Kill Lists Watch: End of This Week
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-17 13:01:00 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-17 13:07:29 UTC
Summary: News from the past couple of days about the practice of spying on people and then killing some of them
-
The state-level campaign to turn off power to the NSA got a big boost January 15, 2014, as Washington became the first state with a physical NSA location to consider a Fourth Amendment protection act designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.
-
A campaign which aims to turn off the electricity to the NSA so that it can’t store data on citizens is in full swing.
The campaign has started in Washington and appears to be part of a partisan effort to rein in the country’s Men in Black.
Washington became the first state with a physical NSA location to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.
The Bill, which has the catchy title HB2272, has been designed by Republican David Taylor and Democrat Luis Moscoso. It was introduced to the house in the dead of night and is based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition.
-
Throughout the NSA leak scandal, the surveillance agency's defenders have insisted its actions are legitimate in part because they're overseen by all three branches of government. The characterization has always been extremely misleading. For example, the secret FISA court system is often incapable of verifying the truth of what they're told by the NSA, and so many members of Congress were ignorant of how the Patriot Act has been interpreted prior to the last reauthorization that, had the ignorant voted the other way, it would've changed the outcome.
-
President Barack Obama is to announce changes to US electronic spy programmes after revelations made by ex-intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
He aims to restore public confidence in the intelligence community.
Mr Obama is expected to create a public advocate at the secretive court that approves intelligence collection.
His proposals come hours after UK media reports that the US has collected and stored almost 200 million text messages per day across the globe.
-
The U.S. National Security Agency has been gathering nearly 200 million text messages a day from around the world, gathering data on people's travel plans, contacts and credit card transactions, Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.
-
A slide from a presentation, seen by The Guardian and Channel 4 News, shows how Dishfire gave spies access to a trove of information. For example, by intercepting the welcome messages phone users receive when they arrive in a new country, the NSA tracked the movements of more than 1.5 million people every day. The agency spied on phone users' contacts by hoovering up five million missed call alerts per day, as well as business cards sent by text message.
-
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has collected and stored almost 200 million text messages a day from around the world, UK media report.
-
During a speech at a hacker convention five months ago, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander showed a PowerPoint slide that listed eight things his agency "does NOT collect." In the months since, every single claim has been proven a lie.
-
NSA has come under intense scrutiny because of Edward Snowdens disclosures about their spying on all Americans. But there are more problems at NSA than their violation of the fourth amendment protections of the constitution.
-
Mounting evidence shows surveillance has had no impact on preventing terrorism. Is the public paying attention?
-
President Barack Obama tomorrow will create a panel to examine how data-collection efforts like the National Security Agency’s spy programs affect Internet companies and privacy rights, said two people familiar with White House deliberations.
-
Former NSA employee Edward Snowden's leaks to the public have sparked months of controversy and could lead to reforms.
-
President Barack Obama’s plan to keep phone data with the National Security Agency for now is a victory for telecommunications companies, which resisted the idea of holding the records themselves over concerns about lawsuits, lost business and unwanted responsibility.
-
It’s been a mixed week for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei after the firm announced impressive financials but was forced again to deny allegations of security weaknesses in its products.
The device and telecoms kit maker announced its unaudited financials on Wednesday, claiming sales revenue for 2013 will reach between 238 billion and 240 billion yuan (€£24bn). This will be a year-on-year jump of around 8 per cent, or 11.6 per cent when measured in US dollars.
-
This issue is headed to the Court of Appeals. From there, it will likely go the Supreme Court. The high court checked and balanced President George W. Bush when he overstepped his legal authority by establishing military commissions that violated due process, and attempted to deny constitutional habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees. It remains to be seen whether the court will likewise refuse to cower before President Barack Obama's claim of unfettered executive authority to conduct dragnet surveillance. If the court allows the NSA to continue its metadata collection, we will reside in what can only be characterized as a police state.
-
In the world of cybersecurity, Bruce Schneier is an unusually accessible voice for those of us who feel we don’t quite understand what’s going on. The author of 12 books, and a prolific blogger and speaker, Schneier helped the Guardian go through the top-secret documents from the U.S. National Security Agency leaked by Edward Snowden last year.
-
U.S. officials are reacting cautiously to revelations published in The New York Times that the National Security Agency has found a way to spy on computers even when they are not connected to the Internet. Report says software was implanted into 100,000 computers worldwide.
-
As President Obama prepares to announce Friday what action he will take with the future of the National Security Agency, two whistleblowers visited West Chester University with recommendations on how to roll back government surveillance.
The two former NSA employees, William Binney and Thomas Drake, sat down with a WCU class Tuesday to discuss the current state of privacy in the country and their struggle for freedom.
-
With Alpine and the area off limits to drone testing, Texas still was one of the six states selected for “drone test sites,” the Federal Aviation Administration has announced.
