01.31.14

NSA Watch: New Faces, Same Policy, Obama Defends Clapper

Posted in Law at 5:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Today’s news about privacy and the NSA in particular

• Support the Making of the Animated Movie “Reclaim Our Privacy!”

  La Quadrature du Net launches a crowd-funding campaign to support the making of the upcoming animation movie about privacy, mass surveillance, and the urgency to rethink our relationship with technology. Help us finance this project!

• Ukrainian police use cellphones to track protesters, court order shows

  Demonstrators protesting Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych suspected their cellphone location data was being tracked since at least last week, when people in the vicinity of a clash between riot police and protesters received a chilling text message. It read: “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”

• Kerry meets Merkel amid anger at NSA eavesdropping

• Kerry seeks to calm German anger at NSA reports

  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that relations with Germany have gone through a “rough patch” recently because of revelations about NSA spying, but insisted that the two countries can put the episode behind them.

• Jairam Ramesh among leaders angered by NSA surveillance

  Leaders from several countries, including Union Minister Jairam Ramesh, have reacted angrily to revelations that the US spied on their governments at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, according to a media report.

• DW’s Webtalk on the NSA and Syria

  Leaders from several countries, including Union Minister Jairam Ramesh, have reacted angrily to revelations that the US spied on their governments at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, according to a media report.

• Germany says US not co-operating enough on NSA scandal

  German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere at the Munich Security Conference Friday said the US is not doing enough to restore trust after the NSA scandal: “The information we are being provided with is not satisfactory and the political damage [of the NSA's work] is greater than the security benefit.”

• Kerry admits ‘rough period’ in US-German ties over NSA

  US Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged Friday that relations with Germany had gone through a “rough period” of late over NSA snooping but that shared security priorities would keep the countries close.

• Why the NSA gets higher marks for privacy than business

  Those of you following the steady stream of news stories on the National Security Agency’s insatiable appetite for information already know that the spy agency has figured out how to snatch data from mobile apps. Since 2007, The NSA and its partner Britain’s Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) have siphoned from apps address books, buddy lists, phone logs and geographic data.

• NSA pursues quantum technology

  NSA also wishes to develop the technology so that it is capable of breaking modern Internet security.

• Deutsche Telekom: NSA/GCHQ revelations an opportunity

  German operator group Deutsche Telekom has hailed last year’s revelations that the US spy agency NSA and the UK’s GCHQ had been monitoring ordinary citizens’ browsing and messaging habits as an “opportunity” for operators to provide data privacy and data security services.

• Why NSA Snooping is About a Lot More Than Just Our Privacy

  Alessandro Acquisti in his TED talk tells us why privacy matters in a world in which it is vanishing. “Privacy is not about having something negative to hide,” he says.

  Indeed, the privacy of all Americans is a matter of principle, enshrined in the Constitution. It used to be we had control of what we wanted people to know about us, good and bad. But not anymore.

  As troubling as this assault on privacy is, the Edward Snowden revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance show that something even more dangerous is afoot. And it’s about what the NSA can do with this information they are collecting on us.

• Snowden revelations of NSA spying on Copenhagen climate talks spark anger

  Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show NSA kept US negotiators abreast of their rivals’ positions at 2009 summitfree

• NSA’s spying on climate talks spark anger

  Developing countries have reacted angrily to revelations that the United States spied on other governments at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

• Obama to Nominate Navy Admiral as NSA Director

• Navy cybersecurity chief to lead NSA

• Obama to name Navy Vice-Adm Michael Rogers to lead NSA

• Vice-admiral Michael Rogers to take command of embattled NSA

  Vice-admiral Michael Rogers, the commander of the US navy’s tenth fleet and its Fleet Cyber Command, will take over from NSA Director Keith Alexander, who reluctantly became a global figure in the wake of the Snowden revelations.

• Obama Says James Clapper ‘Should Have Been More Careful’ In How He Lied To Congress

  any of us are still quite disappointed that James Clapper has kept his job as Director of National Intelligence after flat out lying to Congress over whether or not the NSA spied on Americans. There have been increasing calls from within Congress to have Clapper investigated and possibly prosecuted for the felony of lying to Congress, but there appears to be no movement there at all. Not only does the Obama administration seem to want to protect one of their own, but it’s also made it clear that something like that would make it look like Ed Snowden “won” and they can’t allow that sort of thing.

