Articles by Ryan Gallagher

We found 38 results.


The Powerful Global Spy Alliance You Never Knew Existed
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 5 Mar 2018

1 Mar 2018 – It is one of the world’s most powerful alliances. And yet most people have probably never heard of it, because its existence is a closely guarded government secret.

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The U.S. Spy Hub in the Heart of Australia
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 21 Aug 2017

19 Aug 2017 – A short drive south of Alice Springs, the second largest population center in Australia’s Northern Territory, there is a high-security compound, codenamed “RAINFALL.” The remote base, in the heart of the country’s barren outback, is one of the most important covert surveillance sites in the eastern hemisphere… The NSA and the Australian government’s Department of Defence declined to comment.

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In Major Privacy Victory, Top EU Court Rules against Mass Surveillance
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 26 Dec 2016

The EU’s top court has undermined the British government’s mass surveillance powers in a new ruling that could rein in police and spy agency investigations.

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Extensive British Spying Throughout Africa Revealed in Le Monde
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 26 Dec 2016

Using documents provided by Edward Snowden, the French paper reports that Britain spied on more than 20 current and former African heads of state.

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Private Eyes
Ryan Gallagher and Nicky Hager – The Intercept, 24 Oct 2016

The Little-Known Company That Enables Worldwide Mass Surveillance – The Medusa system, named after the mythical Greek monster with snakes instead of hair, had one main purpose: to vacuum up vast quantities of internet data at an astonishing speed.

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Inside Menwith Hill: The NSA’s British Base at the Heart of U.S. Targeted Killing
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 12 Sep 2016

Documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden expose the controversial role of a massive NSA surveillance base in England’s countryside.

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U.K. Court, in David Miranda Case, Rules Terrorism Act Violates Fundamental Rights of Free Press
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 25 Jan 2016

19 Jan 2016 – A British appeals court has ruled that the United Kingdom’s broad counterterrorism laws breach fundamental rights in a case involving the seizure of encrypted documents from David Miranda, the partner of Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald, at a London airport in 2013.

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The Drone Papers – The Life and Death of Objective Peckham (7 of 8)
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 26 Oct 2015

Stripped of British Citizenship and Killed by an American Drone

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Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 28 Sep 2015

Top-secret documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden expose U.K. eavesdropping agency GCHQ’s attempts to create the largest mass surveillance system anywhere in the world.

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Hacking Team Emails Expose Proposed Death Squad Deal, Secret U.K. Sales Push and Much More
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 13 Jul 2015

Late Sunday [5 Jul 2015], hackers dumped online a massive trove of emails and other documents obtained from the systems of Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team. The company’s controversial technology is sold to governments around the world, enabling them to infect smartphones and computers with malware to covertly record conversations and steal data.

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Google Accused of “Abusive” Conduct in Privacy App Case
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 29 Jun 2015

23 Jun 2015 – An award-winning company founded by former Google engineers is taking legal action against the search engine giant over claims it has engaged in a “pattern of abusive behavior” and is violating privacy rights on a “massive scale.”

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Revealed: How the US Dept. of Justice Gagged Google over Surveillance of WikiLeaks Volunteer
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 22 Jun 2015

20 Jun 2015 – The Obama administration fought a three-month legal battle against Google to secretly obtain the email records of Jacob Appelbaum, a security researcher and journalist associated with WikiLeaks.

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U.N. Special Rapporteur: Governments Must Not “Backdoor” Encryption for Spying
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 1 Jun 2015

A landmark new United Nations report is “the first attempt to create a legal framework for digital security,” David Kaye, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on freedom of expression, told The Intercept in an interview Thursday [28 May 2015].

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NSA Planned to Hijack Google App Store to Hack Smartphones
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 25 May 2015

21 May 2015 – The National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hijack data links to Google and Samsung app stores to infect smartphones with spyware, a top-secret document reveals.

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Apple and Google Just Attended a Confidential Spy Summit in a Remote English Mansion
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 25 May 2015

22 May 2015 – At an 18th-century mansion in England’s countryside last week, current and former spy chiefs from seven countries faced off with representatives from tech giants Apple and Google to discuss government surveillance in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s leaks.

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DEA Global Surveillance Dragnet Exposed; Access to Data Likely Continues
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 13 Apr 2015

Phone logging across 116 nations is similar to three other programs reported by The Intercept, The New York Times, and Reuters.

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New Zealand Used NSA System to Target Officials, Anti-Corruption Campaigner
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 16 Mar 2015

14 Mar 2015 – Kiwi spies programmed XKEYSCORE to intercept documents mentioning top Solomon Islands officials and a campaigner who publishes government leaks.

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New Zealand Targets Trade Partners, Hacks Computers in Spy Operations
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 16 Mar 2015

10 Mar 2015 – New Zealand is conducting covert surveillance operations against some of its strongest trading partners and has obtained sophisticated malware to infect targeted computers and steal data, newly released documents reveal.

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Documents Shine Light on Shadowy New Zealand Surveillance Base
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 9 Mar 2015

Secret files from Edward Snowden reveal how NSA spying tools are being used by its New Zealand counterpart, the GCSB, to eavesdrop on phone calls and emails across the Asia-Pacific — news that has come as a shock to the region, where political leaders have denounced the surveillance as a “mass invasion of privacy” and a “breach of trust.”

