All language subtitles for cyberwar.s01e08.720p.hdtv.x264-w4f_Track02

af Afrikaans
ak Akan
sq Albanian
am Amharic
ar Arabic
hy Armenian
az Azerbaijani
eu Basque
be Belarusian
bem Bemba
bn Bengali
bh Bihari
bs Bosnian
br Breton
bg Bulgarian
km Cambodian
ca Catalan
ceb Cebuano
chr Cherokee
ny Chichewa
zh-CN Chinese (Simplified)
zh-TW Chinese (Traditional)
co Corsican
hr Croatian
cs Czech
da Danish
nl Dutch
en English
eo Esperanto
et Estonian
ee Ewe
fo Faroese
tl Filipino
fi Finnish
fr French
fy Frisian
gaa Ga
gl Galician
ka Georgian
de German
el Greek
gn Guarani
gu Gujarati
ht Haitian Creole
ha Hausa
haw Hawaiian
iw Hebrew
hi Hindi
hmn Hmong
hu Hungarian
is Icelandic
ig Igbo
id Indonesian
ia Interlingua
ga Irish
it Italian
ja Japanese
jw Javanese
kn Kannada
kk Kazakh
rw Kinyarwanda
rn Kirundi
kg Kongo
ko Korean
kri Krio (Sierra Leone)
ku Kurdish
ckb Kurdish (Soranî)
ky Kyrgyz
lo Laothian
la Latin
lv Latvian
ln Lingala
lt Lithuanian
loz Lozi
lg Luganda
ach Luo
lb Luxembourgish
mk Macedonian
mg Malagasy
ms Malay
ml Malayalam
mt Maltese
mi Maori
mr Marathi
mfe Mauritian Creole
mo Moldavian
mn Mongolian
my Myanmar (Burmese)
sr-ME Montenegrin
ne Nepali
pcm Nigerian Pidgin
nso Northern Sotho
no Norwegian
nn Norwegian (Nynorsk)
oc Occitan
or Oriya
om Oromo
ps Pashto
fa Persian
pl Polish
pt-BR Portuguese (Brazil)
pt Portuguese (Portugal)
pa Punjabi
qu Quechua
ro Romanian
rm Romansh
nyn Runyakitara
ru Russian
sm Samoan
gd Scots Gaelic
sr Serbian
sh Serbo-Croatian
st Sesotho
tn Setswana
crs Seychellois Creole
sn Shona
sd Sindhi
si Sinhalese
sk Slovak
sl Slovenian
so Somali
es Spanish Download
es-419 Spanish (Latin American)
su Sundanese
sw Swahili
sv Swedish
tg Tajik
ta Tamil
tt Tatar
te Telugu
th Thai
ti Tigrinya
to Tonga
lua Tshiluba
tum Tumbuka
tr Turkish
tk Turkmen
tw Twi
ug Uighur
uk Ukrainian
ur Urdu
uz Uzbek
vi Vietnamese
cy Welsh
wo Wolof
xh Xhosa
yi Yiddish
yo Yoruba
zu Zulu
Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:01,702 --> 00:00:03,735 BEN: Leaked documents revealed the scope of the NSA's 2 00:00:03,837 --> 00:00:05,704 mass surveillance program. 3 00:00:05,806 --> 00:00:09,741 We cannot prevent terrorist attacks or cyber threats without 4 00:00:09,843 --> 00:00:13,512 some capability to penetrate digital communications. 5 00:00:13,614 --> 00:00:17,516 Others unmasked a unit called Tailored Access Operations. 6 00:00:17,618 --> 00:00:18,817 I don't need mass surveillance. 7 00:00:18,919 --> 00:00:20,619 I need you to break into that guy's computer. 8 00:00:20,721 --> 00:00:22,621 Their mission is to get the ungettable. 9 00:00:22,723 --> 00:00:25,757 If you want to hack into systems lawfully, 10 00:00:25,859 --> 00:00:27,960 the only game in town is the government. 11 00:00:28,062 --> 00:00:29,728 But their targets are secret. 12 00:00:29,830 --> 00:00:32,731 They are very important at actually tracking down people 13 00:00:32,833 --> 00:00:34,866 who are then subsequently killed. 14 00:00:34,969 --> 00:00:37,369 And there's almost nothing they can't hack. 15 00:00:38,606 --> 00:00:48,614 ♪ 16 00:00:57,424 --> 00:00:58,624 The National Security Agency 17 00:00:58,726 --> 00:01:01,360 is one of the world's largest intelligence agencies. 18 00:01:01,462 --> 00:01:03,362 Headquartered in Fort Meade, Maryland, 19 00:01:03,464 --> 00:01:06,732 the NSA's mandate is to collect foreign intelligence. 20 00:01:06,834 --> 00:01:09,768 After 9/11, George W. Bush authorized the NSA to collect 21 00:01:09,870 --> 00:01:12,471 even more, including American communications 22 00:01:12,573 --> 00:01:14,840 to and from foreign targets. 23 00:01:14,942 --> 00:01:17,676 (Cameras snapping) 24 00:01:17,778 --> 00:01:19,444 Good morning. 25 00:01:19,546 --> 00:01:22,748 This is a highly classified program that is crucial 26 00:01:22,850 --> 00:01:24,483 to our national security. 27 00:01:26,320 --> 00:01:28,587 This program shocked an NSA senior executive 28 00:01:28,689 --> 00:01:30,856 named Thomas Drake. 29 00:01:30,958 --> 00:01:33,225 Drake is a decorated veteran who blew the whistle 30 00:01:33,327 --> 00:01:35,560 on NSA's activities to the press. 31 00:01:35,663 --> 00:01:38,630 He barely escaped 35 years in jail after being charged 32 00:01:38,732 --> 00:01:42,901 under the Espionage Act, a law first written in 1917. 33 00:01:43,003 --> 00:01:44,603 - Mr. Drake? - Hi. 34 00:01:44,705 --> 00:01:46,571 - I'm Ben. - Nice to meet you. 35 00:01:46,674 --> 00:01:49,975 The National Security Agency is focused on foreign intelligence. 36 00:01:50,077 --> 00:01:51,643 It was formed in 1952. 37 00:01:51,745 --> 00:01:54,346 People don't realize it was not formed by an act of Congress. 38 00:01:54,448 --> 00:01:58,450 It was literally signed into existence 39 00:01:58,552 --> 00:02:00,485 by the stroke of a secret presidential pen. 40 00:02:00,587 --> 00:02:03,288 In fact, the joke was it was "No Such Agency" 41 00:02:03,390 --> 00:02:04,923 or "Never Say Anything". 