NSA Watch: Climate as 'Terrorism', War on Journalism and Anonymity, Anger in Europe and Angry Birds
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-30 12:37:56 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-30 12:37:56 UTC
Summary: A roundup of yesterday's and today's news about the NSA
New Leaks
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The document, with portions marked "top secret," indicates that the NSA was monitoring the communications of other countries ahead of the conference, and intended to continue doing so throughout the meeting. Posted on an internal NSA website on Dec. 7, 2009, the first day of the Copenhagen summit, it states that "analysts here at NSA, as well as our Second Party partners, will continue to provide policymakers with unique, timely, and valuable insights into key countries' preparations and goals for the conference, as well as the deliberations within countries on climate change policies and negotiation strategies."
Illegal Collection of 'Evidence'
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A man charged with aiding a terrorist organization has asked a U.S. court to throw out information collected by the National Security Agency, saying the NSA's surveillance of his Internet communications violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Prosecuting Anonymisers
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In oral arguments heard on Tuesday, Lavabit and federal prosecutors each presented their cases in front of a three-judge panel at the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. The case is an appeal of contempt-of-court charges against Lavabit, a now-defunct e-mail hosting service that once offered secure communication.
In the summer of 2013, Lavabit was ordered to provide real-time e-mail monitoring of one of its users, widely believed to be Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor-turned-leaker. When Lavabit told the feds that the only way it could hand over communications was through an internal process that would deliver results 60 days after any communication was sent, the authorities returned with a search warrant for Lavabit's SSL keys, which could decrypt the traffic of all of Lavabit's users. Ladar Levison, the CEO of Lavabit, handed over the SSL keys but then shut down his 10-year-old business rather than expose all of Lavabit's users.
War on Journalism
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James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, has issued a blistering condemnation of Edward Snowden, calling the surveillance disclosures published by the Guardian and other news outlets a “perfect storm” that would endanger American lives.
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Director of National Intelligence James Clapper urged former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and his “accomplices” to return leaked documents during a hearing on Wednesday.
Europe
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A former Ukrainian president warned on Wednesday that the country is now on “the brink of civil war,” and Russia added to the gloom by announcing the suspension of its financial aid package, which was all that had been keeping Ukraine solvent.
[...]
Protesters for weeks had suspected that the government was using location data from cellphones near the demonstration to pinpoint people for political profiling, and they received alarming confirmation when a court formally ordered a telephone company to hand over such data.
Earlier this month, protesters at a clash with riot police officers received text messages on their phones saying they had been “registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”
Then, three cellphone companies — Kyivstar, MTS and Life — denied that they had provided the location data to the government or had sent the text messages. Kyivstar suggested that it was instead the work of a “pirate” cellphone tower set up in the area.
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Former employee of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Edward Snowden will be invited to the spring session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), APA’s Europe bureau reports.
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Chancellor says Germany and US still 'far apart' on sweeping surveillance and spying activities revealed by Edward Snowden
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Berlin and Washington are still "far apart" in their views on the US National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance of Germany but they remain close allies, Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament on Wednesday.
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The German government and the German Federal Intelligence Service are facing legal action because they allegedly aided the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) data collection program.
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THE EUROPEAN UNION JUSTICE COMMISSIONER has spoken out on Data Protection Day about national security agency surveillance.
US Politics
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Ever since leaked NSA documents first started popping up this summer, the battle against NSA surveillance has proceeded on multiple fronts: legislators pushing for new laws, journalists pushing for new stories, and tech companies fighting to regain users’ trust. Yesterday, one of the major fronts closed down. Since July, tech companies had been putting pressure on the Department of Justice, fighting for the right to say more about their interactions with law enforcement. Yesterday they made peace, reaching a settlement and withdrawing a class action suit that had drawn in some of the most powerful companies in America. On this front at least, reformers have likely gotten all they’re going to get.
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Senator Patrick Leahy questioned how the Constitution allows the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of U.S. telephone records and repeated his calls for President Barack Obama’s administration to end the program during a hearing Wednesday.
The Obama administration should heed the recent advice of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) and end the phone records collection program, said Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.
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The NSA's new data center in Utah has provided the flashpoint for legislation targeted at "nullifying" the agency by cutting off its access to public utilities and/or leveraging the powers granted to states to combat federal government overreach. An activist group known as The Tenth Amendment Center proposed a state law that would cut off the new data center's much needed water supply, along with any other public utility or service, like sanitation and road repair, in hopes of (at minimum) forcing the NSA to reconsider its collection tactics, or failing that, to find a new home.
Angry Birds
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Some users trying to access the www.angrybirds.com website late Tuesday were greeted by an image depicting the Angry Birds game characters accompanied by the text "Spying Birds." The U.S. National Security Agency's logo was also visible in the image.
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Reacting to recent revelations that smartphone apps such as Angry Birds and Google Maps are being used by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarter (GCHQ) to spy on their users, the Application Developers Alliance has condemned the NSA for damaging the industry.
