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
- Not Hard to Guess Who Will Pay for IBM's Collapse (Due to False Statements Made to Shareholders), Red Hat May Disappear
- IBM's leadership is never being punished for its failures
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- IBM Has Embraced and Rewarded Liars
- The IBM culture vanished
- statCounter Estimates GNU/Linux at 5.32% in Kuwait, Years Ago It Was Near 0%
- Kuwait rose to fame in the 1990s because of a war
- Swatting People Who Write About Corruption, Misogyny, Criminal Misuse of Funds
- we've given ourselves a decade to cover all those stories
- GNU/Linux Rises Above 6% in Colombia
- In Colombia, which is a large south American country, GNU/Linux has risen steadily in recent years
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 138 Out of 200: Garrett Has Basically "Lost" and It is "Embarrassing" to Them
- they just wound up costing hundreds of thousands of pounds
- Gemini Links 03/08/2026: Great Exodus, xkcd as Text, and Dead Ends
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux Has Surged to 6.3% in Madagascar
- Madagascar's adoption of Free software is a subject we covered a lot in past years
- Microsoft's Slop Bet is Killing the XBox Even Faster
- LLMs destroy almost anything they touch
- The Cyber Show on "Weaponised Antisocial Technology"
- by Andy
- Alexandre Oliva on Slippery Slop (LLMs)
- By Alexandre Oliva
- RMS Won the Argument and Now GNU Wins Over Computer Users
- He can look back at nearly 43 years of GNU and say, "I was right..."
- statCounter Corrects GNU/Linux Estimates, Now Measured at 9% Worldwide
- Windows has sunk like a rock
- GNU/Linux-Centric Blogs Belatedly Pick Up News About GNU/Linux Gains: 4-8% Depending on the Surveyor
- more people will get curious and give it a go
- Links 03/08/2026: Strike By Flight Attendants (WestJet) and Greedflation
- Links for the day
- Links 03/08/2026: EU Curtailed Slop, Frank Zappa Recalled
- Links for the day
- Daniel Pocock on Sky News This Morning
- No harm done
- Morten Linderud Has Helped Microsoft Put Locks (and Kill Switches) on the PCs of Arch Linux Users
- "the first rule of "secure boot" is to disable "secure boot"
- In Poor Peru, GNU/Linux Surges From 1% to 5% in a Few Years
- Windows is dying
- All Social Control Media is a Weapon (Against Its Users, Serving the Real Owners)
- That social control networks are weaponised isn't a new concept
- Fanning the Flames of Journalism
- This week we have several surprises coming
- Forcing the Slop Bubble to Implode Fully to Save the Economy From an Even Greater Collapse and Societal Harm
- Let's blow up the bubble. The sooner, the better
- GNU/Linux at 8% in Croatia
- somewhat of a GNU/Linux adoption hotbed
- It's Easy to Predict Microsoft Layoffs for October 2026 Because of the Financial 'Results' That Month (More Faking, More Secret Debt and Buzzwords to Perfume This Debt as "Investment")
- From what we've read, Microsoft is silently laying off people this month based on LITE, which leads to PIPs
- Many Anniversaries
- Many anniversaries in quick succession
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 02, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, August 02, 2026
- Gemini Links 03/08/2026: Collectibles, Cities of the Red Night, and Lali Lambda
- Links for the day
- IBM's August 2026 Promotions (Annual Ritual) Can Turn Into a "Bloodbath" (RAs, Layoffs)
- IBM Common Stock is set to open in the red (minus) on Monday
- Microsoft Culture Explained by People Who Work at Microsoft
- "Be ready for politicking and working over time and weekends."
- Codes of Conduct Attract Hoarders and Sociopaths, They Are Intolerant Towards Good People
- Codes of Conduct (CoCs) are also promoted using violence
- XBox is in Trouble, Sunday News Shows How Serious a Problem It Now Faces
- it seems impossible to resuscitate at this point
- statCounter Observes GNU/Linux at 10% in Libya
- this month statCounter finally sees GNU/Linux approaching "double-figures" there
- Thailand: GNU/Linux Approaching 15%, Windows in a Freefall
- It makes perfect sense for Thailand to adopt GNU/Linux for technical reasons, not just political reasons
- GNU/Linux in Bulgaria Back Up
- part of a trend in Europe
- Cuba Sees Leap in GNU/Linux Usage, as Reported by statCounter
- For the ordinary Cuban it makes sense to reduce a dependence on GAFAM
- Gemini Links 02/08/2026: Drift, Crawlers in Gopher Space, Purpose, and Python
- Links for the day
- Links 02/08/2026: Some Large Slop Investors "Crumbling", Russia Intensifies Bombing of Kiev
- Links for the day
- IBMers Discuss Who Killed IBM (It Impacts Red Hat)
- Fedora is fast becoming like another CentOS
- GNU/Linux Rises to 6% in Mexico
- Did the soccer (football) matches have some impact or just the "unknowns" being deciphered (or omitted) by statCounter?
