Bonum Certa Men Certa

"NSA Director Stepping Down to Spend Less Time With Your Family"

Keith B. Alexander



Summary: NSA news of interest and some international impact, especially in the United Kindgom

Keith Alexander is said to be "stepping down" and the above quote is a nice joke found in Twitter. Mr. Alexander is not going to be sued and he is not going to jail, either. When people have loyalty to a flag rather than loyalty to human values and principles, then as long as they stay within the country of that flag, they'll enjoy immunity (Bush and Kissinger can't travel much around the world, for fear of getting jailed for war crimes).



Let's look at some of the latest news about the NSA. First of all, famous cryptographer Adi Shamir is yet another person who can't enter the US, possibly because of his views [1]. Having spoken about back doors, he cannot enter a conference sponsored by the National Security Agency -- the agency which lies about the public "dangers" of the leaks [2] (the only danger is to the budget of the NSA). Greenwald is going to have more of a day field with leaks [3] and Edward Snowden, who now gets a platform through other whistleblowers [4], debunks the lies we see in the corporate media [5-6]. Maybe it's truly high time for Greenwald to step out of the British press, which finds itself embroiled in domestic scandals [7-9] as the attack on the press here intensifies (comments suggest that Greenwald and his new publisher will work far away from the reach of US political aggression and diplomatic blackmail).

Domestic surveillance [10] and abuses of the law [11,12] by US law enforcement currently breed debate and other misconceptions are being tackled [13] because those who abuse the law really struggle to find justification. They make a mockery of "law enforcement". Let's hope that many more heads will roll, not just Alexander's. We were promised a "war on terror" and in due course we were all labeled "terrorists" and lost our dignity. Who's the real terrorist here (terrorising people)? And how do we restore human dignity now?

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. Cryptographer Adi Shamir Prevented from Attending NSA History Conference
    In this email message to colleagues, Israeli cryptographer Adi Shamir recounts the difficulties he faced in getting a visa to attend the 2013 Cryptologic History Symposium sponsored by the National Security Agency. Adi Shamir is the “S” in the RSA public-key algorithm and is “one of the finest cryptologists in the world today,” according to historian David Kahn. The NSA Symposium begins tomorrow. For the reasons described below, Dr. Shamir will not be there.


  2. 10 reasons not to trust claims national security is being threatened by leaks
    Time and again GCHQ and other intelligence agencies have spuriously used 'national security arguments' to suppress information and stifle debate


  3. Why Pierre Omidyar decided to join forces with Glenn Greenwald for a new venture in news
    Yesterday word leaked out that Glenn Greenwald would be leaving The Guardian to help create some new thing backed by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. I just got off the phone with Omidyar and can report more details about what the new thing is and how it came to be.

    [...]

    NewCo is new venture— a company not a charity. It is not a project of Omidyar Network. It is separate from his philanthropy, he said. He said he will be putting a good deal of his time, as well as his capital, into it. I asked how large a commitment he was prepared to make in dollars. For starters: the $250 million it would have taken to buy the Washington Post.


  4. My Visit With Edward Snowden
    He is an “asylee,” not a “fugitive,” as the mainstream media in America describe him routinely—even some of the trusted journalists who write exclusives based on his revelations. An asylee has the right to be left alone, not hunted like an animal. But similar to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Snowden is in a new purgatory the US has created: free but not free. Snowden is technically free, but still circumscribed by the specter of his home country, which refuses to recognize Russia’s grant of political asylum under international law and human rights agreements.


  5. Ed Snowden Confirms He Took None Of The Documents To Russia
    As we noted last month, from earlier comments Ed Snowden had made about it being impossible for him to reveal the documents he leaked to the Russians or Chinese, it seemed quite likely that he got rid of the documents and had no copies any more himself. This seemed even more likely after the report from earlier this week that the four laptops he took were more of a diversion than anything else. And now, Snowden has confirmed directly that he handed the documents off to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald and did not keep copies for himself, as he's now explained to the NY Times' James Risen.


  6. Snowden Says He Took No Secret Files to Russia


  7. UK spy agencies inquiry to take public evidence
    Parliament's intelligence watchdog is to hear evidence from the public as part of a widening of its inquiry into UK spy agencies' intercept activities.


  8. GCHQ accused of monitoring privileged emails between lawyers and clients
    Allegation relates to eight Libyan nationals and comes in wake of Guardian's revelations about GCHQ and Tempora programme


  9. UK Prime Minister Urges Investigation Of The Guardian Over Snowden Leaks; There Shall Be No Free Press


  10. SD Times Blog: Oakland launches new program using Big Data to bolster police surveillance
    The city of Oakland is taking two popular buzzwords—“Big Data” and “surveillance state”—and combining them into a new program to aid in law enforcement.

    Joining similar police initiatives in Massachusetts, Texas and New York City, the Oakland Police Department is re-appropriating US$7 million in federal grants initially purposed for preventing terror attacks, and using it to construct a new surveillance center. Scheduled to open next summer, the project, formerly referred to as Oakland’s Domain Awareness Center, will electronically gather and analyze data around the clock from a variety of sensors and databases, displaying selected info on a bank of giant monitors.


  11. Feds Sued for Hiding NSA Spying From Terror Defendants
    Five years after Congress authorized warrantless electronic spying, the Obama administration has never divulged to a single defendant that they were the target of this type of phone or email surveillance — despite lawmakers’ claims the snooping has stopped terrorist plots and resulted in arrests.


  12. Door May Open for Challenge to Secret Wiretaps
    Five years after Congress authorized a sweeping warrantless surveillance program, the Justice Department is setting up a potential Supreme Court test of whether it is constitutional by notifying a criminal defendant — for the first time — that evidence against him derived from the eavesdropping, according to officials.


  13. ‘Individual privacy vs collective security’? NO!
    Privacy is often misconstrued as a purely individual right – indeed, it is sometimes characterised as an ‘anti-community’ right, a right to hide yourself away from society. Society, in this view, would be better if none of us had any privacy – a ‘transparent society’. In practice, nothing could be further from the truth: privacy is something that has collective benefit, supporting coherent societies. Privacy isn’t so much about ‘hiding’ things as being able to have some sort of control over your life. The more control people have, the more freely and positively they are likely to behave. Most of us realise this when we consider our own lives. We wear clothes, we present ourselves in particular ways, and we behave more positively as a result. We talk more freely with our friends and relations knowing (or assuming) that what we talk about won’t be plastered all over noticeboards, told to all our colleagues, to the police and so forth. Privacy has a crucial social function – it’s not about individuals vs. society. Very much the opposite.




Recent Techrights' Posts

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
 
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025