According to the changelog, Linux kernel 3.2.61 is a quite big release that introduces better support for the x86, ARM, PowerPC, s390 and MIPS architectures, improves support for the EXT4, ReiserFS, Btrfs, NFS and UBIFS file systems, fixes random networking and sound issues, and includes a plethora of updated drivers (Wireless, InfiniBand, USB, ACPI, Bluetooth, SCSI, Radeon and Intel i915)
MPV, an open-source video player application for Linux kernel-based operating systems, forked from the well-known MPlayer software and designed to be as lightweight as possible, reached version 0.4.1.
The latest version available is Dropbox 2.11.0 (unstable), which has been released a while ago. Among others, it comes with a rewritten graphical user interface, file identifiers, new splash screens and a new headless setup for Linux systems. For more information, see the official changelog.
We have good news for those of you who like action-adventure hack and slash games as we have a neat screenshot of Darksiders running on Linux!
Thanks to the community a bunch of demo games built in Unreal Engine 4 now work on 64bit Linux, so give it a try! The current Unreal Engine only supports 64bit Linux, so remember that if you plan to try the test games.
Retrobooster has just released onto Steam and brings with it skill based old school gameplay as you pilot your ship through caves trying not to bounce off too many walls and explode, oh and it's bloody hard too.
Worms Clan Wars a reasonably high rated Worms game looks like it will come to Linux thanks to info taken from the excellent SteamDB.
I sitll have very fond memories of playing Worms on my old Amiga 600 with my brother and friends when I was younger, as back then it was easily one of the best games around.
It’s been 3 months since the last plasma-nm (Plasma networkmanagement) release and we have been working really hard to bring you again a better release than the previous one. Unlike previous releases, this one is focused on internal changes which are not mostly noticeable on the outside, but I believe they are welcomed.
You might have seen that KDE has a new Konqi drawing. Like our previous mascot, you don't see Konqi very often. That is not just because we don't love Konqi (at least, I do) but also because we don't have that many pretty pictures of Konqi.
As I blogged before, I think this is a huge deal for Free Software on desktops AND mobile devices - it goes far beyond the KDE community. Qt is by far the largest Free Software ecosystem doing native (non-web, I mean) end-user software, but much of that is proprietary. Which makes sense - Digia and the other companies in and around Qt have to make money and don't have 'spreading Free Software' as their prime goal. Frameworks introduces a genuine FOSS touch to that, hopefully bringing many of these developers in touch with the KDE community and the Open Source development processes.
The first release of Plasma 5 is after years of active development finally just around the corner. But where is KDE Telepathy for Plasma 5 standing you ask? Well, a bit behind.
We have started with porting and have the basic applets moreless ready to be used, but that's just a small part of the whole suite. The contact list, the chat application, the system integration module and all other parts needs to be ported to offer a good IM experience with Plasma 5. And we want to offer that.
In the first week of August 45 KDE people will meet at Randa in the Swiss mountains. They will spend a week of their free time and an uncountable amount of passion and dedication to work on free software. It needs money to bring them together and make the best out of their energy. You can help. We are running a campaign to make this happen. It ends today. Please donate now.
On the Frameworks, one can soon expect to see releases of KDE's Plasma Workspaces. A Technology Preview of Plasma 2 has already been released and this ambitious project has not lost any of its goals. Today, I noted that ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote about what he expects from Ubuntu in 2014. There, he quotes Jono Bacon talking about formfactor convergence. And the intarwebs are full of people making jokes that Microsoft is copying Ubuntu with their single UI for multiple devices. But let's not forget where they got their ideas...
The latest GtkInspector code now supports showing more information, a style properties tab for widgets, property editor improvements, and a ton of other changes.
Meld, an open-source file/folder diff and merge graphical software designed for the GNOME desktop environment, has reached version 3.11.2. This is a development release geared towards Meld 3.12 and includes a couple of new features, updated translations and many bugfixes.
he second alpha release to Scientific Linux 7.0 is now available for user testing.
Succeeding the initial Scientific Linux 7.0 Alpha from earlier this month is the second alpha that has various package updates / fixes for this OS that's derived from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 code-base.
An updated support lifecycle, enhanced virtual machine support, improved workload distribution and more are part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) OpenStack Platform 5, the latest release of Red Hat's (RHT) enterprise cloud computing solution.
Even if I use Fedora I usually install Ubuntu in other people computers. The reason is the awesome Ubuntu distro upgrade plus the also awesome USC that has pretty much every application that is available for Linux.
