Privacy and Human Rights Watch: Peeping Crown, Extradition, EU Resistance to Drones, and More
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-28 10:08:33 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-28 10:08:33 UTC
Summary: The latest (past 24 hours) stories about eroding human rights (exploiting transitions to digital), especially privacy rights
GCHQ
-
GCHQ documents say between 3-11 percent of Yahoo webcam chats contain ‘undesirable’ nudity.
-
The government is spying on Yahoo users via their webcams and X-box, according to a report based on leaked Eric Snowden documents. Both the American and British governments are now accused of spying on citizens in their own home, sans either a warrant or just cause.
-
● 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
UK
-
Techdirt followed the the saga of the hacker Gary McKinnon, whom the US authorities wished to extradite from the UK to face charges of causing damage to military computers, for some years before the UK Home Secretary blocked his extradition, and the case against him in the UK was dropped. That was a great result for McKinnon after a 10-year fight to avoid extradition, but it meant that the key issues that his situation raised were never addressed.
Reform/Legal
-
“Once You Give Up Your Rights, You Can Never Get Them Back. Once You Turn On That Police State, You Can Never Turn It Off.”
Richard Clarke is one of the four White House panelists on NSA spying, and the former top counter-terror czar in the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Local Action
-
While the NSA datacenter and its activities are in the national spotlight, local authority remains divided on how to treat it.
Algorithms
-
Eavesdropping by algorithm is still eavesdropping, whether a human looks at your data or not. Real reform can’t abide by the spy dictionary anymore
Alexander
-
In one of his final Capitol Hill appearances, Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency's director, on Thursday called for a stronger strategy to deter cyberattacks, saying the line that would prompt a U.S. response against an adversary “does not yet exist.”
-
Alexander says NSA could accept a change where agency would only be allowed to collect phone data related to terrorism
'Metadata'
Amazon/CIA
-
When former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was conducting digital surveillance on a massive scale, many feared for the future of cloud computing. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimated that Snowden’s revelations could cost U.S. cloud companies $22 billion to $35 billion in foreign business over the next three years, and countless pundits predicted that American businesses would flee the cloud as well. People would prefer to run software and store data on their own computers, the argument went, rather than host their operations atop outside services potentially compromised by the NSA.
Civil Rights
-
If President Barack Obama gets his way, five American citizens will have become victims of announced “targeted assassinations” by the military and CIA. Coupled with disturbing statements by United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, it is evident that the principle of the rule of law has lost force in the past few decades, especially after 9/11.
[...]
It was enshrined in the American, British and French Revolutions as sacred, and is an essential precept of liberalism.
-
*Eliminate the National Surveillance Agency, the NSA; completely stop the enormous spying on the American people. Take the other 12 U.S. intelligence agencies and combine their functions into one. We have the CIA and the FBI and Homeland Security to monitor imminent or longer term dangers to this country.
-
Think of us as having two presidents. One, a fellow named Barack Obama, cuts a distinctly Clark Kent-ish figure. In presiding over domestic policy, he is regularly thwarted in his desires by the Republicans in Congress and couldn’t until recently get his most basic choices for government positions or the judiciary through the Senate. For the most minimal look of effectiveness, he has to rely on relatively small gestures by executive order. In the recent history of the American presidency, he is a remarkably powerless figure presiding over what everyone who is a media anyone claims is a riven, paralyzed, even broken government structure, one in which the Republicans are intent on ensuring that a Democratic president can do nothing until they take the White House (which is almost guaranteed to be never). What this president wants, almost by definition, he can’t have. He is, as Guardian columnist Gary Younge wrote recently, a man who’s lost the plot line to his own story and has been relegated to the position of onlooker-in-chief.
-
There is one law for their terrorists and another for ours. "Theirs" kill a soldier in Woolwich and get slammed up for life. They get a verbal lynching from the red-tops, with Rot in Jail headlines and screams the rope would be too good for them, the filth and scum. "Our" terrorists get royal pardons and "letters of assurance", even if, as may be the case, they slaughter four soldiers and eight horses in cold blood in Hyde Park. That is how it must seem to many people.
