Latest News About Surveillance, Torture, and Assassination
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-11 22:33:38 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-11 22:33:38 UTC
Summary: The steep decline to lawlessness and elimination of dissent
-
The value of privacy is something that most people can appreciate but there are those that wish to systematically dismantle this basic human right. Today, however, in a battle to mirror and celebrate the fight against SOPA and its inspiration Aaron Swartz, the Internet will tell the NSA and their mass surveillance partners that erosion of freedoms will never be accepted.
-
Over the last year the public across the globe was made aware of massive global surveillance conducted by the NSA and its partners or counterparts, but also by private tech companies. In response, and in celebration of the victory against SOPA, PIPA and ACTA two years ago and in memory of one of its key architects, Aaron Swartz, La Quadrature du Net joins this day of mobilisation The Day We Fight Back against mass surveillance, which will mark actions by civil rights groups from all over the world. This day is a perfect occasion for all citizens to get informed, and to act to defend our privacy against private and public surveillance. Below are actions carried out by La Quadrature and its supporters today.
-
Thanks to the generosity of supporters who helped crowd-fund it, and of Benoît Musereau who volunteered to direct it, La Quadrature du Net publishes ”Reclaim Our Privacy”, a three-minute movie that explains the threat to, the importance of protecting, and the tools to reclaim our privacy online. If you want to contribute to the funding of this movie, it is still possible to do so here. Any funds received above the target amount will be shared between Benoît Musereau and La Quadrature du Net. The movie is released under CC BY-SA, so feel free to share or remix it!
-
If George Orwell and Laurie Lee were to return from the Spanish civil war today, they would be arrested under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006. If convicted of fighting abroad with a "political, ideological, religious or racial motive" – a charge they would find hard to contest – they would face a maximum sentence of life in prison. That they were fighting to defend an elected government against a fascist rebellion would have no bearing on the case. They would go down as terrorists.
-
Interception communications commissioner Sir Anthony May says requests amount to 570,000 a year
-
The Day We Fight Back deserves truth amidst the administration’s half-truths and trolling. From thwarted attacks (zero) to President Obama’s new rules (not good enough), this is what you need to know to make real reform happen
-
Analysis: U.S. knows about citizens’ phone calls and emails and spies on allied foreign governments and companies
-
Legislators in Maryland want to turn the lights out on the NSA — literally. A bill introduced last Thursday to its House of Delegates would bar state agencies, utilities, and pretty much anything that receives state funds from providing assistance to federal agencies that collect electronic data or metadata without a specific warrant to do so. Namely, the delegates are thinking of the National Security Agency, which is headquartered just outside their state's capital.
[...]
The campaign to shut off the NSA's water and electricity actually stems from the Tenth Amendment Center, which drafted model legislation on which Maryland's proposal is based. In particular, the Tenth Amendment Center is also hoping to see the NSA's water supply turned off in Utah, where the agency operates another large data center. Though it's a roundabout way of dealing with the NSA and unlikely to be a widely supported measure, Smigiel thinks it's fitting: "I think it was Mark Twain who said, 'Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over.'"
-
Machon talked about the Courage Foundation last December at the 30th Chaos Communication Congress (30C3) in Hamburg, Germany; it is one of the most important annual meetings for hackers around the globe. There, Machon won the audience’s admiration with her talk on what she calls, “the war on whistleblowers.” She believes that these wars are mainly used as a pretext to erode civil liberties worldwide and intervene in other countries’ affairs.
-
International payments, banking and credit card transactions are flagged and monitored by the NSA. It has specifically targeted big credit card companies like VISA.
-
Two weeks ago, we called your attention to the forthcoming “Day We Fight Back,” an Internet movement designed to fight back against the NSA’s data collection program. Guess what? The day is finally here. Watch out, government.
Today, as planned, dozens of participating websites like Upworthy and Piwik are posting banners on their home pages, encouraging viewers to call up and email their local legislators and complain about the NSA.
-
Hammarskjöld died during the night of September 17th, 1961 in a plane crash in what is now Zambia, where he was headed to mediate in the ongoing conflict in neighbouring The Congo in his role as then UN Secretary General.
The diplomat's death has been the subject of numerous rumours and conspiracy theories over the past five decades centred around whether the crash was an accident, or if Hammarskjöld was killed.
Evidence available has left investigators puzzled, with pilot error deemed unlikely after witnesses claimed to have seen the plane going down on fire.
-
Two Dutch ministers faced a grilling in Parliament Tuesday after revealing the country's intelligence services grabbed metadata from some 1.8 million intercepted telephone calls.
Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk and Defence Minister Jeanine Hennis are fending off calls for their resignations after revealing last week that the Dutch secret services intercepted the data -- an act previously attributed to the US National Security Agency (NSA).