While APT 1.0 brought the following new features: apt list, apt search, apt show, apt update, apt install, apt remove, apt full-upgrade, app edit-sources, APT 1.0.6 (the latest version available) also brings some changes, mostly bug-fixes. For information about this release, see the official announcement.
James Hunt has announced yesterday, July 11, the immediate availability for download of version 1.13 of the powerful Upstart init system for Ubuntu-based operating systems, which introduces assorted bugfixes and improvements.
Canonical is a 650-employee software company best known for its version of the Linux operating system. Now its rich-and-famous, dare-devil founder, Mark Shuttleworth, is trying to re-create Canonical into the next Apple, knocking Google Android out along the way.
The latest stable version available is Mir 0.4.0, released a while ago, coming with a surface attribute for visibility, some improvements to the Mir Server code and a surface orientation API, among others. Also, the development of Mir 0.5.0 has already started, the developer getting it prepared for Ubuntu 14.10.
While Ubuntu 12.04.4 has been released in February 2014, Ubuntu 12.04.5 is about to come in less than a month, being scheduled for the 7th of August. The point releases doesn’t get new features added, only bug-fixes, newer kernels and updated GPU stacks, so that they can run well on newer hardware.
Michael Larabel had the pleasure of announcing a few minutes ago, July 11, the immediate availability for download of the first maintenance release for the 5.2 branch of his popular Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.
Deepin 2014 is an interesting release because it uses the Deepin 2.0 Desktop, a lightweight desktop environment developed in HTML5 and GO, and uses Compiz for compositing window management. While it is specially developed for the Chinese users to compete with Ubuntu Kylin, it also comes with 10 languages (including English, Deutsch, French, Espanol) so everybody can use it.
Chitwanix OS, an Ubuntu-based operating system developed by a group of Linux users from Nepal that uses its very own graphical desktop environment forked from Cinnamon, has reached version 1.5 and it is now available for download.
Samsung has suffered another setback in its quest to offer the world an alternative to Android, having failed to launch the first smartphone running its Tizen mobile OS as planned.
Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry 10 aren’t the only smartphone operating systems vying for a place in your pocket. There are other smartphone operating systems in development — and they’re all Linux-based.
Ever since Google’s I/O event we have been swamped under with L reports. We previously reported of the leaked L features, the L preview and most recently the L ROM developed for the Nexus 4 by the xda guys. It now seems the clever guys at xda have done it again!
When it comes to surfing the web, our options are limited: the market is dominated by three or four mainstream web browsers, all of which share major similarities in design and function. Unless you want to build your own browsing program, you're stuck with their modern browsing paradigms. For San Francisco programmer Stanislas Polu, that wasn't good enough, so, he created Breach -- an open source modular web browser designed to allow anybody to tweak and modify it on a whim.
The reason for the mass retraction is mind-blowing: A “peer review and citation ring” was apparently rigging the review process to get articles published.
However, recent articles on its website and Facebook page paint a picture of industry-biased, agenda-driven organization focused on discrediting public interest organizations, organic companies, media outlets and scientists who question the safety of GMOs and pesticides, or who tout the benefits of an organic diet.
[...]
But the relatively small amount of money spent by the organic industry to support mission-aligned nonprofits is nothing compared to the more than $1.3 billion that the agribusiness industry has spent over the last decade in lobbying and on PR front groups or “industry trade groups” to help spin a story about the safety of chemical-intensive and GMO foods.
[...]
With the proliferation of industry-associated scientists, websites and opinion pieces attacking organic agriculture and spinning their narratives about the safety of chemical-intensive GMO foods, reporters and the public must probe deeper and question the real motives behind these so-called “independent” sources of information.
The Soviet Union can be blamed with justifications for many things but not the creation of Islamic extremists' terrorists groups and movements which is a registered trade mark of the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and its main aim was competing terrorism.
Jordan, where the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has been covertly training Syrian rebels for more than a year, is reluctant to host an expanded rebel instruction program, U.S. officials said.
Jordan's reticence, confirmed by four U.S. officials, is a potentially serious setback for President Barack Obama's proposed $500 million initiative, announced in June, to train and arm moderate rebels fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and al Qaeda-linked groups.
A grandmother from Ithaca charged in connection with a peaceful drones protest at the Syracuse Hancock Air Base was given the maximum one-year jail sentence on Thursday, according to multiple reports.
