American human rights activists accuse the special services of monitoring private networks

At the disposal of the American human rights organization Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), documents confirming the fact that the National Security Agency (ANB) could observe the networks of networks in the United States and other countries, Vesti.ru reports with reference to CNET News.

In the summer of 2010, the NSA recognized the existence of the Perfect Citizen project ("ideal citizen"), designed to protect the critical infrastructure (power chain, gas pipelines, water supply systems, etc.) from terrorist threats.

The NSA special services called the program a research project, explaining its need for the desire to evaluate the safety of important infrastructure. All accusations regarding the invasion of the private life of citizens were denied.

As follows from the released EPIC documents, Perfect Citizen also serves to protect the private sector companies from hacker attacks, whose activities affect national interests. So, the NSA has the right to observe SCADA - a centralized system of control over technological processes.

Such a complex, for example, helps to track the temperature, pressure or water level in pipes. If SCADA computer sensors notice the norm, they will immediately notify the operator about this. Many SCADA systems either work on the principle of AS IS ("as is"), that is, their software is not updated at all, or it is extremely rare.

The NSA intends to imitate the attack and evaluate the damage that hackers can cause. According to the executive director of EPIC, Mark Rotenberg, new information about Perfect Citizen "can help refute" the NSA statement that they do not monitor private networks.

Electronic human rights defenders argue that the NSA has developed a program of hidden testing of infrastructure objects, designed for the period until September 2014. The contract for the technical preparation of the test in the amount of $ 91 million is concluded with the famous defense company Raytheon. The contractor is allowed to hire up to 28 engineers and hackers to prepare the project and conduct test attacks. The document says that employees must use standard hacker tools.

Thus, they believe in EPIC, Perfect Citizen can be applied not only to defense, but also to attack, including the infrastructure of other countries.

Recall that some analysts attribute to the NSA and other special services of the United States and Israel, the creation of the Stuxnet worm - a virus that can apply the physical facilities of enterprises. It was this virus in June 2010 that he infected computers at the Bushera NPP in Iran and destroyed the engines of hundreds of uranium centrifuge, sharply reducing and increasing the speed of the converter.

The National Security Agency is the most classified of one and a half tens of special services of the United States. In the directory "Government Institutions of the United States", published back in 1957, the NSA is described as a state agency, which is "highly specialized technical and coordination functions associated with national security."

The headquarters of the NSA is located in a Fort Mide, halfway between Washington and Baltimore. The agency’s tasks include: radio interception, electronic intelligence, government protection and cryptography. About 38 thousand people work on a Fort Mide on an ongoing basis, even more, mainly military personnel, serve on numerous eavesdropping posts in different parts of the globe.

The main recipients of the information from the NSA are, as is believed, the White House, the National Security Council, the Ministry of Internal Security, the State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI, the Ministry of Trade, the Agency for Combating Drug Production and the Ministry of Finance.

Earlier, the NSA was engaged in the collection of disorders exclusively abroad. In the United States, the agency’s activities were strictly regulated with the aim of protecting the personal life of the Americans from interference, but under the Bush administration, Bush, along with the FBI and the CIA, received the right to monitor Internet traffic within the country.

The NSA, in particular, began to monitor the safety of computer networks of federal ministries, which have repeatedly become a target for hackers. In addition, the National Security Agency for several years could freely observe any person suspected in connection with terrorists, for example, listening to his telephone conversations and viewing mail.