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
- Double-Dipping the Docket for Microsoft Glory and Censorship of Microsoft Critics
- same lawyer, same barrister, all US, all Microsoft
- IBM: Less Than a Month's Severance for Each Decade of Service
- Yes, decade!
- The EPO, Europe's Largest Patent Office, Admits Outsourcing to Microsoft Slop
- Their sole goal is to make more money
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- Microsoft's "FUD-as-a-Service" (Against Linux) Not Functioning Well
- This is the kind of contribution companies like Microsoft and Google have to offer to society
- Betanews Becoming a Slopfarm is "Betanews Growing Alongside You", According to Betanews
- Their first 'article' in over two weeks is 52% "AI-generated" (slop), 33% mixed (edited slop), 18% human-written, says an advanced scanner.
- Coffee Day and LLM Sloppers
- The LLM slop "bros" are a lot like fake-money bros; they lie to people, they boast that they lie to people, and they're generally bad people, BS artists in colloquial terms
- TheLayoff Censorship of IBM Threads Has Gone Truly Ludicrous
- we do not argue that TheLayoff should not cull LLM slop
- More Stallmanites Added to FSF Board and Summer Fundraiser Commences
- There's some good news from the FSF
- Gemini Links 17/06/2025: Consistency and Notes About NixOS
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 16, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, June 16, 2025
- July 2 2025 Would Not be First Big Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Before Major National Holiday
- July 2 or 3 mark the start of a very long weekend in the US
- IDG's NetworkWorld Seems to Have Just Become LLM Slop
- If IDG (now controlled by China) does that in at least one site, why not the rest? Only a matter of time?
- Gemini Links 16/06/2025: Free Lunches and Bookmarklet for Mastodon
- Links for the day
- Gemini Protocol Turns 6 on Friday
- Active (online) Gemini capsules are estimated by Lupa at over 3,000
- Taking a Lesson From Denmark and Greenland? Iceland Shows New Lows for Windows, All-Time Highs for GNU/Linux
- If Microsoft sabotages systems of judges at the Hague (in order to appease the insane man who wanted to invade Greenland), why won't its neighbour Iceland take note?
- BetaNews Has Just Deleted Its Latest 'Article' or Got Cracked Again and Restored From Outdated Backup Again
- BetaNews seems to be in some serious trouble right now
- Software Freedom is "Activism" Because the Corporate Agenda Revolves Around Bribery, Deceit, and Betrayal
- At the end Software Freedom will win because it's on the same side as truth and lawfulness
- Links 16/06/2025: EchoLeak and NASA Teaming up With India
- Links for the day
- The Better the Understanding or the More Nations Understand the Threat Posed by Microsoft, the Faster It'll be Eradicated
- We believe that the thing to advocate is self-hosting and Free software... A lack of simplicity or absence of alternatives is a form of vendor lock-in
- A Week of Sunlight
- They say transparency is like sunlight to a vampire
- "Linux" Sites That Went Astray
- there are even worse things than shutdowns
- Links 16/06/2025: Climate, Wildfires, Breaches, and Monopolies
- Links for the day
- Links 16/06/2025: Summer in Finland and Misunderstandings
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 15, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, June 15, 2025
- Gemini Links 15/06/2025: Rainy Season and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
- Links for the day
- Links 15/06/2025: Military Games, Parade, and Actions
- Links for the day
- Links 15/06/2025: Windows TCO, Openwashing, and Wars
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/06/2025: "AI Fatigue and Crappiness"
- Links for the day
- When Abusive Law Firms (Working for Microsofters Against Us) Assert That Someone Writing in Social Media About Himself is Confidential Information
- There was no reason to throw "GDPR" into 2 SLAPPs; they know it, but the goal was to increase the cost of a Defence and lessen the incentive to challenge the SLAPPs
- Microsoft Attack Dogs Against Watchdogs and Guard Dogs in Software
- Last year Microsofters hired attack dogs or "guns for hire"
- Slop Cannot Replace Domain Expertise
- All this "AI" hype (it's not even intelligence, it's all a misnomer, as many of us have insisted all along) will fizzle and be written off as a failed experiment
- IBM's Fresh 'PIPs' (Action Before Layoffs)
- At times like these, even once-reputable employers resort to PIPs and other procedures/tricks for denial of workers' rights
- Microsoft is a Problem Not Just for Denmark
- Every country should consider what Denmark is doing, why Denmark is doing it, and then do the same
- The Slopfarms' Self Detonation
- If more sites like BetaNews go under, then maybe we can still salvage some of the Web
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 14, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, June 14, 2025