BBC
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When the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers published the first of Edward Snowden's NSA-GCHQ leaks in June, it unleashed a stream of abbreviations, acronyms and jargon describing the cyberspies' activities.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Informal Open Letter to the Lawyer of the Microsofters (on Who's Funding the SLAPPs Against Techrights)
- Whenever I ask about the funding they try to change the subject and act all aggressive
- Microsoft Lunduke is Just Provoking People for Provocation's Sake
- Be forewarned and remember where this guy came from: Microsoft
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- The Register MS: We Know Slop is a Bubble and Mindless Hype, But We Get Paid to Participate
- Call out the culprits
- Hate Mail From Anonymous Cowards
- if this persists, we'll need to escalate
- There Are Probably Over a Million Pages in Geminispace
- there are two many limitations which merit a mention when it comes to assessing magnitude
- Besieged by Plagiarists Who Play With LLMs and Image Fusions
- We really need to exercise or use our collective voice to oppose Serial Sloppers
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 08, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, August 08, 2025
- Gemini Links 09/08/2025: Water Painting and Political Violence
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: LLM Sloppers in Google News, LinuxSecurity, and More
- they also perpetuate some falsehoods as the LLMs lack any comprehension
- Links 08/08/2025: China King of Plastics and US Dictator Plans to Meet Russian Dictator
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 08/08/2025: Cracking a Family Member's Password and Overdose of Slop
- Links for the day
- Red Hat's Latest Talent Hunt, Day Ahead of Mass Layoffs, is Yet Another Microsoft Executive
- Red Hat will apparently commence mass layoffs early this coming Monday
- Links 08/08/2025: "Quit Facebook" and High Cost of Microsoft/Windows Shown Again ("BlackSuit")
- Links for the day
- Good Morning, Readers of The Register MS
- Things The Register MS could (but does not) cover this morning
- Why Gemini Protocol Has a Bright Future
- Maybe Gemini Protocol's promise becomes more appealing as the Web turns to slop and bloat
- It's a Lot Easier to Participate in the Unethical System Than to Oppose Injustices in It
- Going after powerful and high-budget interests is never easy
- Microsofters Filed Two SLAPPs Against Us, Now They Cannot Keep Up With Judges' Orders
- For over 4 months already their facilitator in London has been under investigation by British authorities because of what's being done to my wife and I
- Censorship Regarding Red Hat Layoffs
- Talk about this? They'd rather not.
- Struggling to Cut Costs, Microsoft Continues Shutting Down and Cancelling Stuff This Month
- There are August layoffs at Microsoft
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 07, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, August 07, 2025
- Fake 'Linux' Articles, Written by Bots to Take Traffic Away From Real Articles
- LLM slop helps replace information with junk or misinformation
- When Google's Googlebombing of "Gemini" Was Not Enough; They Now Also Googlebomb "Gemini Space"?
- We know GAFAM not only worries about Gemini Protocol but also attempts to 'infiltrate' Geminispace
- The Register MS Promotes Microsoft Slop, Assumes All Readers Use Microsoft Windows
- Microsoft really dominates the site
- Gemini Links 08/08/2025: KDE/Qt Development and What's Missing From "Retro"
- Links for the day
- Links 07/08/2025: US Punishes India Instead of Russia, Attacks Law Firms to Prevent Scrutiny
- Links for the day
- Read Us in Geminispace as Well
- it's definitely a lot simpler than using a Web browser
- Once a Site About BSD and GNU/Linux, and After Months of Silence, LinuxBSDos.com Comes Back Only as a Slopfarm
- very frustrating
- Links 07/08/2025: Hardware Wars, Mass Recall of Colgate Total Clean Mint, More Microsoft Holes Found
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/08/2025: "Right To Manage" and LoRa Analysis
- Links for the day
- For the First Time in a Month OSI's "OpenSource.org" Blogs and It's Basically a Microsoft Blog Post (Microsoft Controls OSI)
- For the first time in a month OSI writes something and it is Microsoft propaganda composed by a Microsoft-salaried operative
- Microsoft, Already Borrowing 3 Billion Dollars a Month, is Trying to Cause Many People to Resign
- MSN (i.e. Microsoft) and others openly admit it
- GAFAM 'Says' is Front Page "News"
- The point of journalism is to check and assess facts, not parrot what people and companies merely claim
- Links 07/08/2025: Apple Makes False Promises, More Trouble for Microsoft
- Links for the day
- OSS Didn't Always Mean Open Source Software
- "oligarchs all the way down"
- The Register MS Does More Microsoft Sez or GitHub Sez (Says) Pieces
- 60 minutes ago
- They Want Activists to Just Barely Walk and Eat, Not Do Activism Anymore
- It's sort of like the ending of '1984'
- Quit Perpetuating the Narrative of Gemini Protocol 'Dying' (It's False)
- The "whisper campaign" against Gemini Protocol
- Criticising Social Control Media in Social Control Media
- Many people are quitting Social Control Media (fewer of them announce this in public)
- Non-Free JavaScript Programs in Banks Aren't Even the Biggest Problem
- Technology was supposed to make life easier; in practice, however, for most of us the opposite effect can be observed
- Slopfarms Are Typically Fake News
- Slopfarms typically relay falsehoods
- Gemini Links 06/08/2025: Replacing a Pocket Watch and Buying in Bulk
- Links for the day
- IBM is Obliterating Fedora
- "Fedora releases were shipping with an increasing number of bugs on launch day even while I was using it for a several year stretch."
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 06, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, August 06, 2025