ForgotPassword?
Sign Up
Search this Topic:
Posts: 27156
Jul 19 15 10:59 AM
"We are under pressure from the Treasury to justify our budget, and commercial espionage is one way of making a direct contribution to the nation's balance of payments." - Sir Colin McColl, MI6 Chief For years public figures have condemned cyber espionage committed against the United States by intruders launching their attacks out of China. These same officials then turn around and justify the United States' far-reaching surveillance apparatus in terms of preventing terrorist attacks. Yet classified documents published by WikiLeaks reveal just how empty these talking points are. Specifically, top-secret intercepts prove that economic spying by the United States is pervasive, that not even allies are safe and that it's wielded to benefit powerful corporate interests. At a recent campaign event in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton accused China of "trying to hack into everything that doesn't move in America." Clinton's hyperbole is redolent of similar claims from the US deep state. For example, who could forget the statement made by former NSA director Keith Alexander that Chinese cyber espionage represents the greatest transfer of wealth in history? Alexander has obviously never heard of quantitative easing (QE) or the self-perpetuating "global war on terror," which has likewise eaten through trillions of dollars. Losses due to cyber espionage are a rounding error compared to the tidal wave of money channeled through QE and the war on terror. When discussing the NSA's surveillance programs, Alexander boldly asserted that they played a vital role with regard to preventing dozens of terrorist attacks, an argument that fell apart rapidly under scrutiny. Likewise, in the days preceding the passage of the USA Freedom Act of 2015, President Obama advised that bulk phone metadata collection was essential "to keep the American people safe and secure." Never mind that decision-makers have failed to provide any evidence that bulk collection of telephone records has prevented terrorist attacks. If US political leaders insist on naming and shaming other countries with regard to cyber espionage, perhaps it would help if they didn't sponsor so much of it themselves. And make no mistake, thanks to WikiLeaks, the entire world knows that US spies are up to their eyeballs in economic espionage - against NATO partners like France and Germany, no less. And also against developing countries like Brazil and news outlets like Der Spiegel. These disclosures confirm what Edward Snowden said in an open letter to Brazil: Terrorism is primarily a mechanism to bolster public acquiescence for runaway data collection. The actual focus of intelligence programs center around "economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation." Who benefits from this sort of activity? The same large multinational corporate interests that have spent billions of dollars to achieve state capture. Why is the threat posed by China inflated so heavily? The following excerpt from an intelligence briefing might offer some insight. In a conversation with a colleague during the summer of 2011, the European Union's chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Hiddo Houben, described the treaty as an attempt by the United State to antagonize China:
"We are under pressure from the Treasury to justify our budget, and commercial espionage is one way of making a direct contribution to the nation's balance of payments." - Sir Colin McColl, MI6 Chief
For years public figures have condemned cyber espionage committed against the United States by intruders launching their attacks out of China. These same officials then turn around and justify the United States' far-reaching surveillance apparatus in terms of preventing terrorist attacks. Yet classified documents published by WikiLeaks reveal just how empty these talking points are. Specifically, top-secret intercepts prove that economic spying by the United States is pervasive, that not even allies are safe and that it's wielded to benefit powerful corporate interests.
At a recent campaign event in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton accused China of "trying to hack into everything that doesn't move in America." Clinton's hyperbole is redolent of similar claims from the US deep state. For example, who could forget the statement made by former NSA director Keith Alexander that Chinese cyber espionage represents the greatest transfer of wealth in history? Alexander has obviously never heard of quantitative easing (QE) or the self-perpetuating "global war on terror," which has likewise eaten through trillions of dollars. Losses due to cyber espionage are a rounding error compared to the tidal wave of money channeled through QE and the war on terror.
When discussing the NSA's surveillance programs, Alexander boldly asserted that they played a vital role with regard to preventing dozens of terrorist attacks, an argument that fell apart rapidly under scrutiny. Likewise, in the days preceding the passage of the USA Freedom Act of 2015, President Obama advised that bulk phone metadata collection was essential "to keep the American people safe and secure." Never mind that decision-makers have failed to provide any evidence that bulk collection of telephone records has prevented terrorist attacks.
