News Roundup: Privacy, Surveillance, and Assassination
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-13 14:22:09 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-13 14:22:09 UTC
Summary: Another set of new links (from yesterday's and today's news) covering a very disturbing trend that exploits technology for imposition of power
-
In 2010 the American Petroleum Institute (API) paid the global intelligence firm Stratfor more than $13,000 a month for weekly intelligence bulletins profiling activist organizations and their campaigns on everything from energy and climate change to tax policy and human rights, according to documents published by WikiLeaks in 2012.
The weekly reports provided details on a wide range of environmental organizations including Greenpeace, NRDC, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. API was interested in anticipating which groups might be out to “attack” them.
-
Step aside, Rand Paul: the NSA has a new enemy. While the Kentucky senator announced his own class-action lawsuit against the NSA on Wednesday, Marc Roberts, a first-term Republican lawmaker in Utah, is planning to introduce legislation that will choke the water supply at the NSA data center under construction in the state.
-
Local protesters joined the National Day of Action against government surveillance by rallying outside the Federal Building on Exchange Street in Kennedy Plaza.
About 20 people held up signs and a large banner that said: “Dear U.S. Government: Stop Spying On Us!!” Organized jointly by Rhode Island MoveOn.org and the R.I. Coalition to Defend Human and Civil Rights, the protest was part of a national effort called The Day We Fight Back.
-
It is instructive to note that all of this will be done by the same government that operates under an explicit constitutional directive purportedly protecting people from “unreasonable searches and seizures” and specifying that “... no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause ... and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”[3] Indeed, one of the most instructive aspects of the NSA scandal is the way the agency has succeeded, for an extensive period of time, in warding off legal challenges to the constitutionality of its surveillance programs. This is instructive from the point of view of libertarian theory, since it illustrates the degree to which the much-vaunted “checks and balances” within the State apparatus, highlighted in the recent Obama speech, are really illusory. In practice, the judicial and executive branches of government tend to act as a legitimizing mechanism for the actions of government agencies, with rare “checks and balances” and“reforms” coming only when the legitimacy of the system is under potent attack from some outside source.
-
The European parliament is to ditch demands on Wednesday that EU governments give guarantees of asylum and security to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower.
-
Never underestimate the newfound digital power of advocacy groups to lobby lawmakers. Tuesday's protest against government surveillance, dubbed The Day We Fight Back, generated more than 85,000 phone calls and 175,000 emails to members of Congress, thanks to more than 6,000 websites that agreed to host a banner to direct voters to act.
-
Panel says program is illegal and ineffective
-
Deputy Attorney General James Cole may have misled Congress earlier this month when he said the National Security Agency doesn’t look at phone data it collects from members of Congress, three lawmakers wrote in a letter on Wednesday.
Because the NSA could track even phone numbers only distantly related to a suspected source believed to be involved in terrorism, it’s entirely possible that a member of Congress‘ records were tracked, said Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Republican author of the Patriot Act, and two other congressmen, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York.
-
And it looks like they’re going to remain convinced of that no matter what.
-
Sensenbrenner, Issa and Nadler wrote to Cole on Wednesday for a public clarification of the statement, which they described as “not entirely accurate” – and in doing so drew attention to a little-noticed procedure used by the NSA.
-
The EC called for reform today in the way which the internet is run, saying it needs to be more transparent and accountable. Specifically, the EC wants to ensure that one country, specifically the US, doesn't maintain a dominating influence.
-
EU vice president Neelie Kroes wants the US to slacken its grip on how the internet is managed in the aftermath of revelations about mass surveillance of innocent citizens.
She said today that reform was needed to make internet governance more inclusive, transparent and accountable around the globe, with particular emphasis unsurprisingly placed on the role the European Union could play in reshaping that control.