42 00:02:05,025 --> 00:02:07,893 You never even referenced the actual name. 43 00:02:07,995 --> 00:02:10,696 People who used to work there, "Oh, I work at DOD." 44 00:02:10,798 --> 00:02:12,331 Now, accelerate forward. 45 00:02:12,433 --> 00:02:14,333 Internet explodes. 46 00:02:14,435 --> 00:02:16,735 You have this rapid transition from analog to digital, 47 00:02:16,837 --> 00:02:22,274 and the explosion of data became exponential. 48 00:02:22,376 --> 00:02:25,811 What do you think is the easiest way to deal with it? 49 00:02:25,913 --> 00:02:27,679 Just suck it all. 50 00:02:27,781 --> 00:02:29,781 But what happened after 9/11? 51 00:02:29,883 --> 00:02:31,650 Was it the NSA should do better? 52 00:02:33,053 --> 00:02:36,888 Here's where you have culture in secret meeting itself; 53 00:02:36,990 --> 00:02:39,458 realizing it had failed but can't admit it failed. 54 00:02:39,560 --> 00:02:42,461 It had not prevented the next Pearl Harbor. 55 00:02:42,563 --> 00:02:45,230 And now, NSA is literally unleashed. 56 00:02:45,332 --> 00:02:47,632 It's unleashed on an extraordinary scale, 57 00:02:47,735 --> 00:02:51,436 a scale we have never seen in US history or the world. 58 00:02:51,538 --> 00:02:54,639 All means necessary to confront the threat. 59 00:02:54,742 --> 00:02:56,742 Who cares about the Constitution? 60 00:02:57,845 --> 00:02:59,378 Who cares about law? 61 00:02:59,480 --> 00:03:01,713 Who cares about the rights of US persons? 62 00:03:01,815 --> 00:03:03,582 Hey, if you've done nothing wrong - I even heard this - 63 00:03:03,684 --> 00:03:05,817 then it shouldn't matter. 64 00:03:05,919 --> 00:03:09,855 And the mantra was: just get the data. 65 00:03:09,957 --> 00:03:12,023 Collect it all so we can know it all. 66 00:03:13,293 --> 00:03:15,627 Collect it all so we can know it all. 67 00:03:17,064 --> 00:03:20,332 Drake inspired another NSA worker to sound the alarm. 68 00:03:20,434 --> 00:03:22,200 RADIO: This afternoon, The Guardian newspapers 69 00:03:22,302 --> 00:03:24,636 revealed the name of their source. 70 00:03:24,738 --> 00:03:27,305 BEN: In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked tens of thousands 71 00:03:27,408 --> 00:03:29,541 of classified NSA documents. 72 00:03:29,643 --> 00:03:31,877 The first to get published was a secret court order 73 00:03:31,979 --> 00:03:34,446 forcing Verizon to fork over the call data 74 00:03:34,548 --> 00:03:36,748 of millions of US customers. 75 00:03:36,850 --> 00:03:38,917 The next big leak was a PowerPoint presentation 76 00:03:39,019 --> 00:03:41,620 about a program called Prism. 77 00:03:41,722 --> 00:03:45,223 The NSA boasted that Prism gave them direct access to emails, 78 00:03:45,325 --> 00:03:48,226 video chats and more from some of America's 79 00:03:48,328 --> 00:03:49,428 biggest tech companies. 80 00:03:50,964 --> 00:03:52,964 The media was obsessed with Snowden and the leaks, 81 00:03:53,066 --> 00:03:54,666 but few people noticed information 82 00:03:54,768 --> 00:03:56,768 hidden in the documents about a top secret 83 00:03:56,870 --> 00:04:01,440 NSA unit called TAO, or Tailored Access Operations, 84 00:04:01,542 --> 00:04:03,608 until the German magazine Der Spiegel 85 00:04:03,710 --> 00:04:06,445 revealed more about it than ever before. 86 00:04:06,547 --> 00:04:07,712 Jorg Schindler is the magazine's 87 00:04:07,815 --> 00:04:10,215 award-winning national security reporter. 88 00:04:10,317 --> 00:04:14,352 You can call them the highly skilled plumbers of the NSA 89 00:04:14,455 --> 00:04:17,823 who are able to get into every sort of pipe. 90 00:04:17,925 --> 00:04:20,859 What they are doing is getting the ungettable. 91 00:04:20,961 --> 00:04:22,861 They're like the special forces of the NSA essentially. 92 00:04:22,963 --> 00:04:24,463 Yeah, a special hacker force. 93 00:04:24,565 --> 00:04:27,632 I mean, the whole NSA is a special force, but those are 94 00:04:27,734 --> 00:04:32,337 the highly skilled handymen who create certain kinds of tools 95 00:04:32,439 --> 00:04:36,808 to infiltrate, manipulate and sabotage 96 00:04:36,910 --> 00:04:39,744 every kind of digital device you might think of. 97 00:04:39,847 --> 00:04:42,948 What's the relationship between Tailored Access Operations 98 00:04:43,050 --> 00:04:44,950 by the NSA and their mass surveillance? 99 00:04:45,052 --> 00:04:48,887 I mean, to explain it easily, I would say that mass surveillance 100 00:04:48,989 --> 00:04:53,425 is like going into the ocean with a huge fishing net 101 00:04:53,527 --> 00:04:56,995 and to draw everything out, whatever you find. 102 00:04:57,097 --> 00:05:00,565 And what the Tailored Access Operation units are doing 103 00:05:00,667 --> 00:05:03,802 is like using the harpoon to find the special targets 104 00:05:03,904 --> 00:05:06,671 and the fishes they really need. 105 00:05:06,773 --> 00:05:08,673 So that might be the difference. 