NSA Watch: Climate as 'Terrorism', War on Journalism and Anonymity, Anger in Europe and Angry Birds
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-30 12:37:56 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-30 12:37:56 UTC
Summary: A roundup of yesterday's and today's news about the NSA
New Leaks
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The document, with portions marked "top secret," indicates that the NSA was monitoring the communications of other countries ahead of the conference, and intended to continue doing so throughout the meeting. Posted on an internal NSA website on Dec. 7, 2009, the first day of the Copenhagen summit, it states that "analysts here at NSA, as well as our Second Party partners, will continue to provide policymakers with unique, timely, and valuable insights into key countries' preparations and goals for the conference, as well as the deliberations within countries on climate change policies and negotiation strategies."
Illegal Collection of 'Evidence'
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A man charged with aiding a terrorist organization has asked a U.S. court to throw out information collected by the National Security Agency, saying the NSA's surveillance of his Internet communications violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Prosecuting Anonymisers
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In oral arguments heard on Tuesday, Lavabit and federal prosecutors each presented their cases in front of a three-judge panel at the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. The case is an appeal of contempt-of-court charges against Lavabit, a now-defunct e-mail hosting service that once offered secure communication.
In the summer of 2013, Lavabit was ordered to provide real-time e-mail monitoring of one of its users, widely believed to be Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor-turned-leaker. When Lavabit told the feds that the only way it could hand over communications was through an internal process that would deliver results 60 days after any communication was sent, the authorities returned with a search warrant for Lavabit's SSL keys, which could decrypt the traffic of all of Lavabit's users. Ladar Levison, the CEO of Lavabit, handed over the SSL keys but then shut down his 10-year-old business rather than expose all of Lavabit's users.
War on Journalism
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James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, has issued a blistering condemnation of Edward Snowden, calling the surveillance disclosures published by the Guardian and other news outlets a “perfect storm” that would endanger American lives.
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Director of National Intelligence James Clapper urged former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and his “accomplices” to return leaked documents during a hearing on Wednesday.
Europe
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A former Ukrainian president warned on Wednesday that the country is now on “the brink of civil war,” and Russia added to the gloom by announcing the suspension of its financial aid package, which was all that had been keeping Ukraine solvent.
[...]
Protesters for weeks had suspected that the government was using location data from cellphones near the demonstration to pinpoint people for political profiling, and they received alarming confirmation when a court formally ordered a telephone company to hand over such data.
Earlier this month, protesters at a clash with riot police officers received text messages on their phones saying they had been “registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”
Then, three cellphone companies — Kyivstar, MTS and Life — denied that they had provided the location data to the government or had sent the text messages. Kyivstar suggested that it was instead the work of a “pirate” cellphone tower set up in the area.
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Former employee of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Edward Snowden will be invited to the spring session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), APA’s Europe bureau reports.
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Chancellor says Germany and US still 'far apart' on sweeping surveillance and spying activities revealed by Edward Snowden
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Berlin and Washington are still "far apart" in their views on the US National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance of Germany but they remain close allies, Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament on Wednesday.
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The German government and the German Federal Intelligence Service are facing legal action because they allegedly aided the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) data collection program.
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THE EUROPEAN UNION JUSTICE COMMISSIONER has spoken out on Data Protection Day about national security agency surveillance.
US Politics
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Ever since leaked NSA documents first started popping up this summer, the battle against NSA surveillance has proceeded on multiple fronts: legislators pushing for new laws, journalists pushing for new stories, and tech companies fighting to regain users’ trust. Yesterday, one of the major fronts closed down. Since July, tech companies had been putting pressure on the Department of Justice, fighting for the right to say more about their interactions with law enforcement. Yesterday they made peace, reaching a settlement and withdrawing a class action suit that had drawn in some of the most powerful companies in America. On this front at least, reformers have likely gotten all they’re going to get.
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Senator Patrick Leahy questioned how the Constitution allows the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of U.S. telephone records and repeated his calls for President Barack Obama’s administration to end the program during a hearing Wednesday.
The Obama administration should heed the recent advice of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) and end the phone records collection program, said Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.
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The NSA's new data center in Utah has provided the flashpoint for legislation targeted at "nullifying" the agency by cutting off its access to public utilities and/or leveraging the powers granted to states to combat federal government overreach. An activist group known as The Tenth Amendment Center proposed a state law that would cut off the new data center's much needed water supply, along with any other public utility or service, like sanitation and road repair, in hopes of (at minimum) forcing the NSA to reconsider its collection tactics, or failing that, to find a new home.
