Corporate undercover nation-state agents

11 Oct 2014

      https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/10/core-secrets/

"But the briefing document suggests another category of employees—ones 
who are secretly working for the NSA without anyone else being aware. 
This kind of double game, in which the NSA works with and against its 
corporate partners, already characterizes some of the agency’s work, in 
which information or concessions that it desires are surreptitiously 
acquired if corporations will not voluntarily comply. The reference to 
“under cover” agents jumped out at two security experts who reviewed the 
NSA documents for The Intercept.

“That one bullet point, it’s really strange,” said Matthew Green, a 
cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University. “I don’t know how to 
interpret it.” He added that the cryptography community in America would 
be surprised and upset if it were the case that “people are inside [an 
American] company covertly communicating with NSA and they are not known 
to the company or to their fellow employees.”

The ACLU’s Soghoian said technology executives are already deeply 
concerned about the prospect of clandestine agents on the payroll to 
gain access to highly sensitive data, including encryption keys, that 
could make the NSA’s work “a lot easier.”

“As more and more communications become encrypted, the attraction for 
intelligence agencies of stealing an encryption key becomes 
irresistible,” he said. “It’s such a juicy target.”

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