Protesters hold placards in support of former US spy Edward Snowden outside the US consulate in Hong Kong on 13 June 2013. (Photo: AFP - Philippe Lopez)
Last week’s leaks detailing the global reach of the US National Security Agency shocked many, but Lebanese officials and tech experts were surprisingly blasé about the issue, their concerns eclipsed by the country’s own Internet privacy issues.
Stunning revelations were leaked last week to the London-based newspaper The Guardian by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and intelligence contracting firm that conducts work for the US National Security Agency (NSA).
The leaks show that the NSA – the biggest spy surveillance organization in the world – has been secretly mining vast quantities of data from telephone companies, emails, chat logs, videos, and searches directly from the servers of nine Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Apple. The data-mining program, dubbed “Prism,” was enabled by changes to domestic American law, the Patriot Act, first introduced by President George W. Bush and later renewed by Barack Obama in December 2012.
While Prism deals with the collection of data, another tool used by the NSA, Boundless Informant, organizes and indexes metadata from around the world. A fact sheet leaked to The Guardian showed that almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence had been collected from US computer networks over a 30-day period in 2013 and almost 100 billion pieces of intelligence worldwide.
The Guardiannoted that “Iran was the country where the largest amount of intelligence was gathered with more than 14 billion reports in that period.” Coming in second was Pakistan with 13.5 billion reports, then Jordan, “one of America’s closest Arab allies” with 12.7 billion. Egypt followed with a documented 7.6 billion reports.
These revelations have sent tremors among diplomatic communities world-wide, especially in Europe. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has initiated legal action against the US government for breaching the US Constitution. However, officials within the West Asian region – where most of the intelligence have been collected – have yet to react to these disclosures.
Lebanon, in particular, has had a long history of struggling against external spying on its telecommunications and Internet servers, with more than a hundred people arrested for collaborating with and spying for foreign states since April 2009. One of the most notable cases occurred in 2010 when Charbel Azzi, an employee of Alfa – one of Lebanon’s two mobile operators – was accused of working with Israel to tap into Lebanon’s telecommunications network.
The news regarding Prism and Boundless Informant raises further concerns over protecting the personal data of Lebanese citizens from foreign states.
For his part, Khaldoun Farhat, CEO of Terranet, one of Lebanon’s major Internet Service Providers, was not particularly surprised by Snowden’s disclosure to the Guardian.
“Snowden’s revelation is to be expected. I’m surprised that people are surprised about it. Companies are obliged to submit to intelligence agencies. It is well-known and expected. You put your information on Google, Apple, and they are known to have dealings with the Prism program. You should expect to be spied on,” he said.
A senior industry expert in the field, who requested anonymity, echoed such sentiments in a separate conversation with Al-Akhbar. “There is no privacy on the Internet. In general, it is accessible. Anything that people post, on Facebook or elsewhere, is public,” the expert noted.
But the industry expert was quick to emphasize that major intelligence agencies are less likely to be watching everyone. “They are not interested in you and me and what we write online. They are targeting specific groups,” he said, pointing to the recent example of an al-Qaeda website that was alleged hacked and taken down by US cyberwarriors.
Farhat highlighted another wrinkle that he felt was not being considered by the reactions to the NSA spying scandal: the potential espionage of hardware and equipment.
“No one is talking about equipment. About a year ago the US House Intelligence Committee investigated Chinese firms like Huawei. They warned against working with these Chinese companies because there seemed to be espionage on the hardware side. It’s probably the same with equipment manufacturers in the West, who likely cooperate with intelligence agencies. Don’t be surprised,” Farhat stressed.
Moreover, both Farhat and the expert were unequivocal about the inability of ISPs in Lebanon to defend or seek legal recourse from surveillance by states on such a massive scale.
“The servers are in the US. It is not passing through the neutral country. Also, since I cannot simply buy Internet or connect with my own cable, I have to go through the Lebanese government. It is out of my control, it is under the control of the government. My traffic is mixed with all the traffic that leaves Lebanon and goes to US and Europe,” Farhat said.
“We are barely struggling to keep the privacy intact within Lebanon,” Minister of Telecommunications Nicolas Sehnaoui said in a phone conversation with Al-Akhbar on the matter.
“Our worries are about Lebanese privacy under Lebanese law. On the international side, this is a matter that concerns everyone,” he added.
When asked about the possibility that the Lebanese government will seek clarification or assurances from the American officials that private data of Lebanese citizens were secure, he responded bluntly:
Stunning revelations were leaked last week to the London-based newspaper The Guardian by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and intelligence contracting firm that conducts work for the US National Security Agency (NSA).
