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FBI Phoebe Spying On Americans Program Exposed By Hacking Team Hack
While you were worried about ISIS….
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The company, Hacking Team, has also been aggressively marketing the software to other U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, demonstrating their products to District Attorneys in New York, San Bernardino, CA, and Maricopa, AZ, and multi-agency task forces like theMetropolitan Bureau of Investigation in Florida and California’s Regional Enforcement Allied Computer Team. The company was also in conversation with various other agencies, including the CIA, the Pentagon’s Criminal Investigative Service, the New York Police Department, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The revelations come from hundreds of gigabytes of company information, including emails and financial records, which were released online Sunday night and analyzed by The Intercept. Milan-based Hacking Team is one of a handful of companies that sell off-the-shelf spyware for hundreds of thousands of euros — a price point accessible to smaller countries and large police forces. Hacking Team has drawn fire from human rights and privacy activists who contend that the company’s aggressive malware, known as Remote Control System, or RCS, is being sold to countries that deploy it against activists, political opponents, and journalists.
Even in the U.S., where the software would presumably be used only with a judge’s approval, the tactic is still controversial. Just last month, Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote to the director of the FBI asking for “more specific information about the FBI’s current use of spyware,” in order for the Senate judiciary committee to evaluate “serious privacy concerns.”
The leaked emails show that the FBI has been using Hacking Team’s software since 2011, apparently for the secretive Remote Operations Unit. It’s long been reported that the FBI has deployed malware in investigations, but details on the agency’s efforts are thin, with the tactic only surfacing rarely in court cases – such as one instance last year when the FBI spoofedan Associated Press article to get a target to click on a link. The FBIreportedly develops its own malware and also buys pre-packaged products, but the relationship with Hacking Team has not been previously confirmed.
The director of the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation in Florida told The Intercept that it “does not have plans to purchase any product from Hacking Team.” The Manhattan District Attorney’s office said, “It would be an overstatement to say that our office is planning to purchase this type of software. This company is one of several in the industry whom we’ve requested meetings with in order to keep pace with rapid technological advancements in the private sector.”
The CIA declined to comment, and ICE said it “does not discuss law enforcement tools and techniques.” (The Intercept will update this story if Hacking Team and other agencies named in the documents respond to requests for comment.)
The leaked emails show that U.S. agencies worried about the legality and perception of Hacking Team’s tools.
Hacking Team refers to its U.S. clients by code names. The FBI unit is “Phoebe,” (initially “f-client,” but one employee complained “it sounds like an antivirus)”, the DEA is “Katie,” and the CIA, who appear to have sampled, but not bought Remote Control System, is “Marianne.”
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/06/hacking-team-spyware-fbi/
While the country has been focused on NSA and their snooping, the FBI, DEA and CIA have been planting backdoors in all of our electronic communication equipment….
“In modern digital communications, encryption is widely employed to protect users from eavesdropping. Unfortunately, encryption also prevents law enforcement and intelligence agencies from being able to monitor and prevent crimes and threats to the country security.
Remote Control System (RCS) is a solution designed to evade encryption by means of an agent directly installed on the device to monitor. Evidence collection on monitored devices is stealth and transmission of collected data from the device to the RCS server is encrypted and untraceable.
http://www.hackingteam.com/index.php/remote-control-system
