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 Whistleblowers Explain How Brutal the Latest Cull is (Layoffs in Seconds-Long Calls, Mass Elimination of Whole Studios and High-Level Officials)
- we see anonymous leakers or whistleblowers in the media today
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- Links 16/07/2026: Slop Recognised as a Waste of Energy, Hong Kong Cracking Down on Dissent/Opposition Some More
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux Approaching 5% "Market Share" in Oceania, Almost Trebling in 12 Months
- It is difficult to ignore the gains made by GNU/Linux this month
- Gemini Links 16/07/2026: esp32-gemserv, Slop-Contaminated Free Software, and Moving Systems
- Links for the day
- Last Summer Microsoft Mass Layoffs Came in Two Large Waves, Rumours Say Next Week Another Large Wave is Coming
- If many more Microsoft layoffs are formally admitted next week we will not be surprised
- Tomorrow is Another Strike Day at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, the Media is Still Deliberately Ignoring It
- Fridays are now recommended “anchor days" for EPO strikes
- Public Interest News Foundation Shows News Drought or News Deserts in the United Kingdom
- Public Interest News Foundation shows that we should be deeply concerned
- Illusions of Choice
- Choices can be differently bad or equally bad
- Windows Down to 10% in India
- Windows is a "burning platform"
- One Year Has Passed
- Our aim is to repair an injured system wherein "abuse of process" can be turned into a weapon, leveraged even by foreigners who are funded by affluent third parties
- Techrights is Annoying People Who Work for (and Serve) People Who Annoy (and Abuse) Society
- Working against us (instead of with us) has historically been a bad strategy
- No Skinnerboxes, No Slop, No False Idols or Corporate Prophets
- Torvalds does not understand the everyday struggles of tech workers and tech users because he is a millionaire
- IBM's Next Stop: $199 (Market Cap Already Under 2.5 Times IBM's Debt)
- Don't rush to call us "sensationalist" over it
- Links 16/07/2026: Solar Greenwashing by Energy-Wasting GAFAM and Growing Concerns About Harm by Social Control Media
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 16/07/2026: Photography, Agility, and "Today I have Truly Become a Linux User."
- Links for the day
- Rebellion Brewing at Microsoft
- As always, we welcome Microsoft whistleblowers
- Technology Against Human Nature
- Losing a sense of what it means to be alive
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 15, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 15, 2026
- IBM Down to $211.20, the Market in General is Up
- No recovery for IBM today
- UEFI 'Secure Boot' Still Not Secure in 2026, New Holes (or Bypasses) Still Being Found
- In 2026 there are still many people who call it "secure" and pretend to themselves that it is about security. It's not. It never was.
- Gemini Links 15/07/2026: Lab 6, Retrospective 2, and "Getting Back Into Gemini"
- Links for the day
- Links 15/07/2026: "Gianni Infantino Under Fire" and "Todd Blanche's Record Raises Alarming Questions About the Future of the US DOJ"
- Links for the day
- Allegedly More IBM RAs (Mass Layoffs) Same Day the Stock Crashed
- No paper trail, so it never happened, right?
- Techrights Was Right: Microsoft's Layoffs Tally Was False, Far More People Are Being Sacked
- "The Xbox Bloodbath Is Actually Way Bigger Than It Seems"
- Get Ready for Increase in PIPs and RAs at IBM, Red Hat, and Other Companies Devoured by IBM
- IBM's "market cap" has just fallen to 199 billion dollars and it has about 70 billion dollars in debt
- IBM Sinking to Lowest Levels Since 2024, But Will Any Executives Be Arrested for Securities Fraud?
- 52-week high of $332.46 and now down to $212.94
- Microsoft Whistleblowers Say "The Entire Thing is Going to Fall Apart" and There Are "No Benefits" to Being Part of Microsoft
- "Multiple sources, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal"
- IBM's Crash Continues Today
- Stocks go up and down, but they don't typically go down by over 25% in a single day
- Like Kyndryl, Multiple Securities Fraud Investigations Into IBM
- Remember what happened to Kyndryl
- How Long Before GNU/Linux is Measured at 20% in Chad?