If US political leaders insist on naming and shaming other countries with regard to cyber espionage, perhaps it would help if they didn't sponsor so much of it themselves. And make no mistake, thanks to WikiLeaks, the entire world knows that US spies are up to their eyeballs in economic espionage - against NATO partners like France and Germany, no less. And also against developing countries like Brazil and news outlets like Der Spiegel.
These disclosures confirm what Edward Snowden said in an open letter to Brazil: Terrorism is primarily a mechanism to bolster public acquiescence for runaway data collection. The actual focus of intelligence programs center around "economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation." Who benefits from this sort of activity? The same large multinational corporate interests that have spent billions of dollars to achieve state capture.
Why is the threat posed by China inflated so heavily? The following excerpt from an intelligence briefing might offer some insight. In a conversation with a colleague during the summer of 2011, the European Union's chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Hiddo Houben, described the treaty as an attempt by the United State to antagonize China:
Read more @ http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31871-documents-published-by-wikileaks-reveal-the-nsa-s-corporate-priorities#
Spying on the Internet is Orders of Magnitude More Invasive Than Phone Metadata
When you pick up the phone, who you’re calling is none of the government’s business. The NSA’s domestic surveillance of phone metadata was the first program to be disclosed based on documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Americans have been furious about it ever since. The courts ruled it illegal, and Congress let the section of the Patriot Act that justified it expire (though the program lives on in a different form as part of the USA Freedom Act). Yet XKEYSCORE, the secret program that converts all the data it can see into searchable events like web pages loaded, files downloaded, forms submitted, emails and attachments sent, porn videos watched, TV shows streamed, and advertisements loaded, demonstrates how Internet traffic can be even more sensitive than phone calls. And unlike the Patriot Act’s phone metadata program, Congress has failed to limit the scope of programs like XKEYSCORE, which is presumably still operating at full speed. Maybe Verizon stopped giving phone metadata to the NSA, but if a Verizon engineer uploads a spreadsheet full of this metadata without proper encryption, the NSA may well get it anyway by spying directly on the cables that the spreadsheet travels over. The outrage over bulk collection of our phone metadata makes sense: Metadata is private. Americans call suicide prevention hotlines, HIV testing services, phone sex services, advocacy groups for gun rights and for abortion rights, and the people they’re having affairs with. We use the phone to schedule job interviews without letting our current employer know, and to manage long-distance relationships. Most of us, at one point or another, have spent long hours on the phone discussing the most intimate details about our lives. There isn’t an American alive today who didn’t grow up with at least some access to a telephone, so Americans understand this well. But Americans don’t understand the Internet yet. Bulk collection of phone metadata is, without a doubt, a violation of your privacy, but bulk surveillance of Internet traffic is orders of magnitude more invasive. People also use the Internet in all the ways they use phones — often inadvertently sharing even more intimate details through online searches. In fact, the phone network itself is starting to go over the Internet, without customers even noticing. XKEYSCORE, as well as NSA’s programs that tap the Internet directly and feed data into it, have some legal problems: They violate First Amendment rights to freedom of association; they violate the Wiretap Act. But the biggest and most obvious concerns are with the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is short and concise:
When you pick up the phone, who you’re calling is none of the government’s business. The NSA’s domestic surveillance of phone metadata was the first program to be disclosed based on documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Americans have been furious about it ever since. The courts ruled it illegal, and Congress let the section of the Patriot Act that justified it expire (though the program lives on in a different form as part of the USA Freedom Act).
Yet XKEYSCORE, the secret program that converts all the data it can see into searchable events like web pages loaded, files downloaded, forms submitted, emails and attachments sent, porn videos watched, TV shows streamed, and advertisements loaded, demonstrates how Internet traffic can be even more sensitive than phone calls. And unlike the Patriot Act’s phone metadata program, Congress has failed to limit the scope of programs like XKEYSCORE, which is presumably still operating at full speed. Maybe Verizon stopped giving phone metadata to the NSA, but if a Verizon engineer uploads a spreadsheet full of this metadata without proper encryption, the NSA may well get it anyway by spying directly on the cables that the spreadsheet travels over.
