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A Hacking Group Is Selling iPhone Spyware to Governments:

These days it seems like every government has a far-reaching and well-developed digital surveillance operation, complete with defense, international espionage, and offensive components. Smaller nations even join spy alliances to pool resources. But there are still many nation-states that for various reasons prefer not to handle their cyber intelligence development in-house. So they do what we all do when we need software: They buy it from a vendor.

On Thursday, researchers published evidence that an established private cyberarms dealer called NSO Group, whose clientele primarily comprises governments, has been selling masterful spyware that is delivered to mobile devices through a series of critical vulnerabilities in Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. Once established on a device, this tool, known as Pegasus, can surveil virtually anything, relaying phone calls, messages, emails, calendar data, contacts, keystrokes, audio and video feeds, and more back to whomever is controlling the attack.

How Poland’s intrusive new spying law could bug world leaders at NATO summit:

Polish spies could be secretly eyeballing world leaders attending the NATO summit in Warsaw, but it’s impossible to know if such snooping is taking place—all thanks to a new law that came into force just last week.

The new anti-terrorism legislation was signed by Polish president Andrzej Duda on June 22. It came into force one week later. Under the law, secret surveillance may be carried out on any foreigner for up to three months without a court order. This includes undercover audio and video taping, bugging private premises, and accessing private electronic and phone communications.

FBI’s Secret Surveillance Tech Budget Is ‘Hundreds of Millions’:

In December 2015, The Washington Post reported the budget of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division at between $600 and $800 million, but officials refused to confirm the exact amount.

NSA Looking to Exploit Internet of Things, Including Biomedical Devices, Official Says:

“We’re looking at it sort of theoretically from a research point of view right now,” Richard Ledgett, the NSA’s deputy director, said at a conference on military technology at Washington’s Newseum on Friday.

Biomedical devices could be a new source of information for the NSA’s data hoards — “maybe a niche kind of thing … a tool in the toolbox,” he said, though he added that there are easier ways to keep track of overseas terrorists and foreign intelligence agents.

When asked if the entire scope of the Internet of Things — billions of interconnected devices — would be “a security nightmare or a signals intelligence bonanza,” he replied, “Both.”

In 1971, Muhammad Ali Helped Undermine the FBI’s Illegal Spying on Americans:

SINCE HIS DEATH a few days ago, countless tributes to Muhammad Ali have brought to life the memories of his extraordinary accomplishments inside and outside boxing. But one thing has gotten little attention: Ali provided cover for a burglary that changed history.

It was March 8, 1971, the night of Ali’s first fight with Joe Frazier, and the noise from that epic battle provided cover for the break-in of an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. The burglary, by eight activists who stole every file in the office, revealed the illegal spying operations that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had organized against a broad swath of Americans, including Martin Luther King Jr. The revelations led to congressional investigations and major reforms of all intelligence agencies.

In the annals of break-ins, this may be the only time the perpetrators purposely chose the night of a boxing match. During their planning, one of the Media burglars remembered that a boxing match that was predicted to be — as it was — the fight of the century would take place March 8 at Madison Square Garden. The burglars thought the buzz of radios and televisions tuned to the fight might serve as a distraction from noises they would make while breaking into the FBI office in Media, a small town near Philadelphia. They also thought that every police officer in the area, not to mention FBI agents, might be totally absorbed in the fight that night.

They were right. Days later, when FBI agents interviewed people who lived on the floors above the office, some said they heard nothing because they were listening to the fight. The distraction of the fight helped the burglars, who called themselves the Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI, walk away with more than 1,000 documents, including one that revealed the FBI’s secret COINTELPRO operations. These operations involved a panoply of dirty tricks that ranged from planting disinformation about antiwar activists, to planning the murder of a member of the Black Panthers, and sending innocent people to prison on the basis of false testimony by agents and informers.

Facing Data Deluge, Secret U.K. Spying Report Warned of Intelligence Failure:

A SECRET REPORT WARNED that British spies may have put lives at risk because their surveillance systems were sweeping up more data than could be analyzed, leading them to miss clues to possible security threats.

The concern was sent to top British government officials in an explosive classified document, which outlined methods being developed by the United Kingdom’s domestic intelligence agency to covertly monitor internet communications.

The Security Service, also known as MI5, had become the “principal collector and exploiter” of digital communications within the U.K., the eight-page report noted, but the agency’s surveillance capabilities had “grown significantly over the last few years.”

MI5 “can currently collect (whether itself or through partners …) significantly more than it is able to exploit fully,” the report warned. “This creates a real risk of ‘intelligence failure’ i.e. from the Service being unable to access potentially life-saving intelligence from data that it has already collected.”

Stingrays, the Spy Tool the Government Tried, and Failed, to Hide:

Stingrays, a secretive law enforcement surveillance tool, are one of the most controversial technologies in the government’s spy kit. But prosecutors and law enforcement agencies around the country have exerted such great effort to deceive courts and the public about stingrays that learning how and when the technology is used is difficult.

This week, the government even went so far as to assert in a court filing (.pdf) that articles published by WIRED and other media outlets that expose the deception “are full of unproven claims by defense attorneys and advocates [and] are not proper proof of anything.”