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Thousands Join Legal Fight against UK Surveillance — And You Can, Too
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 23 Feb 2015

On Monday [16 Feb 2015], London-based human rights group Privacy International launched an initiative enabling anyone across the world to challenge covert spying operations involving Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the National Security Agency’s British counterpart.

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Researchers Find ‘Astonishing’ Malware Linked to NSA Spying
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 23 Feb 2015

17 Feb 2015 – Security researchers have uncovered highly sophisticated malware that is linked to a secret National Security Agency hacking operation exposed by The Intercept last year.

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In Historic Ruling, UK Surveillance Secrecy Declared Unlawful
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 9 Feb 2015

The United Kingdom’s top surveillance agency has acted unlawfully by keeping details about the scope of its Internet spying operations secret, a British court ruled in an unprecedented judgment issued on Friday [6 Feb 2015].

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Canada Casts Global Surveillance Dragnet Over File Downloads
Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald – The Intercept, 2 Feb 2015

The covert operation, revealed Wednesday [28 Jan 2015] by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, taps into Internet cables and analyzes records of up to 15 million downloads daily from popular websites commonly used to share videos, photographs, music, and other files.

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Operation Socialist: The Inside Story of How British Spies Hacked Belgium’s Largest Telco
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 15 Dec 2014

Inside a row of gray office buildings in Brussels, a major hacking attack was in progress. And the perpetrators were British government spies.

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Operation Auroragold: How the NSA Hacks Cellphone Networks Worldwide
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 8 Dec 2014

4 Dec 2014 – According to documents provided to The Intercept by Edward Snowden, the NSA has spied on hundreds of companies and organizations internationally, including in countries closely allied to the United States, in an effort to find security weaknesses in cellphone technology that it can exploit for surveillance.

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Secret Malware in European Union Attack Linked to U.S. and British Intelligence
Morgan Marquis-Boire, Claudio Guarnieri, and Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 1 Dec 2014

Complex malware known as Regin is the suspected technology behind sophisticated cyberattacks conducted by U.S. and British intelligence agencies on the European Union and a Belgian telecommunications company, according to security industry sources and technical analysis conducted by The Intercept.

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Vodafone-Linked Company Aided British Mass Surveillance
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 24 Nov 2014

According to the reports, British telecommunications firms have helped GCHQ dramatically scale-up the volume of internet data it collects from undersea cables. In the five years leading up to 2012, there was a 7,000-fold increase in the amount of data the agency was sweeping up.

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New Zealand Cops Raided Home of Reporter Working on Snowden Documents
Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 20 Oct 2014

16 Oct 2014 – Agents from New Zealand’s national police force ransacked the home of a prominent independent journalist earlier this month who was collaborating with The Intercept on stories from the NSA archive furnished by Edward Snowden.

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Murky Special Ops Have Become Corporate Bonanza
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 15 Sep 2014

The U.S. government is paying private contractors billions of dollars to support secretive military units with drones, surveillance technology, and “psychological operations,” according to new research.

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The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 1 Sep 2014

The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept.

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U.S. Military Bans The Intercept
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 25 Aug 2014

20 Aug 2014 – The U.S. military is banning and blocking employees from visiting The Intercept in an apparent effort to censor news reports that contain leaked government secrets.

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How Secret Partners Expand NSA’s Surveillance Dragnet
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 30 Jun 2014

18 Jun 2014 – Huge volumes of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the National Security Agency with the secret cooperation of more foreign governments than previously known, according to newly disclosed documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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British Spy Chiefs Secretly Begged to Play in NSA’s Data Pools
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 5 May 2014

British surveillance agency GCHQ secretly coveted the NSA’s vast troves of private communications and sought “unsupervised access” to its data as recently as last year, classified documents provided NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal.

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Der Spiegel: NSA Put Merkel on List of 122 Targeted Leaders
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 31 Mar 2014

Secret documents newly disclosed by the German newspaper Der Spiegel on Saturday [29 Mar 2014] shed more light on how aggressively the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have targeted Germany for surveillance.

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Inside the NSA’s Secret Efforts to Hunt and Hack System Administrators
Ryan Gallagher and Peter Maass – The Intercept, 24 Mar 2014

According to a secret document provided by Edward Snowden, the NSA tracks down the private email and Facebook accounts of system administrators (or sys admins, as they are often called), before hacking their computers to gain access to the networks they control.

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How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware
Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald – The Intercept, 17 Mar 2014

The classified files – provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware “implants.” The clandestine initiative enables the NSA to break into targeted computers and to siphon out data from foreign Internet and phone networks.

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Compare the NSA’s Facebook Malware Denial to Its Own Secret Documents
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept, 17 Mar 2014

On Wednesday [12 Mar 2014], Glenn Greenwald and I revealed new details that the NSA secretly pretended to be a fake Facebook server in order to covertly infect targets with malware “implants.” This revelation apparently infuriated Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg so much that he got on the phone to President Barack Obama to complain about it.

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Skype under Investigation in Luxembourg over Link to NSA
Ryan Gallagher – The Guardian, 14 Oct 2013

The Microsoft-owned internet chat company could potentially face criminal and administrative sanctions, including a ban on passing users’ communications covertly to the US signals intelliigence agency.

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