On July 10, grandmother of three, Mary Anne Grady Flores was sentenced to one year in prison for being found guilty of violating an order of protection. A packed courtroom of over 100 supporters was stunned as she was led away, and vowed to continue the resistance. These orders of protection, typically used in domestic violence situations or to protect a victim or witness to a crime, have been issued to people participating in nonviolent resistance actions at Hancock Air Base since late 2012. The base, near Syracuse NY, pilots unmanned Reaper drones over Afghanistan, and trains drone pilots, sensor operators and maintenance technicians. The orders had been issued to “protect” Colonel Earl Evans, Hancock’s mission support commander, who wanted to keep protesters “out of his driveway.”
The former US secretary of state and aspiring president of the United States, Hillary Clinton, was recently on the BBC's 'Women's Hour', the quintessence of media respectability. The presenter, Jenni Murray, presented Clinton as a beacon of female achievement. She did not remind her listeners about Clinton's profanity that Afghanistan was invaded to "liberate" women like Orifa. She asked Clinton nothing about her administration's terror campaign using drones to kill women, men and children. There was no mention of Clinton's idle threat, while campaigning to be the first female president, to "eliminate" Iran, and nothing about her support for illegal mass surveillance and the pursuit of whistle-blowers.
What, exactly, does the United States stand for in the Middle East? More important, what would the average Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian or Yemeni say that it stands for? The suggestion that the United States is retrenching might seem absurd, given that Yemenis can hear the buzz of drones overhead.
Day by day, with chaos blossoming, it becomes clearer that if we do have a strategic narrative for the Middle East, we certainly have not articulated it effectively. In marketing terms, we are not making the sale.
The UN Security Council has called for a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, said on Saturday that it fired rockets on the Israeli capital Tel Aviv in the light of a warning a short time earlier.
News channels broadcast the rockets flying in the sky over the Israeli capital live.
Israel's channel 10 broadcast a rocket falling down in Tel Aviv, but it did not say whether the rocket attack had caused any human or material damage.
The brigades said earlier that it would target Tel Aviv with J80 rockets after 18:00 GMT.
The pair - one a member of Hamas, the other of Islamic Jihad, according to a neighbour - were not at home ââ¬Â¨at about 4.30am yesterday morning when the strike found its target.
Instead, the missile killed Suha (47) and Ola Wishah (30), two disabled women who were among eight residents of the home run by the Mubaret Philistine charity, which accommodated orphaned and severely-disabled men and women in the building's ground floor.
The Israeli military's "pinpoint strikes" on houses in Gaza have killed whole families and children but few of the wanted men they are meant to target because they have long made themselves scarce, Palestinian residents say.
F., a woman from Rafah, also sees the ball of fire after every air strike. “The whole house shakes,” even when the explosion is far away, she says. Everyone experiences it: An explosion in Beit Hanun, in the northern Gaza Strip, that cannot even be heard in Gaza City, rocks homes in the Shabura refugee camp. Everyone relates that there are bombers whose approach cannot be heard. Only the explosion itself can be heard, and then the plane as it returns to Israel. In previous rounds, they say, the planes were audible in both directions. The pilotless drones, meanwhile, never stop buzzing.
“I have a dream” said Martin Luther King in 1963 and I, in 2014, say the same. I have a dream to find my people living a life of love and peace. I have a dream to see my young brothers and sisters playing in their backyards not afraid of hearing drones or sudden bombings. I have a dream to see them going to their schools and going back from schools, in one piece. I have a dream to feel safe during my university classes and feel safe in my bedroom at home. But no, that’s not happening. There is no safe place in Gaza. We wake up like any American does, we wash our faces like any French does, we eat our breakfast like any Chinese does; however, we do not enjoy the silence of the mornings like they do. There is always a drone buzzing in our heads, there is always an ambulance siren ‘wewing’ rushing to rescue an injured or take a chopped to pieces body to the morgue. The dream of a good life is that of any human being living on this planet. It is not a crime, it is not a felony, and it is definitely not a violation of any law.
The United Nation's is raising questions about the legality of Israeli airstrikes, claiming that they may violate international laws on the targeting of civilians.
The Gaza Health Ministry said that 89 people had been killed, many of them civilians, and more than 600 had been in injured since the start Tuesday of the Israeli offensive against the Islamist militant group Hamas and allied factions.
Volleys of rockets from Gaza continued to hit Israel, with at least one intercepted over Tel Aviv. Air-raid sirens sounded at Dimona in southern Israel, the site of the country’s main nuclear reactor. Two Israeli soldiers were reported wounded by mortar shell fragments.
