NSA Watch: Climate as 'Terrorism', War on Journalism and Anonymity, Anger in Europe and Angry Birds
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-30 12:37:56 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-30 12:37:56 UTC
Summary: A roundup of yesterday's and today's news about the NSA
New Leaks
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The document, with portions marked "top secret," indicates that the NSA was monitoring the communications of other countries ahead of the conference, and intended to continue doing so throughout the meeting. Posted on an internal NSA website on Dec. 7, 2009, the first day of the Copenhagen summit, it states that "analysts here at NSA, as well as our Second Party partners, will continue to provide policymakers with unique, timely, and valuable insights into key countries' preparations and goals for the conference, as well as the deliberations within countries on climate change policies and negotiation strategies."
Illegal Collection of 'Evidence'
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A man charged with aiding a terrorist organization has asked a U.S. court to throw out information collected by the National Security Agency, saying the NSA's surveillance of his Internet communications violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Prosecuting Anonymisers
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In oral arguments heard on Tuesday, Lavabit and federal prosecutors each presented their cases in front of a three-judge panel at the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. The case is an appeal of contempt-of-court charges against Lavabit, a now-defunct e-mail hosting service that once offered secure communication.
In the summer of 2013, Lavabit was ordered to provide real-time e-mail monitoring of one of its users, widely believed to be Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor-turned-leaker. When Lavabit told the feds that the only way it could hand over communications was through an internal process that would deliver results 60 days after any communication was sent, the authorities returned with a search warrant for Lavabit's SSL keys, which could decrypt the traffic of all of Lavabit's users. Ladar Levison, the CEO of Lavabit, handed over the SSL keys but then shut down his 10-year-old business rather than expose all of Lavabit's users.
War on Journalism
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James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, has issued a blistering condemnation of Edward Snowden, calling the surveillance disclosures published by the Guardian and other news outlets a “perfect storm” that would endanger American lives.
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Director of National Intelligence James Clapper urged former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and his “accomplices” to return leaked documents during a hearing on Wednesday.
Europe
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A former Ukrainian president warned on Wednesday that the country is now on “the brink of civil war,” and Russia added to the gloom by announcing the suspension of its financial aid package, which was all that had been keeping Ukraine solvent.
[...]
Protesters for weeks had suspected that the government was using location data from cellphones near the demonstration to pinpoint people for political profiling, and they received alarming confirmation when a court formally ordered a telephone company to hand over such data.
Earlier this month, protesters at a clash with riot police officers received text messages on their phones saying they had been “registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”
Then, three cellphone companies — Kyivstar, MTS and Life — denied that they had provided the location data to the government or had sent the text messages. Kyivstar suggested that it was instead the work of a “pirate” cellphone tower set up in the area.
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Former employee of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Edward Snowden will be invited to the spring session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), APA’s Europe bureau reports.
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Chancellor says Germany and US still 'far apart' on sweeping surveillance and spying activities revealed by Edward Snowden
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Berlin and Washington are still "far apart" in their views on the US National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance of Germany but they remain close allies, Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament on Wednesday.
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The German government and the German Federal Intelligence Service are facing legal action because they allegedly aided the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) data collection program.
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THE EUROPEAN UNION JUSTICE COMMISSIONER has spoken out on Data Protection Day about national security agency surveillance.
US Politics
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Ever since leaked NSA documents first started popping up this summer, the battle against NSA surveillance has proceeded on multiple fronts: legislators pushing for new laws, journalists pushing for new stories, and tech companies fighting to regain users’ trust. Yesterday, one of the major fronts closed down. Since July, tech companies had been putting pressure on the Department of Justice, fighting for the right to say more about their interactions with law enforcement. Yesterday they made peace, reaching a settlement and withdrawing a class action suit that had drawn in some of the most powerful companies in America. On this front at least, reformers have likely gotten all they’re going to get.
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Senator Patrick Leahy questioned how the Constitution allows the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of U.S. telephone records and repeated his calls for President Barack Obama’s administration to end the program during a hearing Wednesday.
The Obama administration should heed the recent advice of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) and end the phone records collection program, said Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.
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The NSA's new data center in Utah has provided the flashpoint for legislation targeted at "nullifying" the agency by cutting off its access to public utilities and/or leveraging the powers granted to states to combat federal government overreach. An activist group known as The Tenth Amendment Center proposed a state law that would cut off the new data center's much needed water supply, along with any other public utility or service, like sanitation and road repair, in hopes of (at minimum) forcing the NSA to reconsider its collection tactics, or failing that, to find a new home.
Angry Birds
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Some users trying to access the www.angrybirds.com website late Tuesday were greeted by an image depicting the Angry Birds game characters accompanied by the text "Spying Birds." The U.S. National Security Agency's logo was also visible in the image.
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Reacting to recent revelations that smartphone apps such as Angry Birds and Google Maps are being used by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarter (GCHQ) to spy on their users, the Application Developers Alliance has condemned the NSA for damaging the industry.
BBC
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When the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers published the first of Edward Snowden's NSA-GCHQ leaks in June, it unleashed a stream of abbreviations, acronyms and jargon describing the cyberspies' activities.