106 00:05:08,775 --> 00:05:11,276 So it's like going hand in hand. 107 00:05:11,378 --> 00:05:12,544 And TAO's pretty good at it. 108 00:05:12,646 --> 00:05:13,812 They're extremely good at it, yes. 109 00:05:13,914 --> 00:05:14,946 (Laughing) 110 00:05:16,283 --> 00:05:17,849 The Snowden leaks revealed details about 111 00:05:17,951 --> 00:05:20,952 Tailored Access Operations, but a lot is still unknown. 112 00:05:23,624 --> 00:05:26,491 I wanted to talk to someone who knows the NSA from the inside: 113 00:05:26,593 --> 00:05:30,462 an Air Force veteran and former NSA exec named John Harbaugh. 114 00:05:32,466 --> 00:05:33,865 - I'm John Harbaugh. - Nice to meet you, John. 115 00:05:33,967 --> 00:05:35,200 Please, come in. 116 00:05:35,302 --> 00:05:37,269 Let's see this place. 117 00:05:37,371 --> 00:05:38,370 - "root9B". - Yeah. 118 00:05:38,472 --> 00:05:39,437 (Laughing) 119 00:05:39,540 --> 00:05:40,872 Why that name, by the way? 120 00:05:40,974 --> 00:05:43,742 So "root" is system level access. 121 00:05:43,844 --> 00:05:46,711 "9B" is hexadecimal for 9/11. 122 00:05:46,813 --> 00:05:47,879 Ah. 123 00:05:47,981 --> 00:05:52,784 So it's a nod to the fact that the next 9/11 event 124 00:05:52,886 --> 00:05:55,453 is most likely gonna be cyber-related. 125 00:05:55,556 --> 00:05:58,423 root9B, which has defense contracts, aims to hunt 126 00:05:58,525 --> 00:06:01,293 and pursue adversaries inside a client's network. 127 00:06:01,395 --> 00:06:04,162 This is where we do all of our Hunt Operations, 128 00:06:04,264 --> 00:06:05,830 what we call it for our clients. 129 00:06:05,933 --> 00:06:09,401 So what this is showing you is what the operator sees 130 00:06:09,503 --> 00:06:11,303 while they're doing their op, right? 131 00:06:11,405 --> 00:06:13,905 So there'll be windows of time where they're actually active 132 00:06:14,007 --> 00:06:16,775 inside the client's network pursuing the adversary. 133 00:06:16,877 --> 00:06:18,743 And this was really driven by our experiences 134 00:06:18,845 --> 00:06:19,744 in the government space. 135 00:06:19,846 --> 00:06:21,212 Does it look like this in Fort Meade? 136 00:06:21,315 --> 00:06:22,314 This is better. 137 00:06:22,416 --> 00:06:23,582 (Laughing) 138 00:06:23,684 --> 00:06:26,751 In your bio, it says something like you were the director of 139 00:06:26,853 --> 00:06:30,288 a super elite cyber operation unit. 140 00:06:30,390 --> 00:06:32,824 So basically what that's about 141 00:06:32,926 --> 00:06:34,793 is what we've tried to recreate here. 142 00:06:34,895 --> 00:06:37,796 So my time inside the organization, 143 00:06:37,898 --> 00:06:41,800 I had the pleasure and the fortune to be asked to run 144 00:06:41,902 --> 00:06:45,804 a team of about 8 individuals, and that team was focused on 145 00:06:45,906 --> 00:06:48,873 the most challenging problems in cyber. 146 00:06:48,976 --> 00:06:51,509 Was that Tailored Access Operations? 147 00:06:51,612 --> 00:06:55,513 So you know, there is elements of that space, right? 148 00:06:55,616 --> 00:06:57,616 'Cause if you're in cyber and you do all of cyber, 149 00:06:57,718 --> 00:06:59,985 then you're doing all of those types of things. 150 00:07:01,688 --> 00:07:03,288 And so the bosses could come in and say, 151 00:07:03,390 --> 00:07:05,290 "We have a significant national event. 152 00:07:05,392 --> 00:07:07,826 I need you guys to be able to do this in the next 12 hours." 153 00:07:07,928 --> 00:07:09,494 I could walk into that space and say, 154 00:07:09,596 --> 00:07:11,162 "Hey guys, I need 5 minutes." 155 00:07:11,264 --> 00:07:13,531 I would give them what we would call the op order. 156 00:07:13,634 --> 00:07:14,733 "This is what we need to achieve, 157 00:07:14,835 --> 00:07:17,602 we need to achieve it in the next 12, 24, 48 hours," 158 00:07:17,704 --> 00:07:19,504 and I could walk away. 159 00:07:19,606 --> 00:07:22,440 And I knew when I came back, no matter what time of day, 160 00:07:22,542 --> 00:07:24,309 how long they were working on it, they would get it done. 161 00:07:24,411 --> 00:07:26,177 And it was that kind of-- Again, it was that kind of... 162 00:07:26,279 --> 00:07:27,178 Teamwork? 163 00:07:27,280 --> 00:07:28,713 ...teamwork that really drew people. 164 00:07:28,815 --> 00:07:30,582 And it's a very similar thing to the Special Ops community. 165 00:07:30,684 --> 00:07:32,851 It does sound like a military chain of command. 166 00:07:32,953 --> 00:07:35,453 Yeah, I mean, NSA is a very military organization. 167 00:07:38,358 --> 00:07:39,824 To build a team like TAO, 168 00:07:39,926 --> 00:07:42,227 the NSA has to hire highly skilled hackers. 169 00:07:42,329 --> 00:07:44,462 So how does it head hunt them? 170 00:07:44,564 --> 00:07:46,264 To find out, I ask Chris Soghoian. 171 00:07:46,366 --> 00:07:49,334 He's a privacy activist with the American Civil Liberties Union. 