Privacy News: Ten States Against the NSA, Snowden Speaks About Espionage
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-27 09:28:36 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-27 10:26:48 UTC
Summary: News from the past couple of days, mostly about the NSA
State-level Actions
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With the introduction of the 4th Amendment Protection Act this week, Mississippi became the tenth state in the country to consider legislation to make life difficult for the NSA’s ongoing mass surveillance programs.
Edward Snowden
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Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden told German TV on Sunday about reports that U.S. government officials want to assassinate him for leaking secret documents about the NSA's collection of telephone records and emails.
In what German public broadcaster ARD said was Snowden's first television interview, Snowden also said he believes the NSA has monitored other top German government officials along with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden claims in a new interview that the US agency is involved in industrial espionage.
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German public broadcaster ARD will air a half-hour interview with NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden on Sunday. The first snippet, aired late Saturday, accuses the NSA of conducting industrial espionage.
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The NSA agency is not preoccupied solely with national security, but also spies on foreign industrial entities in US business interests, former American intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, has revealed in an interview to German TV.
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Snowden says the NSA will use information even if it "has nothing to do with national security".
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NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden held a public Web chat on Thursday during which he answered questions sent in from hundreds of curious citizens via Twitter. This was Snowden's first live chat since June of last year, and during the broadcast viewers became privy to some of the outspoken leaker's opinions, especially that of the NSA and their previous actions.
Radical Politicians
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White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden declined to comment, but people familiar with the matter said an announcement is expected soon.
Rogers, a Navy cryptologist, had long been seen as the frontrunner to succeed Gen. Keith Alexander, who has been NSA director since 2005. Alexander, who will retire March 14, is the longest-serving NSA head. He is also the first commander of U.S. Cyber Command, which launched in 2009.
Criticism
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Just a friendly reminder that the NSA's children's website, "CryptoKids," is an actual thing that exists.
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If, for instance, you wanted to stop mass shootings, legislation outlawing the sale, possession or manufacture of any gun capable of firing more than one bullet without reloading might work. It would also be a terrible idea.
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As it tries to protect us from the “bad guys,” the government has become more intrusive in our lives. Where do we draw the line? If you have nothing to hide, would it be OK for government agents to show up unannounced at your door (without cause) to search your home? Would it also be OK for agents to randomly select citizens from off the street and subject them to full body searches?
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Try to think back to the 1970s if you are old enough. Imagine if one day there had been a decree from the Nixon Administration that all citizens must within a week pay for a hand-held device that will allow government to keep track of all your movements and to monitor your telephone calls and written messages you'd be able send through the air to other devices.
I think it would have scared the crap out of most people, and I think they'd be massive resistance to it. So 40 years later millions of people are cajoled through gradual technological advances, advertisement, government secrecy, and peer pressure to actually line up at stores to pay for the latest model of these monitoring devices.
Corporate Spying
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The public is fickle; it will always want the next and best thing, and there will always be someone eager to provide it. For a blink of history's eye, that was the Pony Express. No matter how brilliant your business idea, how diligent and disciplined your execution of it, there is forever someone hungrier and faster coming over the horizon.
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The major selling point for BlackBerry has always been its security and privacy - the way it encrypted communication across its network was the only game in town - that is, until 2010, when governments threatened to “block encrypted BlackBerry corporate e-mail and messaging services” unless their security agencies were granted access to them.
This was the beginning of the demise of Blackberry. Because of The Surveillance State’s inability to spy on their own citizens, governments forced BlackBerry to change their business model, which in turn played a major role in the company’s collapse.
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