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- Sometimes select Taiwanese news sites (published in English) or automated translations are all we have
- Brett Wilson LLP Spreads Trumpism to the United Kingdom, Looking to Profit From 'Legal Colonialism' (Overriding Sovereignty)
- There's growing recognition of this conundrum worldwide
- Distinguished Lecture by Richard Stallman This Coming Monday in Rome
- After "Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World"
- The Lawsuit by Clients of Brett Wilson LLP Against Brett Wilson LLP is Officially On, It is Progressing, The 'Experts' Pick Outside Law Firms (RPC and Mills & Reeve) to Spare Them From Litigants in Person
- So it is probably quite potent
- The 'Culture Wars' in Free Software Have Gone Out of Control
- Social control media amplifies such utterly infantile discourse
- Teaser: To Compensate for the Fact Our Clients Are Terrible Human Beings Who Strangle Women (While on Microsoft's Payroll) and We Get Paid by Mystery Parties We Bombard You and Your Wife With Almost 10 Kilograms of Legal Papers
- If you can't win an argument, then drown the other side with papers?
- Now Confirmed in Western Media: Microsoft Azure Layoffs This Month
- Affirmed by more sources moments ago
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- Microsoft and Apple Are Rare Topics in Geminispace
- in Geminispace it's rather safe to assume everyone is into BSD, GNU/Linux, and sometimes retro
- Qualcomm and Manchester United Appear to Have Dumped Microsoft (Qualcomm Now Invests More in Linux, Apparently)
- It's a relief to no longer see Microsoft logos and brands on a local football club's gear (I'm not a Manchester United fan, but not a foe either)
- As Guest of Honour in Rome, Founder of the Free Software Foundation to Speak ("Distinguished Lecture") After Introduction by Leonardo Querzoni
- Happy hacking...
- All Things Open is Proprietary
- The OSI has become a front group of proprietary software openwashers, led and sponsored by proprietary giants
- When Microsoft Lays Off Lots of Workers They Say It "Invests in AI" (a Lie), Now It's "Reshuffles" or "Microsoft Tightens"
- Microsoft "news" by bots
- "I saw Richard Stallman give a talk in the mid 80s, which began my fear and loathing of software patents" and "Richard Stallman was always right."
- "By betraying the legacy of our ancestors, we’ve set ourselves on a path toward self-destruction — moral, intellectual, economic, and ultimately biological."
- The Demise of Shopping in Person
- In a world like this, how valued is the customer?
- We Are Safe in a Modern "Tech" Society, Right?
- People are safer if they control their own computing
- This Past Friday, "Nearly 700 People Came to Listen to RMS!" (Richard Stallman)
- "Nearly 700 people came to listen to RMS!"
- Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT Churning Out Plagiarism and the Slopfarm LinuxSecurity Turns to Pseudonyms
- Our hunch is, UbuntuPIT will sooner or later realise that this toxic approach is just harming UbuntuPIT and tainting the reputation of past articles
- Gemini Links 11/10/2025: Nyctography, Gerrymandering, and Lurking
- Links for the day
- Links 11/10/2025: World Mental Health Day 2025, Another European Legal Defeat for Microsoft 360
- Links for the day
- MIT Technology Review is Part-Time SPAMfarm of Billionaires and Mega-Corporations
- Does MIT operate its own "b2b" SPAMfarm?
- Open Source Initiative Executive Director Leaves, Replacement Sought by Monopolists, Not the Community or OSI Members
- Serves to show who runs this show...
- Links 11/10/2025: China-US Tensions Grow Again, "Hey Hi" More Widely Recognised as Bubble Made of Capital That Doesn't Exist
- Links for the day
- Peter O'Callaghan QC represented grandparents, Westernport Hotel, at Liquor Royal Commission
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Either The Register MS Divests From FOSS Coverage or Liam Proven is on Long Holiday
- Publishers perish when their audience loses trust in them
- Microsoft Cancelling Another Datacentre is a Sign of Financial Trouble and Lack of Growth
- The debt continues to grow
- Gemini Links 11/10/2025: An Evening at the Fair and Fast Fourier Friday
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 10, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, October 10, 2025
- Geminispace is Very Large
- The word continues to spread and the number of participants grows
- Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, This Time During National Day Holiday
- This time it's China again
- 10 Out of 10: RMS Attracts Massive Audience in Göteborg, Sweden (All Seats Occupied, Some People Standing)
- a 55-second clip of his talk
- Staying Happy in Times of Crackdowns on Civil Society
- Optimism in this sort of "new reality" or "new normal" seems like something for the irrational person
- "Nobel" Exploited Posthumously for "AI" Hype, Now They Do the Same With "Quantum"
- ere have been many jokes about "Nobel" for peace (often granted to pro-war people) and a fake one for "Economics" (establishment propaganda)
- Slopwatch: Plagiarism and "Linux" Articles by Bots
- Sites that do this won't survive; many of them rely on slop services (suppliers) that will cease to exist after the bubble bursts
- Links 10/10/2025: Putin Admits Russia Downed Azerbaijan Airlines Jet, More New Heat Records
- Links for the day
- Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
- A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
- Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
- Google itself is a slop pusher these days
- Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
- A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
- XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
- "everyone is ditching the xbox."
- Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025