• Obama Stands by Intelligence Chief

• French Surveillance Programs Eerily Echo The NSA’s, Right Down To Codifying Unconstitutional Collections

  As the NSA leaks have expanded to detail spying activities in other countries, those governments affected have had a variety of reactions. In some cases, legitimately questionable tactics were exposed (potential economic espionage in Brazil, tapping German chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone) and the responses were genuinely outraged. In other cases, the outrage was temporary and somewhat muted, suggesting these countries were allowing the NSA to take the heat for their own questionable surveillance programs aimed at their citizens.

• After NSA Backdoors, Security Experts Leave RSA for a Conference They Can Trust

  We thought we won the Crypto Wars, the fight to make strong encryption accessible to all, in the 1990s.1 We were wrong. Last month, Reuters broke news about a deal struck between the popular computer security firm RSA and the National Security Agency. RSA reportedly accepted $10 million from NSA to make Dual_EC_DRBG—an intentionally weakened random number generator—the default in its widely used BSAFE encryption toolkit.

• Terror suspect challenges NSA surveillance programme

  In the motion filed in federal court in Denver on Wednesday with help from the American Civil Liberties Union, Jamshid Muhtorov also requested that prosecutors disclose more about how surveillance law was used in his case. Muhtorov denies the terror charges he faces.

• NSA: no terrorists caught, yet entangled in everything

  There is so much missing or purposefully obfuscated in the debate about NSA/Five Eyes spying, US Government illegality, CIA collusion with al-Qaeda, Guantanamo, 9/11, torture, drones, Afghanistan, Iraq and everything that millions of people have been outraged about for over a decade, but the most striking is that almost no one is proposing closing these organizations down and few are talking about prosecuting those responsible.

• NSA: new privacy officer helps boost agency’s reputation

  The NSA has finally found an officer for its civil liberties and privacy office. A new member of the NSA team will have to provide expert advice as well as develop measures for strengthening the NSA’s privacy protection. The appointed officer seems to be a good choice for the NSA whose reputation has been tarnished, but at the same time this raises some experts’ doubts.

• Canadian spies scooped up airport Wi-Fi in NSA trial: Reports

  Documents from Edward Snowden reveal that Canada’s foreign signals intelligence agency picked up metadata on airport travellers from free Wi-Fi available at a major Canadian airport.

• CSEC Snowden docs: MPs grill defence minister on spying revelation

• Canadian Gov’t Responds To Spying Revelations By Saying It’s All A Lie And Calling Glenn Greenwald A ‘Porn Spy’

• UK public has shrugged off NSA leaks, says David Cameron

  Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday he believes the British public has largely shrugged off the espionage disclosures of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, telling lawmakers that people seem to be satisfied that U.K. spies are doing their jobs.

• Chris Erway: NSA surveillance threatens Rhode Island

  When the National Security Agency’s surveillance program PRISM was disclosed in early June, the immediate question wasn’t if the program would harm the U.S. tech industry but how badly. Six months and many more disclosures later, it’s clear NSA surveillance is an economic millstone that threatens to drag down the U.S. tech industry.

• NSA Knows: Secret digital back doors

  Two decades ago, the National Security Agency (NSA) sought legislation requiring a “back door” in all public encryption technologies, enabling the agency to monitor electronic communications even when the parties sought to shield them from prying eyes. That push failed. The NSA then embarked on an effort to accomplish essentially the same goal in secret.

• If CIA, MI6, NSA and GCHQ disappeared we would be safer – David Shayler

  The US relationship with the Saudis appears to be changing and even though several decades ago Saudi agreed to sell the US oil at $10 a barrel in perpetuity, the love affair appears to be over. According to former MI5 officer and whistleblower David Shayler there may be plans to change the official story of 9/11 and the US start pointing the finger at Saudi Arabia. Mr. Shayler believes the way to stop all of the illegality being committed by agencies such as CIA, NSA, MI6 and GCHQ is to simply stop funding them.

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