-
Agency’s dragnet of communications data threatens to destroy the confidence between reporter and source on which most investigations depend, Committee to Protect Journalists said
-
DUTCH houses are famous for having large front parlour windows that look directly onto the pavement, affording passersby a clear view of everything happening inside. It is commonplace to associate these windows with the Calvinist Dutch enthusiasm for transparency, a moral imperative to display that one has nothing to hide. One might think that such a compulsively transparent nation would be less upset than others to learn that its electronic communications were being monitored, but in fact Dutch citizens reacted with fury last August to documents released by Edward Snowden, showing that America's National Security Agency had apparently collected huge amounts of information on Dutch phone calls and other communications—1.8m of them in December 2012 alone. The interior minister, Ronald Plasterk, issued a report in October denying any Dutch government complicity, and in television appearances accused the Americans of carrying out unauthorised surveillance in the Netherlands and promised to call them to account.
-
A vocal proponent among US Senate liberals for controversial National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance efforts says the program could be shut down, and experts are unsure how many Americans’ phone numbers have been gathered.
Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, one of the few proponents of the NSA data-collection programs among Democratic progressives, said Wednesday he is “not assuming” that lawmakers will opt to “keep the bulk collection.”
-
Many of the new privacy protections and surveillance reforms ordered by President Obama will probably not harm the National Security Agency’s ability to do its job, the agency’s deputy said.
“They’re not putting us out of business,” Deputy Director Rick Ledgett said in a recent interview at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. “They’re not putting an unbearable burden on us. There is a cost to implementing those procedures. But the cost is reasonable, and the effects are not hurting our mission in a significant way.”
-
Press freedom in the United States has suffered “one of the most significant declines” in the last year after sacrificing information to national security, with the NSA surveillance scandal topping the list of wrongdoing.
That’s according to The World Press Freedom Index for 2014 from Reporters Without Borders (RWB), which put the US in 46th place out of 180 countries, a 13-place drop from last year.
-
Obama heads an administration Murder, Inc. agenda. He appointed himself judge, jury and executioner.
-
After seven years of litigation, two trips to a federal appeals court and $3.8 million worth of lawyer time, the public has finally learned why a wheelchair-bound Stanford University scholar was cuffed, detained and denied a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii: FBI human error.
FBI agent Kevin Kelley was investigating Muslims in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004 when he checked the wrong box on a terrorism form, erroneously placing Rahinah Ibrahim on the no-fly list.
What happened next was the real shame.
-
An anti-drone activist and journalist has gone missing in Pakistan just days before he was due to travel to Europe to speak with Parliament members about the impact of the U.S. drone wars. The legal charity Reprieve says Karim Khan was seized in the early hours of February 5 by up to 20 men, some wearing police uniforms. He has not been seen since. Khan’s brother and son were both killed in a drone strike. In addition to public activism, Khan was also engaged in legal proceedings against the Pakistani government for their failure to investigate the killings of his loved ones. We are joined by filmmaker Madiha Tahir, who interviewed Khan for her documentary, "Wounds of Waziristan."
-
A judge in Onondaga County found 13 anti-drone-aircraft activists guilty of disorderly conduct for protesting at a Syracuse-area military base where airmen with the New York Air National Guard's 174th Attack Wing remotely fire missiles from unmanned aircraft flying in Afghanistan.
DeWitt Town Judge David Gideon on Friday sentenced 12 of the 13 peace activists for blocking entrances to the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base on Oct. 25, 2012, according to a De Witt court clerk. The dozen protesters each received 15 days in jail, $375 fines and two-year restraining orders prohibiting them from being near Col. Earl A. Evans, a commander at the base, the clerk said. Gideon is expected to sentence the remaining activist, Vietnam veteran Elliott Adams, on Feb. 25. The 67-year-old from Sharon Springs, Schoharie County, received permission from the judge to miss Friday's court appearance because he was out of the state.
-
Every time you think the war on terror can't get any weirder, it does.
[...]
All this helps explain why the Obama administration apparently feels it cannot kill an American citizen without first taking the political temperature in the U.S. When a government program has the odor of illegality, no one wants to use it unless the use will not be heavily criticized. That's no way to run national security and it's no way to run a constitutional democracy, either.
-
- Looking at the way the White House has handled requests from (ACLU) America’s Civil Liberties Union and other rights activist groups demanding more clarification and more transparency on the drone program, what do you think the White House is afraid of if the information comes out in the open?
-
The Intercept, the new startup title funded handsomely by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, debuted Monday and created buzz both for simply showing up and for its content: An article examining the use of drones to kill government-selected targets abroad, plus a collection of aerial images of the United States' national security campuses.
-
Just last month, JPMorgan Chase acknowledged that it facilitated the largest Ponzi scheme in history, looking the other way as Bernie Madoff brazenly turned his business bank account at JPMorgan Chase into an unprecedented money laundering operation that would have set off bells, whistles and sirens at any other bank.
The U.S. Justice Department allowed JPMorgan to pay $1.7 billion and sign a deferred prosecution agreement, meaning no one goes to jail at JPMorgan — again. The largest question that no one can or will answer is how the compliance, legal and anti-money laundering personnel at JPMorgan ignored for years hundreds of transfers and billions of dollars in round trip maneuvers between Madoff and the account of Norman Levy. Even one such maneuver should set off an investigation. (Levy is now deceased and the Trustee for Madoff’s victims has settled with his estate.)
-
President Obama is now considering whether to order the Central Intelligence Agency to kill a U.S. citizen in Pakistan. That’s big news this week. But hidden in plain sight is the fact that Amazon would be an accessory to the assassination.
Amazon has a $600 million contract with the CIA to provide the agency with “cloud” computing services. After final confirmation of the deal several months ago, Amazon declared: “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”
-
The program, writes Jacobsen, evolved into Project MKUltra, a secret US program studying mind and behavior control techniques, complete with experiments on human subjects. MKUltra also enjoyed the help of ex-Nazi scientists.
-
An effort by a powerful U.S. senator to broaden congressional oversight of lethal drone strikes overseas fell apart last week after the White House refused to expand the number of lawmakers briefed on covert CIA operations, according to senior U.S. officials.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, held a joint classified hearing Thursday with the Senate Intelligence Committee on CIA and military drone strikes against suspected terrorists.
But the White House did not allow CIA officials to attend, so military counter-terrorism commanders testified on their own.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- [Video] Leaving Microsoft Behind for the Sake of National Security
- Threats to "National Security" aren't some users with an Android phone but Microsoft at the root of things
- World Press Freedom Day: WIPO censors Debian suicide cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 07/05/2024: Pulitzer for Supreme Court Expose, New Threats to Media Reported
- Links for the day
- Berlin police declined to investigate FSFE Nazi comparisons
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
-
- [Meme] Technical Committee With People Who Are Not Technical
- the computing/computer industry being occupied by people who lack suitable background
- The Demise of Computer Science Education
- Education is essential for the future; without it, whole nations will perish
- [Video] Prisons for the Minds and for Tech Workers
- Today's video talks about what happens to workforces (across disciplines) in recent years
- [Meme] Struggling to Leave Its Nazi Past Behind
- digital arson
- Microsoft Declines to Talk About How Many People It Has Just Laid Off
- Hours ago in IGN: "Microsoft did not say how many staff will lose their jobs, but significant layoffs are inevitable. IGN has asked Bethesda for comment. Microsoft declined to expand further when contacted by IGN."
- Microsoft Windows in South America: From 99% to 87%
- the latest from statCounter
- It's Rather Obvious Why They Try to Silence Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and Daniel Pocock
- Some of them already sent physically menacing messages to Daniel Pocock
- IRC Network of Techrights Turns 3 (or 16 if We Count the Freenode Days)
- In a few months IRC turns 36
- Sedating Oneself (and Shareholders) With Fuzzy Buzzwords and Pointless Acquisitions
- IBM trying to buy time
- Clickfraud Spamnil Ran Out of Clickfraud Budget, Apparently
- sooner or later charlatans and frauds run out of steam
- Techrights Gets Under the Skin of Bad, Corrupt, Immoral People (That's a Good Thing)
- Journalism is the lifeblood of democracy and free societies
- Companies Do Not Shut Down Offices and Lay Off Staff en Masse (Morale and Reputation Issue) Unless They're in Deep Financial Trouble
- Microsoft has been faking its financial performance for years
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 07, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, May 07, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- GNU/Linux and ChromeOS Now at 6% in France, According to statCounter
- numbers from statCounter
- Gemini Links 07/05/2024: Music Spotlight and Network Knobs
- Links for the day
- Only Weeks After Microsoft Closed Offices and Studios It is Closing Several More (Many Layoffs, Still Deeply Debt-Saddled)
- When the sad news writes itself
- Bolivarian Republic Of Venezuela: GNU/Linux Reaches 9% (ChromeOS Included)
- Venezuela must have lost interest in some American proprietary software when users were locked out of their own data (Adobe) and the costs could no longer be justified
- [Video] Microsoft is Like Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and Other Perpetrators of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering
- openwashing, Microsoft lobbying, and Microsoft subsidies (e.g. bailouts in the form of 'defence' contracts)
- Security & Debian: Urgent: New Feed URLs after another WIPO censorship
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 07/05/2024: Smashing Windows (Moving to GNU/Linux) and Mastodon Time-wasting
- Links for the day
- Links 07/05/2024: Cheap EVs and Cloudflare Layoffs
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Communities Governed by Parasitic Elements and Girlfriends (Who Can't Understand Those Communities)
- Karen Sandler and Molly de Blanc present at DebConf18
- [Meme] You Can't Kill an Idea (or Facts)
- Thankfully, in Western societies, there's still due process, rule of law etc. You don't just hire assassins or imprison critics
- [Meme] Software in the Public Interest (SPI), Inc, Values Articles of Daniel Pocock at ~$5,000 Each (and Fails to Hide the Facts)
- we are laughing, not grieving
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 06, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, May 06, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- [Meme] About 2,564 Internet Sites Now at Risk of Hostile Takeover by Microsoft-Sponsored Software in the Public Interest (SPI)
- WIPO censors Debian suicide cluster
- Links 07/05/2024: Burning Plastic Waste, Facebook Censoring Politicians
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/05/2024: Smashing Windows (Microsoft Losing Users to GNU/Linux), Sixty Years of BASIC
- Links for the day
- Southern Asia is All Android (Majority) Now
- It's looking better (almost) every month
- Windows Already Down to 1% "Market Share" in Some Countries
- it is a dying breed
- Tesla Has Become a Ponzi Scheme or a 'Meme Stock'
- They tell us Tesla is "worth" almost twice as much as a company that sold about 30 times more cars
- For People at Red Hat "Job is at Risk"
- Red Hat is consulting some notorious firms to implement cuts
- Linux.com Became Mostly Dead, de Facto Marketing Site of "Linux" Foundation Products (Unrelated to Linux)
- what has happened to the authoritative domain Linux.com
- Microsoft GitHub: A Hair Salon Where You Get Awards for Nothing (NFT Vanity)
- People aren't defined by some private (proprietary) database and Microsoft does not universally "score" developers
- In Europe, Android is Bigger Than Windows (Android Now Measured at 45.1% Worldwide)
- Right now in statCounter...
- Links 06/05/2024: Al Jazeera Raided, Wildfire Season Coming
- Links for the day
- On Character Assassination Tactics
- The people who leverage these dirty politics typically champion projection tactics
- Links 06/05/2024: Scams and Politics
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 06/05/2024: Reading and Computers
- Links for the day
- United States Entering the $100 Trillion Debt Trap, We Compare GAFAM Debt
- Google's debt is about 6 times less than Amazon's
- GitLab's Losses Grew From $172,311,000 to $424,174,000 Per Annum
- Letting this company have control over your (or your company's) development/code forge may cost you a lot in the future
- statCounter's Latest: Android Bouncing to New All-Time Highs, Windows Down to Unprecedented Lows
- Android rising
- Can't Bear the Thought We're Happy and Productive
- If someone is now harassing online friends, attacking the wife, attacking my family (not just attacking and defaming people I know online) there are legal ramifications
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 05, 2024
- IRC logs for Sunday, May 05, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Erinn Clark & Debian: Justice or another Open Source vendetta?
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work