The outrage over bulk collection of our phone metadata makes sense: Metadata is private. Americans call suicide prevention hotlines, HIV testing services, phone sex services, advocacy groups for gun rights and for abortion rights, and the people they’re having affairs with. We use the phone to schedule job interviews without letting our current employer know, and to manage long-distance relationships. Most of us, at one point or another, have spent long hours on the phone discussing the most intimate details about our lives. There isn’t an American alive today who didn’t grow up with at least some access to a telephone, so Americans understand this well.
But Americans don’t understand the Internet yet. Bulk collection of phone metadata is, without a doubt, a violation of your privacy, but bulk surveillance of Internet traffic is orders of magnitude more invasive. People also use the Internet in all the ways they use phones — often inadvertently sharing even more intimate details through online searches. In fact, the phone network itself is starting to go over the Internet, without customers even noticing.
XKEYSCORE, as well as NSA’s programs that tap the Internet directly and feed data into it, have some legal problems: They violate First Amendment rights to freedom of association; they violate the Wiretap Act. But the biggest and most obvious concerns are with the Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is short and concise:
Read more @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/09/spying-internet-orders-magnitude-invasive-phone-metadata/
When you pick up the phone and call someone, or send a text message, or write an email, or send a Facebook message, or chat using Google Hangouts, other people find out what you’re saying, who you’re talking to, and where you’re located. Such private data might only be available to the service provider brokering your conversation, but it might also be visible to the telecom companies carrying your Internet packets, to spy and law enforcement agencies, and even to some nearby teenagers monitoring your Wi-Fi network with Wireshark. But if you take careful steps to protect yourself, it’s possible to communicate online in a way that’s private, secret and anonymous. Today I’m going to explain in precise terms how to do that. I’ll take techniques NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used when contacting me two and a half years ago and boil them down to the essentials. In a nutshell, I’ll show you how to create anonymous real-time chat accounts and how to chat over those accounts using an encryption protocol called Off-the-Record Messaging, or OTR. If you’re in a hurry, you can skip directly to where I explain, step by step, how to set this up for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Android. Then, when you have time, come back and read the important caveats preceding those instructions. One caveat is to make sure the encryption you’re using is the sort known as “end-to-end” encryption. With end-to-end encryption, a message gets encrypted at one endpoint, like a smartphone, and decrypted at the other endpoint, let’s say a laptop. No one at any other point, including the company providing the communication service you’re using, can decrypt the message. Contrast this with encryption that only covers your link to the service provider, like an HTTPS web connection. HTTPS will protect your message from potential snoops on your Wi-Fi network (like the teenager with Wireshark) or working for your telecom company, but not from the company on the other end of that connection, like Facebook or Google, nor from law enforcement or spy agencies requesting information from such companies. A second, bigger caveat is that it’s important to protect not only the content of your communications but also the metadata behind those communications. Metadata, like who is talking to whom, can be incredibly revealing. When a source wants to communicate with a journalist, using encrypted email isn’t enough to protect the fact that they’re talking to a journalist. Likewise, if you’re a star-crossed lover hoping to connect with your romantic partner, and keep your feuding families from finding out about the hook-up, you need to protect not just the content of your love notes and steamy chats, but the very fact that you’re talking in the first place. Let’s take a quick look at how to do that. Secret identities Meet Juliet, who is trying to get in touch with Romeo. Romeo and Juliet know that if they talk on the phone, exchange emails or Skype chats, or otherwise communicate using traditional means, there’s no way to hide from their powerful families the fact that they’re communicating. The trick is not to hide that they’re communicating at all, but rather that they’re Romeo and Juliet. Juliet and Romeo decide to make new chat accounts. Juliet chooses the username “Ceres,” and Romeo chooses the username “Eris.” Now when Ceres and Eris have an encrypted conversation it will be harder for attackers to realize that this is actually Juliet and Romeo. When Juliet’s accounts are later audited for evidence of communicating with Romeo — her short-tempered cousin is a bit overbearing, to say the least — nothing incriminating will show up. Of course, just making up new usernames alone isn’t enough. It’s still possible, and sometimes even trivial, to figure out that Ceres is actually Juliet and Eris is actually Romeo.
When you pick up the phone and call someone, or send a text message, or write an email, or send a Facebook message, or chat using Google Hangouts, other people find out what you’re saying, who you’re talking to, and where you’re located. Such private data might only be available to the service provider brokering your conversation, but it might also be visible to the telecom companies carrying your Internet packets, to spy and law enforcement agencies, and even to some nearby teenagers monitoring your Wi-Fi network with Wireshark.
