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
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- This is the way the Net ought to work and was originally designed to work [...] IRC as a protocol turns 38 this month
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- The Tragedy of Software Developers Making Up Narratives and Making Excuses for Plagiarism (of Their Own Work, Too)
- one lingering issue is that many who vote in Debian GRs receive money from slop companies
- Evri Makes Us Optimistic About the Collapse of the Slop Pyramid Scheme (Bubble)
- Do not be seduced by false promises of "automation" or "intelligence" where only automation may exist but no intelligence at all
- Links 24/08/2026: "Journalism Can Help Expose Bad Science And Trigger Real-World Change"; Further Suppression and Censorship in China/HK
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 24/08/2026: Soul Mentality, Words to Live by, Mozz.us Gemlog Resumes, Smol Conversations
- Links for the day
- Today The Register MS Published Greenwashing Spam for the Slop Pyramid Scheme, It Mentions "AI" 29 Times
- More people need to talk about the role of the media in this pyramid scheme
- Slop Plagiarism and Chatbots Are Killing Evri (They Infuriate and Insult Clients)
- Slop destroys companies and leads to misery (miserable clients, time-wasting)
- Links 24/08/2026: Re-defining the IndieWeb and "Data Center Backlash Bursts Into the Midterms"
- Links for the day
- The Issue With Omarchy is the Slop, the Politics Are a Side Issue
- Those corporations do not oppose slop, they participate in it
- In South Korea, Steady Increases for GNU/Linux
- authorities said they would migrate to GNU/Linux or consider moving in that direction
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 160 Out of 200: In Astounding Repetition of Last Year, Brett Wilson LLP Deliberately Ignores Holidays of People It is Attacking and Crushes Principles of Access to Justice
- Disconnected from the law
- Links 24/08/2026: Vision and Skill, Doing Good, Chiperia Project
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 23, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, August 23, 2026
- Gemini Links 23/08/2026: Turning 60, PineTime, and Simulation Hypothesis
- Links for the day
- Will Your "Modern" New Car Still be on the Road in 2060?
- Are people now expected to change a car as often as they replace a mobile phone and, if so, how fast would costs add up?
- The Sniff Test
- Be sceptical of "CoCs"
- Cloudflare Sees a Quarter of Requests in China Coming From GNU/Linux Today
- Will 23% ever be the average for GNU/Linux rather than a mere peak?
- You Can Lose Some Battles and Still Win the War
- Winning or losing isn't something for a scoreboard
- GNU/Linux Usage Measured at 23% in Russia Today
- the average was almost 10%
- Things Not to Fear Missing Out on
- Life is too short to pay attention to social control media
- Gemini Links 23/08/2026: Exercising Again, Tackling Phone Addiction, and Putting Graal Online Back Online
- Links for the day
- Northern Africa: GNU/Linux Measured at Around 5%
- by Clownflare
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- "I'd rather be laid off than be put on a PIP"
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- When will 14% be the average?
- Links 23/08/2026: Water Crises, Illegal Tariffs, and Carney Confronts US Over Patent Imperialism
- Links for the day
- Links 23/08/2026: Slop "Children's Stories Contain Bizarre Patterns" and "Butterflies at the One Garden"
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 159 Out of 200: Telling Courts False Information and Spoon-feeding Them Insults, Hoping or Expecting Them to Repeat These Insults
- When lawyers trick courts into repeating something false
- Microsoft is in Double Trouble in Singapore
- Android+GNU/Linux+ChromeOS are near 20%
- The Slop Industry Bribed the Media to Pretend It Has Something New and Revolutionary. Now It Bribes Politicians Too. Anything to Avoid Scrutiny and Regulation.
- borrowed money has long been used to bribe the media
- "AGI" is Decades Old and It Never Found a Viable Business Model or Real, Actually Useful Use Cases
- I keep reminding people of local firms (right here in Manchester) doing the same thing the media now calls "AGI"...
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 22, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, August 22, 2026
- Microsoft to Its Workers in April-May: You're Too Old, Go Away. Microsoft in August: Young People, Go Away.
- What does this company even sell anymore?
- Clownflare Data US-Centric
- We are assuming that for national security reasons not many sites in Chinese (or based in China) outsource their traffic to Clownflare
- Gemini Links 22/08/2026: Broken Car, Devuan, and Thundermail
- Links for the day
- Links 22/08/2026: Prince Harry, Elton John and Others Pay High Price for Frivolous Litigation in the UK
- Links for the day
- 'Voluntary' Mass Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
- IBM does not want people to notice what truly goes on there
- Another Round of GAFAM Layoffs, This Time Apple
- Now Apple "is shutting down an entire Vision Pro team focused on developing gaming features for the mixed-reality headset."
- Gemini Links 22/08/2026: The Bodyguard (1992), Minimalism, Backups, and IPFS
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 158 Out of 200: Making Alliances With Men Arrested for Strangling Women Was Always a Terrible Strategy
- They work for American slop companies
- Links 22/08/2026: TikTok Settles With Feds, Harms Caused by Social Control Media Gaining Attention
- Links for the day
- New Data Shows Microsoft's XBox is Really Dying
- XBox is a "burning platform"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 21, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, August 21, 2026