NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is hunted again; FBI demands extradition

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is back in the news again, with the FBI demanding his arrest and extradition if he flew to any the Scandinavian countries to claim asylum.

According to newly released documents, the FBI wrote a letter to the police forces in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, asking them to report Snowden’s whereabouts as the U.S. Department of Justice has charged Snowden with theft and espionage, and issue a provisional arrest warrant.

“The FBI expresses its gratitude … for any assistance that can be provided on this important matter,” the letter, issued on June 27, stated.

Back in 2013, Edward Snowden, who was an NSA recruit, had leaked massive data of U.S. and British surveillance of digital communications, showing to what extent NSA had collected phone records of millions of Verizon customers every day, resulting in the breach of security and privacy.

Immediately after the leak, Snowden left for Hong Kong and then left for Moscow shortly after. While in Hong Kong, he sought help from Wikileaks, which arranged and helped him travel to Moscow. He also tried to apply for asylum in Scandinavian countries, especially Norway, at the Moscow airport. But due to shortage of time, he had to leave.

On the same day, the U.S. embassy in Oslo wrote a letter to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, requesting the Norway government to return Snowden to his country, where he is wanted for his crime, “by way of denial of entry, deportation, expulsion or other legal means.”

Failing to get a response, the embassy wrote another letter, repeating its request of arresting and extraditing Snowden to the U.S. following the 1977 extradition treaty between the two countries. Snowden’s lawyer Ben Wizner spoke on the possibility of the U.S. government sending similar requests to most of the countries in and outside Europe at the same time.

Read more @ http://www.ibtimes.com.au/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-hunted-again-fbi-demands-extradition-1463139

 

US pressured Norway to arrest & extradite Snowden, seize all devices – documents

The US repeatedly asked Norway to detain and deport whistleblower Edward Snowden if he tried to enter its territory in the aftermath of his leaks on mass US global surveillance, Norwegian media revealed citing formal requests.

Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs received the first letter from Washington shortly after the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor’s revelations went public when he was stranded in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. 

The note, dated June 27, 2013, was quoted by Norway’s NRK broadcaster: “We request that should US citizen Edward J. Snowden attempt to enter Norway through any means, the Government of Norway notify the Embassy immediately and effectuate the return of Mr. Snowden to the United States by way of denial of entry, deportation, expulsion or other lawful means.” 

On the same day, the FBI’s Scandinavia office followed up with another letter addressed to justice authorities in Norway, Sweden and Finland. It described Snowden as a criminal fugitive and urged them to notify American personnel if the whistleblower booked a flight to one of their countries from Moscow. 

USA asked Norway, Sweden, Iceland to arrest Edward Snowden http://t.co/OzEVAQPi2j

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 27, 2015

These correspondences were followed up with a separate message to Norway’s Department of Foreign Affairs on July 4, 2013, requesting that Snowden be arrested and extradited if he were to attempt to enter Norwegian territory. “The United States urges that Snowden be kept in custody, if arrested,” the note said. 

READ MORE: PACE calls on US to stop persecuting Snowden 

The language in documents revealed by NRK reflects how desperately the US wanted to contain the information Snowden had in his possession.  

“The Embassy requests the seizure of all articles acquired as a result of the offenses (..) This includes, but is not limited to, all computer devices, electronic storage devices and other sorts of electronic media.”

The most problematic aspect of the US making such bullish requests is that Snowden would have been denied his international right to apply for asylum before being arrested had the countries complied, Snowden’s lawyer Ben Wizner told NRK.

“What is troubling to me is the suggestion that if Mr. Snowden showed up in one of these countries, he should be promptly extradited – before he would have a chance to raise his humanitarian rights under international law,” he said.

“The only correct response from political leaders in Norway or any other free society should be to tell the US that this is a question of law and not a question of politics. And that, under international law, someone who is charged with a political offense has a right to raise a claim for asylum before the question of extradition even comes up.” 