-
The Untied States is the world's biggest violator of human rights of non-American persons and has been strongly condemned for conducting surveillance and prisoner torture around the globe, a report on US human rights said Friday.
The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013 was released by the Information Office of China's State Council, or the Cabinet, in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013 issued by the US State Department on Thursday.
-
China has hit back at the US over the human rights debate alleging the “world judge of human rights” has serious question marks hanging over its own record.
[...]
Washington has long “made arbitrary attacks and irresponsible remarks” on the human rights situation in almost 200 countries and regions again in its just-released reports, the Chinese report says.
“However, the US carefully concealed and avoided mentioning its own human rights problems,” it adds.
Chinese ally Russia has also repeatedly said the United States has no right to claim a mantle of moral leadership. Moscow has criticized Washington sharply over human rights, pointing to secret CIA jails abroad and treatment of inmates at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba and elsewhere.
Drones
-
Mr. Shami, a militant who American officials say is living in the barren mountains of northwestern Pakistan, is at the center of a debate inside the government over whether President Obama should once again take the extraordinary step of authorizing the killing of an American citizen overseas.
-
European Union Members of Parliament condemned the use of drones in targeted killings in a vote of 534 to 49. The vote proposing a ban referred to the drone strikes as “unlawful.”
-
Activists of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf, led by cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan, had blocked the route from the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar for the past three months in a protest over U.S. drone strikes.
-
Increased European research on unmanned aircraft is making the European Parliament nervous.
Military
-
Proposed cuts to defence spending would shrink US army to smallest size in 74 years
-
An influential U.S. senator says the Obama administration's response to the Benghazi attack was so fraught with inaccuracies and misleading testimony in the weeks preceding the 2012 presidential election that it warrants a new and thorough investigation by a joint Senate committee.
-
The very first act of the western-backed insurrectionists which represent a small percentage of the population and have managed to overthrow the government was to attempt rob Russian speakers in Ukraine of their language.
-
Hunt will be giving advice to startups in his new role at the San Francisco-based investment firm as they seek out profitable deals from the federal government. He told VentureBeat in an interview, "I'm taking my understanding of the intelligence space and scouting out the opportunities."
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The Word About the Upcoming Talk by Richard Stallman - Scheduled for Friday This Week - Has Spread ("The Cost of Freedom," Lausanne, Switzerland)
- So the word is spreading
- Microsoft Front Group Starts the Year by Championing Underage (or Child) Labour
- the fake 'FSF'
- Chatbots Are Not Data-Driven, They're Human-Censored and Rely on Wage Slaves (and Sometimes Unpaid Volunteers)
- This is the Microsoft wage slavery
- Gemini Links 12/01/2025: No Country For Old Men, Burned Homes, and "Planet P is Clean"
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: Brittany Day and Brian Fagioli Are Still at It, Googlebombing "Linux" With LLM Slop (Taking Away Traffic From the Articles They're Plagiarising)
- Some more sites that used to cover GNU/Linux have turned into slopfarms
-
- Gemini Links 13/01/2025: RestFest, Yule, and Deedum
- Links for the day
- Modern Web Browsers as Web Censorship Software
- We continue to recommend Geminispace
- Two Weeks From Now Dr. Richard Stallman Speaks at The Summit of Future 2025 (India)
- he will be giving a "Keynote Address" in India
- Microsoft is Tight With Money: It's About the Salaries ('Cost' of the Workers)
- a question of cost, not skill
- Google Got People Sort of Addicted to Android So It Can Cash in (Services, App Store, Advertising) Decades Later
- This is not software freedom
- The Free Software Foundation Reaches 370k Dollars in Funding, Due Date is January 17th When Richard Stallman is Guest of Honour in Lausanne (Switzerland)
- Even fellow board members seem unaware of it
- Record Lows for Windows (Microsoft) in Botswana
- The market share of Vista 11 is seen as going down
- Preserving Deleted Articles About Bill Gates Talking Like a Drug Dealer About Computer Users
- Now it's 2025. Different challenge.
