Privacy News: Ten States Against the NSA, Snowden Speaks About Espionage
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-27 09:28:36 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-27 10:26:48 UTC
Summary: News from the past couple of days, mostly about the NSA
State-level Actions
-
With the introduction of the 4th Amendment Protection Act this week, Mississippi became the tenth state in the country to consider legislation to make life difficult for the NSA’s ongoing mass surveillance programs.
Edward Snowden
-
Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden told German TV on Sunday about reports that U.S. government officials want to assassinate him for leaking secret documents about the NSA's collection of telephone records and emails.
In what German public broadcaster ARD said was Snowden's first television interview, Snowden also said he believes the NSA has monitored other top German government officials along with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
-
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden claims in a new interview that the US agency is involved in industrial espionage.
-
German public broadcaster ARD will air a half-hour interview with NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden on Sunday. The first snippet, aired late Saturday, accuses the NSA of conducting industrial espionage.
-
The NSA agency is not preoccupied solely with national security, but also spies on foreign industrial entities in US business interests, former American intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, has revealed in an interview to German TV.
-
Snowden says the NSA will use information even if it "has nothing to do with national security".
-
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden held a public Web chat on Thursday during which he answered questions sent in from hundreds of curious citizens via Twitter. This was Snowden's first live chat since June of last year, and during the broadcast viewers became privy to some of the outspoken leaker's opinions, especially that of the NSA and their previous actions.
Radical Politicians
-
White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden declined to comment, but people familiar with the matter said an announcement is expected soon.
Rogers, a Navy cryptologist, had long been seen as the frontrunner to succeed Gen. Keith Alexander, who has been NSA director since 2005. Alexander, who will retire March 14, is the longest-serving NSA head. He is also the first commander of U.S. Cyber Command, which launched in 2009.
Criticism
-
Just a friendly reminder that the NSA's children's website, "CryptoKids," is an actual thing that exists.
-
If, for instance, you wanted to stop mass shootings, legislation outlawing the sale, possession or manufacture of any gun capable of firing more than one bullet without reloading might work. It would also be a terrible idea.
-
As it tries to protect us from the “bad guys,” the government has become more intrusive in our lives. Where do we draw the line? If you have nothing to hide, would it be OK for government agents to show up unannounced at your door (without cause) to search your home? Would it also be OK for agents to randomly select citizens from off the street and subject them to full body searches?
-
Try to think back to the 1970s if you are old enough. Imagine if one day there had been a decree from the Nixon Administration that all citizens must within a week pay for a hand-held device that will allow government to keep track of all your movements and to monitor your telephone calls and written messages you'd be able send through the air to other devices.
I think it would have scared the crap out of most people, and I think they'd be massive resistance to it. So 40 years later millions of people are cajoled through gradual technological advances, advertisement, government secrecy, and peer pressure to actually line up at stores to pay for the latest model of these monitoring devices.
Corporate Spying
-
The public is fickle; it will always want the next and best thing, and there will always be someone eager to provide it. For a blink of history's eye, that was the Pony Express. No matter how brilliant your business idea, how diligent and disciplined your execution of it, there is forever someone hungrier and faster coming over the horizon.
-
The major selling point for BlackBerry has always been its security and privacy - the way it encrypted communication across its network was the only game in town - that is, until 2010, when governments threatened to “block encrypted BlackBerry corporate e-mail and messaging services” unless their security agencies were granted access to them.
This was the beginning of the demise of Blackberry. Because of The Surveillance State’s inability to spy on their own citizens, governments forced BlackBerry to change their business model, which in turn played a major role in the company’s collapse.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Richard Stallman's Web Site Back Online, But It Seems Like a 2-Months-Old Snapshot
- Latest political notes are dated July 2 (2026)
- IBM Eliminating Over 20,000 IBM Workers by Year's End, Insiders Claim
- the layoffs are silent
-
- The Legal Services Board (LSB) Takes on Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for Utter Failures, We'll Resume Our SRA Series to Illuminate How Bad the SRA Really Is
- a quick overview of the latest news
- Links 04/09/2026: Notorious Patent Trolls' Judge Enters the Private Sector (Corruption, Revolving Doors), Gloria Steinem's Life in Pictures
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/09/2026: Worries, Upgrades, and CS Students
- Links for the day
- SPAM Disguised as Benchmark or Comparison: The Register MS "PARTNER CONTENT" is Getting Weirder by the Month
- Sites that promote fake 'coins' or pyramid schemes to their audience(s) aren't worth tolerating
- PIPs at IBMs are Layoffs Because They're Impossible to Satisfy (or They Terminate Workers Despite Satisfying Them)
- What insiders say
- In the United Kingdom You Can No Longer Make the Assumption People Use Windows (or 'Smart' 'Phone')
- As autumn arrives Microsoft faces a crisis
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 171 Out of 200: Talking About Corruption and Violence Against Women
- Today the Labour Party (UK) speaks about corruption
- Warming Up for Investigative Journalism About the European Patent Office (EPO), Europe's Second-Largest and Probably Most Corrupt Institution in Europe
- It continues to exploit diplomatic immunity for impunity
- Microsoft Handing Out PIPs by the Thousands, Anxiety in GAFAM Building Up
- Years ago I heard from people who pretended to be ill to avoid getting fired
- BRICS in the Windows: Brazil's GNU/Linux Share (as Measured by CDN) Has Hit Highest Point in a Month
- The largest Web CDN, Clownflare, sees GNU/Linux at 8.1% right now in Brazil
- Corporate Media Will Always Glorify Its Owners (Corporations That Value Nothing But Capital)
- Collecting "money" like it's a form of competition where they track "score"
- We'll Never Do Slop!