Norway: Hey Snowden here's a prize, now could you head to the court so we can decide if we wanna extradite you kthx: http://t.co/c32K8wKX3G

— Jenna McLaughlin (@JennaMC_Laugh) August 27, 2015

Snowden has been invited to Norway to receive the prestigious Bjørnson Prize by the Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Academy for freedom of expression. The award is being presented to Snowden “for work protecting privacy and for shining a critical light on US surveillance of its citizens and others.”

However, it is still unclear whether Norway would arrest Snowden if he attempted to enter the country. 

Norway’s Justice and Foreign Affairs departments said that the US’ requests had not been answered because, under Norwegian law, no country can make an extradition request until the alleged criminal is actually on Norwegian territory.

Jøran Kallemyr, State Secretary in Norway’s Department of Justice, confirmed this view: “What Norway has done is to inform the American authorities how the Norwegian system works,” he said. “If they request an extradition, the prosecuting authorities will decide if the case should be brought before the courts. And the court will decide if the terms for extradition are fulfilled.” 

READ MORE: US aggressively threatened to 'cut off' Germany over Snowden asylum - report

Norway is not the only country reportedly bullied to hand over Snowden. Washington threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Berlin should Germany offer asylum to Snowden or even try to arrange any kind of travel to Germany, according to a report by journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Read more @  http://www.rt.com/news/313663-snowden-norway-us-pressure/

 

EDWARD SNOWDEN CRAYFISH: NSA WHISTLEBLOWER HAS NEW SPECIES OF CRAYFISH NAMED AFTER HIM

In 2013, Edward Snowden became a household name when the former government contractor and CIA employee leaked tens of thousands of classified intelligence files that he copied from the National Security Agency (NSA). Many called Snowden an American hero, and many others called him a traitor. One man who falls into the category of the former is Christian Lukhaup, a research associate at Humbold University in Berlin.

To honor Snowden — who he called “an American freedom fighter” in a recent paper — Lukhaup has decided to name a newly discovered species of crayfish after the NSA leaker.

“The new species is named after the american freedom fighter Edward Joseph Snowden. He is honored due to of his extraordinary achievements in defense of justice, and freedom. The name is used as a noun in apposition.”

The Edward Snowden crayfish — officially named Cherax snowden — was first discovered by Lukhaup in 2006 when he retrieved a specimen from a collector in Kepala Burung in the province of West Papua, Indonesia. That Cherax snowden remained the only one Lukhaup would be able to get his hands on until earlier this year when he and other researchers obtained some specimens from an online store in Germany that sold freshwater invertebrates, and more from a wholesale distributor in Indonesia.

With more than one single specimen on hand, researchers were finally able to extract DNA from Cherax snowden to prove that it was, in fact, an as of yet undescribed species of crayfish.

Read more @ http://www.inquisitr.com/2374746/edward-snowden-crayfish-nsa-whistleblower-has-new-species-of-crayfish-named-after-him/ 

 

NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Gets A Crayfish Named After Him

Read more @ http://www.techtimes.com/articles/79326/20150826/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-gets-a-crayfish-named-after-him.htm

 

Julian Assange 'told Edward Snowden not to seek asylum in Latin America'

WikiLeaks founder says he told the NSA whistleblower he could be kidnapped or killed, and that he was better off sheltering in Russia despite ‘negative PR’

Julian Assange has said he advised the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden against seeking asylum in Latin America because he could have been kidnapped and possibly killed there.

The WikiLeaks editor-in-chief said he told Snowden to ignore concerns about the “negative PR consequences” of sheltering in Russia because it was one of the few places in the world where the CIA’s influence did not reach.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Times, Assange also said he feared he would be assassinated if he was ever able to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought asylum in 2012 to avoid extradition.

He accused US officials of breaking the law in their pursuit of him and his whistleblowing organisation, and in subjecting his connections to a campaign of harassment.

Read more @ http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/29/julian-assange-told-edward-snowdon-not-seek-asylum-in-latin-america

 

Snowden Effect: Intel Agency Restrictions Reflects Global Spying Crackdown

Authorities in the UK and Germany are cracking down on intelligence activities as public opinion swings against mass surveillance, coupled with heavy criticism from human rights groups and setbacks at the European Court of Human Rights.

