[tor-talk] Intercept: NSA MONKEYROCKET: Cryptocurrency / AnonBrowser Service - Full Take Tracking Users, Trojan SW

[grarpamp]

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/the-nsa-worked-to-track-down-bitcoin-users-snowden-documents-reveal/

https://www.reddit.com/search?sort=top&t=week&q=nsa+bitcoin
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&dateRange=pastWeek&query=nsa+bitcoin
https://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=nsa+bitcoin

OAKSTAR MONKEYROCKET aka THUNDERISLAND

"agency working to unmask Bitcoin users about six months before
Ulbricht was arrested, and that it had worked to monitor Liberty
Reserve around the same time"
"American spies were also working to crack Liberty Reserve"
"analysts have .. tracked down senders / receivers of Bitcoin"
the agency was interested in surveilling some competing
cryptocurrencies, "Bitcoin is #1 priority,"

"using this “browsing product,” which “the NSA can then exploit.”

"These programs involve ventures with US companies."
Staff travel to "Virginia partner / these extremely patriotic
business associates" highly cloaked.

"
Partner provided first/last name metadata... large influx of
traffic... ftp process... causing disk space to fill up
"

Powers also used for traditional police work
“other targeted users will include those... International / Organised
Crime and Narcotics...Follow-The-Money" missions

"
cyber targets that utilize online e-currency services...
There’s no elaboration on who is considered a “cyber target.”
"

"
that the NSA would “launch an entire operation ... under false
pretenses” just to track targets is “pernicious,” ... Such a practice
could spread distrust of privacy software in general, particularly in
areas like Iran where such tools are desperately needed by dissidents.
This “feeds a narrative that the U.S. is untrustworthy,”
"

"Despite Bitcoin’s reputation for privacy... you should really lower
your expectations of privacy on this network.”

"
financial privacy “is something that matters incredibly” to the
Bitcoin community, and expects that “people who are privacy conscious
will switch to privacy-oriented coins” after learning of the NSA’s
work here.
"

"
If the government’s criminal investigations secretly relied on NSA
spying, that would be a serious concern. Individuals facing criminal
prosecution have a right to know how the government came by its
evidence, so that they can challenge whether the government’s methods
were lawful. That is a basic principle of due process. The government
should not be hiding the true sources for its evidence in court by
inventing a different trail.
"

https://theintercept.com/2017/11/30/nsa-surveillance-fisa-section-702/

"
Civil liberties advocates have long suspected that the Justice
Department is underreporting Section 702 cases in order to limit court
challenges to the controversial law. Some theorize that the government
conceals Section 702 use through a process known as “parallel
construction,” in which evidence obtained from the warrantless
surveillance authority is reobtained through traditional FISA
authorization, and the government only discloses the latter authority
in U.S. District Court. One defense lawyer referred to this practice
in a court filing as “laundering” Section 702 evidence.
"

“
The government intercepts Americans’ emails and phone calls in vast
quantities using this spying law and stores them in databases for
years,” said Patrick Toomey, staff attorney for the American Civil
Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “FBI agents around the
country then go searching through that trove of data as a matter of
course, including in domestic criminal investigations.
"

"
If the FBI uses parallel construction to conceal intelligence
community information, it would not be the only federal law
enforcement agency doing so. In 2013, Reuters obtained documents from
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that showed how agents were
trained to “recreate” investigative trails to conceal how intelligence
intercepts helped to identify criminal targets.
"