NSA Watch: GCHQ/NSA Gang Up Against Servers, Hide Violations, Face Blowback
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-28 20:27:44 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-28 20:27:44 UTC
Summary: News from Monday and Tuesday, covering a range of development in the NSA saga and beyond
Corporate Servers
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British intelligence officials can infiltrate the very cables that transfer information across the internet, as well as monitor users in real time on sites like Facebook without the company's consent, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
The internal documents reveal that British analysts gave instruction to members of the National Security Agency in 2012, showing them how to spy on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in real time and collect the computer addresses of billions of the sites’ uploaders.
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Some of the world's most popular smartphone applications are telling British and American intelligence agencies everything about you – from your location to your politics or whether you're part of the swinging set.
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British and US spy agencies have gathered data from smartphone apps which leak personal data on to global networks, according to reports.
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EXILED AMERICAN WHISTLEBLOWER Edward Snowden has revealed evidence that shows GCHQ is able to monitor web traffic without the knowledge of either the website or the user.
Operation Squeaky Dolphin is explained in the presentation "Psychology A New Kind of SIGDEV" (Signals Development) obtained by NBC from the Snowden files. It describes an operation to harvest Facebook Likes, Youtube URLs and Blogger visits
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Security expert and technologist Bruce Schneier has told the BBC that he believes the NSA and GCHQ have "betrayed the trust of the internet".
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New information made public by Edward Snowden reveals that the governments of the United States and United Kingdom are trawling data from cellphone “apps” to accumulate dossiers on the “political alignments” of millions of smartphone users worldwide.
Crimes Concealed
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In a weekend interview with German ARD public television network, Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. government uses its broad electronic surveillance capabilities to engage in industrial espionage. Snowden told ARD TV that, “I will say is there is no question that the U.S. is engaged in economic spying,” Snowden gave the example that, “If there is information at Siemens that they think would be beneficial to the national interests, not the national security, of the United States, they will go after that information and they’ll take it.” Snowden left hanging what exactly is done with such potentially useful economic intelligence, and he provided little additional information on this subject beyond indicated the news outlets holding copies of yet published NSA leaked documents could provide more specific information.
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At the same time that the Obama administration publicly mulls over how to end its controversial storage of millions of Americans’ phone records swept up by the National Security Agency, the government is also reportedly exploring ways to prevent other spies from seeing what it’s spying on.
Police/FBI (Domestic Spying)
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If you had any faith left in anonymous email services, now would be the time to let that go. New court documents show that in chasing down associates of Freedom Hosting, the FBI managed to download the entire email database of TorMail. And now it's using that information to take on the Darknet.
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Police began tracking Aguilar's phone and soon discovered it was at the mall.
US Political Reaction
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A group of six Congressmen have asked President Barack Obama to remove James Clapper as director of national intelligence as a result of his misstatements to Congress about the NSA’s dragnet data-collection programs. The group, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), said that Clapper’s role as DNI “is incompatible with the goal of restoring trust in our security programs”.
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The RNC has declared domestic spying illegal. A faction led by George W. Bush-era bureaucrats is pushing back.
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The National Security Agency depends on huge computers that guzzle electricity in the service of the surveillance state. For the NSA's top executives, maintaining a vast flow of juice to keep Big Brother nourished is essential -- and any interference with that flow is unthinkable.
European Reaction
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When the EU agreed its current Data Protection Directive in 1995, the internet was just coming onto the horizon, and Mark Zuckerberg was just 11.
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SAP and Atos are working with the European Union to bring in new standards for web-based programmes and data storage in an effort to tackle growing surveillance fears following ongoing NSA revelations.
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AT&T’s ambitions to expand in Europe have been put on ice, for now. And the NSA spying scandal is at least partly to blame.
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Public broadcaster ARD airs interview in which whistleblower says National Security Agency is involved in industrial espionage
People's Voice
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It only makes sense that the NSA be confronted online. After all, it’s the Internet the agency uses to spy on us. They’re not following us down dark streets or steaming open our snail mail. Instead, they’re monitoring our emails to discover who is in our circle and stalking us on Facebook and Google Plus. Especially if we use Windows, there’s no need for them to dirty their hands sifting through our garbage when they can enter through a virtual trap door on our computer to rifle through our word processor and spreadsheet files. Phone tapping? How old school in a world where every call we make, even from a land line, becomes VoIP somewhere along the line. When we use VoIP or Skype, they can easily listen. If we visit a website located in a country on their hit list, they sit-up and take notice.
