs into terrorist

cell phones isn't the only thing Tao

does some of their activity is

jeopardized Internet Security at

large one Snowden leak shows how Tao

found a vulnerability a software bug and

Mozilla

Firefox Tao used the bug to try to

identify some users also running an

anonymizing software called

tour not only did Tao need to be able to

Monitor and hijack internet traffic to

pull off its attack but hundreds of

millions of Firefox users were left

vulnerable to the software bug which has

since been patched

[Music]

Claudia hacker Claudia GUI has helped

expose Tao's

activities that's try I met him in an

old stazzy surveillance tower that still

stands in what used to be Soviet

controlled East Berlin a lot of the mass

surveillance and B collection capability

of the NSA is um empowered by some of

the break-ins that to is able to do for

example they would ask um too to break

into some core uh parts of the of the

internet infrastructure of the whole

Global backbone you know from from an

internet structure perspective when you

connect from Germany to Google you move

through a number of hops 10 15 noes that

relay your message from Berlin to you

know Hamburg and Frankfurt and then to

who knows Netherlands wherever the

cables are if the NSA is able to break

into any one of these points then

they're able to see you U communicating

with Google when they're able to observe

that they're also able to ey jacket so

pretend like you're getting a response

from Google while instead you're getting

a response from the NSA none of this

comes cheap claudo and I went inside to

look through a Snowden leak known as the

black budget the NSA spends more than

$600 million a year for just the kind of

offensive hacks Tao conducts yeah this

is what it's being called the black

budget and the trend that we see is that

you know again the balance between how

much it's invested in breaking things

and how much it's invested in protecting

things is uneven um you know part of the

Mandate of intelligent Services is to

keep the country secure at the same time

from a technological perspective they're

undermining the security of the country

and like you said we all use the exact

same internet once it's broken for one

it's broken for all mhm so the question

is is it worth it to break something and

keep it broken for catching one or two

terrorists that you probably could catch

otherwise breaking into the internet or

hacking into phones might make us all

less secure so is teo's hacking really

all that

targeted to find out more about who Tao

targets I met up with Robert M Lee he'

been out of the military for only a week

he was an Air Force cyber officer and

also worked for an intelligence agency

he won't confirm or deny that's the

NSA okay how did you get into being a

hacker so the Air Force has a wonderful

program where it volunteers you to do

and uh I

joined the Air Force said Here I Am Lord

what would you like me to do and they

said go be a cyber

guy so if you were to take Snowden

slides completely seriously you'd think

that it's all mass surveillance I

actually for the first time ended up

seeing slides that I had actually seen

before in real life I was like holy

like I've seen these ones but once you

bring something into the intelligence

Community it you don't delete files like

everything is stored and so there was

some files that like get translated out

like their truth and they were just

remnants of product pitches or something

like that and so I think that you can't

take all the slides seriously we also

know that there is something called Tao

in in the

NSA what what is that team like what

what are they doing yeah so I think when

you look at Tao it's actually the thing

that I think most of the community

should be cool with right so I'm I'm

actually a huge privacy Advocate I hate

and ironically enough I hate the idea of

any sort of mass surveillance from a

perspective of Tao or whoever would be

breaking into those networks that's

targeted retained intelligence and so

privacy Advocates should actually enjoy

that they should say hey uh Mass

surveillance sucks we need more targeted

surveillance we need more targeted if

you're going to do intelligence do the

kind that you put resources into and

have to think about and have to

prioritize your own efforts it's not

going to be some dissident or

accidentally picking up somebody else's

Communications so who are Tao's targets

I don't know exactly their targets right

I wouldn't be able to speak about it

anyway but I I would say that it would

be asinine to assume that anything in

our national policy of Interest isn't

one of their targets right so if we say

if the president says Global terrorism

is something we're concerned with well

then to is not doing their job like the

government is not doing their job if

they don't go after it anything that the

president wakes up in the morning and

says hey this is important to me anybody

in the government who's not supporting

his needs is not doing their job so I

would just off virtue of that say the to

has to be doing that stuff or they're

incompetent and they're wasting taxpayer

money you know so you can't have it both

ways Rob made a pretty convincing case

for the so-called targeted surveillance

too conducts but investigative reporter

Ryan Gallagher disagrees

he says the problem is that the unit's

methods aren't as targeted as they seem

too is doing some of the most aggressive

work that NS does um the traditional Le

stropping where they're listening in on

a a phone call just by like wiretapping

a cable which they call kind of passive

surveillance that's actually becoming

almost secondary now to the active

surveillance they call which is

attacking and hacking systems and part

of the reason for that is because

increasingly networks and Technologies

adopting encryption and so they can't

listen to it by just tapping the kale

because then they can't read it or

listen to it it's just you know jargon

going forward especially with the sort

of boom and encryption you're going to

see more and more of these hacking

attacks to the point that it there may

come a stage in the future where it is

described as a mass surveillance uh kind

of

technique Tao's hacking skills may be in

higher demand than ever before and while

the group goes after terrorists that's

not all they

do how does Tao decide who to Target and

are they really legitimate

threats the elite unit has gone after Al

Qaeda and Taliban fighters but the

Snowden laks also revealed the group

hacked into the president of Mexico's

emails and workers at a Belgian

telecommunications company were spied on

by the British possibly with help from

Tao generally there is consensus that

mass surveillance is a bad thing while

targeted surveillance is table uh

because they go after very specific

individuals or very specific

groups however there's multiple things

that you need to consider one is what

makes a legitimate Target um you know

ultimately the NSA only has to respond

to somehow to the US government but they

have no respect whatsoever towards

forigners in so we had cases where you

know they spied on UNICEF they spied on

forain Ministries they spied on private

companies energy companies and you know

so what at that point makes it

legitimate to hack directly and Target a

certain

organization we don't

know one of the S documents that that

came out about the Taylor dax's group is

um one of the guys from within the unit

is saying look we don't just do

terrorism we do everything we do all

operations we're here to support any

operations I think it's one of the comic

and

misconceptions that the government has

managed to build up around a lot of

these Revelations so it's like don't

worry about it we're only going after

these extreme terrorist people who are

you know we're trying to protect you and

all that but that's kind of disingenuous

because it's not at all just what

they're doing they're doing a lot more

than that ultimately it seems Tao maybe

just one more tool in the nsa's mass

surveillance Arsenal what happens in a

mass surveillance regime you sweep up

essentially everybody everybody by

definition becomes a Target which means

there's no target the problem is that

when you do this in secet secret and you

protect your your secret powers this

usually doesn't end well in terms of

History it just

doesn't you know in

1984 the extraordinary George orell

novel the only place

Winston the only place he could go to

out of sight was in the corner because

that's where the surveillance cameras

couldn't reach which meant what they

knew where he was and remember people

forget even in 1984 he didn't prevail he

basically cried

Uncle you can't fight them can't beat

them join them you're a whistleblower

you cried Uncle to some extent or you

cried out yeah do you think it was worth

it

yeah history was at

stake we know the nsa's elite hacking

unit has helped capture terrorists but

they've also targeted friendly nation

states so who else have they gone after

for now much of Tao's work remains

shrouded in secrecy but privacy

activists whistleblowers and others

aren't giving up on the fight to know

more and to live surveillance free