172 00:07:53,807 --> 00:07:56,641 Who are they, and where's the NSA recruiting them from? 173 00:07:56,743 --> 00:07:58,743 The government wants people who can get us security clearance, 174 00:07:58,845 --> 00:08:00,545 more so than ever. 175 00:08:00,647 --> 00:08:04,783 Particularly after Snowden and after Chelsea Manning, 176 00:08:04,885 --> 00:08:08,887 they want people who they know are gonna play by the rules. 177 00:08:08,989 --> 00:08:11,690 They want people who cannot be easily blackmailed. 178 00:08:11,792 --> 00:08:14,926 So I think NSA tries to recruit the best and brightest 179 00:08:15,028 --> 00:08:17,295 from computer science programs around the country, 180 00:08:17,397 --> 00:08:19,564 and in particular computer security programs. 181 00:08:19,666 --> 00:08:20,565 like Carnegie Mellon, 182 00:08:20,667 --> 00:08:23,501 that have probably 183 00:08:23,603 --> 00:08:26,671 the most sophisticated offensive cybersecurity programs 184 00:08:26,773 --> 00:08:29,507 in academia in the United States, and their students are 185 00:08:29,609 --> 00:08:33,611 heavily recruited both by NSA, but also by Silicon Valley. 186 00:08:33,714 --> 00:08:35,146 They're competing for the same people? 187 00:08:35,248 --> 00:08:36,414 So they're competing for the same people, 188 00:08:36,516 --> 00:08:38,149 and the problem that NSA has is 189 00:08:38,251 --> 00:08:40,318 they can't pay the same kind of money, right? 190 00:08:40,420 --> 00:08:43,088 They're not gonna be able to offer the smoothies and massages 191 00:08:43,190 --> 00:08:45,790 and sort of perks of life that Google and Facebook can. 192 00:08:45,892 --> 00:08:48,026 But they have something that those companies don't. 193 00:08:48,128 --> 00:08:50,628 What they have is a monopoly on violence, right? 194 00:08:50,731 --> 00:08:52,297 In the same way that if you wanna like 195 00:08:52,399 --> 00:08:54,432 repel out of helicopters and shoot people in the head, 196 00:08:54,534 --> 00:08:56,801 you go join the Special Forces. 197 00:08:56,903 --> 00:09:00,105 If you wanna hack into systems lawfully, 198 00:09:00,207 --> 00:09:02,273 the only game in town is the government. 199 00:09:02,375 --> 00:09:06,244 In many other walks of life, you would be... 200 00:09:06,346 --> 00:09:07,979 you would be a criminal, you would be a stalker, 201 00:09:08,081 --> 00:09:09,280 you'd be a bad person. 202 00:09:09,382 --> 00:09:11,483 But when you go to NSA, suddenly you get to 203 00:09:11,585 --> 00:09:13,752 wrap yourself in the flag and do it for king and country. 204 00:09:16,356 --> 00:09:18,389 If TAO can legally do things no one else can, 205 00:09:18,492 --> 00:09:20,558 who are they hacking, and why? 206 00:09:26,867 --> 00:09:28,099 BEN: Not much is known about 207 00:09:28,201 --> 00:09:30,535 who Tailored Access Operations hacks, but the Snowden Leaks 208 00:09:30,637 --> 00:09:33,605 revealed one major target: Osama bin Laden. 209 00:09:35,408 --> 00:09:38,143 TAO hacked into the mobile phones of Al Qaeda operatives 210 00:09:38,245 --> 00:09:41,613 in the hunt for bin Laden, as reported by The Washington Post. 211 00:09:41,715 --> 00:09:44,149 The unit's work also led to the capture of 40 insurgents 212 00:09:44,251 --> 00:09:45,617 in Afghanistan. 213 00:09:46,953 --> 00:09:48,720 Ryan Gallagher is an investigative reporter 214 00:09:48,822 --> 00:09:51,289 at The Intercept, where he has covered the role of surveillance 215 00:09:51,391 --> 00:09:52,891 in the ongoing war on terror. 216 00:09:54,461 --> 00:09:58,563 How did TAO and how does TAO fit into the War on Terror? 217 00:09:59,733 --> 00:10:01,933 Well, they're very important. 218 00:10:02,035 --> 00:10:05,203 I mean, people don't necessarily think of 219 00:10:05,305 --> 00:10:09,274 surveillance even as a thing being integral to what 220 00:10:09,376 --> 00:10:12,510 the military is doing on the ground, but it is. 221 00:10:12,612 --> 00:10:14,212 It's absolutely vital. 222 00:10:14,314 --> 00:10:16,881 What the Tailored Access guys are doing for instance is, 223 00:10:16,983 --> 00:10:21,286 because they're so skilled at actually breaking into systems 224 00:10:21,388 --> 00:10:23,888 and going after what they would refer to as hard targets, 225 00:10:23,990 --> 00:10:28,226 people who are elusive or skilled at dodging surveillance, 226 00:10:28,328 --> 00:10:31,396 they are very important at actually tracking down people 227 00:10:31,498 --> 00:10:35,767 who are then subsequently killed or captured, in past years 228 00:10:35,869 --> 00:10:40,638 probably rendered in through the Black Sites program 229 00:10:40,740 --> 00:10:42,640 that was going on through the Bush Administration. 230 00:10:42,742 --> 00:10:46,578 So they're very entwined with these physical, 231 00:10:46,680 --> 00:10:48,880 kind of kinetic, they call it, operations on the ground. 