- GNU/Linux Leaps to 8% in Asia
- In Asia, is it a bit higher because of GAFAM distrust? Maybe some other factor/s?
- Clownflare Web Usage Survey: About 10% in North America Use GNU/Linux, Worldwide 6.7%
- surveyors that showed GNU/Linux growth
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 137 Out of 200: Discovering That Spending a Million British Pounds (1,348,250.01 United States Dollars) on Lawyers Cannot Take Down One's Critics
- just outright bullying and criminality
- Steam Survey, analytics.usa.gov, and statCounter All Point to GNU/Linux Gains (Again)
- This must be very annoying to Microsoft
- GNU/Linux Exceeds 6% in Spain
- In recent years the "market share" steadily grew from 3% to over 6%
- Brazil: GNU/Linux Record High, 5%
- On average, GNU/Linux has evidence of growth in many countries this summer
- Amid 2026 Bing Layoffs Microsoft Share in Search Collapses
- How much longer before Microsoft throws in the towel or rebrands again?
- United Kingdom: GNU/Linux up to 7%, ChromeOS Another 5% (Total 12%)
- further significant gains for GNU/Linux this month
- Links 02/08/2026: Cheeto "Blurted Out Vile Plot to Censor ABC"; New York Times Fights 'Intimidation'
- Links for the day
- Why Techrights Will Still be Active a Decade From Now
- Techrights will carry on for many years to come
- We Are Witnessing the End of IBM
- IBM cannot find growth by moving downwards, by lowering standards
- The Slop Presumption Rule
- Tainting oneself can take one day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 01, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, August 01, 2026
- Gemini Links 02/08/2026: Older Books, Esperanto Music History, and Slop Making Things Worse
- Links for the day
- Sharing and Empathy
- Be more like Stallman, not Linus
- August 2026 Microsoft Layoffs Are "Secret Layoffs" or "Silent Layoffs"
- It's all about secrecy, isn't it?
- Fedora 'Community' Became 100% IBM Staff, Drawing Up Policies Like CoC and CoI (Where the IBM is Excepted From Conflict of Interest Policies)
- IBM has in effect killed Fedora
- Gemini Links 01/08/2026: Planner Season is Upon Us, Slop "Apocalypse", and USENET
- Links for the day
- Cuts at IBM, Allegedly More Shutdowns to Come, CEO Visits Complicit Media to Promote Lies and Products That Will Never Exist (Misleading Shareholders)
- IBM is collapsing
- Links 01/08/2026: GAFAM Falling Deep Into Trillion in (Secret) Debt to Keep the Slop Bubble From Popping Already, Anger Over "FIFA’s World Cup Privatisation Plan"
- Links for the day
- Newer Not Better: Treadmill Updates Cause Problems
- after 2 years the un-updated machines still fine
- The Cyber Show on the Slop Bubble
- new article about the implosion of the slop bubble
- Links 01/08/2026: New York Times Trying to Inflate the Slop Pyramid Scheme (at Cost to Its Own Reputation) and "Iran Appears to Be Blasting Amazon Data Centers Off the Map"
- Links for the day
- Positive Political Momentum
- Daniel Pocock is taken seriously by many people who contact us privately
- Google "AI" is Plagiarism, the Case of Richard Stallman (RMS)
- Why would anyone choose LLM slop over the originals, curated and fact-checked by domain experts?
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 136 Out of 200: Lawyers That Get Paid to Mess About
- They were already outnumbered and understaffed
- Explaining That Software Patents Are Neither Legal Nor Desirable
- Many of our readers work in the legal sector
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 31, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, July 31, 2026
- Gemini Links 01/08/2026: Retirement, Bike Trips, Quake Stuff, Usenet Reborn
- Links for the day