On July 9, CNN spread the news that the U.S. is planning to attack the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with drones. The American press has also created the impression in the last few days that Washington might conduct an airstrike soon. Within this context, I was in Washington last week to grasp what the Obama administration is planning with regard to Iraq and Syria.
The call came to the mobile phone of his brother’s wife, Salah Kaware said. Kaware dlives in Khan Younis, in southeast Gaza, and the caller said that everyone in the house must leave within five minutes, because it was going to be bombed.
It is the first US drone strikes against Pakistan in almost a month. The June 11 attacks killed 16 people at two sites in North Waziristan, and again none of the victims were ever identified.
Who is behind all this murkiness, this sabotage, this destabilisation of the world: Bahrain, the GCC, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia are all targeted. President Putin, a former intelligence officer, is fighting very hard against this force, but I see that he has recently decided to back down. Obviously he has been warned of further action against him by these forces. It would be a fight that he, and Russia, would lose, but I have confidence that Mr Putin will find a way to maintain his vision of the world and its corruption and ruling elite.
The spy school was established by a covert British intelligence organization in partnership with the Canadian government. The British had a vested interest in training the Americans in intelligence gathering, but couldn't do it on American soil since the U.S. had not yet entered the war. Camp X Canadian location solved this problem; it opened just a day before the U.S. was forced into the war by the bombings of Pearl Harbour in December 1941. This set up Camp X as "a place of great importance for winning the war effort," said Trojian.
It's hard to imagine an empty field in Whitby, Ont., was once a "deadly school for dirty warfare."
That description opens History Channel documentary Camp X: Secret Agent School, which tells the story of an unlikely training ground for Canadian, British and American Second World War spies - some of whom went on to become the founding members of the CIA.
President Obama recently sent a small contingent of American troops back into Iraq in order to support a weak and corrupt Iraqi regime that has been losing territory to a group of rebel fighters known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). The ISIS is a spin-off of the rebel fighters that have been allied with the American CIA in its covert war against Syria. Interestingly enough, groups like ISIS are labeled "rebels" when they fight for America and "terrorists" the moment they cross the line. The lesson in all of this is the same one that has been repeating itself time and again over the last half century in the Middle East: interventionism causes more problems than it solves. The latest drumbeat for even more war is being banged on behalf of the American puppet-democracy in Iraq, and the American government is doing what it does best: refusing to mind its own business. Is it possible that the United States could ever return to a foreign policy that involves the legitimate defense of the United States and its territories – nothing more, nothing less? This would cost less, achieve more, and facilitate peaceful relationships. Here are three reasons to stay utterly uninvolved with Iraq.
HRW’s proximity to Ms. Power damages HRW’s stated independence in light of her declarations that “the United States is the greatest country on Earth,” “the leader in human rights,” and “the leader in human dignity.” Shortly after leaving HRW, Malinowski similarly lauded the “bipartisan consensus for America’s defense of liberty around the world” and the “exceptional” nature of the United States at his own September 24, 2013 confirmation hearing.
A "secret" but well-known C.I.A. station adjacent to Arbil’s airport, in Kurdistan, is undergoing an expansion. Locals say that they have been hearing what they believe to be U.S. drones operating out of the facility.
For more than four years of Freedom of Information Act litigation concerning the government’s targeted-killing program, the government managed to avoid releasing a single document in response to requests filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and reporters for the New York Times. That changed with a federal appeals court’s release, just more than two weeks ago, of the July 2010 Office of Legal Counsel memorandum that authorized the killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S. citizen. Now, two separate rulings issued this week in the same case—New York Times Co. v. Department of Justice—make clear that additional releases of information are likely to be on the way. Together, the two court orders mean that the district court will proceed almost immediately to evaluate and prepare additional OLC memoranda for public release and will, perhaps shortly thereafter, decide whether the government must make public additional documents relating to the legal and factual bases for the government’s targeted-killing program.
"To allow the production and distribution of such a film on the assassination of an incumbent head of a sovereign state should be regarded as the most undisguised sponsoring of terrorism as well as an act of war," Ja wrote, according to Reuters, which saw the letter.
In the film, Franco and Rogen portray talk show host and producer who are recruited to try to kill the Korean leader. A letter was sent on June 27 to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from North Korea's U.N. Ambassador Ja Song Nam. The complaint references the film not by name but by this plot, which Ja Song Nam says "involves insulting and assassinating the supreme leadership."
Since WWII, our nation has been illegally meddling in affairs of other countries (a U.N. Charter violation). Steve Weissman, writing for Reader Supported News, points out that the State Department controls the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development, a well-known CIA front, as well as other private groups like Freedom House that set up shop in western Ukraine a decade ago. State even bought a radio station.