Angry Birds
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Some users trying to access the www.angrybirds.com website late Tuesday were greeted by an image depicting the Angry Birds game characters accompanied by the text "Spying Birds." The U.S. National Security Agency's logo was also visible in the image.
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Reacting to recent revelations that smartphone apps such as Angry Birds and Google Maps are being used by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarter (GCHQ) to spy on their users, the Application Developers Alliance has condemned the NSA for damaging the industry.
BBC
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When the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers published the first of Edward Snowden's NSA-GCHQ leaks in June, it unleashed a stream of abbreviations, acronyms and jargon describing the cyberspies' activities.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- If Your Company Lost About 30% of Its 'Value' in 3 Months, Then Maybe It Was Never Worth What You Claimed
- Does that make sense?
- Pleroma is Dying
- The last social control media that I joined was Pleroma
- Asia and Social Control Media
- statCounter reckons it's down from over 10% to just 3% since it began tracking those things
- Anonymous Threats Against My Wife and Against Yours Truly
- Promoting GNU/Linux and condemning people who attack GNU/Linux is not a crime
- Decades-Long Microsofter (Darryl K. Taft) and TIOBE Conflate Microsoft GitHub (Proprietary) With FOSS in Microsoft-Sponsored 'News' Site
- We do not intend to do a lengthy debunking because we covered this subject several times in the past
- Microsoft Cuts Continue, Visitor Center in Redmond Shut Down
- This goes on and on, leading up to the next giant wave of mass layoffs
- IBM Bubble Deflating After James Kavanaugh's Accounting Trick With 'Toxic Assets' Comes Under SEC Scrutiny
- If something goes up based on false speculations, bonus numbers and self-serving lies, then it'll come back down, eventually...
- The EPO's Corruption and Violation of Rules is Spreading to the United Kingdom (Software Patents)
- Yesterday a letter was sent to the chief regarding salaries while reminding him of the next strike, which is only 11 days away
- IBM Continues Tanking Today, Already $58+ Lower Than Recent High, Insiders Explain Why
- The same CFO from the inception of Kyndryl is still the CFO at IBM
- Put Criminals in Prison, Not People Who Report the Crimes
- Can people be sent to prison for opposing crime?
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- Links 13/02/2026: SUSE Uses Microsoft Internally, MElon's Company Helps Turn Epstein Files Into Child Abuse (After the Pornography Scandals)
- Links for the day
- African Browser Choices Show a Growing Problem in the World Wide Web
- World Wide Web (WWW) becoming little but a transport layer for a particular proprietary application (Google Chrome) [...] we're back to the late 1990s
- If You Want Digital Freedom, Then Follow Richard Stallman, the "Linux" Brand Has Changed and OSI is Microsoft (GitHub)
- If you want something stable and predictable, then stick with GNU, the GPL, and GCC
- Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and SRA Failing to Curb SLAPPs Against People Who Expose Wrongdoing
- We'll soon show messages that we transmitted to politicians
- Beware the Latest IBM SPAM, IBM is Already Down "After Hours"
- After a harsh day in Wall Street IBM's shares area already down again (after trading hours)
- Radicalism in Our Communities is Mostly Corporate, Not Grassroots
- Infiltration and systematic destruction can be shallowly painted as "inducing manners"
- Life Gets Better After Social Control Media
- Don't become part of these experiments
- statCounter Suggests Americans Are Dumping Social Control Media
- Are Americans getting fed up with social control media and quitting in droves?
- Back Doors and Fake Security
- They've militarised everything, even people's home computers
- Cost-Cutting and Book-Cooking at IBM
- It's like cutting salaries by more than 50%
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 12, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, February 12, 2026
- Mainstream Media Intentionally Ignoring EPO Strikes
- “EPO on Strike!”