-
The United States carried on two ten-year wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where we killed an estimated 250,000 civilians. We killed many more Muslim fighters by the tens of thousands. We destroyed their country with our bombs. Because those third world countries lack birth records, identification and death certificates--the numbers could be much higher.
In most large city in America, such as Denver, newscasters relate killings every night of the week. Chicago, Houston, Detroit and Los Angeles suffer gang killings nightly.
One in four children suffers bullying by a teen thug in high schools across America every day during school terms. In other words, our children cannot attend school without fear of being beat up, harassed, called names and demeaned by meaner, bigger students who have no other purpose in life but to manifest their thuggery.
What bothers me: we promote horrific violence via our continuous wars promoted by bankers and the military industrial complex that profit at the cost of human lives. We promote TV violence such as "Criminal Minds" and "NCIS" where lots of people commit diabolical mayhem. We support social media arcade games for kids like "Doom" and worse. Our movies feature horrific violence that pours into our kids minds and emotions. It's like the 60s movie "Clockwork Orange" seems normal. You can watch television "Cops" where violence becomes normal. Our drones in the Middle East kill any number of humans without identity.
-
President Barack Obama said last May that control of the United States’ weaponized drone program would shift away from the Central Intelligence Agency and into the hands of the Pentagon, but a new report suggests Congress could keep that from happening.
-
The authoritarian regimes, bloody revolutions and tense diplomatic relations in the Middle East dominate the news today. Much of this turmoil was presaged by the activities and experiences of three covert CIA officers in the 1940s and 1950s, says Hugh Wilford, professor of history at California State University, Long Beach. In "America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East," Wilford chronicles American adventures in the Middle East after World War II. He recently spoke to U.S. News about romanticized spy games, staged coups and the consequences of it all. Excerpts:
-
A “progressive” columnist whose own organization is pursuing a “fresh approach” in contrast to “a far-right Republican Party that is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America,” is petitioning the Washington Post to publicize its owners’ financial investments each time it reports on the CIA.
-
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration in Chicago Wednesday, took several swipes at President Barack Obama, at one point saying that while King would have said, "I have a dream," the president would have to say "I have a drone."
According to a story in The Chicago Sun Times, Wright, Obama's former pastor, spoke at the breakfast hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union and called on those there to reject the “three-headed demon” of “racism, militarism and capitalism” — the foundations of Western society.
Wright went on to slam the president by saying that each week Obama presides at a meeting to decide where drones will be launched.
-
Congress' $1.1 trillion spending bill contains a secret provision torpedoing President Obama's plans to pass the drone program from the CIA to the Pentagon. In a classified annex, the bill specifically prohibits any funds being used to facilitate such a transfer, the Washington Post reports. Obama wants to shift the CIA from its paramilitary footing back to an intelligence one, and perhaps bring greater transparency to the drone program. But lawmakers don't trust the military with the keys.
-
Congress has moved to block President Barack Obama’s plan to shift control of the U.S. drone campaign from the CIA to the Defense Department, inserting a secret provision in the massive government spending bill introduced this week that would preserve the spy agency’s role in lethal counterterrorism operations, U.S. officials said.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- New Article Explains How the GPL Came About and WordPress Having Copyleft Obligations
- Having been involved in the WordPress development community since almost the beginning, I know why it chose the GPL and how it restricts abuse by Automattic
- Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) Gives Talk in Oxford University in 4 Hours
- If you live nearby, go there (it's free as in gratis)
- Using a Law Firm's Licence to Exercise Politics Through Frivolous SLAPPs and Nastygrams (to Silence People, Remove Pages, Demand Fake or Forced 'Apologies')
- Things must be getting really bad when lawyers act for raving antisemites
- Another Site Bites the Dust: "Open Source For You" Becoming a Slopfarm (LLM Slop)
- What a shame. Another dead site.
-
- Links 24/04/2025: GAFAM Problems and No Peace (or Ceasefire) in Sight
- Links for the day
- Slopfarms on the Web Almost Always Generate Anti-Linux FUD When They Produce "Linux" Output
- Welcome to the dying Web
- Richard Stallman's Oxford Talk Has Just Ended, Here Are Some Photos
- he might hop over to another European country
- Gemini Links 24/04/2025: Birthday and Good Work of Academia in Esotericism
- Links for the day
- Links 24/04/2025: EU fines Apple and Facebook, Another Microsoft GitHub Security Blunder
- Links for the day
- IBM Gained Almost 6 Billion Dollars in "Goodwill" Value in Just 3 Months, According to IBM
- Congrats to the management!
- In Belarus, Yandex is Now Measured as 50 Times More 'Popular' (by Usage) Than Microsoft
- Yandex continues to gain, whereas Bing cannot even register at 1%. Last month it was registered or measured at a measly 0.65%.
- IBM Cannot Lie to Shareholders Anymore
- "I would not be surprised if we see a layoff every quarter this year."
- We're Working to Make Full-Site Search Available
- This site has over 1,000 'wiki' pages, many thousands of documents, several thousands of videos, and about 50,000 blog posts or articles. We need to make them easier to find/navigate.