But if you take careful steps to protect yourself, it’s possible to communicate online in a way that’s private, secret and anonymous. Today I’m going to explain in precise terms how to do that. I’ll take techniques NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used when contacting me two and a half years ago and boil them down to the essentials. In a nutshell, I’ll show you how to create anonymous real-time chat accounts and how to chat over those accounts using an encryption protocol called Off-the-Record Messaging, or OTR.
If you’re in a hurry, you can skip directly to where I explain, step by step, how to set this up for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Android. Then, when you have time, come back and read the important caveats preceding those instructions.
One caveat is to make sure the encryption you’re using is the sort known as “end-to-end” encryption. With end-to-end encryption, a message gets encrypted at one endpoint, like a smartphone, and decrypted at the other endpoint, let’s say a laptop. No one at any other point, including the company providing the communication service you’re using, can decrypt the message. Contrast this with encryption that only covers your link to the service provider, like an HTTPS web connection. HTTPS will protect your message from potential snoops on your Wi-Fi network (like the teenager with Wireshark) or working for your telecom company, but not from the company on the other end of that connection, like Facebook or Google, nor from law enforcement or spy agencies requesting information from such companies.
A second, bigger caveat is that it’s important to protect not only the content of your communications but also the metadata behind those communications. Metadata, like who is talking to whom, can be incredibly revealing. When a source wants to communicate with a journalist, using encrypted email isn’t enough to protect the fact that they’re talking to a journalist. Likewise, if you’re a star-crossed lover hoping to connect with your romantic partner, and keep your feuding families from finding out about the hook-up, you need to protect not just the content of your love notes and steamy chats, but the very fact that you’re talking in the first place. Let’s take a quick look at how to do that.
Meet Juliet, who is trying to get in touch with Romeo. Romeo and Juliet know that if they talk on the phone, exchange emails or Skype chats, or otherwise communicate using traditional means, there’s no way to hide from their powerful families the fact that they’re communicating. The trick is not to hide that they’re communicating at all, but rather that they’re Romeo and Juliet.
Juliet and Romeo decide to make new chat accounts. Juliet chooses the username “Ceres,” and Romeo chooses the username “Eris.” Now when Ceres and Eris have an encrypted conversation it will be harder for attackers to realize that this is actually Juliet and Romeo. When Juliet’s accounts are later audited for evidence of communicating with Romeo — her short-tempered cousin is a bit overbearing, to say the least — nothing incriminating will show up.
Of course, just making up new usernames alone isn’t enough. It’s still possible, and sometimes even trivial, to figure out that Ceres is actually Juliet and Eris is actually Romeo.
Read more @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/14/communicating-secret-watched/
The agency collected and stored intimate chats, photos, and emails belonging to innocent Americans—and secured them so poorly that reporters can now browse them at will. Consider the latest leak sourced to Edward Snowden from the perspective of his detractors. The National Security Agency’s defenders would have us believe that Snowden is a thief and a criminal at best, and perhaps a traitorous Russian spy. In their telling, the NSA carries out its mission lawfully, honorably, and without unduly compromising the privacy of innocents. For that reason, they regard Snowden’s actions as a wrongheaded slur campaign premised on lies and exaggerations. But their narrative now contradicts itself. The Washington Post’s latest article drawing on Snowden’s leaked cache of documents includes files “described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained” that “tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless.” The article goes on to describe how exactly the privacy of these innocents was violated. The NSA collected “medical records sent from one family member to another, résumés from job hunters and academic transcripts of schoolchildren. In one photo, a young girl in religious dress beams at a camera outside a mosque. Scores of pictures show infants and toddlers in bathtubs, on swings, sprawled on their backs and kissed by their mothers. In some photos, men show off their physiques. In others, women model lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam …” Have you ever emailed a photograph of your child in the bathtub, or yourself flexing for the camera or modeling lingerie? If so, it could be your photo in theWashington Post newsroom right now, where it may or may not be secure going forward. In one case, a woman whose private communications were collected by the NSA found herself contacted by a reporter who’d read her correspondence. Snowden defenders see these leaked files as necessary to proving that the NSA does, in fact, massively violate the private lives of American citizens by collecting and storing content—not “just” metadata—when they communicate digitally. They’ll point out that Snowden turned these files over to journalists who promised to protect the privacy of affected individuals and followed through on that oath.
