ELECTRONIC ESPIONAGE DEFINITION FULL
Secret government documents, published by the media in 2013, confirm the NSA obtains full copies of everything that is carried along major domestic fiber optic cable networks. As one expert observed, “this isn’t a wiretap, it’s a country-tap.” This copying includes both domestic and international Internet activities of AT&T customers. The undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails web browsing and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers and provides those copies to the NSA. In early 2006, EFF obtained whistleblower evidence (.pdf) from former AT&T technician Mark Klein showing that AT&T is cooperating with the illegal surveillance. All of these surveillance activities are in violation of the privacy safeguards established by Congress and the US Constitution. Those news reports, combined with a USA Today story in May 2006 and the statements of several members of Congress, revealed that the NSA is also receiving wholesale copies of American's telephone and other communications records. News reports in December 2005 first revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been intercepting Americans’ phone calls and Internet communications. History of NSA Spying Information since 2005 (See EFF’s full timeline of events here ) Since this was first reported on by the press and discovered by the public in late 2005, EFF has been at the forefront of the effort to stop it and bring government surveillance programs back within the law and the Constitution. Senate that, if Russia was to blame for NotPetya, “it is an example of precisely the type of cyber operation that could be seen as warfare, in that it approximates effects similar to those that might be attained through the use of armed force.The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001. Olga Oliker, a Washington-based expert on U.S.-Russia relations, said in 2017 testimony before the U.S. Moller-Maersk and other global corporations. “I think there is a difference between an act of espionage, which we conduct as well, and other nations do, versus an attack,” Clapper said at the time.Ī devastating 2017 hack attributed to Russia, known as “NotPetya,” crippled ports by paralyzing the shipping giant A.P. government’s personnel agency, the Office of Personnel Management, exposed sensitive personal information of millions of current and former federal employees and contractors.įormer Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in 2015 that he suspected China of conducting the hack, and he said during congressional testimony two years later that in his view it was an act of espionage. government computers or actually disrupted government functions,” said Bellinger, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.Ī hack in 2014 that targeted the U.S.
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We don’t know yet whether the Russians simply accessed U.S. “It may simply be a massive act of espionage that would not constitute an act of war.
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John Bellinger, the top State Department lawyer under former Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said it was not yet clear whether the hack could be considered an act of war.
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Examples include operations that “trigger a nuclear plant meltdown open a dam above a populated area, causing destruction or disable air traffic control services, resulting in airplane crashes.”
ELECTRONIC ESPIONAGE DEFINITION MANUAL
“Simply stealing information, as much as we don’t like it, is not an act of war - it is espionage,” said Benjamin Friedman, a policy director at the think tank Defense Priorities.Įxperts said cyber attacks can be acts of war if they cause physical destruction.Ī Department of Defense law of war manual states that some cyber operations should be subject to the same rules as physical, or “kinetic” attacks. information, and should be viewed as espionage. Hollis and other experts said the attack appears to have been carried out to steal sensitive U.S.