- The main way to get people to adopt Vista 11 is to sell them a new PCs and in poor countries it happens a lot less
- Making Techrights Faster Down Under (Australia and New Zealand)
- there's more to life than speed
- Strikes at the EPO Approved for the Rest of the Year, "€1,3 Billion Taken From Staff Income"
- Intensity can be revised and increased over time
- Focusing on What We Really Ought to Focus on
- Today we'll focus mostly on EPO affairs
- Violence is Not a Joke
- "Police say Widdecombe killing was targeted but motive remains unclear"
- How to Properly Measure the Performance of a Patent Office
- A "contribution from staff [which] is published by SUEPO Munich."
- Who Next After IBM? (Bubbles Don't Last Forever)
- the demise of companies with "ai" in their name/domain
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XIV - "Not One of Us" (How the Group Dubbed by EPO Insiders "Alicante Mafia" Pushes Out Talent, Replacing It With Friends)
- misuses the EPO's budget like it is a fountain of money for his friends
- LibreTech Collective Abandons Microsoft GitHub and All Other Proprietary Software
- Each time a project eliminates control by a hostile party it stands to gain
- GNU/Linux Estimated at 8% "Market Share" Today (in statCounter)
- Days ago it said 7.1%, then 7.3% or 7.4%
- Links 15/07/2026: US Regime "Cuts Two Utah National Monuments by More Than 90%", "Hormuz is Less Crucial Than It Was"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/07/2026: Old Computer Challenge, "Trial by Fire", LLM Slop Destroying Companies
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 14, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, July 14, 2026
- Heshan de Silva-Weeramuni Becomes Program Manager at the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
- Heshan's addition means that the FSF is growing after a solid financial year (best in years)
- Michael McMahon Explains Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
- The real solution is a curb on botnets. A mitigation strategy, however, would involve going static.
- Matters of Public Safety
- "Police say Ann Widdecombe killed in 'targeted attack' as motive investigated"
- The Register MS and Its Promotional Microsoft Content
- It's not too hard to see what the business model of The Register MS is
- IBM: From $306 to $212 in 7 Days, IBM Won't Go Up More Than 50% to Where It Was at 'Peak Vapourware'
- There's a limit to how much or how long a company can fake its performance and its potential [...] Early this morning a few insiders ("traders") cashed in on their "pump-n-dump"
- Red Hat Staff Needs to Start Looking for the Next Job
- Workers can conveniently lie or deny it to themselves, but waves of PIPs ("silent layoffs") will sweep over more and more units or teams as the company runs out of money to play with
- IBM the Next Bear Stearns
- IBM cannot recover if all it has to show is vapourware
- IBM Stock Collapses and It's Only the Beginning
- Will GAFAM soon follow and will any executives be arrested for the accounting fraud insiders have long cautioned about?
- I'll Be Extremely Difficult for Microsoft to Sell Any XBox Consoles Now
- Microsoft understands this
- How Software Freedom Would Benefit Everybody
- A society that denies control by greedy companies would do a disservice to monopolies and improve all services to citizens
- Links 14/07/2026: Harsh But Also Fair Criticism of Hey Hi (AI) Slop, 'Open' AI Shuts Down Its Own Products as Funds Run Out
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/07/2026: Old CD Binder and AWK
- Links for the day
- In Defence of Physical Tickets
- Tickets are not some "app" and not some "code" on some "screen"
- Microsoft Layoffs Not Limited to XBox (False Narrative in the Mainstream Media)
- Microsoft is becoming less relevant and workforce reductions won't end any time soon
- Links 14/07/2026: Plagiarism Spun as "Training", Zelensky Announces Leadership Shuffle
- Links for the day
- The Register MS Has Just Published "AI" Webspam That Mentions "AI" 54 Times. It Was Paid to Do This.
- Who pays for all this "AI" hype or "buzz"?
- Gemini Links 14/07/2026: Self-Advocacy Online; "The Internet Is Dead: How the Web Lost Its Human Soul"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 13, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, July 13, 2026
- Modern Technology Harms Women More Than Men (Because the 'Tech Bros' Who Dominate STEM Have a Poor View of Women)
- “Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.”
- Internet Relay Chat Trolls Are Not Expressing Opinions, They Are Saboteurs
- For the record
- Links 14/07/2026: "The Freedom of Information Act Is in Serious Trouble"; Irish Datacenters Use Up Almost 25% of Total Energy
- Links for the day