The agency collected and stored intimate chats, photos, and emails belonging to innocent Americans—and secured them so poorly that reporters can now browse them at will.
Consider the latest leak sourced to Edward Snowden from the perspective of his detractors. The National Security Agency’s defenders would have us believe that Snowden is a thief and a criminal at best, and perhaps a traitorous Russian spy. In their telling, the NSA carries out its mission lawfully, honorably, and without unduly compromising the privacy of innocents. For that reason, they regard Snowden’s actions as a wrongheaded slur campaign premised on lies and exaggerations.
But their narrative now contradicts itself. The Washington Post’s latest article drawing on Snowden’s leaked cache of documents includes files “described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained” that “tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless.”
The article goes on to describe how exactly the privacy of these innocents was violated. The NSA collected “medical records sent from one family member to another, résumés from job hunters and academic transcripts of schoolchildren. In one photo, a young girl in religious dress beams at a camera outside a mosque. Scores of pictures show infants and toddlers in bathtubs, on swings, sprawled on their backs and kissed by their mothers. In some photos, men show off their physiques. In others, women model lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam …”
Have you ever emailed a photograph of your child in the bathtub, or yourself flexing for the camera or modeling lingerie? If so, it could be your photo in theWashington Post newsroom right now, where it may or may not be secure going forward. In one case, a woman whose private communications were collected by the NSA found herself contacted by a reporter who’d read her correspondence.
Snowden defenders see these leaked files as necessary to proving that the NSA does, in fact, massively violate the private lives of American citizens by collecting and storing content—not “just” metadata—when they communicate digitally. They’ll point out that Snowden turned these files over to journalists who promised to protect the privacy of affected individuals and followed through on that oath.
Read more @ http://www.mintpressnews.com/latest-snowden-leak-devastating-to-defenders-of-nsa/207552/
The nation’s secretive surveillance court should not have reinstated the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone call data even temporarily, because an appellate court ruled that the program was illegal in May, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday. The suit asks the appellate court to overrule the secret court and enjoin the program immediately. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on May 7 that the NSA program that vacuumed up domestic metadata relating to all American phone calls — who was calling who, when and for how long — was illegal, and that Congress did not intend Section 215 of the Patriot Act to authorize the government to instate such a wide dragnet. Information about every single American’s phone call behavior is not “relevant to an authorized investigation,” the court concluded. Congress let the spying program lapse by failing to renew it before its June 1 expiration date. Then, when reform legislation passed the following day, Congress called for the massive spying program to end — but with a grace period. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court then ruled that the bulk surveillance, first revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden two years ago, could be resumed for five months. But in a motion filed on Tuesday afternoon, the ACLU and its New York branch argue that the NSA is twisting the court’s words, and that bulk collection must be ended immediately because it has been, and continues to be, illegal. “The government says it will wind down this unconstitutional program eventually, but the Constitution doesn’t have a grace period,” said ACLU Staff Attorney Alex Abdo in a statement. “Bulk collection is unconstitutional and must end.” Abdo argued the case before the Second Circuit, where a three-judge panel ruled the program illegal — but noted that Congress was going to reassess the law soon. It did not issue an injunction. The USA Freedom Act, passed on June 2, requires the NSA to get a specific warrant in order to obtain call records or metadata from communications providers — starting on Nov. 29. Anticipating questions about the Second Circuit decision, the surveillance court judge explained in his ruling that only a higher court could tell him what to do: “Second Circuit rulings are not binding on the FISC, and this court respectfully disagrees with that Court’s analysis, especially in view of the intervening enactment of the USA Freedom Act,” wrote Judge Michael Mosman in the court order.
The nation’s secretive surveillance court should not have reinstated the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone call data even temporarily, because an appellate court ruled that the program was illegal in May, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday. The suit asks the appellate court to overrule the secret court and enjoin the program immediately.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on May 7 that the NSA program that vacuumed up domestic metadata relating to all American phone calls — who was calling who, when and for how long — was illegal, and that Congress did not intend Section 215 of the Patriot Act to authorize the government to instate such a wide dragnet. Information about every single American’s phone call behavior is not “relevant to an authorized investigation,” the court concluded.
