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
- Microsoft's Mass Layoffs Very Wide-Ranging, Media Focused on Gaming Though Microsoft Mass-Firing Lawyers and "AI" Staff (Contradicting Its Supposed "Investment" in "AI")
- Microsoft plans to fire almost half a thousand people in legal roles
- 2012 Article About the Free Software Foundation Blasting Canonical/Ubuntu Over Adoption of "Secure" Boot (Microsoft's Remote Control Over GNU/Linux Since PCs' Power-on)
- By Katherine Noyes (article has since then became 404, not found)
- Debian Can Dump Blind Users Because I am Not Blind
- the sort of mentality we're up against
- The European Patent Office Cannot Attract Proficient Patent Examiners Who Master Their Domain
- They are enablers and facilitators of corruption
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- What Wayland and Microsoft/IBM systemd Have in Common
- focus on what IBM (Red Hat) is pushing while running over critics.
- Linux Already Has About 60% of the "Market"
- "When mentioning the client side," opines an associate, "it is essential to recite the list of other markets where Microsoft is negligible or a no-show. It is repetitive to do so, but it needs saying -- often."
- In Norway, Android/Linux Has Just Hit All-Time High (First Time Since 2020), GNU/Linux Already Very Prevalent
- Despite its small population size, Norway gave us Qt and many other things
- Finland (and NATO) Must Move to GNU/Linux and Dump Microsoft Even Faster
- "Microsoft is not a technology problem, it is a staffing problem."
- The Microsofters We Sued Helped Microsoft Make GNU/Linux 'Expire' This Year
- "Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration"
- linuxconfig.org Joins linuxtechlab.com and Others, Becomes a Slopfarm With Fake Linux 'Articles' (LLM Slop)
- They contain "linux" in their domain names, but they are just slopfarms
- Links 19/07/2025: Microsoft Cuts in China and Wall Street Journal Sued for Reporting on Jeffrey Epstein
- Links for the day
- Fascistic Policies Got 'Normalised' in 'Public Office'. Let's Not Let the Same Happen in 'Tech'.
- Political discourse typically guides what's "normal" and what "good citizens" should believe/feel
- Yes, Your Mastodon Instance Will Also Shut Down
- Few people run a one-person instance in the Fediverse
- The Demise of GAFAM Necessitates Greater and Broader Awareness
- Morale at Microsoft is really bad
- Free Software Foundation Reaches 75% of Funding Goal
- Not bad for this "Fosschild"
- Slopwatch: 7 New Examples of Fake 'Linux' Slop Pieces (Plagiarism With Misinformation)
- Serial Sloppers need to be shunned
- Links 19/07/2025: Kapo-berg Settles, Software Patents Challenged
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 18, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, July 18, 2025
- Links 18/07/2025: Peace With PKK and Connie Francis Dies
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/07/2025: Alhena 5.1.8 and Bornhack 2025
- Links for the day
- How to Top Up a "Limited Liability" With Even More Limitations (Dodging Accountability in the UK)
- Some people call it a "shell game". Sometimes it's done for tax evasion purposes.
- Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Inches Towards 75% of Fund-Raising Target
- Will the cutoff date be extended again?
- Gemini Space (or Geminispace) Grows, But Usage of Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops Further
- Ideally, all Gemini capsules should use self-signed certificates
- Links 18/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs in Activision, The New Stack (Sponsored by Microsoft) Complains About Openwashing
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/07/2025: OCC25 Gnus for Reading Usenet and RSS Feeds, Small Web Updates
- Links for the day
- [Meme] 9AM Meeting at Brett Wilson LLP
- Brett Wilson LLP in space
- Listing as Staff People Who Left the Company More Than Six Years Earlier
- There are apparently no laws against that
- Brian Fagioli Shovels Up LLM Slop (Plagiarism) Onto Slashdot, Then Uses Slashdot for Affirmation or as Badge of Honour
- Notice how some of his latest slop is presented ("as featured on Slashdot")
- Social Control Media Productivity
- Snapping photos of the bone
- The Law Firm SLAPPing Us For the Microsofters Lost 72% of Its Tangible Assets in the Past Year, According to Its Own Reports
- That might help explain why they're willing to tolerate serial stranglers from Microsoft as clients
- Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com Slopfarm and Slopfarms Propped Up by Google News
- "As LLM slop is foisted onto the WWW in place of knowledge and real content, it now gets ingested and processed by other LLMs, creating a sort of ouroboros of crap."
- Links 18/07/2025: Weather Events and Health Hazards
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's All-Time Low in Finland
- Microsoft is in a freefall
- Security: Shane Wegner & Debian statement of incompetence
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 17, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, July 17, 2025
- Gemini Links 17/07/2025: "Goodreads for Gemini" and Defence of "The Small Web"
- Links for the day
- Links 17/07/2025: Anger and Morale Issues at Microsoft, Wars and Conflicts Get Digital
- Links for the day
- CALEA / CALEA2 is the Real Problem, Not Chinese Operatives Exploiting CALEA / CALEA2 (as Any Other Nation Can)
- CALEA / CALEA2 is more of a front door than a back door
- 99.99% Uptime in First Half of 2025
- Since January there was only one noticeable outage
- Nils Torvalds and Anna "Mikke" Torvalds (née Törnqvis) Hopefully Use GNU/Linux by Now
- "Torvalds Family Uses Windows, Not Linus’ Linux"
- Attack of the Slopfarms
- FUD-amplifying bots with slop images, slop text (LLM slop)
- When People Call a Best/Close Friend of Bill Gates a "Serial Rapist"
- Good thing that the Linux Foundation keeps the "Linux" trademark ("Linux Mark") clean
- Not My Problem, I Don't Care
- Context/inspiration: Martin Niemöller
- Honest Journalism About the European Patent Office Ceased to Exist After SLAPPs and Bribes to the Media
- The EPO is basically a Mafia
- Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia, Shutdown in Pakistan, What Next?
- It seems possible that in 2025 alone Microsoft will have laid off over 50,000 workers
- Life Became Simpler When I Stopped Driving and I Don't Miss Driving When I See "Modern" Cars
- Gee, wonder why car sales have plummeted...
- Why I Believe Brett Wilson LLP and Its Microsoft Clients Are All Toast
- So far our legal strategy has worked perfectly
- EPO Jobs Are Very Toxic and Bad for One's Health
- Health first, not monopolies
- Response to Ryo Suwito Regarding the Four Freedoms
- the point of life isn't to make more money
- Microsoft's Morale Circling Down the Drain
- Or gutter, toilet etc.
- What Matters More Than "Market Share"
- The goal is freedom, not "market share"
- Tech Used to be Fun. To Many of Us It's Still Fun.
- You can just watch it from afar and make fun of it all
- Links 17/07/2025: "Blog Identity Crisis" and Openwashing by Nvidia
- Links for the day
- Greffiers and the US Attorney of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
- The lawsuit can help expose extensive corruption in the American court system as well
- Credit Suisse collapse obfuscated Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners scandal
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- The People Who Promoted systemd in Debian Also Promote Wayland
- This is not politics
- UK Media Under Threat: Cannot Report on Data Breach, Cannot Report on Microsoft Staff Strangling Women
- The story of super injunction (in the British media this week, years late)
- Victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, Wanted to Sue Him But Lacked the Funds (He Attacked Their Finances)
- Having spoken to victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
- Links 17/07/2025: Science, Hardware, and Censorship
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/07/2025: Staying in the "Small Web" and Back on ICQ
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 16, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 16, 2025