The leaks show that the NSA – the biggest spy surveillance organization in the world – has been secretly mining vast quantities of data from telephone companies, emails, chat logs, videos, and searches directly from the servers of nine Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Apple. The data-mining program, dubbed “Prism,” was enabled by changes to domestic American law, the Patriot Act, first introduced by President George W. Bush and later renewed by Barack Obama in December 2012.
While Prism deals with the collection of data, another tool used by the NSA, Boundless Informant, organizes and indexes metadata from around the world. A fact sheet leaked to The Guardian showed that almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence had been collected from US computer networks over a 30-day period in 2013 and almost 100 billion pieces of intelligence worldwide.
The Guardiannoted that “Iran was the country where the largest amount of intelligence was gathered with more than 14 billion reports in that period.” Coming in second was Pakistan with 13.5 billion reports, then Jordan, “one of America’s closest Arab allies” with 12.7 billion. Egypt followed with a documented 7.6 billion reports.
These revelations have sent tremors among diplomatic communities world-wide, especially in Europe. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has initiated legal action against the US government for breaching the US Constitution. However, officials within the West Asian region – where most of the intelligence have been collected – have yet to react to these disclosures.
Lebanon, in particular, has had a long history of struggling against external spying on its telecommunications and Internet servers, with more than a hundred people arrested for collaborating with and spying for foreign states since April 2009. One of the most notable cases occurred in 2010 when Charbel Azzi, an employee of Alfa – one of Lebanon’s two mobile operators – was accused of working with Israel to tap into Lebanon’s telecommunications network.
The news regarding Prism and Boundless Informant raises further concerns over protecting the personal data of Lebanese citizens from foreign states.
For his part, Khaldoun Farhat, CEO of Terranet, one of Lebanon’s major Internet Service Providers, was not particularly surprised by Snowden’s disclosure to the Guardian.
“Snowden’s revelation is to be expected. I’m surprised that people are surprised about it. Companies are obliged to submit to intelligence agencies. It is well-known and expected. You put your information on Google, Apple, and they are known to have dealings with the Prism program. You should expect to be spied on,” he said.
A senior industry expert in the field, who requested anonymity, echoed such sentiments in a separate conversation with Al-Akhbar. “There is no privacy on the Internet. In general, it is accessible. Anything that people post, on Facebook or elsewhere, is public,” the expert noted.
But the industry expert was quick to emphasize that major intelligence agencies are less likely to be watching everyone. “They are not interested in you and me and what we write online. They are targeting specific groups,” he said, pointing to the recent example of an al-Qaeda website that was alleged hacked and taken down by US cyberwarriors.
Farhat highlighted another wrinkle that he felt was not being considered by the reactions to the NSA spying scandal: the potential espionage of hardware and equipment.
“No one is talking about equipment. About a year ago the US House Intelligence Committee investigated Chinese firms like Huawei. They warned against working with these Chinese companies because there seemed to be espionage on the hardware side. It’s probably the same with equipment manufacturers in the West, who likely cooperate with intelligence agencies. Don’t be surprised,” Farhat stressed.
Moreover, both Farhat and the expert were unequivocal about the inability of ISPs in Lebanon to defend or seek legal recourse from surveillance by states on such a massive scale.
“The servers are in the US. It is not passing through the neutral country. Also, since I cannot simply buy Internet or connect with my own cable, I have to go through the Lebanese government. It is out of my control, it is under the control of the government. My traffic is mixed with all the traffic that leaves Lebanon and goes to US and Europe,” Farhat said.
“We are barely struggling to keep the privacy intact within Lebanon,” Minister of Telecommunications Nicolas Sehnaoui said in a phone conversation with Al-Akhbar on the matter.
“Our worries are about Lebanese privacy under Lebanese law. On the international side, this is a matter that concerns everyone,” he added.
When asked about the possibility that the Lebanese government will seek clarification or assurances from the American officials that private data of Lebanese citizens were secure, he responded bluntly:
“Lebanon is a very small country. We cannot protect ourselves considering that the Internet servers are based in the US. How can she [the American ambassador] assure me of something when her country is doing the opposite? If you read the news on this issue, they [the American government] are infringing on the privacy of non-Americans and even Americans...Any Lebanese and non-Lebanese using Google or Facebook, the NSA has a direct link to it. Not much you can do. It is up to major international bodies, like the UN, Human Rights Commission or the EU or the American people themselves to ask for a change in this behavior.”Requests for comment from Al-Akhbar to the US Embassy in Beirut on the NSA spying scandal were not answered at the time of publication.