Following a wave of scandals, spy agencies around the world are coming under pressure to be more open about their actions. It follows the repealing of powers held by US services, with leaks like the Snowden revelations paving the way for an unprecedented reduction in the power of security services.

Now, authorities in the UK and Germany are cracking down on intelligence activities as public opinion swings against mass surveillance, coupled with heavy criticism from human rights groups and setbacks at the European Court of Human Rights.

In Germany, Angela Merkel’s coalition of lawmakers have made plans to create a post for a “permanent expert” to oversee the actions of Germany’s security services.

These developments come as a direct reaction to revelations that spies from Germany’s BND had been relaying information gathered on various German companies and European allies to the American National Security Agency (NSA), while there were also accusations that Chancellor Merkel’s office did nothing to prevent the practice.

Extra Pressure on Intel Agencies

The additional scrutiny on German spies follows developments in the US, with the country’s recently implemented Freedom Act repealing many of the powers previously held by the NSA under the old Patriot Act.

From June, the NSA hasn’t been allowed to engage in the mass collection of Americans’ phone records, while a public interest advocate has been appointed to oversee the implementation of surveillance programs.

The UK’s intelligence agencies have also been pulled up for their actions as a result of the Snowden leaks, with communications agency GCHQ found guilty in February of taking part in an unlawful information-sharing agreement with the NSA that went on for seven years.

This was followed up by another ruling in Britain’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in June, which found the agency guilty of illegally spying on two human rights groups.

In reaction to the decision, Eric King, deputy director of civil rights group Privacy International, said that more needed to be done to control the actions of security services.

“Clearly our spy agencies have lost their way. For too long they’ve been trusted with too much power, and too few rules for them to protect against abuse. How many more problems with GCHQ’s secret procedures have to be revealed for them to be Brought Under Control? ”

Snowden: The Legacy of the Leaks

The increase in scrutiny and reduction in powers for security agencies has in large been triggered by the revelations of former NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

These revelations, along with other leaks from organizations like WikiLeaks, which have uncovered a series of illegal practices undertaken by intelligence agencies in many countries, such as the US, UK and Germany.

This has led to an unprecedented shift in the nature of intelligence legislation in some countries, with security services witnessing a reduction in their powers for the first time in the post 9/11 era, defined by the West’s commitment to the war on terror.

However despite claims that agencies are working in the interest of national security, critics say the overbearing surveillance practices contradict and question many civil liberties.

Despite the restrictions in the United States and Germany, the Britain appears to be heading in the opposite direction when it comes to surveillance policy, with the UK’s Conservative government revealing plans to give spy agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ more powers to deal with threats to national security

The government has outlined its highly controversial plan to introduce the Investigatory Powers Bill, dubbed the ‘Snooper’s Charter,’ which would give agencies more powers and force Internet companies to log and track users’ web history for up to year to allow for police and security service access.

Read more @ http://www.mintpressnews.com/snowden-effect-intel-agency-restrictions-reflects-global-spying-crackdown/208960/

 

US appeals court backs NSA phone data collection

A US appeals court has thrown out a lower court’s ruling that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ phone records is unconstitutional, adding to the legal uncertainty over the controversial spying programme.

The ruling by a three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit threw out a December 2013 injunction that banned the NSA from collecting in bulk the so-called “metadata” of US telephone users which track to whom calls are placed and how long they last.

Read more @ http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6615fa84-4d99-11e5-9b5d-89a026fda5c9.html

 

Why It’s Hard to Sue the NSA: You Have to Prove It Spied on You

Here’s a big problem with secret spying programs in the US: To dismantle them with a lawsuit, someone has to prove that their privacy rights were infringed. And that proof is almost always a secret.