The CIA's style guide makes a careful distinction between misinformation and disinformation
Wilson’s closest business associates included current and former high-ranking officials of the Pentagon and the CIA who would later be implicated in the Iran-Contra arms deals.
Governments, militaries, corporations, banks: They all stand to lose the control they exert over society when information they suppress runs free. Yet some of the most ardent advocates for the free Internet have become targets of these very institutions, forced to live on the run, in exile or, in some cases, in prison.
Gerindra party candidate Prabowo Subianto rose to military power under the autocratic Suharto administration, which ruled Indonesia for more than 30 years. Rising through the ranks of Kopassus, the Indonesian special forces, Prabowo soon developed a reputation for brutal and uncompromising tactics in putting down perceived threats to Suharto’s authority. Although they later divorced, Prabowo’s marriage to Suharto’s daughter Titiek bound him closer to the regime and gave him the resources he would later channel towards his bid for political office.
In a Democracy Now! special, we go inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London to interview Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He has been holed up there for more than two years, having received political asylum. He faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States. In the U.S., a secret grand jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its role in publishing a trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as classified State Department cables. In Sweden, Assange is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct, though no charges have been filed. Late last week, there was the first break in the latter case in two years, when a Swedish court announced it would hold a hearing on July 16 about a request by his lawyers for prosecutors to hand over new evidence and withdraw the arrest warrant. In the first of a two-part interview, Assange discusses his new legal bid in Sweden, the ongoing grand jury probe in the United States, and WikiLeaks’ efforts to assist National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
‘secret database’ of aggressive tax planners leaked to British newspaper
Yep, the fact that there’s now an app for scalping restaurant bookings rubbed some people the wrong way. Of course, it could be that the critics were just jittery and irritable from too many days of wondering whether an eviction letter was about to arrive in the mail, but still: Even such a normally Silicon Valley-friendly tech press outfit as TechCrunch was impelled to decry the rise of the new “JerkTech.” When TechCrunch tells you to “go disrupt yourself,” it’s probably time for bleeding edge entrepreneurs to take a long hard look in the mirror.
Swiss vaults have held treasures ranging from Nazi gold to Wall Street fortunes. Now they might become the guardians of the 21st century's most precious asset. Think thick steel doors, timed locks, biometric sensors — all virtual, of course.
The general public that expects our news organizations to tell the truth and nothing but the truth find out this is not always so and even lying is part of it.
Local newspapers like the Herald will always try to please the local sentiment, knowing where the money comes from to keep it going. A.P. Napolitano entitled his book, "Lies the Government Told You," seemed to know about that subject.
A bitterly contested Republican congressional race unfolding in south-central Kansas is testing the political influence of big corporate money in the backyard of two billionaire brothers who have poured millions into races across the nation to advance their agenda of low taxes and less regulation.
Verizon is monitoring Twitter TWTR +1.29% better than the NSA monitors phone calls. All companies have become pseudo-stalkers on social media, their Twitter specialists leaping into @ction when they see people complaining about a late plane, poor service, or high fees. We Twitter users all know the routine: “@MalignedCorpX: “Sorry to hear that! How can we help? DM us so we can help you privately.”
Advances on the digital revolution, attacks on journalists, and state-media conflict have marked journalism in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to UNESCO's 2014 report “World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development”. The document highlights state harassment of journalists, challenges reforming outdated media laws, media concentration, lack of journalistic resources and training, and drug-related journalistic deaths as some of the major problems facing journalists in the region.
This week, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, a massive offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the military to “take off the gloves” and declared: "Hamas chose escalation and it will pay a heavy price for it.”
Warner Bros. have removed a Greenpeace campaign video from YouTube in which the group criticizes LEGO for partnering with Shell. Greenpeace is outraged, describing the takedown request as an attack on free speech. The environmental group informs TF it will challenge the removal while encouraging its supporters to upload the video everywhere.
In late May, hacker artist David Huerta, co-organizer of Art Hack Day and Cryptoparty, sent the NSA one hell of a snail mail. Huerta built a DIY encrypted mixtape using an Arduino board and a transparent acrylic case, containing a "soundtrack for the modern surveillance state." It's a mixtape the NSA won't be able to listen to because of the power of private key-based cryptography.
History has a way of repeating itself. Modern electronics has all but destroyed personal privacy. The tragedy of 9/11 changed the way the world looks at security - opening the floodgates to electronic evesdropping, domestic and international spying and Big Brother intrusion in everyone's daily lives.
