In the wake of the recent realization that the National Security Agency is creeping on all of us, Anonymous is now touting a trove of documents that the hacker collective says is proof that the NSA is spying on citizens of over 35 different countries. And it says “they” (presumably the NSA) don’t want you to see them.
Here’s an excerpt from their full press release:
Greetings Netizens, and Citizens of the world.Anonymous has obtained some documents that “they” do not want you to see, and much to “their” chagrin, we have found them, and are giving them to you. These documents prove that the NSA is spying on you, and not just Americans. They are spying on the citizens of over 35 different countries.These documents contain information on the companies involved in GiG, and Prism.Whats GiG you might ask? well…The GIG will enable the secure, agile, robust, dependable, interoperable data sharing environment for the Department where warfighter, business, and intelligence users share knowledge on a global network that facilitates information superiority, accelerates decision-making, effective operations, and Net-Centric transformation.Like we said, this is happening in over 35 countries, and done in cooperation with private businesses, and intelligence partners world wide.We bring this to you, So that you know just how little rights you have. Your privacy and freedoms are slowly being taken from you, in closed door meetings, in laws buried in bills, and by people who are supposed to be protecting you.
GIG is presumably the Global Information Grid, a program operated by the NSA that focuses on information architecture to support information/intelligence collection capabilities. Whether you approve of the program or not, it’s not exactly a super secret one, there’s a public web page outlining the whole GIG vision.
One of the “leaked” documents is titled “Department of Defense NetOps Strategic Vision” (pdf). NetOps is essentially the umbrella under which the GIG operates, also largely information that is publicly available.
Other leaked documents appear to be from one of the Department of Defense Enterprise Architecture Conference events. The DoD EA conference is an annual conference in which they discuss geeky things like how to normalize data that comes from multiple sources and how to make varying systems with varying architectures play together nicely, among other things.
Yet another document titled JOINT CAPABILITIES INTEGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM also appears to be available publicly online with some searching. Other documents include a mundane personnel directive and a glossary of terms for standard techie-relevant words like “accessible,” “authenticate” and “schema.”
One interesting document, also available publicly by Googling, outlines numerous inquiries from people requesting to be removed from the INSA spies list. “I’m a geek, not a spook,” reads one request. That document appears to be possibly related to a prior incident.
It’s unclear whether a source provided the “leaked” documents to this associate(s) of Anonymous, or if the documents were simply found online with some Googling. (I notice the press release author is careful to use the word “obtained” when referring to how the documents came into their possession). I haven’t gone through all 13 of the documents yet, but so far, this doesn’t appear to me to be much of a super secret stash. It’s more like a map to already available information.
The content itself may be intriguing to some, for sure, and a little bit relevant in some instances, especially if you’re a geek like me who is interested in data and how systems operate.
Maybe that’s what the takeway is supposed to be here. Or maybe not. It is Anonymous, after all.
UPDATE 6/7 at 4:40pm EST: After reviewing all 13 documents, I can confirm that all of the documents posted by this person(s) claiming association to Anonymous are, in fact, all documents that are already available in the public domain. In addition to those noted above, the remainder have all been available for download at the CJCS Directives Electronic Library, the U.S. Department of Defense Chief Information Officer office and Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative websites.
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