Report Suggests NSA Engaged In Financial Manipulation, Changing Money In Bank Accounts
from the that-would-be-big dept
Matt Blaze has been pointing out that when you read the new White House intelligence task force report and its recommendations on how to reform the NSA and the wider intelligence community, that there may be hints to other excesses not yet revealed by the Snowden documents. Trevor Timm may have spotted a big one. In the recommendation concerning increasing security in online communications, the second sub-point sticks out like a sore thumb:
Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial system.
While there have been plenty of reports about the US running hundreds of offensive cyberattacks on others, outside of things like Stuxnet, not many have been directly identified. And I’m unaware of any claims suggesting attempts to “manipulate the financial system” of any particular country and/or to “change the amounts held in financial accounts.” It seems a bit odd to come out of the blue like that, and certainly suggests that this particular bullet point likely came as a result of a rather specific thing that came up during the task force’s review.
So, now we wait for the inevitable news of what sort of financial shenanigans the NSA was up to.
Filed Under: cyberattacks, financial manipulation, nsa
Comments on “Report Suggests NSA Engaged In Financial Manipulation, Changing Money In Bank Accounts”
And here I thought
It was my better half who spent all the money in my checking account… now she can blame the NSA and I can’t prove it.
Well, if they need a place to hide money, they can put some in my account…I can promise to spend it more wisely than the government would…
Re: And here I thought
Always wondered why I was short money every month.
This explains everything!
NO ONE EXPECTS it to "come out of the blue like that"!!!
But at the least, Paypal works with NSA:
BFP Breaking News- Omidyar?s PayPal Corporation Said To Be Implicated in Withheld NSA Documents
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/12/11/bfp-breaking-news-omidyars-paypal-corporation-said-to-be-implicated-in-withheld-nsa-documents/
And so don’t forget that Paypal cut off Wikileaks. That was wondered about at the time, NOW we KNOW that ALL the big “internet” corporations are in cahoots with NSA (including first and foremost, Google) — And note the FEW, that are effectively monopolies in their areas. HOW can that be on an open internet with such simple requirements, high profits, and no regulations?
The phony deal that evil people (and gullible fools) try to force on us: You can’t have the benefits of technology unless give up all privacy.
03:32:32[d-025-5]
So they’re not only liars, they’re also thieves? There’s nothing worse than a lying thief.
Re: Re:
Sure there is.
A murdering, lying thief.
Re: Re:
Thieves are liars, they lie about the ownership of what they stole.
Cyber Capabilities?
You know back when my dad was doing it in the 80’s it was called bank robbing.
Re: Cyber Capabilities?
This is so different that it could qualify for patent protection.
This is Bank robbing on the internet
Re: Re: Cyber Capabilities?
… a system for increasing the bit count of specified bank account balance information while simultaneously decreasing the bit count of a specified NSA slush fund account ON THE INTERNET….
patent pending /s
There were suggestions that the Snowden stuff revealed so far wasn’t even the biggest news, that there was something even bigger in the offing. Maybe news of redirecting suspected terrorist funds into an NSA slush?
Re: Re:
Or rather, Snowden’s captured intel might reveal that the NSA/ETC is diverting American Tax Payer Funds into known terrorists’/CIAssets’ bank accounts to insure the problem (Terrorism) maintains the solution (Global Surveillance).
After all, if the Terrorist Threat disappears, so too does the “excuse” for global surveillance which would end the ability of US Federal Agencies to blackball, blackmail and manipulate anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Can you even imagine the amount of capital and raw power that is invloved in these new secret US operations and how far the members of the Federal Tri-Letter Agencies are willing to go to prevent the public from choking their golden goose?
I see a new big war on the horizon.
if this was an individual who had done this ‘financial manipulation’ in any way, shape or form, there would have been hell to pay! why should those in any government agency be allowed to? whoever it was that gave the instructions should be held accountable. one of these agencies, be it NSA, DoJ, whichever, would have been on to the person outside of the industries, like a fly on a turd!!
Re: Re:
“why should those in any government agency be allowed to?”
Occupying Governments can never be held accountable for their crimes while in the Occupied Territory.
They are the conquerors and you are the conquered.
You have no legal recourse against those who now hold your country hostage – who use your labor for their own enrichment.
Just because your conquerors are your own countrymen, makes them no less your masters and no less above the laws of your land, because it is they who now make those laws.
So now I know...
… where my $500,000,000 went! NSA kindly restore these funds to my account.
For point number one I think we should have an amendment.