Former U.S. based National Security Agency (NSA) employee Edward Snowden's plea to extend his asylum in Russia is expected to be approved soon, said a Russian migration official.
One reason is because few popular strategies pose real threats to power. That’s not an accident: the rules of social change have been clearly defined by those in power. Either you play by the rules — rules which don’t allow you to win — or you break free of the rules, and face the consequences.
Privacy advocates are dusting off a months-old campaign to block cybersecurity legislation that they warn would send too much personal information into government hands.
America's police forces have demonstrated a bottomless appetite for army-style crowd control and CIA-style surveillance, and the private sector has stepped up to the plate in a big way.
During his last six years working as an elite security researcher for Google, the hacker known as Morgan Mayhem spent his nights and weekends hunting down the malware used to spy on vulnerable targets like human rights activists and political dissidents.
The Department of Justice declined to launch a criminal probe after both the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA accused each other of improperly accessing the other's computers.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein claimed in March the CIA improperly surveilled staffers.
Accusations had been thrown at the CIA by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee charging that the CIA had been illegally searching the computers of committee staffers.
The Department of Justice will not investigate whether the Central Intelligence Agency illegally spied on staffers of the Senate Intelligence Committee and removed documents from committee servers, McClatchy confirmed Thursday. The CIA also claimed committee staffers took documents from the intelligence agency without authorization, and that claim will also not be investigated.
The Justice Department has announced that it won’t pursue a criminal investigation of a dispute between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA over whether agency staffers poached on the committee’s turf and vice versa.
Before President Jimmy Carter enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, the executive branch had claimed for 40 years an “inherent” power to spy on anyone. Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon used intelligence agencies to investigate opponents for political gain and other federal agencies wiretapped nonviolent citizens, without warrants, for their political beliefs.
In what appears to be one of Edward Snowden’s final revelations, the former CIA and NSA agent has demonstrated conclusively that the National Security Agency has collected and analyzed the contents of emails, text messages, and mobile and landline telephone calls from nine non-targeted U.S. residents for every one U.S. resident it has targeted.
German startup Tutanota has admitted its webmail service was vulnerable to a cross-site scripting bug despite boasting it offered an "NSA-proof email service."
At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US, says whistleblower William Binney – that's a 'totalitarian mentality'
Although Snowden garnered all the headlines, he is only one of a string of people who have revealed the constitutionally questionable activities of our nation’s spy agencies. In Before Snowden: Behind the Curtain, filmmakers Bill and Tricia Owen interview former NSA employees who have revealed the agency’s spying activities targeting Americans.
As Harsh V. Pant, professor of International relations at King's College London, points out, “The US has been doing its best to reach out to Modi and his government. India is key to the US’ ability to create a stable balance of power in the larger Indo-Pacific and at a time of resource constraints, it needs partners like India to shore up its sagging credibility in the region in face of Chinese onslaught.”
The courts have generally permitted warrantless searches incident to an arrest. This began with the reasonable allowance that law enforcement needs to ensure that the arrest can take place safely and secure evidence related to the arrest.
The strongest public relations campaign to encourage government whistleblowers to-date launched Friday in Washington.
None of the men has been charged with a crime. The government declines to confirm they were monitored. To do so legally, officials would have had to convince a surveillance court that there was probable cause to suspect that the subjects were foreign agents engaged in terrorism. Given the absence of evidence or criminal charges, that seems dubious.
Before we were all distracted by Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency leaks, the outrage of 2013 was the Obama administration’s snooping through the phone records of Associate Press reporters. The weirdly-similarly named James Rosen and James Risen – the former a Fox News correspondent, the latter a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times – have been lately entangled with the Obama administration, who have the best plumbers since Nixon’s boys. Rosen was spied upon for his alleged involvement with a State Department leak on a story about North Korea. Risen – a dogged reporter on NSA and CIA wiretapping and spying – has been on the brink of prosecution for years because he refuses to reveal a CIA source.
In the age of innocence that was brought to an end by Edward Snowden's revelations, we broadly knew of three kinds of surveillance: the classic kind, by countries against other countries; the industrial kind, by companies against companies; and - the most recent addition - the Google/Facebook kind, carried out by companies against their customers. Snowden made us aware that countries also carried out large-scale surveillance against huge numbers of their own citizens, the vast majority of whom had done nothing to warrant that invasion of their privacy. But there's a fifth kind of surveillance that has largely escaped notice, even though it represents a serious danger for democracy and freedom: spying carried out by companies against non-profit organizations whose work threatens their profits in some way.