- Jeffrey Epstein crypto disclosure: uncanny timing, Bitcoin demise, pump-and-dump, ponzi schemes
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 12/02/2026: Avoiding Coffee, Trying Ubuntu, and "Open Source Robot"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Slop CEO Speaks of Layoffs
- They will go along with the "replaced by AI" baloney
- In Systematic Contempt of the British High Court, Brett Wilson LLP Spent Two Years Lying to Courts and Breaking Rules Against Us
- We criticise Brett Wilson LLP quite lot because of its conduct
- IBM Kyndryl as "Aggressive “Enron” Accounting"
- IBM Kyndryl continues to nosedive today
- Relationships evidence: Tiago, Tassia, Thais, Antonio & Debian favoritism, nepotism
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Debian pregnancy cluster: why it is public interest
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- State of the Slop, Slopfarms Containment
- Slopfarms still exist this year, but their visibility is limited
- Links 12/02/2026: Pushback Against, "NATO Is Expected to Step Up Arctic Security"
- Links for the day
- Links 12/02/2026: "Microsoft Just Forked Windows" and Windows Notepad is a Giant Security Hole
- Links for the day
- Windows Has Become Increasingly Irrelevant
- There's a very massive wave of layoffs coming Microsoft's way
- Our Most Successful Year Ever
- The hired guns in London are eager to turn the UK into another China
- Slopfarms Waning, But Not Extinct Yet
- Metrics show that usage of LLMs is declining
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 11, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, February 11, 2026
- IBM's Stock is Crashing
- If it follows the trajectory of its satellite Kyndryl, it can fall and reach as low as $75
- Gemini Links 11/02/2026: Sunny Morning and "KiCad Aims to Ease Linux Installation"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Loses Ground in Switzerland
- One issue is, Google and Apple seem to gain at Microsoft's expense
- Microsoft Layoffs Must be Very Near (and Very Large)
- just like IBM
- Bringing Attention/Awareness of EPO Corruption and Cocaine Use to the Mainstream Media
- What has Europe become? Prey to vultures?
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part V - Everyone Seems to Agree That SRA is a Sham
- We're going to start a new series soon
- A Can of WORMS - Part V - Up Next: The Comeback of RMS in the United States
- Guess who funds the cancellers
- Threats From 'Former' Red Hat (Now IBM) Staff While IBM's Likely Accounting Fraud Attracts Public Scrutiny
- We must be getting "warm"
- Matthew J. Garrett Has Just Sent a Threat to Put My Wife and I in Prison Because His Own Spouse Says He's a Rapist
- What really intimidates him is his own spouse
- Gemini Links 11/02/2026: Terminator Trilogy and Lagrange in the Apple App Store
- Links for the day
- Links 11/02/2026: Fentanylware (CheeTok) for ICE, Jimmy Lai Shows Journalism Became 'Crime' in Hong Kong
- Links for the day
- With Firefox Measured at 2% in the United Kingdom Time is Running Out for Web Site Support for Gecko/Servo Users
- The open Web is rapidly dying while Mozilla celebrates and champions slop
- Lawsuit reactions: EFF behaviour reveals zombification, censorship
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 11/02/2026: $700 Billion Slop Bill, Social Control Media Under Political Fire for Deliberate Health Harms
- Links for the day
- Amended Input From Software Freedom Institute for EU Consultation on Free Software
- "On 3 February 2026 Software Freedom Institute lodged a submission with the European Commission's inquiry into Open Digital Ecosystems"
- Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part VI - Attacks on Staff and Attacks on the Law Merit Another New Series
- new series coming shortly
- Nadella's Mindless PR Spam Ahead of the Layoffs 'Snowball' (Adding Up Batches) Turning Into an Avalanche
- Based on recent observations, the more puff pieces we see about Nadella, the closer we get to Microsoft "pulling the trigger" on mass layoffs
- When Happens to Red Hat If (or When) IBM Collapses
- IBM is in flux because its CFO is now implicated in what seems like accounting fraud
- IBM's Financial Engineering (Accounting Fraud) Shell, Kyndryl Holdings Inc, is Insolvent
- If this was done by the very same people who still run IBM, can we expect any better from "Sugar Daddy" IBM?
- 2026 a Very Productive Year and We Have Many Big Stories to Tell
- maybe we'll produce 8,000 new articles/pages by year's end
- Clownflare is in Trouble as Its Debt More Than Doubled in Less Than a Year, Expect Further Enshittification
- Clownflare isn't free
- After the Next Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Washington State Could be #1 for US Layoffs
- Microsoft Corp shares were down yesterday
- EPO's Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH): The EPO is Generally “Managed by Excel” (Microsoft)
- The current management has basically defined corruption to be "success"
- With an IBM Company Down Over 75% After Apparent Accounting Fraud the IBM Insiders Want Answers From James Krabanaugh
- He has no technical qualifications
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 10, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, February 10, 2026