From Stephen Lendman:
“It doesn’t surprise. On June 8, Haaretz headlined “What was the Israeli involvement in collecting US communications intel for NSA?” More on that below.
On April 3, 2012, James Bamford headlined “Shady Companies with Ties to Israel Wiretap for US for the NSA.”
He said NSA chief General Keith Alexander’s “having a busy year.” He’s “cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency’s greatly expanded eavesdropping network.”
“In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia.”
It’s for around “4,000 earphone-clad intercept operators, analysts and other specialists, many of them employed by private contractors.”
Spies “R” Us defines US policy. NSA’s “mammoth 1-million-square-foot, $2 billion Utah Data Center is far more sweeping.”
It’s located at Camp Williams. It’s a Utah National Guard training facility. Once fully operational, says Bamford, it’ll “become, in effect, the NSA Cloud.”
It’ll receive data from NSA satellites, overseas listening posts, and nationwide multipleNo telecom facility monitoring rooms. What’s planned is an unprecedented global spy network.
NSA operatives and hackers will harvest around 2.1 million gigabytes of data per hour. It’ll do so on the world’s most powerful computer.
It’s call Titan Supercomputer. It can handle over 20,000 trillion calculations per second or 20 petaflops. One petaflop = one quadrillion instructions per second.
Supercomputer power will be used to collect and analyze foreign and domestic communications from all possible sources.
Two Israeli companies are involved. High-tech firms Verint and Narus have longstanding US/Israeli intelligence connections. For many years, Verint was a majority-owned Comverse Technology subsidiary.
Both companies have about half their employees in Israel. In August 2012, Verint acquired Comverse. It now operates independently.
It makes security software. It calls itself “a global leader in Actionable Intelligence solutions.”
Narus calls itself a cybersecurity company. It’s an independent Boeing subsidiary. It provides real-time network traffic and analytics software. It does so with enterprise class spyware capabilities.
In 1997, it was founded in Israel. It created NarusInsight. It’s a supercomputer system. A previous article said AT&T uses it at their secret San Francisco facility. It lets NSA spy on its customers.
Verint’s software also is used to do it. Bamford called it “especially troubling that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to (its) intelligence service.”
A previous article discussed Israeli spying on America. The CIA calls Israel America’s main regional spy threat. An Israeli-based CIA operative once found food in his refrigerator rearranged.
Washington knows what’s going on. Publicly it’s ignored. Pre-9/11, the FBI uncovered a massive US-based Israeli spy ring. It remains active.
It betrays America. Numerous Israeli citizens are involved. They have close ties to foreign military, criminal and intelligence sources. They reportedly breach US laws with impunity.
Israel’s featured prominently in annual FBI reports. It actively seeks proprietary/secret US information. It’s mainly on military systems and advanced computer applications.
Proprietary commercial and industrial data are stolen. Israel recruits spies. Sophisticated methods are used. Computers are hacked for information.
Washington’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Israel “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.”
The Pentagon accused Israel of “actively engag(ing) in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage.”
FBI whistleblower John Cole said Justice Department officials ordered dozens of Israeli espionage cases dropped. At issue was political pressure.
Washington gives Israel billions of dollars in annual aid, state-of-the-art weapons and technology, and numerous other special privileges. In return, it steals US state and commercial secrets.
Despite longstanding close ties, Washington considers Israel both ally and counterintelligence threat. In terms of technical capability and human resources, it matches America’s best.
It has access to the highest US political, military and intelligence sources. Bamford said NSA-developed advanced analytical/data-mining software was lawlessly given Israel.
An Operations Directorate technical director did so secretly. Apparently Israeli companies got access. Technology they got advanced their own.
Narus once boasted about being “known for its ability to capture and collect data from the largest networks around the world.” Unexplained was that stolen software facilitates is capabilities.
Retired Israeli General Hanan Gefen ran its secret Unit 8200. It’s Israel’s NSA equivalent. He admitted Israeli ties to Comverse.
At the time, it owned Verint. It owns other Israeli high-tech companies. They specialize in eavesdropping and surveillance. They operate globally.
According to Gefen, the “correlation between serving in the intelligence Unit 8200 and starting successful high-tech companies is not coincidental.”
Lila:
I’ve written about Israeli spying on all US telecommunications (and all Indian, as well) in this piece, as well as in LOE.