Congress let the spying program lapse by failing to renew it before its June 1 expiration date. Then, when reform legislation passed the following day, Congress called for the massive spying program to end — but with a grace period.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court then ruled that the bulk surveillance, first revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden two years ago, could be resumed for five months.
But in a motion filed on Tuesday afternoon, the ACLU and its New York branch argue that the NSA is twisting the court’s words, and that bulk collection must be ended immediately because it has been, and continues to be, illegal.
“The government says it will wind down this unconstitutional program eventually, but the Constitution doesn’t have a grace period,” said ACLU Staff Attorney Alex Abdo in a statement. “Bulk collection is unconstitutional and must end.”
Abdo argued the case before the Second Circuit, where a three-judge panel ruled the program illegal — but noted that Congress was going to reassess the law soon. It did not issue an injunction.
The USA Freedom Act, passed on June 2, requires the NSA to get a specific warrant in order to obtain call records or metadata from communications providers — starting on Nov. 29.
Anticipating questions about the Second Circuit decision, the surveillance court judge explained in his ruling that only a higher court could tell him what to do: “Second Circuit rulings are not binding on the FISC, and this court respectfully disagrees with that Court’s analysis, especially in view of the intervening enactment of the USA Freedom Act,” wrote Judge Michael Mosman in the court order.
Read more @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/14/aclu-slams-secretive-court-renewing-illegal-bulk-surveillance/
There’s a reason the television show The Wire wasn’t just called “The Cops vs. Drug Dealers Show.” Law enforcement’s surveillance in America—and particularly its ever-increasing use of wiretaps—have been primarily driven for the last 25 years by drug cases. And as the chart above shows, that’s now truer than ever before. Earlier this month the US court system released its annual report of every wiretap over the last year for which it granted law enforcement a warrant. And of those 3,554 wiretaps in 2014, fully 89 percent were for narcotics cases. That’s the highest percentage of wiretaps focused on drugs in the report’s history, and it continues a steady increase in the proportion of drug-focused spying. Twenty-five years ago, just 62 percent of wiretaps were for drug cases. In fact, that constant swell in drug-focused wiretaps may help to explain the general increase in all American wiretaps. In total, the count of US state and federal wiretaps has jumped from 768 in 1989 to more than four times that number today. But take out those drug cases, and the collection of wiretaps of all other kinds increased only 29 percent in those 25 years, from 297 in the year 1989 to just 384 last year.
There’s a reason the television show The Wire wasn’t just called “The Cops vs. Drug Dealers Show.” Law enforcement’s surveillance in America—and particularly its ever-increasing use of wiretaps—have been primarily driven for the last 25 years by drug cases. And as the chart above shows, that’s now truer than ever before.
Earlier this month the US court system released its annual report of every wiretap over the last year for which it granted law enforcement a warrant. And of those 3,554 wiretaps in 2014, fully 89 percent were for narcotics cases. That’s the highest percentage of wiretaps focused on drugs in the report’s history, and it continues a steady increase in the proportion of drug-focused spying. Twenty-five years ago, just 62 percent of wiretaps were for drug cases.
In fact, that constant swell in drug-focused wiretaps may help to explain the general increase in all American wiretaps. In total, the count of US state and federal wiretaps has jumped from 768 in 1989 to more than four times that number today. But take out those drug cases, and the collection of wiretaps of all other kinds increased only 29 percent in those 25 years, from 297 in the year 1989 to just 384 last year.