Revelation contrasts markedly with White House efforts to distance itself from UK government pressure to destroy disks
The Obama administration knew in advance that the British government would oversee destruction of a newspaper’s hard drives containing leaked National Security Agency documents last year, newly declassified documents show.
The White House had publicly distanced itself on whether it would do the same to an American news organisation. The Guardian newspaper, responding to threats from the British government in July 2013, destroyed the data roughly a month after it and other media outlets first published details from the top secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
A former Lake Ridge resident and Republican candidate for the House of Delegates 51st District was the subject of electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency according to information leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Case brought by alliance of privacy groups to be heard by IPT, the security services oversight body that normally deliberates in private
Next, her assertions that his asylum in Russia is of questionable intent and demonstrates a lack of American patriotism. The accusation is one that Snowden himself addressed in an interview with NBC News. He called the question on his presence in Russia a “really fair concern,” but noted that he had planned to travel out of Moscow to Latin America and had found himself with a revoked passport. “So when people ask ‘Why are you in Russia?’ I say, ‘Please ask the state department,’” explained Snowden. The state department, in turn, said it had revoked his passport while he was still in Hong Kong, but that he had someone managed to get on the plane and had ended up in Russia. Had the state department successfully kept him in China, Clinton claiming his travels to China and Russia were suspicious would seem unfair.
The heavy hitting internet providers in Britain have slammed GCHQ and the NSA as being the biggest villains of the year for their work in surveillance
Wemple disputes two claims we made in the story: 1) that while we were reporting the story, officials at the Department of Justice reached out to Muslim community leaders and claimed that it would contain errors even though it hadn’t been written yet, and 2) that Justice Department officials refused to acknowledge our requests for comment.
From photographing public works of art to bulk-buying computers, five Americans now have a record on file with US intelligence agencies for carrying out everyday activities. Thousands of unsuspecting Americans are also tagged in the database.
Classified NSA training documents using the racial epithet “raghead” surfaced this past week in a recent release of documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Edward Snowden put his life on the line in order to expose the US spy agency’s violations of human rights and privacy around the world.
Since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began leaking the details last year of the NSA's vast surveillance capabilities, the amount of collateral damage to individual privacy at home and abroad has put the agency under intense public scrutiny. Privacy experts, however, say that the now-infamous NSA surveillance programs such as Quantum and PRISM not only threaten individual privacy; they threaten the overall security of the internet as a whole.
Nevertheless, the CIA was Obama’s safety hatch to escape: “A central question, one American official said, is how high the information [CIA knew three weeks before about the planned arrest of its agent] about the agent went in the C.I.A.’s command—whether it was bottled up at the level of the station chief in Berlin or transmitted to senior officials, including the director, John O. Brennan, who is responsible for briefing the White House.” It is doubtful that heads will roll, but the reporters make a significant point (in line with my foregoing characterization of Obama), his obduracy, his absolute refusal to admit a wrong: “For all his concerns, Mr. Obama does not plan any extraordinary outreach to Ms. Merkel, an official said, noting that some in the administration also feel that Germany should not overreact to the case or conflate it with the privacy issues raised by the N.S.A.’s surveillance.” Heaven forbid such conflation (!)—in reality, the unified pattern (here NSA and CIA appear to be wearing each other’s shoes), this with respect to Germany, but in the larger picture conflation in the US as well under different terms: massive surveillance and abridgment of civil liberties.
Politicians are still trying to hand over your data behind closed doors, under the guise of 'cybersecurity' reform. Have we learned nothing?
The bill breaks new ground in two important ways. First, CISA protects companies that share security-related data with one another and with the government from being sued.
British Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled emergency legislation Thursday to compel phone companies and Internet providers to store their customers' records, arguing that data needed to track down criminals and terrorists could otherwise be deleted.
The UK government will enact emergency legislation next week forcing internet and phone companies to log records of calls, text and online activity.
Several Muslim American organizations have announced they may file lawsuits against the U.S. Government over FBI spying that targeted American citizens who are of the Muslim religion and Arab heritage, and are demanding investigations by Federal authorities.
Two Washington D.C. based organizations are the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) who have expressed outrage at the spying.
For years, the internet's biggest players have hoarded your personal data and sold it for billions. Now, a band of angry startups is demanding privacy and aiming to overhaul the social-media business forever.
New polling figures give United States President Barack Obama only a 43 percent job approval rating among all Americans, but the commander-in-chief is statistically way more celebrated by Muslims.