Governments should not concern itself with industry interests so much and they should concern themselves more with the public interest instead. It is a contradiction for patent law to exist alongside trade secret law since patent law is allegedly supposed to promote openness by protecting those that disclose their secrets yet those that don’t disclose their secrets are still protected by trade secret law anyways. One or the other should be abolished.
Re: Re:
The only thing patents protect against that trade secrets don’t are independent inventions. But patents shouldn’t be intended to protect against independent inventors they should promote the disclosure of non-obvious ideas that no one else would independently come up with (instead of obvious ones that someone else will come up with). But instead trade secret laws are what protects against non-obvious ideas and patent laws only protect against obvious ideas that someone feels someone else will independently come up with.
I don’t think that bullet point necessarily “hints to other excesses not yet revealed by the Snowden documents”.
By that same logic the bullet point above or any other bullet point anywhere would also be telling. I wouldn’t put anything past the NSA at this point but let’s be consistent here.
Re: Re:
well, for bullet point 1, the US governmental agencies have been been caught in the past doing industrial espionage, so that one isn’t telling anything new
Re: Re: Re:
“caught in the past doing industrial espionage”
I’m aware of NSA doing surveillance on Petrobras for example, but are there any cases where they then passed along that intelligence to domestic companies? Government agencies try to hold their cards pretty close to their vests. Again, It’s not that I don’t believe they wouldn’t do that but it would be as noteworthy a point as the topic of this article. (If there are historical examples of US intelligence agencies sharing data with US companies, please correct my ignorance)
This is old, old news though. The CIA has been doing essentially just that for years with their involvement in the drug trade.
prison time...
Most of us simply won’t start trusting the gov’t or the banking system until these people and all of the ilk are sent to jail. That’s the only way, but it will never happen.
Swordfish
Maybe the movie was based more on fact that fiction.
Ummm,
Am I the only one here who suspects NSA involvement in BitCoin? Mayhaps this is evidence of such shenanigans.
You would think with the NSA transferring funds that..
The national debt would be at near zero by now.
Re: You would think with the NSA transferring funds that..
You assume that the agency gives a s*it about the national debt. Nope, that’s YOUR problem to clear up, not theirs.
Ha you said ” out of the blue”
How long...
are the citizens of the U.S. going to sit idly by and watch as our civil liberties and privacy are taken away piece by piece by our government? 1984, here we…
OH LOOK! Something shiney!
What were we talking about again???
look at me...
…I’m against everything but especially mike…
to da moon?
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Bitcoin users not affected.
I want my 5 million back
Money matters
It’s funny how in the recent few years we’ve had some major stock market manipulations going on, and it was world wide..such as the Libor in London:
“Libor, which is used to price $300tn (?192tn) of financial products around the world, has been overseen until now by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA). But its integrity has been questioned after banks and other financial firms were found to have rigged the rate.” From the Guardian- http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/09/nyse-body-libor-city-scandal
Would that also include the NSA?
I just wonder how much they were actually doing in not only accessing telephone records, but also financial records. Remember, they do and can have almost any data record available anywhere with the push of a button, so Snowden said a very long time ago:
“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data
The program he was in reference to is XKeyscore, and it’s capabilities are limited to the internet-but how many banks are connected, anyway?
I bet a whole lot of them-and they’re all vulnerable.
Re: Money matters
Well, if the NSA targeted the traders & fund managers at any one of the major institutional investors, they could set up a nicely profitable side business in front-running.
On a totally unrelated note, how’s your 401K doing?
Gauss?
http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193767/Gauss_Nation_state_cyber_surveillance_meets_banking_Trojan
419
Can anyone else see a whole new slew of 419 scams coming?
The Republicans hate big government right?
Check out the Asia Times interview with Thomas Drake
Recently Asia Times printed an interview with NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GECON-02-231213.html
In it, there is this exchange…
LS: I have a couple of questions regarding the use of legendary software PROMIS [Prosecutor’s Management Information System], which was developed by my friend William A Hamilton, the founder of the US information technology company Inslaw Inc, and he was also a programer for NSA. Do you know anything about NSA’s use of unauthorized copyright infringing copies of Inslaw’s PROMIS software for at least 25 years as the software it sold to banks in support of its “follow the money” SIGINT mission?
TD: I don’t have any specific knowledge of it. I am certainly aware of the program. I was not part of it. I have heard about it and am aware, had become aware of it over the years, and … I’ve had people who’ve had the history of that program who have actually contacted me over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, it is an example – though I don’t have, I can’t validate or verify it – not any of the allegations or assertions, any of the history that’s been revealed and disclosed regarding PROMIS, none of it surprises me and here’s why. It’s unfortunate but it is, and I had the direct experience at NSA that NSA would either abscond with or would cast aside really powerful technology and then use it for their own purposes.