- Links 24/04/2025: IBM Loses Many Contracts, Intel to Lay Off Over 20% (Not Counting Those Who Leave 'Voluntarily')
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman Can Explain to Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society Why LLM Slop is Not Artificial Intelligence and Why It Hurts Society
- another 'crop' of LLM slop that damages GNU/Linux and facts
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, April 23, 2025
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) Promoting Microsoft and Proprietary Software Using Microsoft Operatives
- Because nothing says "Open Source" like GPL violations facilitated by Microsoft
- Links 23/04/2025: Crackdowns on Dissent, Palin Loses Libel Retrial Against New York Times
- Links for the day
- Links 23/04/2025: Hard Times and Digital Amnesia
- Links for the day
- The GNU/Linux Site Formerly Known as "linoxide.com" is Back... as an LLM Slopfarm!
- Better for linoxide.com to go offline than to do this
- Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
- Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
- Richard Stallman to Speak in Oxford University Exactly a Day From Now
- outsourced to GAFAM
- Links 23/04/2025: "Hiding Corruption" and "The Cost of Defunding Harvard"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft 'Studies' Again? Leon Musolff is Writing Papers With Microsoft.
- Even if one can see/find a link to "the study" (in the Bezos-controlled publication), most people won't look any further and just take everything at face value.
- Towards GNU World Domination
- The FSF led by Geoffrey S. Knauth with his friend Richard Stallman in the FSF's Board [...] Let's encourage people to adopt GNU/Linux. There has never been a better time.
- statCounter Helps Visualise Just How Deep in Trouble Microsoft is (Especially in Africa)
- Microsoft sabotaged efforts to connect Africans and equip them with GNU/Linux laptops
- The Register is Using Linux-Hostile Clickbait in Articles of Linux Proponents
- Don't be a "whore" to advertisers, team El Reg
- Microsoft Windows in Cyprus Lacking a Future
- Most people access the Web there from mobile
- Matrix Has a Severe Problem With Illegal Images
- If Matrix cannot get the CP problem under control, many projects and people will dump Matrix
- Never Try to Justify Strangulation of Women (Not in the US and Not in the UK)
- Joint post by Mrs. Rianne Schestowitz and Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- Links 23/04/2025: Tesla Profits Plunge 71%, Intel Ready to Lay Off 20% of Staff, Microsoft and IBM Layoffs
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's Most Profound Issue is That People Moved to 'Mobile' and "App Stores" (Microsoft's Presence There is Negligible)
- Expect a wild ride for Microsoft this year
- Google News is Amplifying FUD and Lies About Linux (and OpenSSH/SSH) by Promoting Slopfarms With Machine-Generated FUD and Slop Images
- Google should know better
- Gemini Links 23/04/2025: Librarians, Anubis, and Refactoring a Gemini Capsule
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 22, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, April 22, 2025
- Links 22/04/2025: Ending DEI Policies at Adobe, FTC Sues Uber
- Links for the day
- RMS is Done at KCL, Next Stop is Oxford
- The message of RMS has long resonated well in India
- US Government Already Bailing Out OpenAI/Microsoft With "Contracts", As Usual, Back Doors You Cannot Remove Becoming 'a Step Closer' on New PCs (Unless Everyone Acts ASAP)
- The next "logical" step towards digital prisons
- Microsoft Devises PR Stunts to Distract From Impending Mass Layoffs and Likely Bad Results Preceding Those Mass Layoffs
- A "voluntary exit plan"
- Gemini Links 22/04/2025: Deaths, HamsterCMS, and More
- Links for the day
- Links 22/04/2025: FTC v. Meta Trial and Google Remedies
- Links for the day
- In Turkey, Windows Down Rapidly While GNU/Linux Grows
- Although Turkey is in NATO (but not the EU), it cannot quite trust computer systems controlled by the United States
- GNOME, Microsoft, and GitHub: The Lack of Reporting on Abusive Colleagues Contributed to Profound Media Vacuum (or Blackout), Now Resorting to SLAPPs
- This lack of morality/courage has helped enable further abuse, lining up more victims
- Richard Stallman Has Updated His Article on Why "Free Software Is Even More Important Now"
- Richard Stallman is about to give a talk here in the UK in a few hours
- Microsoft Already Attacks the BSDs as Well (the E.E.E. Way, as Usual)
- Bearers of bad news
- The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is in Trouble, May Soon be Out of Business
- Openwashing needs to end
- Microsoft's Debt Grew Over 6 Billion Dollars in the Last Reporting Quarter (Before Inauguration), Expect Worse Next Week When 'Results' Are Disclosed and Mass Layoffs Resume
- Microsoft is bleeding. It does not want people to notice.
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 21, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, April 21, 2025
- Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk in London in 7 Hours (Need to Register as Venue Limited to 150 Seats), Public Announcements Begin to Appear
- These are not announced weeks or months in advance