Intelligence Warfare - Just saw the Edward Snowden documentary...

[Colebra]

Wasn't sure where to post this, but Intelligence Warfare seems like a big deal to me...

Just saw the documentary last night, and I have to say it was quite chilling.
Apparently the U.S. is plugged into U.S. based telecommunications companies, looking into not just metadata, but actual content of e-mails, telephone calls, etc.
That part we all kind of know about, right?
The thing is that they also seem to have contract with foreign companies that bypasses those countries governments, in order to intercept communications made by foreign citizens.
Why this is such a big deal, according to Snowden, is because for U.S. citizens they actually have to get a court order to look into data. That's not the case for foreign citizens.
They can go ahead and look into data, and use it against companies or individuals that pose any kind of threat, either military or economic.

Has anyone seen this movie?

 

[DeltaForce103]

We've known most of this for a rather long time, there were whistleblowers before Snowden.

The magnitude of the data that's collected is astonishing. The US government has access to the fiber optic cables that form the Internet backbone, and since most traffic on the Internet is routed through the US, the NSA is quite literally building massive datacenters to store it all.

NSA documents detail procedures to subvert encrypted protocols of communication used by American and international companies and financial institutions.

However, none of the above tactics meant to subvert online encryption are nearly as frightening as the tactics used to manipulate online discourse. Disinformation campaigns attack online social media, forums and communities with the intent of diverting constructive discussion from sensitive topics through a variety of techniques, and instead use them as a means to propogate disinformation and propaganda.

One method of particiular interest is the "honey pot", undesirable individuals such as hacktivists, political opponents and so on are lured into sexually compromising situations, which are then used to destroy their reputations.
How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations - The Intercept

The US and UK are not the only nations with state-sponsered sockpuppetry, i.e, manipulating online discourse.
China : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Part
Russia: Web brigades - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Israel/Anti-Islam: Jewish Internet Defense Force - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

With one of the fastest growing Internet bases in the world, I would not be surprised if India and other nations have already joined the bandwagon. At least, America has individuals who recognize the interchangability of personal privacy with liberty and are brave enough to stand up against state surveillance, it seems much of Europe and Asia doesn't even have that.