https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/the-nsa-worked-to-track-down-bitcoin-use... https://www.reddit.com/search?sort=top&t=week&q=nsa+bitcoin https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&dateRange=pastWeek&query=nsa+bitcoin https://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=nsa+bitcoin OAKSTAR MONKEYROCKET aka THUNDERISLAND "agency working to unmask Bitcoin users about six months before Ulbricht was arrested, and that it had worked to monitor Liberty Reserve around the same time" "American spies were also working to crack Liberty Reserve" "analysts have .. tracked down senders / receivers of Bitcoin" the agency was interested in surveilling some competing cryptocurrencies, "Bitcoin is #1 priority," "using this “browsing product,” which “the NSA can then exploit.” "These programs involve ventures with US companies." Staff travel to "Virginia partner / these extremely patriotic business associates" highly cloaked. " Partner provided first/last name metadata... large influx of traffic... ftp process... causing disk space to fill up " Powers also used for traditional police work “other targeted users will include those... International / Organised Crime and Narcotics...Follow-The-Money" missions " cyber targets that utilize online e-currency services... There’s no elaboration on who is considered a “cyber target.” " " that the NSA would “launch an entire operation ... under false pretenses” just to track targets is “pernicious,” ... Such a practice could spread distrust of privacy software in general, particularly in areas like Iran where such tools are desperately needed by dissidents. This “feeds a narrative that the U.S. is untrustworthy,” " "Despite Bitcoin’s reputation for privacy... you should really lower your expectations of privacy on this network.” " financial privacy “is something that matters incredibly” to the Bitcoin community, and expects that “people who are privacy conscious will switch to privacy-oriented coins” after learning of the NSA’s work here. " " If the government’s criminal investigations secretly relied on NSA spying, that would be a serious concern. Individuals facing criminal prosecution have a right to know how the government came by its evidence, so that they can challenge whether the government’s methods were lawful. That is a basic principle of due process. The government should not be hiding the true sources for its evidence in court by inventing a different trail. " https://theintercept.com/2017/11/30/nsa-surveillance-fisa-section-702/ " Civil liberties advocates have long suspected that the Justice Department is underreporting Section 702 cases in order to limit court challenges to the controversial law. Some theorize that the government conceals Section 702 use through a process known as “parallel construction,” in which evidence obtained from the warrantless surveillance authority is reobtained through traditional FISA authorization, and the government only discloses the latter authority in U.S. District Court. One defense lawyer referred to this practice in a court filing as “laundering” Section 702 evidence. " “ The government intercepts Americans’ emails and phone calls in vast quantities using this spying law and stores them in databases for years,” said Patrick Toomey, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “FBI agents around the country then go searching through that trove of data as a matter of course, including in domestic criminal investigations. " " If the FBI uses parallel construction to conceal intelligence community information, it would not be the only federal law enforcement agency doing so. In 2013, Reuters obtained documents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that showed how agents were trained to “recreate” investigative trails to conceal how intelligence intercepts helped to identify criminal targets. "