Corporations' Voice
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The Obama administration has reached a deal with a number of technology giants, allowing the companies to disclose more information on customer data they are compelled to share with the government.
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For quite some time there have been rumours of Google wanting to take AI to the next level. Popular Android-based game, ‘Ingress‘ presents an artificial layer on top of real world landmarks and allows players to claim territories while the interact with their surroundings. Although it’s not what the public expected initially, it did represent the future that Google envisioned for gaming.
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72% of you said that you thought the NSA’s actions would have an effect on the entire U.S. software industry, with 20% of you expressing the opinion that proprietary software developers only would be effected. Taken together, this means that 92% of you are of the opinion that the NSA’s dirty tricks will have a negative effect on the U.S. tech sector. 7% of you answered “maybe a little but not much” with only 1% choosing “not at all.”
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- This is a classic way to avoid paying workers
- Techrights Should be Even Faster Now
- We're now better off
- Richard Stallman (RMS) Gave 3 Talks in India in Less Than a Week
- In India this month we've not seen a single negative comment about RMS
- Microsoft Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay Reported Hours After Microsoft Reported Weak Numbers and Microsoft Stock Fell
- Microsoft has a bloodbath this month
- Another Slew of Fake Articles About 'Linux' and 'Security' From Brittany Day at linuxsecurity.com (Spamfarm/Slopfarm)
- linuxsecurity.com is basically a pariah and parasite. It lessens the incentive to write real articles about "Linux" by generating fake ones to outrank the originals.
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- Links 31/01/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Microsoft, Sweden Again Fails to Protect Critics of Violence
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux" and More (Latest Roundup Featuring BetaNews, Janus Atienza, and Brittany Day From Guardian Digital, Inc)
- LLM slop season
- "Not one of us" by Dr. Andy Farnell
- Elon Musk has brought embarrassment to nerds and technologists
- Gemini Links 31/01/2025: "Bulletin Buble" and "Why Blog?"
- Links for the day
- Static Site Generators (SSGs) Pay Off: Vastly Faster Sites, Much Smaller Hosting Bills
- success story for SSGs
- Of Note: Linux Foundation Has Already Let Linux.com Rot for About 4 Months (No Activity)
- there's no campaign aside from marketing spam there
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 30, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, January 30, 2025
- Indian Data Biases statCounter For or Against "Linux"
- In statCounter, the GNU/Linux increases and decreases are deeply tied to what it does with data collected in India
- The Corporate Media Pretends That Facebook ("Meta") Has Performed Well, But Its Debt Doubles Every 2 Years Despite Mass Layoffs
- That same media also helps parrot misleading financial claims
- Microsoft's Debt Surged by More Than 6,000,000,000 Dollars in Just 3 Months
- numbers released hours ago
- The Sheer Irony of Microsoft Proxy Accusing Others of 'Stealing'
- Wherever DeepSick's data came from, Microsoft (or its proxy) is in no position to issue criticism.
- The Difference a Decade (and GAFAM Money) Makes
- Credibility cannot be purchased
- [Meme] The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Critics Because Its Message is Effective
- Applying to others the same standards one is willing to violate?
- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised $422,000 (Another $22k in the Two Weeks After Campaign Ended), Proving That Truth and Justice Tend to Find a Way
- 10,000+ dollars a week even without campaigning for more funds
- Faking Revenue Increase by Buying Your Own Products and Services (Through Scams and Scammers Like Scam Altman)
- Is this what society deserves? Media that instead of exposing corruption has chosen to participate in it and profit from it?
- Links 30/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Causes Deaths, FBI Seizes Domains
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Action vs Inaction, Gopherholes, and More
- Links for the day
- Links 30/01/2025: Microsoft Wants Convicted Felon to Give Fentanylware (TikTok) to It (After Making a Phonecall Asking for That in 2019), "Moving Away From Google's Ecosystem"
- Links for the day
- Jack M. Germain (LinuxInsider) Seems to Have Turned to LLM Slop, Graphics Slop, and B2B SPAM
- LinuxInsider is barely active anymore
- Links 30/01/2025: Amazon Layoffs and DeepSeek Panic
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Chaos Reigns, E-mail, Searching
- Links for the day
- IBM: Many Thousands of Layoffs in 2025
- If 2025 is expected to be the same, then perhaps about 20,000 IBM workers will no longer be there
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, January 29, 2025
- Google: Your Only Option is Google YouTube (Coming Soon: Mandatory DRM and Attestation?)