- Being against slop is not being "left behind"
- Thieves Complain About the People They Steal From
- "When you point the finger at someone, there are three fingers pointing back to you"
- Links 04/09/2026: "The Rise of the Billionaire Lobby", the "Imperialist Delusions", and Digital Restrictions (DRM) From Nvidia
- Links for the day
- Buying From China
- Nations must begin to speak about their digital sovereignty, which Free software is best equipped to grant and best positioned to assure in the face of outside resistance
- GNU/Linux Continues to Grow in China
- GNU/Linux reached its highest point in a month
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 03, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, September 03, 2026
- Gemini Links 04/09/2026: Forgotten Realms Avatar Series and Slop Plagiarism's Footprint in Gopher/Geminispace
- Links for the day
- Like Uber, Paypal's Debt Has Shot Up 2.5 Billion Dollars in 3 Months, Now the Mass Layoffs Come to India
- even reducing the salaries by offshoring isn't enough to save the company
- Microsoft "engineers who aren’t critical are let go" this week/month (silent layoffs)
- "stack ranking"
- Is Microsoft Trying to Kill What's Left of XBox by Year's End?
- How many people will still bother purchasing these consoles by the end of the year?
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 170 Out of 200: Downtimes
- Yesterday traffic skyrocketed here
- The Register MS Publishes More Word Salads Promoting "AI" Because It's Paid to Do So
- Hype, name-dropping, and scaremongering
- Gemini Links 03/09/2026: Google Maps, Gemini's Early History, and Suppressing Slop Plagiarists
- Links for the day
- Links 03/09/2026: Unsafe Skies, Thunderbird Adopts Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in Traps, "Xbox Live Down Again"
- Links for the day
- Growing Thirst for Free Software, the LibreOffice Edition
- LibreOffice is in "high demand"
- Links 03/09/2026: John Ternus Enters Apple Amid Mass Layoffs, Journalist İrem Delice Arrested
- Links for the day
- Stallman.org Down Due to Virtual Machines Issue, "Senior Engineers are Investigating the Issue" Since Saturday
- RMS site down due to virtual machines issues upstream
- Linux Foundation is Plagiarism Hub, Linux is at Risk From It
- Torvalds never looked weaker and more compromised
- Gemini Links 03/09/2026: Back in Japan, Another New Year, Reasons to Avoid Have a "Smart" "Phone", and Rant About Built-in Batteries
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 02, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, September 02, 2026
- Identi.ca is Practically Dead, Just Like All Social Control Media (Eventually)
- All Social Control Media is a waste of time
- Gemini Links 02/09/2026: Intentions, Publishing on Workstations, and Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA)
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux Reaches 6% in Nepal
- Today I checked GNU/Linux in Nepal again
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 169 Out of 200: Calling People "Nazis"
- 'Cancel culture' in action
- GNU Turns 43 This Month, GNU/Linux Turns 35 Next Year
- It seems like no area of computing has not been impacted by the GNU/Linux revolution
- Uber Debt Grew 2.5 Billion Dollars in 3 Months, Company Lays Off at Least 10% of Workforce
- The media repeats the "official" numbers
- Links 02/09/2026: The Machine Stops, AuraSearch, and DOOM 1/2
- Links for the day
- 1-1 Meetings at IBM This Week, PIPs Expected, Maybe RAs Too
- As usual, we invite whistleblowers to tell us what's going on
- Links 02/09/2026: Germany Blames Russia for Leipzig Airport Drone Attack and China Gains Power as US Faces Humiliation in the Midst of Presidential Cover-up
- Links for the day
- Quit Talking About "AI Layoffs" and Talk About How Chatbots and Other Bots Broke Recruitment Processes by Cheating
- Bots talking to other bots isn't HR; it's a catastrophe
- It's Inevitable Anyway, So...
- of course blame Chinese Communists for the "anti-AI" messages
- Robotics Isn't "Hey Hi", Robotics Isn't New Either
- Is the official Arduino blog becoming shilling platform for Qualcomm's "hey hi" [so-called 'intelligent'] chips?
- Giving 'Free Publicity' to the People You Hate and Attack
- Be careful what you wish for in social control media
- Today We'll Focus on Growth of GNU/Linux
- We've meanwhile noticed that Clownflare statistics for north American nations show 19% of requests (CDN) originating from GNU/Linux
- IBM Secret (or Silent) Layoffs in September 2026
- We need whistleblowers
- Gemini Links 02/09/2026: GAFAM's E-mail Cartel, ROOPHLOCH 2026, and Homeworlds
- Links for the day
- Not Only Microsoft and IBM Hide Layoffs (Secret Layoffs) and Fail to Follow the Law (or Bypass It)
- Microsoft's tactics are not so unique
- People Who Participate in the Slop Plagiarism Pyramid Scheme and the Moral Dilemma (What's Acceptable for a Salary?)
- giant pyramid scheme
- State of the Slop, Linux Edition
- Whether slop about "linux" becomes rarer by the end of this year, well... time will tell
- Links 02/09/2026: 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop Plagiarism) Destroying Evidence, "Data Center Backlash Has Officially Rattled Scam Altman"
- Links for the day
- Andrew Lee Has Turned Freenode Into a Slopfarm (Because Who Needs IRC Anyway?)
- The site is churning out slop all day long
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 01, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, September 01, 2026