232 00:10:48,982 --> 00:10:51,616 So are they basically the commandos of the NSA? 233 00:10:51,718 --> 00:10:53,585 You could put it like that, yeah. 234 00:10:53,687 --> 00:10:56,821 I mean, it's maybe sort of glorifying them a little bit. 235 00:10:56,923 --> 00:11:00,491 But I mean, essentially these guys are just like geeky nerds, 236 00:11:00,594 --> 00:11:03,461 but they do kind of do that sort of commando-type role. 237 00:11:03,563 --> 00:11:07,599 They're facilitating military operations on the ground 238 00:11:07,701 --> 00:11:09,467 by hacking into targets. 239 00:11:09,569 --> 00:11:13,171 They are actually directly able to track people 240 00:11:13,273 --> 00:11:15,306 who are then killed in say a drone strike. 241 00:11:15,408 --> 00:11:18,309 So what they do, yeah, it is kind of commando work, 242 00:11:18,411 --> 00:11:21,779 but they are also providing assistance on the ground to 243 00:11:21,882 --> 00:11:25,316 real commando types who are out there trying to kill people. 244 00:11:27,654 --> 00:11:28,786 In the hunt for bin Laden, 245 00:11:28,889 --> 00:11:31,322 TAO reportedly used what the unit calls "implants", 246 00:11:31,424 --> 00:11:34,993 spy devices installed in mobile phones or other hardware. 247 00:11:36,696 --> 00:11:38,663 Implants are just some of the tools that appear 248 00:11:38,765 --> 00:11:40,932 in a leaked document called the ANT Catalog, 249 00:11:41,034 --> 00:11:43,468 which lists other spy gear at TAO's disposal. 250 00:11:45,071 --> 00:11:46,671 Security researchers Michael Ossmann, 251 00:11:46,773 --> 00:11:48,506 Joe FitzPatrick and Dean Pierce 252 00:11:48,608 --> 00:11:50,808 decided to build some of these spy tools themselves. 253 00:11:51,878 --> 00:11:54,779 The media kinda saw it and reported on bits and pieces 254 00:11:54,881 --> 00:11:56,214 of it and said, "Oh, look at this thing! 255 00:11:56,316 --> 00:11:57,515 This is magic!" 256 00:11:57,617 --> 00:11:58,850 And I think all of us looked at it and said, 257 00:11:58,952 --> 00:12:00,418 "Oh, yeah, I know how to do that. 258 00:12:00,520 --> 00:12:01,753 Yeah, I know how to do that." 259 00:12:01,855 --> 00:12:04,255 Joe recreated a graphics card that can see what's running 260 00:12:04,357 --> 00:12:07,592 on a computer's active memory, and Dean rigged a phone 261 00:12:07,694 --> 00:12:10,628 so it picks up the mobile traffic in the area. 262 00:12:10,730 --> 00:12:14,465 Mike reproduced Ragemaster, a tiny chip implanted in 263 00:12:14,567 --> 00:12:17,835 a computer video cable to reflect information via radar. 264 00:12:18,905 --> 00:12:22,240 When this is installed, I can point one antenna at it, 265 00:12:22,342 --> 00:12:24,208 and that's transmitting a signal. 266 00:12:24,311 --> 00:12:26,377 And then my other antenna's also pointed at it, 267 00:12:26,479 --> 00:12:28,613 and it's receiving a reflection. 268 00:12:28,715 --> 00:12:32,517 By measuring that reflection, I can, on my laptop, 269 00:12:32,619 --> 00:12:36,254 recover information that's going over the cable. 270 00:12:36,356 --> 00:12:39,557 And what I get is a video image, 271 00:12:39,659 --> 00:12:43,528 a screen image from the target computer system. 272 00:12:43,630 --> 00:12:46,631 And this is an example of something where 273 00:12:46,733 --> 00:12:48,333 an implant is required. 274 00:12:48,435 --> 00:12:50,802 Getting an implant into a piece of hardware, 275 00:12:50,904 --> 00:12:54,439 like a video cable, requires physical access. 276 00:12:54,541 --> 00:12:57,442 But planting bugs into terrorists' cell phones 277 00:12:57,544 --> 00:12:59,711 isn't the only thing TAO does. 278 00:12:59,813 --> 00:13:00,912 Some of their activity has jeopardized 279 00:13:01,014 --> 00:13:02,780 internet security at large. 280 00:13:05,618 --> 00:13:08,820 One Snowden leak shows how TAO found a vulnerability 281 00:13:08,922 --> 00:13:11,389 - a software bug - in Mozilla Firefox. 282 00:13:13,326 --> 00:13:15,860 TAO used the bug to try to identify some users also running 283 00:13:15,962 --> 00:13:18,429 an anonymizing software called Tor. 284 00:13:19,265 --> 00:13:21,899 Not only did TAO need to be able to monitor and hijack 285 00:13:22,002 --> 00:13:24,502 internet traffic to pull of its attack, 286 00:13:24,604 --> 00:13:26,637 but hundreds of millions of Firefox users were left 287 00:13:26,740 --> 00:13:30,274 vulnerable to the software bug, which has since been patched. 288 00:13:34,881 --> 00:13:35,980 - Claudio. - Hey, man. 289 00:13:37,050 --> 00:13:40,952 Hacker Claudio Guarnieri has helped expose TAO's activities. 290 00:13:41,054 --> 00:13:44,622 I met him in an old Stasi surveillance tower that 291 00:13:44,724 --> 00:13:48,426 still stands in what used to be Soviet-controlled East Berlin. 292 00:13:48,528 --> 00:13:51,295 A lot of the mass surveillance and bulk collection capability 293 00:13:51,398 --> 00:13:54,966 of the NSA is empowered by some of the break-ins 294 00:13:55,068 --> 00:13:56,534 that TAO is able to do. 295 00:13:56,636 --> 00:14:02,273 For example, they would ask TAO to break into some core parts 296 00:14:02,375 --> 00:14:05,576 of the internet infrastructure, of the whole global backbone. 