US intelligence, allies tried to prevent another Arab Spring: Snowden

The US National Security Agency and its allies have developed plans to monitor smartphones used by people in some African countries in order to prevent “another Arab Spring”, a new report shows.

The plans were developed by US intelligence in cooperation with allies in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, a group which is known as the “Five Eyes” alliance, according to documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The spy agencies developed the plan to be prepared to carry out surveillance operations in the event of more unrest in some Arab countries, particularly in the Africa region, especially Senegal, Sudan and the Congo.

However, they also targeted other countries, including France, Cuba, Morocco, Switzerland, Bahamas, the Netherlands and Russia, showed the report, which was published by The Intercept and CBS News on Wednesday.

The spy agencies sought to implement their plans by delivering malware through Google and Samsung app stores.

Spies from each of the countries, who comprise a joint electronic eavesdropping unit called the Network Tradecraft Advancement Team, launched the surveillance project, the report added.

They held some workshops in Australia and Canada between November 2011 and February 2012, during which they were working on a series of tactics.

The workshops primarily aimed to find new ways to exploit smartphone technology for surveillance purposes, the report noted.

The spying agencies used the Internet espionage system XKEYSCORE in order to identify smartphone traffic flowing across Internet cables. Then, they used the system to track down smartphone connections to app marketplace servers operated by Samsung and Google.

They were trying to develop a method to hack and hijack phone users’ connections to app stores as part of a pilot project codenamed IRRITANT HORN.

This way they could send malicious “implants” to targeted devices in order to collect data from the phones without their users noticing.

The report is indicative of the how the agencies sought to “exploit” app store servers in order to launch so-called “man-in-the-middle” attacks to infect phones with the implants.

A man-in-the-middle attack is a technique used by hackers to place themselves between computers as they are communicating with each other. Criminal hackers also use it to defraud people.

The extent of the NSA’s spying activities was revealed in June 2013, when Snowden began leaking classified intelligence documents.

The disclosures revealed that the NSA had been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans and foreign nationals as well as political leaders around the world.

AT/AT

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk