Privacy and Human Rights Watch: Peeping Crown, Extradition, EU Resistance to Drones, and More
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-28 10:08:33 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-28 10:08:33 UTC
Summary: The latest (past 24 hours) stories about eroding human rights (exploiting transitions to digital), especially privacy rights
GCHQ
-
GCHQ documents say between 3-11 percent of Yahoo webcam chats contain ‘undesirable’ nudity.
-
The government is spying on Yahoo users via their webcams and X-box, according to a report based on leaked Eric Snowden documents. Both the American and British governments are now accused of spying on citizens in their own home, sans either a warrant or just cause.
-
● 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
UK
-
Techdirt followed the the saga of the hacker Gary McKinnon, whom the US authorities wished to extradite from the UK to face charges of causing damage to military computers, for some years before the UK Home Secretary blocked his extradition, and the case against him in the UK was dropped. That was a great result for McKinnon after a 10-year fight to avoid extradition, but it meant that the key issues that his situation raised were never addressed.
Reform/Legal
-
“Once You Give Up Your Rights, You Can Never Get Them Back. Once You Turn On That Police State, You Can Never Turn It Off.”
Richard Clarke is one of the four White House panelists on NSA spying, and the former top counter-terror czar in the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Local Action
-
While the NSA datacenter and its activities are in the national spotlight, local authority remains divided on how to treat it.
Algorithms
-
Eavesdropping by algorithm is still eavesdropping, whether a human looks at your data or not. Real reform can’t abide by the spy dictionary anymore
Alexander
-
In one of his final Capitol Hill appearances, Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency's director, on Thursday called for a stronger strategy to deter cyberattacks, saying the line that would prompt a U.S. response against an adversary “does not yet exist.”
-
Alexander says NSA could accept a change where agency would only be allowed to collect phone data related to terrorism
'Metadata'
Amazon/CIA
-
When former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was conducting digital surveillance on a massive scale, many feared for the future of cloud computing. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimated that Snowden’s revelations could cost U.S. cloud companies $22 billion to $35 billion in foreign business over the next three years, and countless pundits predicted that American businesses would flee the cloud as well. People would prefer to run software and store data on their own computers, the argument went, rather than host their operations atop outside services potentially compromised by the NSA.
Civil Rights
-
If President Barack Obama gets his way, five American citizens will have become victims of announced “targeted assassinations” by the military and CIA. Coupled with disturbing statements by United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, it is evident that the principle of the rule of law has lost force in the past few decades, especially after 9/11.
[...]
It was enshrined in the American, British and French Revolutions as sacred, and is an essential precept of liberalism.
-
*Eliminate the National Surveillance Agency, the NSA; completely stop the enormous spying on the American people. Take the other 12 U.S. intelligence agencies and combine their functions into one. We have the CIA and the FBI and Homeland Security to monitor imminent or longer term dangers to this country.
-
Think of us as having two presidents. One, a fellow named Barack Obama, cuts a distinctly Clark Kent-ish figure. In presiding over domestic policy, he is regularly thwarted in his desires by the Republicans in Congress and couldn’t until recently get his most basic choices for government positions or the judiciary through the Senate. For the most minimal look of effectiveness, he has to rely on relatively small gestures by executive order. In the recent history of the American presidency, he is a remarkably powerless figure presiding over what everyone who is a media anyone claims is a riven, paralyzed, even broken government structure, one in which the Republicans are intent on ensuring that a Democratic president can do nothing until they take the White House (which is almost guaranteed to be never). What this president wants, almost by definition, he can’t have. He is, as Guardian columnist Gary Younge wrote recently, a man who’s lost the plot line to his own story and has been relegated to the position of onlooker-in-chief.
-
There is one law for their terrorists and another for ours. "Theirs" kill a soldier in Woolwich and get slammed up for life. They get a verbal lynching from the red-tops, with Rot in Jail headlines and screams the rope would be too good for them, the filth and scum. "Our" terrorists get royal pardons and "letters of assurance", even if, as may be the case, they slaughter four soldiers and eight horses in cold blood in Hyde Park. That is how it must seem to many people.
-
The Untied States is the world's biggest violator of human rights of non-American persons and has been strongly condemned for conducting surveillance and prisoner torture around the globe, a report on US human rights said Friday.
The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013 was released by the Information Office of China's State Council, or the Cabinet, in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013 issued by the US State Department on Thursday.
-
China has hit back at the US over the human rights debate alleging the “world judge of human rights” has serious question marks hanging over its own record.
[...]
Washington has long “made arbitrary attacks and irresponsible remarks” on the human rights situation in almost 200 countries and regions again in its just-released reports, the Chinese report says.
“However, the US carefully concealed and avoided mentioning its own human rights problems,” it adds.
Chinese ally Russia has also repeatedly said the United States has no right to claim a mantle of moral leadership. Moscow has criticized Washington sharply over human rights, pointing to secret CIA jails abroad and treatment of inmates at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba and elsewhere.
Drones
-
Mr. Shami, a militant who American officials say is living in the barren mountains of northwestern Pakistan, is at the center of a debate inside the government over whether President Obama should once again take the extraordinary step of authorizing the killing of an American citizen overseas.
-
European Union Members of Parliament condemned the use of drones in targeted killings in a vote of 534 to 49. The vote proposing a ban referred to the drone strikes as “unlawful.”
-
Activists of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf, led by cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan, had blocked the route from the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar for the past three months in a protest over U.S. drone strikes.
-
Increased European research on unmanned aircraft is making the European Parliament nervous.
Military
-
Proposed cuts to defence spending would shrink US army to smallest size in 74 years
-
An influential U.S. senator says the Obama administration's response to the Benghazi attack was so fraught with inaccuracies and misleading testimony in the weeks preceding the 2012 presidential election that it warrants a new and thorough investigation by a joint Senate committee.
-
The very first act of the western-backed insurrectionists which represent a small percentage of the population and have managed to overthrow the government was to attempt rob Russian speakers in Ukraine of their language.
-
Hunt will be giving advice to startups in his new role at the San Francisco-based investment firm as they seek out profitable deals from the federal government. He told VentureBeat in an interview, "I'm taking my understanding of the intelligence space and scouting out the opportunities."
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Politicians Ought to Invite Dr. Richard Stallman and Prof. Eben Moglen to Speak About Policies, Licensing, Digital Sovereignty
- Is there something in Europe other than RMS' talk this coming Monday (that we're not yet aware of)?
- Good Explanation of Why IBM Has Chosen to Conceal Mass Layoffs (of 'Expensive' Staff) as "R.T.O." (Even For People Who Never Worked at the Office to Which They're Ordered to "Return")
- Many remaining IBM (or Red Hat) workers in Europe are in "cheaper" places such as Brno
- Microsoft's Serial Strangler and Matthew J. Garrett Join Forces in Trying to Gag Techrights (for Exposing Microsoft Corruption and Crimes Against Women)
- Whose terrible idea was it?
- Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Proud to Host Free Software Talk by Richard Stallman
- ahead of Monday's talk
- Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Machine-Generated FUD (LLM Slop) From GBHackers, CybersecurityNews, and Guardian Digital, Inc (Google News Promotes Slop Plagiarism, Misinformation)
- Companies that lie try to drown out the signal with falsehoods
-
- Links 22/02/2025: OpenAI Plans to Possibly Abandon Microsoft, Facebook Doubles Execs' Bonuses While Sacking Thousands
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/02/2025: Weekend Chill and Programming Thoughts
- Links for the day
- Links 22/02/2025: Labour Department Investigates Microsoft Infosys Amid Mass Layoffs, Large Law Firms Caught Red Handed With LLM Slop (Defrauding Clients and Courts)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/02/2025: Analog Stuff, Sigil, and SSGs
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's Market Share in Cameroon Falls to New Lows
- This means a lot of Android users (iOS is about 4 times smaller), but Android does not mean freedom
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 21, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, February 21, 2025
- The Streisand Effect is Real
- So don't be evil. Also, don't strangle women.
- Links 21/02/2025: Linux Foundation Openwashing, Microsoft Copilot Goes Down
- Links for the day
- Links 21/02/2025: Doomscrolling and European Ham Radio Show
- Links for the day
- Links 21/02/2025: TikTok Layoffs, WebOS Software Patents in Bad Hands
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/02/2025: Web Browsers, Mechanical Shortcuts, and Internet Hygiene
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman 'Only' Founded the FSF
- there's no reason to be upset at the FSF for keeping their founder in the Board
- Techrights Disconnected From the United States Two Years Ago
- Did people really need to wait for the US government to become this hostile towards the media before recognising the threat?
- Before Trying Censorship by Extortion the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Literally Begged Us to Delete Pages
- This is very clearly just a broad campaign of intimidation
- Hype Watch: Weeks After Microsoft Disappointed Investors With "Hey Hi" It's Trying Some "Quantum" Hype (Adding Impractical Vapourware to Accompany This Hype and Even LLM Slop in 'News' Clothing)
- Remember "metaverse"? What happened to media hype about "blockchain" and "IoT"?
- Report About February Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in 2025) Comes Back From the Dead
- Yesterday we wrote about an article in CRN (reporting Microsoft layoffs) being removed without any reasons specified
- Links 21/02/2025: Myanmar Scam Centre and Disruptions at USPTO
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, February 20, 2025
- gbhackers.com is Not Hackers, It's LLM Slop Outputs (Fake 'Articles') That Attack 'True Hackers'
- A site called linuxsecurity.com keeps doing this and now we see the slopfarm gbhackers.com doing the same
- Gemini Links 20/02/2025: Law of Warming and Cooling, Health, and Devlog
- Links for the day
- linuxsecurity.com Continues to Spread Lies or Machine-Generated FUD (Microsoft LLMs Likely the Source) About OpenSSH and Linux
- this LLM problem is global
- Links 20/02/2025: Microsoft Infosys Layoffs and IRS Layoffs (Good News for Rich Tax Evaders)
- Links for the day
- IBM Layoffs in Europe Already Happening or Underway (UK and Spain). They Try Not to Call These "Layoffs".
- "CIO" in particular was repeatedly mentioned lately, as was Consulting
- People Who Came From Microsoft Demanding Removal of Articles About Them, About Microsoft, and About Microsoft GitHub is "Generous" (According to Them)
- Imagine choosing a law firm that borrows money in the same year just to avoid overdraft in the bank!
- Possibly a Third Round of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in 2025 ("Cloud Solution Architects, Customer Roles"), Report Removed or Censored
- This is literally the top story for "microsoft layoffs" right now
- Instead of 'DoS Protection' Cloudflare is Allegedly Conducting 'DoS Attacks' on Users of Browsers Other Than Firefox and GAFAM's DRM Sandboxes (Chrome, Safari and Others)
- If you value the Web, you will avoid Cloudflare
- Mixing Real With Fake in One 'Article' (by "Director of Content, Help Net Security")
- From what we can gather, he got machines to generate some slop for him
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, February 19, 2025