297 00:14:05,678 --> 00:14:08,813 You know, from an internet structure perspective, 298 00:14:08,915 --> 00:14:11,916 when you connect from Germany to Google, you move through 299 00:14:12,018 --> 00:14:15,353 a number of hubs, 10, 15 nodes that relay your message 300 00:14:15,455 --> 00:14:18,890 from Berlin to, you know, Hamburg and Frankfurt, and then 301 00:14:18,992 --> 00:14:21,626 to who knows, Netherlands, wherever the cables are. 302 00:14:21,728 --> 00:14:24,862 If the NSA is able to break into any one of these points, 303 00:14:24,964 --> 00:14:28,466 then they're able to see you communicating with Google. 304 00:14:28,568 --> 00:14:30,334 When they're able to observe that, 305 00:14:30,437 --> 00:14:32,170 they're also able to hijack it. 306 00:14:32,272 --> 00:14:35,406 So pretend like you're getting a response from Google, 307 00:14:35,508 --> 00:14:37,875 while instead you're getting a response from the NSA. 308 00:14:37,977 --> 00:14:39,477 None of this comes cheap. 309 00:14:39,579 --> 00:14:41,679 Claudio and I went inside to look through a Snowden leak 310 00:14:41,781 --> 00:14:43,481 known as the Black Budget. 311 00:14:43,583 --> 00:14:46,617 The NSA spends more than $600 million a year 312 00:14:46,719 --> 00:14:49,754 for just the kind of offensive hacks TAO conducts. 313 00:14:49,856 --> 00:14:51,456 Yeah, this is what... 314 00:14:51,558 --> 00:14:52,757 it's being called the Black Budget. 315 00:14:52,859 --> 00:14:56,227 And the trend that we see is that again, the balance between 316 00:14:56,329 --> 00:14:58,496 how much is invested in breaking things and how much is invested 317 00:14:58,598 --> 00:15:00,832 in protecting things is uneven. 318 00:15:00,934 --> 00:15:03,634 You know, part of the mandate of intelligence services 319 00:15:03,736 --> 00:15:05,369 is to keep the country secure. 320 00:15:05,472 --> 00:15:07,572 At the same time, from a technological perspective, 321 00:15:07,674 --> 00:15:09,707 they're undermining the security of the country. 322 00:15:09,809 --> 00:15:12,877 And like you said, we all use the exact same internet. 323 00:15:12,979 --> 00:15:15,346 Once it's broken for one, it's broken for all. 324 00:15:15,448 --> 00:15:18,850 So the question is: is it worth it to break something 325 00:15:18,952 --> 00:15:22,520 and keep it broken for catching one or two terrorists 326 00:15:22,622 --> 00:15:24,589 that you probably could catch otherwise? 327 00:15:24,691 --> 00:15:26,824 Breaking into the internet or hacking into phones 328 00:15:26,926 --> 00:15:28,559 might make us all less secure. 329 00:15:28,661 --> 00:15:30,995 So is TAO's hacking really all that targeted? 330 00:15:36,803 --> 00:15:38,669 BEN: To find out more about who TAO targets, 331 00:15:38,771 --> 00:15:40,805 I met up with Robert M. Lee. 332 00:15:40,907 --> 00:15:42,907 He'd been out of the military for only a week. 333 00:15:43,009 --> 00:15:45,676 He was an Air Force cyber officer and also worked for 334 00:15:45,778 --> 00:15:49,413 an intelligence agency; he confirm or deny that's the NSA. 335 00:15:50,016 --> 00:15:51,449 - Prost. - Cheers. 336 00:15:51,551 --> 00:15:53,684 (Chattering) 337 00:15:53,786 --> 00:15:57,221 How did you get into being a hacker? 338 00:15:57,323 --> 00:15:59,257 So, the Air Force has a wonderful program 339 00:15:59,359 --> 00:16:01,225 where it volunteers you to do shit. 340 00:16:01,327 --> 00:16:04,795 And I joined the Air Force, 341 00:16:04,898 --> 00:16:06,831 said, "Here I am, Lord. What would you like me to do?" 342 00:16:06,933 --> 00:16:09,500 And they said, "Go be a cyber guy." 343 00:16:11,204 --> 00:16:14,138 So if you were to take Snowden's slides completely seriously, 344 00:16:14,240 --> 00:16:15,773 you'd think that it's all mass surveillance. 345 00:16:15,875 --> 00:16:18,476 I actually for the first time ended up seeing slides 346 00:16:18,578 --> 00:16:20,745 that I had actually seen before in real life. 347 00:16:20,847 --> 00:16:23,414 I was like holy shit, like I've seen these ones! 348 00:16:23,516 --> 00:16:26,417 But once you bring something into the intelligence community, 349 00:16:26,519 --> 00:16:28,719 you don't delete files, like everything is stored. 350 00:16:28,821 --> 00:16:31,789 And so there were some files that like get translated out, 351 00:16:31,891 --> 00:16:34,158 like their truth, and they were just remnants 352 00:16:34,260 --> 00:16:36,227 of product pitches or something like that. 353 00:16:36,329 --> 00:16:39,163 And so I think that you can't take all the slides seriously. 354 00:16:39,265 --> 00:16:42,800 We also know that there is something called TAO in the NSA. 355 00:16:44,437 --> 00:16:45,603 What is that team? 356 00:16:45,705 --> 00:16:46,704 Like what are they doing? 357 00:16:46,806 --> 00:16:48,439 Yeah, so I think when you look at TAO, 358 00:16:48,541 --> 00:16:50,308 that's actually the thing that I think most of the community 359 00:16:50,410 --> 00:16:51,709 should be cool with, right? 