01.25.14

Privacy Watch: NHS Sells Out, Snowden Makes Headlines, GOP Uses NSA for Anti-Obama Partisanship, NSA Program Deemed Illegal, Bieber Rips NSA Coverage

Posted in News Roundup at 1:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: News coverage about the NSA, primarily from Friday and today

NHS

• Opinion: NHS “care.data”: You Are Not a Patient, You Are a Commodity

  Well, what do you know. The government saw fit to send us a message about the NHS and all the wonderful things they are doing for us with it. The Guardian tells us a bit about it here.

• Why you should be angry about changes to NHS patient data policy

  Our medical information will be uploaded to a central database. In some ways this makes sense, but the care.data project is cause for concern too

Snowden

• Snowden speaks: NSA spies create ‘databases of ruin’ on innocent folks

  “Not all spying is bad. The biggest problem we face right now is the new technique of indiscriminate mass surveillance, where governments are seizing billions and billions and billions of innocents’ communication every single day,” he said.

• US hints at Edward Snowden plea bargain to allow return from Russia

  Attorney general prepared to ‘engage in conversation’ with NSA whistleblower but says full clemency is ‘going too far’

• Snowden considers returning to the US, and the “permanent record”

  In an online Q&A session, former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden answered 13 questions posed by Twitter users. The questions he considered ranged from the reasoning behind his leaks, to his hope for what the future of American intelligence programs may look like.

• NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden lays out hopes for reforms to US intelligence system

• Holder Says He’s Open to Plea Deal with NSA Leaker Snowden

• NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden rules out returning to the US

  Former NSA contractor says he will stay in Russia, claiming that he stands no chance of getting a fair trial under current whistle-blower laws

• If Only All ‘Narcisstic Traitors’ Were This Reasonable And Insightful

  Over the past few months, it’s been funny to watch the personal attacks on Ed Snowden — especially those that call him either a narcissist or a traitor. These seem to be based on little more than, well, a dislike of what Snowden has done, rather than any sort of logical or rational exploration of his statements and deeds.

GOP on Bush Policies

• Republicans call for halt to “unconstitutional surveillance programs”

  New GOP resolution says NSA metadata dragnet program harms basic human rights.

• NSA domestic surveillance condemned in Republican party resolution

• Exclusive: Republican Party Calls For End To NSA Domestic Phone Records Program

• U.S. Republicans condemn NSA ‘dragnet’ spying program

Crime

• ‘This overreach is unacceptable’: the case against NSA bulk collection

  A growing set of people and organizations have spoken out calling for an end to the spy program. Here’s what they said

• Federal Oversight Board: NSA Program Ineffective & Illegal

• US oversight board says NSA bulk phone data collection illegal

  A US oversight board has said the NSA’s bulk telephone spying program is illegal. The man responsible for revealing it, fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden, believes he cannot receive a fair trial in the US.

• Pioneers of digital spying have misgivings about current NSA programs

  Former federal prosecutor Eric Friedberg conducted the first court-approved email wiretap nearly 20 years ago while investigating an international conspiracy to sell fraudulent cellphones.

• NSA Spying Sends Data to Canada

  In Kamloops, B.C., cool overnight temperatures in summer mean Telus (TU) needs to run its air conditioning for only about 40 hours a year to keep its computer servers from overheating. Lower cooling costs are part of the Canadian telecommunications company’s sales pitch to businesses looking to store troves of digital information cheaply. Telus also promotes Canada’s inexpensive hydroelectric power, low seismic activity—and, now, lower risk of government snooping. “There is a structural advantage in Canada in that the data is here and the privacy protection is more stringent,” says Lloyd Switzer, who runs Telus’s 10 data centers.

• To Reform the NSA, Slash Its Budget

• The NSA and CIA are criminal enterprises

• Arizona, New Hampshire, Tennessee lawmakers target NSA

• Justifying the Unjustifiable: Deconstructing the Lies of the NSA

  This is the GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.

