Privacy Watch: NHS Sells Out, Snowden Makes Headlines, GOP Uses NSA for Anti-Obama Partisanship, NSA Program Deemed Illegal, Bieber Rips NSA Coverage
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-25 18:37:43 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-25 18:37:43 UTC
Summary: News coverage about the NSA, primarily from Friday and today
NHS
-
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.
-
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
-
"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.
-
Attorney general prepared to 'engage in conversation' with NSA whistleblower but says full clemency is 'going too far'
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
New GOP resolution says NSA metadata dragnet program harms basic human rights.
Crime
-
A growing set of people and organizations have spoken out calling for an end to the spy program. Here's what they said
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
This is the GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.
More Important Than NSA Crimes
-
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.
-
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 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.
-
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.
-
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'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 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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- XBox is Rapidly Turned Into a Slopfarm by Microsoft
- Slop isn't about efficiency and saving money
- Reboots Should Never be Necessary
- "BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
- Microsoft's Halloween Documents and systemd, Wayland, Etc.
- Maybe one day Wayland will be widespread. Or maybe not.
- Changing One's Name Won't Change One's Past
- People who have earned a bad reputation are not magically "entitled" to reset
- People Who Assault Women Are Not Victims of "Distress"
- It seems like an American tradition. In a country with almost 50 presidents, not even one was a female.
- Adoption of Gemini Protocol Still Growing
- Gemini Protocol is being obscured by the media - it doesn't help that Google 'hijacked' the word "Gemini" - but people still manage to find out about it, download a client, and use it
- Brett Wilson LLP "Takes it Personal" (Character Assassination, Not Professionalism). Everybody Can See That.
- On behalf of violent men
-
- Coming Soon: Another OSI Scandal, This One Implicating Molly de Blanc
- OSI has been fairly quiet lately
- Outreachy & Debian pregnancy cluster, Meike Reichle evidence
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Again, "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
- Microsoft Lunduke is not trying to "protect" Linux
- One of the Most Hilarious Things About the Microsoft SLAPPs
- It's so ridiculous
- Financial Support for the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project
- The FSF has extended until Friday its fund-raising campaign
- Illegally Hiding (or Demanding Secrecy Around) Illegal Requests or Attempts at Extortion
- unlawful communications like threats
- Gemini Links 14/07/2025: BOFH Archive, Updating Old Palm PDAS, and Nginx vs Slop Bots
- Links for the day
- Ubuntu is Becoming GAFAM-Like
- What does that say about Canonical and Ubuntu?
- Slopfarms Which Take Real Articles About GNU/Linux and Turn Them Into Copycats Which Are False
- Even before the LLM hype those were quite common
- The Firm That Picks on Techrights is Accustomed to Working With Criminals
- Techrights never did anything illegal. So why is it being picked on by people who work with criminals?
- Microsoft Said the Mass Layoffs Were for "Investment" in "AI", But It's Also Laying Off the "AI" and "Copilot" Staff
- Months ago we showed many so-called "AI" people were getting the boot and this time it's the same
- DryDeadFish is Dead, Long Live DryDeadFish
- We kept checking, hoping it can recover from some temporary technical issue
- For Quite Some Time Already Microsoft Attracts Crackpots, Scams, and More
- Occasionally we talk about the situation at IBM as there are many parallels
- Links 14/07/2025: Chatbots Broken Again, McHire LLM Shows Limits of the Hype
- Links for the day
- Slashdot Media Turned Linux Journal Into a Slopfarm and Now Slashdot Actively Promotes Anti-Linux Slopfarms
- Yes, "no-nonsense" apparently means actual nonsense
- Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism
- Links for the day
- More EPO Leaks on the Way
- We hope that Mr. Rowan will actually try to refute what we say and show, not merely point the finger at the messengers
- Decommodification is a Corporate Strategy Against Communities
- systemd is led by Microsoft and hosted by Microsoft
- copyleft.org 'Hijacked' by the People Who Attack the Person Who Created Copyleft
- So far there's nothing "tasteless" in copyleft.org, but that can change at any time in the future
- Asking People to Take Down Articles and Videos Only Makes These More Popular and "Viral"
- If you do something bad, one of the worst things you can possibly do it try to silence those who speak about it
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 13, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, July 13, 2025
- Two-Thirds Towards FSF Goal, Richard Stallman to Give Talks in Europe
- There are 67 left before reaching the target
- Gemini Links 14/07/2025: Politicised Tech and "Leaving GitHub"
- Links for the day
- Pissing Contests and Pissing Off Everyone
- people who came from Microsoft are trying to vex and divide the community
- Microsoft Repeats the Mistakes Made by the EPO After We Exposed a Major Microsoft/EPO Scandal 10 Years Ago
- That scandal was all over the media, not just in English
- The Demise of LLMs
- We've just checked BetaNews again. They've dropped all the slop and went back to human authors.
- Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Sonpo Museum of Art and FCEUX
- Links for the day
- Links 13/07/2025: UnitedHealth's Censorship Campaign, Australia Wary of China
- Links for the day
- Firing Away With Nonsense
- Or fighting fire with fire
- Links 13/07/2025: Climate Crisis, GAFAM Poisoning the Water
- Links for the day
- Turns Out LLMs for Code Don't Save Time and Don't Improve Quality
- Neither legal nor useful
- The Microsofters Will Have an Obligation to Compensate Us
- This story isn't just about Microsoft. It's also about corruption, there are many women victims, there is abject "abuse of process", and many more scandals to be illuminated in years to come.
- Reproducing at the EPO Instead of Producing Monopolies for Foreign Monopolies With Their Price-Fixing Cartels
- Does the EPO recognise the need of well-educated Europeans to bear kids?
- Valnet Inc. Dominates Real (Not LLM Slop) GNU/Linux Coverage in 2025
- And likely in prior years, too
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) Fund Raiser Goes on
- Later this month we'll expose another OSI scandal
- EPO Staff Representatives Issue a Warning About Staff's Health and Inadequate Care
- Even the EPO's own stakeholders (money sources) are openly protesting against what the EPO became
- Links 13/07/2025: Partly Assorted News From Deutsche Welle and CBC
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Board Games and Battle Styles
- Gemini Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 12, 2025
- Plunder at the Second-Largest Institution in Europe
- cuts, neglect, health problems, even early deaths
- Links 12/07/2025: Political Developments, Attack on Opposition, Climate Actions
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 12/07/2025: Melodic Musings and Small Web July
- Links for the day
- Links 12/07/2025: Jail in China for Homoerotica, South Korea Discriminates Against Old Workers
- Links for the day
- If Only Everything Was Rewritten in Rust, We'd Have No More Security Issues?
- Nope.
- Links 12/07/2025: Birdwatching and Fake/Misleading Wall Street 'Valuation' Figures
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 12/07/2025: How to Avoid Writing, Apps for Android
- Links for the day
- Using SLAPPs to Cover Up Sexual Abuse and Strangulation
- The exact same legal team of the Serial Strangler from Microsoft and Garrett already has a history fighting against "metoo"
- EPO Staff Committee on Harassment in the Workplace
- slides
- Adding the Voice of Writers to UK SLAPP Reform
- The journey to repair antiquated (monarchy era) laws will likely be long
- EPO Takes More Money From Staff for Speculation (Pensions), Actuarial Study Explains the Impact
- "The key change in this year’s Actuarial Study, due to cascading the new “risk appetite” from the financial study, is a significant increase of the total pension contribution rate of 5.7 percentage points, up to a total of 37.8%. This is driven by an unprecedented decrease in the discount rate of 105 bps down to 2.2%."
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 11, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, July 11, 2025