360 00:16:51,811 --> 00:16:53,477 So I'm actually a huge privacy advocate. 361 00:16:53,580 --> 00:16:54,712 And ironically enough, 362 00:16:54,814 --> 00:16:56,914 I hate the idea of any sort of mass surveillance. 363 00:16:57,016 --> 00:17:00,384 From a perspective of TAO or whoever would be breaking into 364 00:17:00,486 --> 00:17:03,354 those networks, that's targeted, retained intelligence. 365 00:17:03,456 --> 00:17:05,556 And so privacy activists should actually enjoy that. 366 00:17:05,658 --> 00:17:08,793 They should say, "Hey, mass surveillance sucks. 367 00:17:08,895 --> 00:17:10,761 We need more targeted surveillance, we need more--" 368 00:17:10,863 --> 00:17:12,663 If you're gonna do intelligence, do the kind 369 00:17:12,765 --> 00:17:15,399 that you put resources into and have to think about, 370 00:17:15,501 --> 00:17:17,201 and have to prioritize your own efforts 371 00:17:17,303 --> 00:17:19,103 so it's not gonna be some dissident or accidentally 372 00:17:19,205 --> 00:17:20,638 picking up somebody else's communications. 373 00:17:20,740 --> 00:17:22,406 So who are TAO's targets? 374 00:17:22,508 --> 00:17:23,841 I don't know exactly their targets, right? 375 00:17:23,943 --> 00:17:25,276 And I wouldn't be able to speak on it anyway, 376 00:17:25,378 --> 00:17:27,712 but I would say that it would be asinine to assume 377 00:17:27,814 --> 00:17:30,147 that anything in our national policy of interest 378 00:17:30,250 --> 00:17:31,582 isn't one of their targets, right? 379 00:17:31,684 --> 00:17:34,118 So if we say... if the president says global terrorism 380 00:17:34,220 --> 00:17:35,686 is something we're concerned with, well, 381 00:17:35,788 --> 00:17:37,388 then TAO's not doing their job, like the government's 382 00:17:37,490 --> 00:17:39,290 not doing their job if they don't go after it. 383 00:17:39,392 --> 00:17:41,192 Anything that the president wakes up in the morning and 384 00:17:41,294 --> 00:17:43,594 says, "Hey, this is important to me," anybody in the government 385 00:17:43,696 --> 00:17:46,397 who's not supporting his needs is not doing their job. 386 00:17:46,499 --> 00:17:48,566 So I would, just off virtue of that, 387 00:17:48,668 --> 00:17:50,468 say that TAO has to be doing that stuff, 388 00:17:50,570 --> 00:17:53,437 or they're incompetent and they're wasting taxpayer money. 389 00:17:53,539 --> 00:17:55,506 So you can't have it both ways. 390 00:17:55,608 --> 00:17:57,141 Rob made a pretty convincing case 391 00:17:57,243 --> 00:17:59,710 for the so-called targeted surveillance TAO conducts, 392 00:17:59,812 --> 00:18:03,180 but investigative reporter Ryan Gallagher disagrees. 393 00:18:03,283 --> 00:18:05,783 He says the problem is that unit's methods 394 00:18:05,885 --> 00:18:08,152 aren't as targeted as they seem. 395 00:18:08,254 --> 00:18:12,256 TAO is doing some of the most aggressive work that NSA does. 396 00:18:12,358 --> 00:18:16,127 The traditional eavesdropping where they're listening in on 397 00:18:16,229 --> 00:18:19,130 a phone call just by like wiretapping a cable, 398 00:18:19,232 --> 00:18:21,232 which they call kind of passive surveillance, 399 00:18:21,334 --> 00:18:24,568 that's actually becoming almost secondary now 400 00:18:24,671 --> 00:18:27,805 to the active surveillance they call it, which is 401 00:18:27,907 --> 00:18:30,574 attacking and hacking systems. 402 00:18:30,677 --> 00:18:32,810 And part of the reason for that is because, 403 00:18:32,912 --> 00:18:36,147 increasingly, networks and technologies adopting 404 00:18:36,249 --> 00:18:39,583 encryption, and so they can't listen to it by just tapping 405 00:18:39,686 --> 00:18:42,253 the queue because then you can't read it or listen to it. 406 00:18:42,355 --> 00:18:43,654 It's just, you know, jargon. 407 00:18:43,756 --> 00:18:46,657 Going forward, especially with this sort of boom in encryption, 408 00:18:46,759 --> 00:18:49,260 you're gonna see more and more of these hacking attacks 409 00:18:49,362 --> 00:18:51,796 to the point that there may come a stage in the future 410 00:18:51,898 --> 00:18:55,633 where it's described as a mass surveillance kind of technique. 411 00:18:57,303 --> 00:19:00,338 TAO's hacking skills may be in higher demand than ever before. 412 00:19:00,440 --> 00:19:02,406 And while the group goes after terrorists, 413 00:19:02,508 --> 00:19:04,275 that's not all they do. 414 00:19:08,247 --> 00:19:11,048 BEN: How does TAO decide who to target? 415 00:19:11,150 --> 00:19:13,517 And are they really legitimate threats? 416 00:19:13,619 --> 00:19:17,121 The elite unit has gone after al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, 417 00:19:17,223 --> 00:19:19,690 but the Snowden leaks also revealed the group hacked into 418 00:19:19,792 --> 00:19:22,159 the president of Mexico's emails. 