Read more @ http://www.wired.com/2015/07/drug-war-driving-us-domestic-spying/
Read more @ http://www.techtimes.com/articles/69809/20150717/ibm-supercomputer-watson-now-detect-attitude-writing.htm
On Friday artists Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider walked away from We Are Always Listening (WAAL), a National Security Agency (NSA) subcontractor, DIY surveillance program, satirical prank, or new media art project, depending on your interpretation. The artists, who anonymously scored a viral hit earlier this year when they clandestinely installed their sculpture bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in a Brooklyn park, secretly taped the conversations of strangers in New York and Berlin and posted the audio files online. The project fulfilled Greenspan and Tider’s goal, which was to rekindle the widespread anger about unchecked and unauthorized government surveillance of citizens that flared in 2013 at the time of the NSA leaks. News outlets on both sides of the Atlantic covered WAAL — from Gothamist and Wired to the Guardian and Spiegel — fueling further outrage over its invasive nature, which the artists sought to redirect (via the “Angry?” link on the project website) toward an American Civil Liberties Union petition in the lead-up to the expiration of the Patriot Act on June 1. But after a long conversation with another NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, the artists reevaluated and ultimately decided to pull the plug (or blow the whistle) on their project. Hyperallergic spoke to Greenspan and Tider about their reasons for starting WAAL, why they think the public was so quick to stop caring about the NSA surveillance scandal, and how activists and artists have to compete with everything from the economic crisis in Greece to Miley Cyrus for people’s attention.
On Friday artists Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider walked away from We Are Always Listening (WAAL), a National Security Agency (NSA) subcontractor, DIY surveillance program, satirical prank, or new media art project, depending on your interpretation. The artists, who anonymously scored a viral hit earlier this year when they clandestinely installed their sculpture bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in a Brooklyn park, secretly taped the conversations of strangers in New York and Berlin and posted the audio files online.
The project fulfilled Greenspan and Tider’s goal, which was to rekindle the widespread anger about unchecked and unauthorized government surveillance of citizens that flared in 2013 at the time of the NSA leaks. News outlets on both sides of the Atlantic covered WAAL — from Gothamist and Wired to the Guardian and Spiegel — fueling further outrage over its invasive nature, which the artists sought to redirect (via the “Angry?” link on the project website) toward an American Civil Liberties Union petition in the lead-up to the expiration of the Patriot Act on June 1. But after a long conversation with another NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, the artists reevaluated and ultimately decided to pull the plug (or blow the whistle) on their project.
Hyperallergic spoke to Greenspan and Tider about their reasons for starting WAAL, why they think the public was so quick to stop caring about the NSA surveillance scandal, and how activists and artists have to compete with everything from the economic crisis in Greece to Miley Cyrus for people’s attention.
Read more @ http://hyperallergic.com/221997/artists-blow-the-whistle-on-their-nsa-whistleblower-project/
In 2013, Edward Snowden unleashed an earthquake, of which aftershocks are still being felt. The revelation that spy agencies in the US, UK, Canada and Australia were working to undermine online encryption and had built backdoors in to the internet services we all use was shocking. Until Snowden, most of us assumed our private online activity was private. But the disclosures – like that in which Skype had allowed collection of users’ video calls, for example – have shaken everyone’s faith in online anonymity. We used to assume Terms & Conditions had our backs, that the legalese we have little choice but to click on would work in our interests, as well as our software makers’. But that assumption has turned out to be misplaced. Is anyone fighting back? Sometimes it takes a victim to act first. Brazil, whose own president was reportedly a target of NSA spying, last year passed an “internet constitution” limiting gathering and sharing of metadata about internet users by ISPs and other companies. Elsewhere, too, efforts are underway to put our privacy back under lock and key. Unfortunately, however, they are not going so well: ‘Magna Carta’ Last year, Tim Berners-Lee, credited with having “invented” the Web, called for “a global constitution, a bill of rights” for the internet. Berners-Lee is advocating a document like the Magna Carta, England’s “Great Charter” that was amongst the world’s first system of codified rights in the 13th century, and has forwarded his wish through a campaign, The Web We Want. But the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta passed in June with the initiative having gained barely a fraction of the traction of the Web he gave the world – and with good reason. Like John Perry Barlow’s seminal A Declaration Of Independence Of Cyberspace before it, nearly 20 years ago, the global push fails to take in to account that laws which could bring it about are national, not international in nature. Only politicians can bring about the change. EC regulation Europe is trying to write protections in to the laws of its members states. Having decided to write new guidelines to data protection and privacy to update the 20-year-old EU Data Protection Directive, the European Commission has tabled the so-called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
In 2013, Edward Snowden unleashed an earthquake, of which aftershocks are still being felt. The revelation that spy agencies in the US, UK, Canada and Australia were working to undermine online encryption and had built backdoors in to the internet services we all use was shocking.