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) to follow? Only for "approved" (attestation) browsers?
- Mastodon Was Always Biased (Just Like Twitter After Abandoning Chronological and Neutral Timelines in Order to Become More Like Facebook)
- So bury-brigading and click-farming control what people see
- Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Falls to Only 0.4% of the Total in Geminispace
- Geminispace does not need to outsource trust
- The Munich-Based EPO is Still Using a Platform That Promotes the Far Right and Rehabilitates Nazism
- Active Twitter account
- Links 29/01/2025: Dismantling Public Health in the US, Air Busan Plane Up in Flames (South Korea's Air Disasters Streak)
- Links for the day
- Announcements and Administrivia
- This week we're going out for two days in a row to celebrate an achievement that's very respectable
- Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Japan, GTD, and More
- Links for the day
- Sir, Yes, Sir. The Life of EPO Patent Examiners.
- If working for the EPO makes it harder to sleep at night, take action
- How the EPO Pressures Staff Into Minting More Monopolies (Patents), Even Illegal Ones That Harm Europe and Ultimately Dismantle the Rule of Law
- insights into the pressure examiners are under
- LLM Slop Machines Are Not a Win for "Open Source" and If They Get Cheaper, It's Even Worse
- If some program that claims to be "Open Source" pollutes the Web with fake articles (Microsoft SPAM and fake "Linux" articles), whose win is it?
- Links 29/01/2025: Data Privacy Day and Growing Tensions in Europe
- Links for the day
- Nazi Twitter (aka "X") Became a Troll Site That Lets People Buy a Blue Tick While Its Boss Actively Promotes Neonazi Politicians
- the intellectual level of people who infest the Web through "Twitter" or "X"
- This is Why They're So Afraid of Richard Stallman (He Tells People the Correct History)
- Then they post about it to Microsoft's LinkedIn
- Richard Stallman Speech in Bengaluru, "Silicon Valley of India"
- 62 years have passed since his "young nerd" days and he's still at it
- Claim: Facebook Deletes Posts of IBM Red Hat Critics
- As always, follow the money (advertisers)
- Links 29/01/2025: Climate Crisis and "It’s time for the Xbox to fade away" (Microsoft Lose)
- Links for the day
- Links 29/01/2025: Buying Groceries During a Trade War, Political 'Retro'
- Links for the day
- More Illegal Patents at the EPO, Legality of Granted European Patents No Longer Matters to the Office
- breaking the law for profit
- Network Improvements Tomorrow
- "Network maintenance" down in London
- Sharing is Caring (But Advocating Copyleft Makes You a "Target")
- GPLv3 does not close all the loopholes which the "Affero" helps close
- Articles About Free Speech at Facebook
- 'Facebook vs Linux' story is now receiving a lot more media coverage
- We Were Right About stallmansupport.org Making an Error by Joining Social Control Media. mastodon.social Suspends stallmansupport.org.
- From what we can guess, accounts can be banned by some oversensitive admin or a mob of users ("bury brigades")
- "Latest Technology News" in BetaNews Still LLM Slop and SPAM Composed by LLMs (It's Basically a Spamfarm Disguised as a News Site)
- Only a fool would visit BetaNews in search of actual news
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 28, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, January 28, 2025
- The EPO's Corruption, If It Remains Untackled, Helps the Far Right and Enemies of European Unity/Solidarity
- Do not negotiate with evil
- The Web, Including Wikipedia, Gets Filled With Lies About Bill Gates, Added by Bill Gates and His PR Team
- Of course Wikipedia is funded by Gates
- Facebook Banning Linux Sites (or People Who Link to Linux Sites) is Another Symptom of the Web's Demise
- The state of media on the Web is really bad; Social Control Media amplifies the badness, as Facebook serves to show
- Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Neovim Telescope and Writing Less
- Links for the day