419 00:19:22,261 --> 00:19:24,829 And workers at a Belgian telecommunications company 420 00:19:24,931 --> 00:19:28,566 were spied on by the British, possibly with help from TAO. 421 00:19:28,668 --> 00:19:31,235 Generally there is a consensus that mass surveillance 422 00:19:31,337 --> 00:19:34,705 is a bad thing, while targeted surveillance is tolerable 423 00:19:34,807 --> 00:19:37,575 because they go after very specific individuals 424 00:19:37,677 --> 00:19:38,943 or very specific groups. 425 00:19:40,213 --> 00:19:41,445 However, there is multiple things 426 00:19:41,547 --> 00:19:42,513 that you need to consider. 427 00:19:42,615 --> 00:19:46,450 One is: what makes a legitimate target? 428 00:19:46,552 --> 00:19:50,421 You know, ultimately the NSA only has to respond to... 429 00:19:50,523 --> 00:19:52,356 somehow to the US government. 430 00:19:52,458 --> 00:19:55,359 But they have no respect whatsoever towards foreigners. 431 00:19:55,461 --> 00:19:58,162 And so we have cases where they spied on UNICEF, 432 00:19:58,264 --> 00:20:00,131 they spied on foreign ministries, 433 00:20:00,233 --> 00:20:03,534 they spied on private companies, energy companies, you know. 434 00:20:03,636 --> 00:20:05,770 So what, at that point, makes it legitimate to 435 00:20:05,872 --> 00:20:08,305 hack directly and target a certain organization? 436 00:20:08,408 --> 00:20:09,607 We don't know. 437 00:20:12,545 --> 00:20:14,845 One of the Snowden documents that came out about the Tailored 438 00:20:14,947 --> 00:20:19,617 Access group is one of the guys from within the unit is saying, 439 00:20:19,719 --> 00:20:22,486 "Look, we don't just do terrorism, we do everything. 440 00:20:22,588 --> 00:20:25,890 We do all operations, we're here to support any operations." 441 00:20:25,992 --> 00:20:28,726 I think it's one of the common misconceptions 442 00:20:28,828 --> 00:20:31,629 that the government has managed to build up around 443 00:20:31,731 --> 00:20:33,197 a lot of these revelations. 444 00:20:33,299 --> 00:20:35,733 So it's like, "Don't worry about it, we're only going after 445 00:20:35,835 --> 00:20:38,335 these extreme terrorists, people who are, you know... 446 00:20:38,438 --> 00:20:40,371 We're just trying to protect you," and all that. 447 00:20:40,473 --> 00:20:42,873 But that's kind of disingenuous because 448 00:20:42,975 --> 00:20:44,608 that's not at all just what they're doing. 449 00:20:44,710 --> 00:20:45,910 They're doing a lot more than that. 450 00:20:46,012 --> 00:20:48,779 Ultimately, it seems TAO may be just one more tool 451 00:20:48,881 --> 00:20:51,248 in the NSA's mass surveillance arsenal. 452 00:20:51,350 --> 00:20:53,484 What happens in a mass surveillance regime, 453 00:20:53,586 --> 00:20:55,586 you sweep up essentially everybody. 454 00:20:55,688 --> 00:20:59,457 Everybody by definition becomes a target, 455 00:20:59,559 --> 00:21:00,791 which means there's no target. 456 00:21:00,893 --> 00:21:02,860 The problem is that when you do this in secret 457 00:21:02,962 --> 00:21:05,596 and you protect your secret powers, 458 00:21:05,698 --> 00:21:07,865 this usually doesn't end well in terms of history. 459 00:21:07,967 --> 00:21:09,667 It just doesn't. 460 00:21:09,769 --> 00:21:13,237 You know, in 1984, the extraordinary 461 00:21:13,339 --> 00:21:16,307 George Orwell novel, the only place Winston... 462 00:21:18,511 --> 00:21:22,379 the only place he could go to, out of sight, 463 00:21:22,482 --> 00:21:24,715 was in the corner, because that's where 464 00:21:24,817 --> 00:21:26,617 the surveillance cameras couldn't reach. 465 00:21:26,719 --> 00:21:28,652 Which meant what? They knew where he was. 466 00:21:28,754 --> 00:21:31,655 And remember, people forget even in 1984, 467 00:21:31,757 --> 00:21:33,257 he didn't prevail. 468 00:21:33,359 --> 00:21:34,592 He basically cried uncle. 469 00:21:37,230 --> 00:21:39,864 If you can't fight them, you can't beat them, join them. 470 00:21:39,966 --> 00:21:42,266 So you're a whistleblower, you cried uncle to some extent, 471 00:21:42,368 --> 00:21:43,767 or you cried out. 472 00:21:43,870 --> 00:21:45,636 Do you think it was worth it? 473 00:21:45,738 --> 00:21:47,238 Yeah. 474 00:21:47,340 --> 00:21:48,873 History was at stake. 475 00:21:52,979 --> 00:21:55,145 We know the NSA's elite hacking unit has helped capture 476 00:21:55,248 --> 00:21:58,415 terrorists, but they've also targeted friendly nation states. 477 00:22:00,253 --> 00:22:02,319 So who else have they gone after? 478 00:22:02,421 --> 00:22:05,489 For now, much of TAO's work remains shrouded in secrecy. 479 00:22:05,591 --> 00:22:08,259 But privacy activists, whistleblowers and others 480 00:22:08,361 --> 00:22:10,728 aren't giving up on the fight to know more, 481 00:22:10,830 --> 00:22:12,563 and to live surveillance free. 44664

Can't find what you're looking for?
Get subtitles in any language from opensubtitles.com, and translate them here.