More Important Than NSA Crimes

• Op-Ed: MSNBC cuts off NSA interview for ‘breaking news’ of Bieber arrest

• Justin Bieber arrested: Report interrupts congresswoman during NSA interview

  There were signs that it is time for us to detonate the Earth and begin colonising a new planet last night, when an MSNBC anchor cut off congresswoman Jane Harman mid-sentence to bring news of Justin Bieber’s arrest.

• Video: Congresswoman speaking on NSA phone scandal interrupted for Justin Bieber in court

  Social media users were outraged last night when a MSNBC segment was interrupted for “breaking news” relating to Justin Beiber’s arrest.

Corporate Views

• Is Red Hat Working for the NSA?

  Is Red Hat secretly working with the NSA to build back doors into their products? I don’t think so. As far as I can tell, the company is the best of breed when it comes to big business and Linux. The company seems to be a very good open source citizen.

• NSA Interception In Action? Tor Developer’s Computer Gets Mysteriously Re-Routed To Virginia

  Also, some more details from PrivacySOS. As you can see, rather than go from the Amazon warehouse in Santa Ana, California up the coast to Seattle, instead the package went across the country to Dulles, Virginia to Alexandria (right outside of DC) and was “delivered” there. Upon seeing this, my initial reaction was that it might not be a big deal. With shipping logistics these days, it’s no uncommon to see a sort of hub system, where packages travel across the country from one warehouse to a shipping hub, only to be shipped back across the country for actual delivery.

• Tim Cook Talks NSA, Secrecy, and More with ABC News

  On the NSA front, however, Cook said quite pointedly that Apple is under a gag order and can’t tell what it knows about the NSA surveillance.

• Google chairman says ‘encrypting everything’ could end China’s censorship, stop NSA snooping

  Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt has reportedly said that encryption is the key to many of Internet’s modern-day problems, including opening up countries with strict censorship laws.

• Google’s Boasts About Ending Surveillance Are Hard To Swallow

  Google’s Eric Schmidt is at the Davos World Economic forum right now talking up his company’s potential to end government surveillance and censorship completely using solely “strong encryption,” reports Rich McCormick of The Verge.

  The American NSA has proven itself quite adept at finding cracks in Google’s systems, and China’s real-time censorship machine is unlike any other in the world.

  Nevertheless, Schmidt is confident, from the Verge:

  Schmidt said that Google was attempting to strengthen its encryption so the world’s governments “won’t be able to penetrate it” and obtain private data. Those efforts creates problems for “governments like China’s,” which he thought responsible for “80 to 85 percent of the world’s industrial espionage.”

  The Google chairman also said he saw the eventual relaxation of Chinese censorship over time as the number of people using social media in the country continued to grow.

Misc.

• Letter from Crypto Pioneers Denounces NSA Surveillance

  Perhaps the biggest condemnation of President Obama’s address last Friday announcing reforms to the NSA’s surveillance programs was his failure to mention any of the agency’s alleged involvement in subverting cryptography standards and the impact that has had on the trustworthiness of products built on those baselines.

• Why Obama’s speech on NSA reforms is a bag of chips full of air

  A couple of days ago Obama gave a long speech about the so-called reforms he was going to bring to NSA. When I went through the transcript of his speech it reminded me of a packet of chips that’s practically full of air.

• On children’s website, NSA puts a furry, smiley face on its mission

  The turtle wearing a hat backward, baggy jeans and purple sunglasses looks just like other cartoon characters that marketers use to make products like cereal and toys appealing to children.

  But the reptile, known as T. Top, who says creating and breaking codes is really “kewl,” is pushing something far weightier: the benefits of the National Security Agency.

• NSA Surveillance Sparks Talk of National Internets

  Just imagine the “network of all networks,” the globe-spanning Internet, becoming a loose web of tightly guarded, nearly impermeable regional or even national networks. It seems antithetical to the mythology surrounding the Internet’s power and purpose. But ongoing revelations about the extensive surveillance activities of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) are pushing countries like Germany and Brazil to take concrete steps in that direction.

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