A recent Gallup poll showed an astonishing 72% of Muslims support the policies and presidency of Barack Obama. Although Muslim-American academics explained the reason he is supported, they ignore reasons Muslims should condemn Obama's policies.
A year after Edward Snowden's digital heist, the NSA's chief technology officer says steps have been taken to stop future incidents. But he says there's no way for the NSA to be entirely secure.
Eavesdropping on the chancellor, spying in the intelligence service and defense ministry – the US's desire to know everything is alienating its friends. This is bad news, but it can’t be changed, says Volker Wagener.
Archbishop calls for 'mind shift' on right to die and condemns as 'disgraceful' the treatment of the dying Nelson Mandela
When explaining how and why they violate constitutional protections of fundamental rights, leaders of the federal intelligence apparatus insist it be done with style.
The two contenders in the disputed Afghan presidential election do not present a clear choice for us in the West to decide whom to root for, or root against. Both candidates are experienced, credible presidential timber, and we ought to be able to work constructively with either one as president.
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself…Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.”—H.L. Mencken, American journalist
How Demsunfairly labelAmericans
● If you criticize President Obama’s policies and leadership, you are a racist.
● If you do not feel abortion and birth control pills should be without any limitations, you are anti-women.
● If you believe in the integrity and sovereignty of national borders, you are a nationalist.
● If you believe that immigration reform should begin with securing our southern border and enforcing existing immigration laws, you are anti-Hispanic.
● If you believe in auditing and correcting abuses in the welfare programs, you are anti-poor people.
● If you believe the president should execute the laws passed by Congress and that he should not issue laws on his own, you are a constitutionalist and a rigid person clinging to the past.
He was arrested, tortured, imprisoned for almost a decade... for something he did not do. He reveals his story to France 24.
Once upon a time, if a character on TV or in a movie tortured someone, it was a sure sign that he was a bad guy. Now, the torturers are the all-American heroes. From 24 to Zero Dark Thirty, it's been the good guys who wielded the pliers and the waterboards. We're not only living in a post-9/11 world, we're stuck with Jack Bauer in the 25th hour.
Six years into Obama's presidency, no one has been forced to answer for Bush's illegal war on terror. Here's why
Crucial logs revealing flights to a British overseas territory when it was allegedly used as a secret US prison are in the possession of the police, the Observer has learned.
Being that I include myself in the more reactionary segment of our society, I feel it’s important to respond. In 2012, President Barack Obama signed into law the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). Sections 1021 and 1022 of this act give the U.S. government the right to indefinitely detain any U.S. citizen without trial, indefinitely. Another writer mentioned this very thing in a letter on Friday. This is not propaganda. This is a fact that anyone can look up and find.
The elections pit challengers against many incumbents who voted for the controversial National Defense Authorization Act's (NDAA) standing provisions for the indefinite detention of US citizens, without charge or trial, when deemed by the government to be associated with terrorism.
The USTR's position on trade agreements is incredibly antiquated. It acts as if it's an extension of "American business" and seems to believe that the only ones fighting against its various trade agreements, like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP) are these meddling "public interest" groups, which don't understand the importance of big business. It's why the USTR recently created a special "public interest" committee to pretend that it was listening to criticism while shunting them off to their own little corner to be ignored.
But the real problem is that the USTR doesn't pay much attention to actual innovative business: entrepreneurs and startups that are doing much of the important work today that will be important for the future. Instead, they tend to only listen to the last generation of companies: the legacy players and behemoths who are looking to protect themselves against competition and innovation. So it was great to see during this week's TPP negotiations (though held in even more secrecy than usual) the EFF presented negotiators with two important letters about different aspects of the TPP, signed by the organizations that the USTR would like to pretend its helping -- and yet those organizations are not at all happy about it.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is coming, and it could give multinational corporations even more influence over global policy.
That’s what critics of the trade deal between 12 countries along the Pacific Rim (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam) are saying. It’s not helping that the contents of the agreement have largely been kept secret, even though the TPP is the biggest trade deal since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995.
This is a great start, and it highlights a key point of copyright law: it is supposed to encourage those kinds of things. The problem is that very little research has actually been done to determine if it actually does that. Instead, it's often taken on the basis of faith that it must do that, without considering whether it really does, or if there are other limiting downsides to how it's currently done. Some people claim that I am somehow "against" copyright. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am happy to support a copyright system that has been shown to actually promote creativity and innovation. I've just seen very little evidence to suggest our current system really does that.