LS: Understood, but I would like to ask you, nevertheless one more question related to this. This would be, once NSA controlled the software used by banks to process wire transfers or money and letters of credit it could in theory add, delete and/or modify the amounts of funds in accounts because the funds are just data like any other kind of data. Have you ever heard that NSA or other intelligence agency exploited the banks surveillance version of PROMIS towards such an end?
TD: I’ve certainly heard of it, I just don’t have any proof nor can I verify or validate, but I will tell you one of the aspects that has not been fully disclosed although I blew the whistle on it early on when I, within the system, had gone to key people within the government particularly congressional intelligence committees regarding Stellar Wind. One of the things that Stellar Wind did was actually without, again, without warrants, was gain direct access to financial transaction information at the bank level, credit card level, and this is extraordinary – these secret agreements were put into place regarding the flow of money.
This is shrouded in all kinds of secrecy … but I was well aware what would that mean if there were those within the system who chose to abuse it, you know far beyond the purpose of tracking money laundering and things of that nature because this is all hidden; … the life blood of any economy is the money, the money flows, the money deposits, the investments. I can’t speak specifically to the allegations or assertions that you mentioned, but I can tell you that I would not be surprised at all that it was used in that manner given my knowledge of other abuses of information and systems that people in secret would use or have access to.
Why not the CIA??!
Is anyone REALLY that suprised?
NSA, PROMIS Bank Surveillance
Michael Thomas, a former partner at a Wall Street investment bank, published a novel entitled “Black Money” in the 1990s in which he depicts the U.S. Intelligence community having strong -armed banks to install sophisticated tracking software for intelligence needs such as combatting terrorism but then exploiting the same bank surveillance software to enable insiders to profit from insider trading, while kicking back a portion of the illicit profits as “off-the-books” political contributions to the Administration in power.
Re: NSA, PROMIS Bank Surveillance
Ah… business as usual…
Re: NSA, PROMIS Bank Surveillance
To blackmail an organization like the Banking Industry, one must possess some evidence of very obvious very-wrong-doing by the organization – that the organization really does not want made public.
For the IntelComm to strong-arm the banks into anything and for the banks to not cry foul, it is absolutley necessary that the banks must be guilty of something they really do not want the public to discover.
Or is it more likely that; rather than strong-arm the banks – a one-sided attack – US Intel simply made a deal with the banks that they could not refuse – such that the banksters would be allowed to get their take on the deal, in cash, by simply playing bad-accountant and as a bonus, they were guaranteed both total unnaccountability under law for their crimes and bail-out cash provided by the US taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions, to restock their stolen/lost cash reserves – kick-backs delivered with smiles in all directions, whenever needed.
How much of that spending spree by the Fed, could the Intelligence Community siphon off for agency and private use with nobody ever becoming the wiser, in the chaos that accompanied the federal actions during the Bail-Out?
No “Bail-out” tally has ever been offered the public as to who got what, when, where, or how much, or how often, of the billions and billions of tax-payer’s dollars that were being delivered apparently to the very banks who nearly bankrupted the planet.
Considering the timing, I cannot imagine the Intell Community, (puffed up by their immunity from scrutiny and guarantee of non-accountability by the Fed), NOT grabbing fistfuls of these skids of cash being sent to banksters month after month, or more likely diverting accounted numbers electronically to off-shore banks through their proprietary back-doors in the US banks’ computer software.
Sounds more like the perfect heist setup for skimming a ton of cash from the tax-payer’s pockets while the tax-payers are staring at the banksters, who; getting raises in pay, promotions, and making millions on the side legally, for their efforts, could care less.
Great stuff. However a lot of this stuff has already been made public years and years ago.
setup
As far I see this snowden is employed to leak the stuff and the NSA top structures report to same employer of snowden with goal to desensitise society internationally to accept no more privacy as norm….thats why snowden told NSA…im doing ur work for u now and u will thank me later…he is like an MKUltra handler for NSA breaking society in for 666 #its a setup. ..they all have same Boss.
so what are the odds that nsa had something to do with the missing trillions mentioned the day before 9/11?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU
Forget about Bitcoin and NSA
Forget using Bitcoin to avoid the NSA. It’s useless. It is so insecure that it is easily stolen. It’s not nearly as anonymous as its advocates claim. Here’s proof: http://alfidicapitalblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-serious-disadvantages-of-bitcoin.html
Anyways right action should be taken in order to protect against the cyber threats.
documentary letters of credit software