Until Snowden, most of us assumed our private online activity was private. But the disclosures – like that in which Skype had allowed collection of users’ video calls, for example – have shaken everyone’s faith in online anonymity.
We used to assume Terms & Conditions had our backs, that the legalese we have little choice but to click on would work in our interests, as well as our software makers’. But that assumption has turned out to be misplaced.
Sometimes it takes a victim to act first. Brazil, whose own president was reportedly a target of NSA spying, last year passed an “internet constitution” limiting gathering and sharing of metadata about internet users by ISPs and other companies. Elsewhere, too, efforts are underway to put our privacy back under lock and key. Unfortunately, however, they are not going so well:
‘Magna Carta’
Last year, Tim Berners-Lee, credited with having “invented” the Web, called for “a global constitution, a bill of rights” for the internet. Berners-Lee is advocating a document like the Magna Carta, England’s “Great Charter” that was amongst the world’s first system of codified rights in the 13th century, and has forwarded his wish through a campaign, The Web We Want.
But the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta passed in June with the initiative having gained barely a fraction of the traction of the Web he gave the world – and with good reason. Like John Perry Barlow’s seminal A Declaration Of Independence Of Cyberspace before it, nearly 20 years ago, the global push fails to take in to account that laws which could bring it about are national, not international in nature. Only politicians can bring about the change.
Europe is trying to write protections in to the laws of its members states. Having decided to write new guidelines to data protection and privacy to update the 20-year-old EU Data Protection Directive, the European Commission has tabled the so-called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Read more @ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/07/18/no-one-wants-to-protect-your-privacy/?utm_campaign=pro&
When the truth finally comes out about all the spying in all its shocking detail and who is behind it…. people should remember the people who said things like this…… The truth always finally comes out, no matter how much people lie and create diversions to deflect the truth being found out….. The truth will find a way sooner or later. The perpetrators may not be shown any leniency either… at present they feel strong because they can know what every person is saying at any given time…. And have the upper hand. They have everything at their fingertips, but when you look back through life you know that change comes whether you like it or not, and it will happen for them too. What they are creating now will affect the future and create a despotic world for all the generations to come….. They all need to do some self-reflection and start caring about their eternal souls…. And not the life they are currently living which is but like a grain of sand in all eternity….. a flash in the pan.
Jeb Bush said Tuesday that he was infuriated by the possibility of a plea bargain for Edward Snowden that would allow the former government contractor to return to the United States from Moscow. The 2016 Republican presidential candidate tweeted that Snowden, “should be given no leniency” for his actions. Snowden broke the law, recklessly endangered nat’l security, & fled to China/Russia. He should be given no leniency https://t.co/9RHNGsHZnx — Jeb Bush (@JebBush) July 7, 2015 On Monday, former Attorney General Eric Holder told Yahoo that the United States benefited from Snowden’s leak of classified documents, and that a consensus could be reached on a plea deal. “We are in a different place as a result of the Snowden disclosures,” Holder said. “His actions spurred a necessary debate. I certainly think there could be a basis for a resolution that everybody could ultimately be satisfied with—I think the possibility exists.” Several others have spoken out about the potential plea deal. Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA director during the George W. Bush administration, told Yahoo he was appalled by the idea and believes Snowden should return to criminal charges.
Jeb Bush said Tuesday that he was infuriated by the possibility of a plea bargain for Edward Snowden that would allow the former government contractor to return to the United States from Moscow.
The 2016 Republican presidential candidate tweeted that Snowden, “should be given no leniency” for his actions.
Snowden broke the law, recklessly endangered nat’l security, & fled to China/Russia. He should be given no leniency https://t.co/9RHNGsHZnx
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) July 7, 2015
On Monday, former Attorney General Eric Holder told Yahoo that the United States benefited from Snowden’s leak of classified documents, and that a consensus could be reached on a plea deal.
“We are in a different place as a result of the Snowden disclosures,” Holder said. “His actions spurred a necessary debate. I certainly think there could be a basis for a resolution that everybody could ultimately be satisfied with—I think the possibility exists.”
Several others have spoken out about the potential plea deal. Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA director during the George W. Bush administration, told Yahoo he was appalled by the idea and believes Snowden should return to criminal charges.
Read more @ http://freebeacon.com/national-security/jeb-bush-snowden-should-be-given-no-leniency/
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
Interact