Weekend News: Surveillance, Drones, CIA, and Ukraine
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-10 09:29:54 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-10 09:29:54 UTC
Summary: More weekend news (plus early Monday news) about issues scarcely covered in the wider media/press
NSA/Surveillance
-
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed two briefs on Friday challenging secret government demands for information known as National Security Letters (NSLs) with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The briefs—one filed on behalf of a telecom company and another for an Internet company—remain under seal because the government continues to insist that even identifying the companies involved might endanger national security.
-
Has it only been 10 months since Edward Snowden's NSA revelations changed the world? Can you even remember what the world was like, before he gave 50,000 -- no, 200,000 -- no, wait, 2 million-- secret documents to Glenn Greenwald: smoking guns that exposed Washington's global surveillance state, which far outstripped the wildest, wettest dreams of the Stasi, of Stalin, yea of Orwell himself?
-
Speaking over Skype from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his living situation is a bit like prison - with a more lenient visitor policy.
-
We never knew the National Security Agency were such fans of the Master Sword.
-
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt wants you to know he's "pretty sure" your data is safe from surveillance.
-
There are also other eras I could proclaim, the Era of Severe Money Troubles, since some of the surveillance is justified by lack of monetary responsibility, and the Era of Complacency, because of people not doing anything about the mounting surveillance when they could. I could even call this the Era of Cyber Warfare. But one thing at a time.
-
National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden answered questions before the European Parliament on Friday, saying that the United States spy agency pressures its allies to take steps towards further enabling widespread and indiscriminate surveillance.
-
We have seen how the NSA’s phony court system has acted as a substitute for genuine judicial review, allowing the NSA to build up precedents purporting to assist its constitutional claims. We have also seen that the NSA is able to obtain surveillance authorization through misrepresentations to the court, without any genuine consequence to the agency, even when discovered. In this Part, we now examine how the NSA shields its activities from review by the public court system, through the control of secret information that could be used as evidence against them.
-
Addressing thousands of audience during a teleconference interview at South by Southwest, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that Americans in exile were fast emerging as new age National security reporters.
-
CHELSEA Manning is ‘happy’ and ‘doing well’, according to her Pembrokeshire family who travelled to the US last month.
-
Julian Assange, who has been at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition, addressed attendees of SXSW via Skype, where the confirmed 'there is upcoming material' that will be released and made mention of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Drones
-
The idea of a killer robot, as a coalition of international human rights groups has dubbed the autonomous machines, conjures a humanoid Terminator-style robot. The humanoid robots Google recently bought are neat, but most machines being used or tested by national militaries are, for now, more like robotic weapons than robotic soldiers. Still, the line between useful weapons with some automated features and robot soldiers ready to kill can be disturbingly blurry.
-
Will we rescue our character, our culture, and our Constitution from a sort of 9/11 P.T.S.D?
-
As an adapter to the thinking of men of power, Obama was a quick study. It took him less than half a year as president to subscribe to Dick Cheney’s view on the need for the constant surveillance of all Americans. This had to be done for the sake of our own safety in a war without a visible end. The leading consideration here is that Obama, quite as much as George W. Bush, wants to be seen as having done everything possible to avoid the “next 9/11.” He cares far less about doing everything possible to uphold the Constitution (a word that seldom occurs in his speeches or writings). Nevertheless, if you ask him, he will be happy to declare his preference for a return to the state of civil liberties we enjoyed in the pre-2001 era. In the same way, he will order drone killings in secret and then give a speech in which he informs us that eventually this kind of killing must stop.
CIA
-
A month later, at a meeting sponsored by Schwab Capital markets, CIA executive director "Buzzy" Krongard laid out for investors what such a war would entail. "[It] will be won in large measure by forces you do not know about, in actions you will not see and in ways you may not want to know about," he said.
-
Investigators for the Senate Intelligence Committee, working in the basement of a C.I.A. facility in Northern Virginia, had obtained an internal agency review summarizing thousands of documents related to the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Parts of the C.I.A. report cast a particularly harsh light on the program, the same program the agency was in the midst of defending in a prolonged dispute with the intelligence committee.
Ukraine
-
Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchysta on March 8th said the Ukraine is ready to negotiate with Russia “at any level” over the Crimea issue, the move followed announcements by India and China that they were officially backing Russia’ right to intervene in the Crimea. Deshchysta added that international mediation efforts over the issue have made some small steps forward, including progress in efforts to establish a contact group. He also said the mediation group membership had yet to be settled, and progress is fragile. But with over a third of the world’s population backing Russia, the Ukrainian Crisis is over.
-
Double standards are on display as Western leaders attack Russia regarding Ukraine, while they themselves commit or endorse worse aggression on other countries.
-
In her March, 2011 testimony before Congress, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, lamented that the US propaganda mill was losing ground to its rivals for lack of funding. In an informal interview she went further, stating that when abroad she got her news from RT, since CNN had become obsessed with celebrity trials and failed to cover international developments. So the US Secretary of State declared publicly that her most trusted news source was....(drum roll ) Russia Today .