- Links 13/01/2025: Disinformation, Social Control Media Actively Promoting Nazism, and Catchup With Ukraine
- Links for the day
- TPM Boosters Inside Debian (TPM Isn't About Security, It is About Control Over Users and Their Machines)
- We're not rushing to any conclusions
- Aaron Swartz Died 12 Years Ago After a Vicious Government Campaign to Stop Him
- The Aaron Swartz story is a reminder of the importance of having verifiable/verified information out there for the general public to see
- Links 13/01/2025: GitLab Enshittification and Minimalism and Efficiency with Gemini Protocol
- Links for the day
- Links 13/01/2025: Hardware, Health, and Conflicts
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Appears to Have Fallen to Only 15% in Maldives
- This is a problem for Microsoft
- Rumours of IBM Canada Layoffs
- We'll keep a vigilant eye on this
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, January 12, 2025
- Bots Covering Debian Releases
- It would be quite safe to guess that chatbots were at least partly leveraged for that text
- Links 12/01/2025: Microsoft Admits It's Laying Off Staff Only Where Staff is "Expensive" (Race to the Bottom)
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Being High on Drugs Isn't Happiness (Likewise, Being a "Star" in Social Control Media is Temporary)
- Many entities - or people - will regret telling everybody "follow me on Twitter"
- [Meme] They Say That RMS Says the "F" Word (Freedom) Too Much...
- About 32.7k US dollars are now left for the FSF to raise (in 6 days)
- Links 12/01/2025: More Sanctions Against Russia, SCOTUS Signals Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban Will Stay
- Links for the day
- [Meme] A Jihad Against Servers the User Controls
- We need to strive for and work towards greater control by users over "their" servers
- Microsoft Azure-Only Bugs in "Linux" Can "Compromise the System."
- From ubuntu.com and linux.org a few days ago
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 11, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, January 11, 2025
- Gemini Links 12/01/2025: DHL Express Does Not Deliver, Oddmuse Update
- Links for the day
- Links 11/01/2025: Social Control Media Facing Sanctions, Carter Respected at Funeral
- Links for the day
- If TikTok (China) Has the Rights of American Persons, Then ByteDance Can be Sentenced to Death
- TikTok - like Julian Assange - does not enjoy any protections of the First Amendment and since it's not a person it would lack these protections as an American company, too
- After a Year of Layoffs in Microsoft Nigeria (and Microsoft in Africa at Large) Windows Falls to New Lows and Bing Falls to 0.46% "Market Share"
- Of course Microsoft gave bribes in Nigeria to suppress GNU/Linux adoption
- An Important Lesson About Patents and Patent Maximalism (They Drive People and Companies Away)
- This previously happened in Texas, where companies perceived their presence (in any form) to be a liability as patent trolls could drag them to friendly courts and win "damages"
- When It Comes to Fentanylware (TikTok), a Digital Weapon of a Hostile Entity, Common Dreams is Jumping the Shark Again (Years After It Ran Out of Steam or Money)
- Or maybe it likes the agenda promoted (curated) by Fentanylware (TikTok) and its parent company, Bytedance or Chinese Community Party (CPP)
- BetaNews is Now Officially a Spamfarm With Phantom Authors and Fake Text (SPAM and Linkspam Made With LLM Slop)
- That's it, the site is virtually dead now (maybe that was the plan all along)
- Hazem Abbas of medevel is Ruining His Site With LLM Slop
- Some of his articles are original, but now everything is suspect
- [Meme] Real and Fake (or "several influential "open source" organizations [which] have come to be dominated by large companies")
- The Free Software Foundation has not sold out
- Free Software Foundation: Anchoring the FSF in its values
- Original by Free Software Foundation
- GNU/Linux Surges to All-Time Highs in Greenland, Windows Sinks to All-Time Lows
- a lot of GNU/Linux gets detected there lately
- Microsoft's "Donald Trump First" Doctrine
- national deficits growing
- Microsoft in Trouble as Azure Breaks and Only Days After Promising Investment in "Datacentres" Construction of Actual Datacentres Paused (Expect More Azure Layoffs Very Soon)
- No wonder many people who got trapped inside Azure quit Azure, which keeps bleeding (losses and layoffs)
- Gemini Links 11/01/2025: Wildfire, Militia and the Mole, IRC vs Social Control Media
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 10, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, January 10, 2025