Japan: On Team FVEY since the 1950's

[grarpamp]

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/24/japans-secret-deals-with-the-nsa-that-expand-global-surveillance/

Japan both 0wn3d and embarassed, documents in link.


According to the agency’s documents, its relationship with Japan dates
back to the 1950s. NSA’s presence in the country was for many years
managed out of a “cover office” in the Minato area of downtown Tokyo,
within a U.S. military compound called the Hardy Barracks. From there,
NSA maintained close relations with a Japanese surveillance agency
that it refers to as Japan’s Directorate for Signals Intelligence, or
SIGINT.

Beyond Tokyo, NSA has a presence today at several other facilities in
Japan. The most important of these is located at a large U.S. airbase
in Misawa, about 400 miles north of Tokyo. At what it calls its
“Misawa Security Operations Center,” the agency carries out a mission
under the code name LADYLOVE. Using about a dozen powerful antennas
contained within large golf ball-like white domes, it vacuums up
communications — including phone calls, faxes, and internet data —
that are transmitted across satellites in the Asia-Pacific region.
NSA’s operations in Japan are not limited to monitoring the
communications of nearby adversaries.

At Misawa, the NSA began integrating hacking operations into its
repertoire of capabilities. One such method it deployed at the base is
called a “Quantum Insert” attack, which involves monitoring the
internet browsing habits of people targeted for surveillance, before
covertly redirecting them to a malicious website or server that
infects their computers with an “implant.”

NSA documents reveal that Yokota is home to what the agency calls its
Engineering Support Facility, which supplies equipment used for
surveillance operations across the world. In 2004, the agency opened a
major new 32,000 square foot building at the site – about half the
size of a football field – for the repair and manufacture of
surveillance antennas

STAKECLAIM. The NSA does not appear to have a large number of
employees stationed on the island; instead, it remotely operates the
Okinawa facility from a “24-hour collection operations center” in
Hawaii.

An April 2013 document revealed that the NSA had provided the Japanese
Directorate for SIGINT with an installation of XKEYSCORE, a mass
surveillance system the NSA describes as its “widest reaching” for
sweeping up data from computer networks, monitoring “nearly everything
a typical user does on the internet.”

And in September 2012, Japan began sharing information with the NSA
that could be used to identify particular kinds of malicious software
being used by hackers.

the NSA had obtained domestic court orders enabling it to conduct
surveillance on U.S. territory of Japanese officials and the Bank of
Japan

The NSA participates in a group called the SIGINT Seniors Pacific,
which has included surveillance agencies from Australia, Canada, the
United Kingdom, France, India, New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea, and
Singapore.

At the end of proceedings in Anchorage, the moratorium stood and Japan
was not granted any special exemptions. Japan’s representatives were
furious. “This whaling hypocrisy leads us to seriously question the
nature by which Japan will continue participating in this forum,”
complained Joji Morishita,

Hiroshi Miyashita, a former Japanese government data protection
official, told The Intercept that Japan’s funding of U.S. intelligence
activities is withheld from public disclosure under a state secrecy
law, which he criticized. “It’s our money — Japanese taxpayers’
money,” he said. “We should know how much was spent for intelligence
activities in Japan.” “There is no oversight mechanism,” Miyashita
said. “There is limited knowledge of activities within the bases.”

“Japanese citizens know almost nothing about Japanese government
surveillance,” said Daisuke. “It is extremely secret.”

At the time, Japan expressed concerns that unintended disclosure of
its participation would be too high a risk and had other reasons as
well.”