-
As the Euromaidan protests in the Ukrainian capitol of Kiev culminated this week, displays of open fascism and neo-Nazi extremism became too glaring to ignore. Since demonstrators filled the downtown square to battle Ukrainian riot police and demand the ouster of the corruption-stained, pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, it has been filled with far-right streetfighting men pledging to defend their country’s ethnic purity.
-
The Russian invasion of Crimea occurred in a place little known to Americans, for reasons rooted in a tangled and bloody history. The showdown between President Vladimir Putin and the new Ukrainian government is a fight about tangible matters of intense mutual interest.
But many Americans can't address international crises without sounding like a Toby Keith song: "I Wanna Talk About Me."
Recent Techrights' Posts
- [Video] Time to Acknowledge Debian Has a Real Problem and This Problem Needs to be Solved
- it would make sense to try to resolve conflicts and issues, not exacerbate these
- Daniel Pocock elected on ANZAC Day and anniversary of Easter Rising (FSFE Fellowship)
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Ulrike Uhlig & Debian, the $200,000 woman who quit
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Girlfriends, Sex, Prostitution & Debian at DebConf22, Prizren, Kosovo
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
-
- [Video] Debian's Newfound Love of Censorship Has Become a Threat to the Entire Internet
- SPI/Debian might end up with rotten tomatoes in the face
- Joerg (Ganneff) Jaspert, Dalbergschule Fulda & Debian Death threats
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Amber Heard, Junior Female Developers & Debian Embezzlement
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- [Video] IBM's Poor Results Reinforce the Idea of Mass Layoffs on the Way (Just Like at Microsoft)
- it seems likely Red Hat layoffs are in the making
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 24, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, April 24, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Links 24/04/2024: Layoffs and Shutdowns at Microsoft, Apple Sales in China Have Collapsed
- Links for the day
- Sexism processing travel reimbursement
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Microsoft is Shutting Down Offices and Studios (Microsoft Layoffs Every Month This Year, Media Barely Mentions These)
- Microsoft shutting down more offices (there have been layoffs every month this year)
- Balkan women & Debian sexism, WeBoob leaks
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Martina Ferrari & Debian, DebConf room list: who sleeps with who?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 24/04/2024: Advances in TikTok Ban, Microsoft Lacks Security Incentives (It Profits From Breaches)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 24/04/2024: People Returning to Gemlogs, Stateless Workstations
- Links for the day
- Meike Reichle & Debian Dating
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Europe Won't be Safe From Russia Until the Last Windows PC is Turned Off (or Switched to BSDs and GNU/Linux)
- Lives are at stake
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 23, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, April 23, 2024
- [Meme] EPO: Breaking the Law as a Business Model
- Total disregard for the EPO to sell more monopolies in Europe (to companies that are seldom European and in need of monopoly)
- The EPO's Central Staff Committee (CSC) on New Ways of Working (NWoW) and “Bringing Teams Together” (BTT)
- The latest publication from the Central Staff Committee (CSC)
- Volunteers wanted: Unknown Suspects team
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Debian trademark: where does the value come from?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Detecting suspicious transactions in the Wikimedia grants process
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 23/04/2024: US Doubles Down on Patent Obviousness, North Korea Practices Nuclear Conflict
- Links for the day
- Stardust Nightclub Tragedy, Unlawful killing, Censorship & Debian Scapegoating
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gunnar Wolf & Debian Modern Slavery punishments
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- On DebConf and Debian 'Bedroom Nepotism' (Connected to Canonical, Red Hat, and Google)
- Why the public must know suppressed facts (which women themselves are voicing concerns about; some men muzzle them to save face)
- Several Years After Vista 11 Came Out Few People in Africa Use It, Its Relative Share Declines (People Delete It and Move to BSD/GNU/Linux?)
- These trends are worth discussing
- Canonical, Ubuntu & Debian DebConf19 Diversity Girls email
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 23/04/2024: Escalations Around Poland, Microsoft Shares Dumped
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 23/04/2024: Offline PSP Media Player and OpenBSD on ThinkPad
- Links for the day
- Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, Holger Levsen & Debian DebConf6 fight
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- DebConf8: who slept with who? Rooming list leaked
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Bruce Perens & Debian: swiping the Open Source trademark
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Ean Schuessler & Debian SPI OSI trademark disputes
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Windows in Sudan: From 99.15% to 2.12%
- With conflict in Sudan, plus the occasional escalation/s, buying a laptop with Vista 11 isn't a high priority
- Anatomy of a Cancel Mob Campaign
- how they go about
- [Meme] The 'Cancel Culture' and Its 'Hit List'
- organisers are being contacted by the 'cancel mob'
- Richard Stallman's Next Public Talk is on Friday, 17:30 in Córdoba (Spain), FSF Cannot Mention It
- Any attempt to marginalise founders isn't unprecedented as a strategy
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 22, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, April 22, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Don't trust me. Trust the voters.
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Chris Lamb & Debian demanded Ubuntu censor my blog
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Ean Schuessler, Branden Robinson & Debian SPI accounting crisis
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- William Lee Irwin III, Michael Schultheiss & Debian, Oracle, Russian kernel scandal
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work