-
As the European Union and the Commission drive efforts to conclude the most ambitious overhaul of the continent’s data protection legislation since 1995 in advance of European Parliament elections this spring, Business Cloud News sat down with European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx to discuss the law’s development, its implications for cloud service providers once in place, and the revelations surrounding the NSA and GCHQ’s widespread digital surveillance activities.
-
A bill that would exempt the National Security Agency’s data center in Bluffdale from paying taxes on its massive electric consumption met some resistance from legislators Tuesday, but remained on track.
The bill would codify a commitment made by former Gov. Jon Huntsman not to tax the utilities for the data center in an attempt to lure the massive NSA operation to Utah.
-
Last week I wrote about an inquiry being conducted by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament into the laws that govern the UK's intelligence agencies (now closed, I'm afraid.) That's just one sign of the tectonic shift that has taken place in this area in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about massive, global surveillance being carried out by the NSA and GCHQ.
-
One year after the tragic death of the campaigning hacker, a global campaign against surveillance is building the Don’t Spy On Us campaign in his spirit
-
-
Coming off the latest (not so surprising) revelations of the misuse of NSA data, Happiness Brussels has launched “Spy on the NSA,” a site which gives the the NSA a taste of its own medicine in support of www.thedaywefightback.org, “a massive digital protest against mass surveillance taking place across the internet today.” Among those participating today as well are Reddit, Amnesty International, Tumblr, Upworthy and Greenpeace.
-
On Monday, the new publication First Look reported that electronically obtained metadata controls who, how, and when U.S. drones kill abroad. Journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill write that that kind of information doesn’t only determine who is killed: Metadata on phone SIM cards determines how victims of the strikes are found.
-
The administration of President Barack Obama leaked sensitive information about the possibility of using a drone to kill an American who joined al-Qaida in order to position themselves as politically "deliberative," Sen. Marco Rubio said Tuesday.
-
A thought experiment to get assassination advocates back on the right side of the law
-
For British MPs, the issue has taken on fresh significance after it emerged that intelligence operatives at GCHQ have been providing targeting information to their US counterparts.
-
Notice those words: "legally" and "policy." No longer does U.S. media make a distinction between the two.
-
Human rights need to have a home. Presently in both the United States and much of the world it has taken a back seat to right and left. In a world that cares about people, human rights shouldn't take a back seat to any political party. Universal human rights should drive.
-
Torture, secrecy, military adventurism. Dick Cheney, more than anyone else, set the course for America after 9/11
-
Poland’s criminal investigation into secret CIA prisons located on its territory has been in progress since 2008. Now run from the Prosecutor’s Office in Krakow, the process has recently been extended, once again, to February 2014.
[...]
“It is significant that the ECHR was the first court to conduct a public hearing on al-Nashiri’s claims of torture and secret detention. The Polish authorities have failed to conduct an effective investigation, and US courts have also failed to deliver justice to date”, added Singh, who also represented al-Nashiri in Strasbourg.
-
At a secret black site in the years after the end of WWII, CIA and US intelligence operatives tested LSD and other interrogation techniques on captured Soviet spies—all with the help of former Nazi doctors. An excerpt from Annie Jacobsen’s Operation Paperclip, published this week.
-
The worst kept secret in Washington national security circles is no more. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper publicly acknowledged for the first time at a Senate hearing Tuesday that the Central Intelligence Agency has a drone program.
The CIA’s drone program, which operates in Pakistan and Yemen, has been the subject of news reports for years. But U.S. officials have continued to steer clear of publicly acknowledging the program, glossing over CIA’s role, because it has remained officially covert. That covert status allows the CIA to operate in countries where local governments don’t support the strikes.
