WikiLeaks publishes 'biggest ever leak of secret CIA documents'

The 8,761 documents published by WikiLeaks focus mainly on techniques for hacking and surveillance

By: Ewen MacAskill Defence and security correspondent, Sam Thielman in New York, and Philip Oltermann in Berlin
Tuesday 7 March 2017

The US intelligence agencies are facing fresh embarrassment after WikiLeaks published what it described as the biggest ever leak of confidential documents from the CIA detailing the tools it uses to break into phones, communication apps and other electronic devices.

Thousands of documents focus mainly on techniques for hacking, including how the CIA cooperated with British intelligence to engineer a way to compromise smart televisions and turn them into improvised surveillance devices.

The leak, dubbed “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, will once again raise questions about the inability of US spy agencies to protect secret documents in the digital age. It follows disclosures about Afghanistan and Iraq by army intelligence specialist Chelsea Manning in 2010 and about the National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ by Edward Snowden in 2013.

The documents appear to be from the CIA’s 200-strong Center for Cyber Intelligence and show in detail how the agency’s digital specialists engage in hacking.
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Tzelemel wrote:Wait, so the CIA and some British organisation, maybe GCHQ, maybe SIS, were trying to make telescreens a real thing?

Tzelemel wrote:Wait, so the CIA and some British organisation, maybe GCHQ, maybe SIS, were trying to make telescreens a real thing?

VazScep wrote:[...] FFS. Has anyone actually read Nineteen-Eighty Four? [...]

Acetone wrote:So not much has changed from the Snowden leaks? Just new tech.

The car idea is pretty nutty but I assumed they could do that anyway.

I wonder how Trump will handle this. Agree with it presumably?

Still not showing evidence, U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper told senators he’s really sure Russia was the source of “hacked” Democratic emails, but the case remains weak, say ex-intelligence officials William Binney and Ray McGovern.


By William Binney and Ray McGovern

It has been several weeks since the New York Times reported that “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” led the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin “deployed computer hackers” to help Donald Trump win the election. But the evidence released so far has been far from overwhelming.

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Thommo wrote:[...] (PS: Loving the 1984 pedantry, the same thing has occurred to me - we're not quite at the point that the microphone and camera are installed mandatorily just yet)

crank wrote:What makes you think the washing machine is off just because you turned it off? Read the stuff, that's how some of the hacks work.

crank wrote:Of course, we don't live in a totalitarian regime, at least not yet. They have to resort to such tactics because we're not totalitarian. They control the citizens through information control, they want ALL the information they can get, it's their armor and their weapons.

willhud9 wrote:I feel this is much ado about nothing to be honest