-
That has got to be one of the silliest statements of the new year. If Woolsey honestly believes the U.S. government is anti-Semitic, that it is driven by anti-Jewish sentiments, he needs to explain why the U.S. has generously made Israel, the spiritual and geographical homeland of the Jewish people, a virtual client-state, having given/lent/made available billions upon billions of dollars over the years.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
- If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
- Preparations for Our 19th Anniversary Have Already Begun
- When we get back we'll probably sort out some balloons and venue for the next party
- Pleased After 2 Years With team.blue
- Moving from a Content Management System (CMS, dynamic) to a Static Site Generator (SSG) was a wise decision that made life so much easier
- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is Being Attacked by Organisations Jealous of Its Principled Stance and Longevity
- Nobody is perfect, but imperfection does not instantaneously imply sinister intent
-
- Activists Can Win, But Keep an Eye on the Ball and on the Trophy
- GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
- Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
- Links for the day
- At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
- The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, September 03, 2025
- The UEFI 9/11 - Part VI - This Serious Harm Was Planned for Over a Decade, Not an Accident or Merely Some Misfortune
- The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
- GNOME Unfit for Diversity and Inclusion
- GNOME's leadership is using "bad words"
- Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
- Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
- Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
- Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News
- Links 03/09/2025: Microsoft Causes Mass Layoffs Outside Microsoft Also, "Google Can Keep Paying for Firefox Search Deal"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/09/2025: calendar.txt, Alhena 5.3.1, and ROOPHLOCH
- Links for the day
- The Theory That the Man From McKinsey, Whom Red Hat Took From Microsoft a Month Ago as Executive, Wants 'Efficiency' (Lower Salaries)
- So far... no "official" word
- When Your Site's Articles Are Being 'Cheapened' by Slop as Feature Images
- Dr. Farnell should become an advisor to The Register MS
- Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops to Only Half a Dozen Capsules and 0.2% of the Whole in Geminispace, Self-Signed is the Way to Go
- It used to have hundreds, according to Lupa
- Doing to Red Hat What They Already Did (and Still Do) to IBM
- there seems to be a drive to hire cheaper staff, and it may be led by somebody Red Hat hired from Microsoft
- Links 03/09/2025: Salesforce's Latest Mass Layoffs, 93% in Large Poll at The Register MS Say UK Government Should Dump Microsoft
- Links for the day
- If You Reject the Google Verdict in the US, Then You Should Also Reject the "Modern" Web (Do Something About It)
- Gemini Protocol is still open; it cannot be hijacked or subverted because it's frozen by design and by intention
- Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
- OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
- Many People Are "Leaving" Red Hat, Even High-Level Managers
- Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
- Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
- I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
- Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
- perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
- Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
- Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
- As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
- Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
- At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
- "Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
- "Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025
- Links 02/09/2025: Oligarch Tech and Text Encoding Concerns in Ada
- Links for the day
- "Internal Changes at Red Hat / IBM"
- It seems like quite a few people are leaving
- Confirmed in French Media: Mass Layoffs (10% Culled) in Microsoft France
- Now some reports in French
- "People on LinkedIn Saying That They've Left Red Hat."
- We already saw signs of it a month ago and named some of the people
- Gone With the BRICs (or BRICS): "Linux 8" in Cuba
- GAFAM must be worried
- Telecompaper Reports Microsoft to Reduce the Workforce by Another 10% (in France)
- Imagine what this will do to staff's morale
- Microsoft in Freefall in Finland
- Can Finland eradicate Windows from all its infrastructure, including core operations that are sensitive to sabotage by cracking?
- Google's Chrome Passes 70% and Web Standards Are Dying
- The Web is quickly becoming devoid of any standards
- India is Back to Windows 8 (Market Share Down to 8%) as Android Soars to a New Record High
- For Microsoft, India is a runaway market
- Slopwatch: Plagiarism and Ponzi Scheme, Bubble About to Burst Entirely, Admits Goldman Sachs
- the hype that Google News and The Register MS actively participate and profit from
- Links 02/09/2025: SCO Summit and Russia Suspected Of Jamming GPS
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 02/09/2025: Mediterranean Marriage and Staying Connected at 35,000 Feet
- Links for the day
- The Register MS Says "AI Web Crawlers Are Destroying Websites", So Why Does The Register MS Help 'AI' Companies? (Spoiler: Money)
- People need to call out The Register MS on its hypocrisy
- Slopfarms Already Peaked, They Will Die When Slop Companies Run Out of Money to Borrow
- slopfarms will lack an actual "engine"
- Links 02/09/2025: Attacks on Unions, Microsoft TCO, and DDoSing a Growing Problem
- Links for the day
- Why We Publish Information About the SLAPPs (But Not About the Legal Process), an Abuse of Process by Americans Trying to Silence Critics of Their Employer, Microsoft
- It doesn't take thousands of pages to explain something simple
- Internet Relay Chat Didn't Fall Off a Cliff
- IRC will turn 40 in less than 3 years from now
- The UEFI 9/11 - Part V - This is Not a Drill (Disable "SecureBoot" Now)
- A "9/11" Coming
- There's No Obligation to Speak to Anybody
- The very fact that "bkuhn" is till spending time in social control media says a lot about his poor judgment
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 01, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, September 01, 2025
- Microsoft Trying to Force People to Resign (Amid Mass Layoffs) a Strategy That Takes Its Toll
- Microsoft seems to be circling down the drain and the "final flush" will be the moment the "hey hi" (AI) bubble implodes completely
- Google Simply Cannot Be Trusted
- Only fools would trust GAFAM
- Admission That a Third Party (or Parties) Funds the SLAPPs Against Techrights
- This can end up costing them over a million dollars
- Modifying and Writing One's Own Computer Programs is Not a Crime (or: Google Proves That Stallman Was Right)
- We're generally gratified to see so many positive mentions of him
- Why We Stopped Publishing Videos (for Now)
- We'll probably get back to videos one day, but it's hard to say when or to what extent
- What Animal Rights Activism Teaches Us About Sympathy and Focus
- It's possible to believe that the planet is warming, that we must do something about it, and still eat eggs and butter