That’s the Catch-22 that an appeals court served up Friday to plaintiffs who for the last two years have been attacking the NSA’s metadata collection program authorized under section 215 of the Patriot Act. The plaintiffs are led by constitutional lawyer and conservative activist Larry Klayman, who had sued the Obama administration for violating his fourth amendment privacy rights. In 2013, a lower court granted his a request for an injunction to stop the NSA’s spying on his data. But the Obama administration appealed that ruling, and an appellate court has now thrown out that injunction based on a familiar and vexing problem for those who sue the government’s secret spying apparatus: The plaintiffs couldn’t sufficiently prove that the NSA secretly spied on them.

“In order to establish his standing to sue, a plaintiff must show he has suffered a ‘concrete and particularized’ injury,” wrote judge Janice Rogers Brown in her opinion. “In other words, plaintiffs here must show their own metadata was collected by the government…the facts marshaled by plaintiffs do not fully establish that their own metadata was ever collected.”

Klayman first launched his lawsuit, after all, in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations that the NSA had interpreted the Patriot Act to allow the collection of any American’s metadata.

But Judge Brown pointed out, for instance, that Snowden had leaked a document showing that the NSA was collecting metadata from all users of Verizon’s Business Network Services—not Verizon Wireless, of which Klayman was a customer. Though the NSA has since claimed that virtually every wireless carrier was fair game for that domestic spying program, Brown argued Klayman’s inability to prove his communications were included in that spying still removed his grounds for an injunction.

Read more @ http://www.wired.com/2015/08/hard-sue-nsa-prove-spied/

 

Maybe they should create a tribunal to deal with the spies because courts are another government outlet…. That means government run courts are dealing out verdicts on another government run organizations….. it does not make sense.  It has to be a tribunal of sorts with no connections to governments or corporations and no one with relatives with connections to either.

 

Appeals court rejects challenge to NSA's ongoing mass collection of phone data

Judges found that the man who brought the case, Larry Klayman, could not prove his particular phone records had been swept up in NSA dragnets

A federal appeals court has rejected a high-profile challenge to the ongoing mass collection of US phone data by the National Security Agency without ruling on the merits of bulk surveillance.

Judges for the District of Columbia court of appeals found that the man who brought the case, conservative lawyer Larry Klayman, could not prove that his particular cellphone records had been swept up in NSA dragnets.

The ruling reversed an injunction from a lower court on the phone records surveillance program – but only in a technical sense, as the injunction never actually went into force.

But the judges’ decision does not impact that of a different federal appeals court, which in May found that the bulk phone records collection lacked a foundation in law. That ruling, by the second circuit court of appeals, added momentum to a congressional rollback of the surveillance program that has yet to take effect.

In their ruling, judges Janice Rogers Brown, Stephen Williams and David Sentelle wrote: “The record, as it stands in the very early stages of this litigation, leaves some doubt about whether plaintiffs’ own metadata was ever collected.”

Klayman shot back, telling the Guardian the judges were “intellectually dishonest” as the widespread nature of NSA bulk phone records collection has been on display for more than two years since whistleblower Edward Snowden’s surveillance disclosures.

“It’s outrageous this court would allow the constitutional rights of Americans to be trampled upon,” Klayman said. “The court has become the tool of the establishment.”

Read more @ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/28/appeals-court-rejects-challenge-nsa-phone-data-collection

 

US court upholds NSA bulk phone spying

A US appeals court has ruled in favour of the government in a case challenging the National Security Agency's collection of millions of phone records.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed a decision by a lower court that found the program was likely illegal and sent the matter back to the lower court for reconsideration.

US President Barack Obama signed into law reforms to the program earlier this year, but legal challenges continue to make their way through the courts because the changes are not due to take effect until November 29.

The court's finding means the NSA can continue to collect the phone records until the changes go into effect.

Read more @ http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/nthamerica/2015/08/29/us-court-upholds-nsa-bulk-phone-spying.html

 

US court rules for government over NSA metadata collection program

Read more @ http://tvnewsroom.org/newslines/u-s/us-court-rules-for-government-over-nsa-metadata-collection-program-107854/

 

Court overturns NSA phone record collection ruling

The 2013 decision ordering the US National Security Agency (NSA) to stop its collection of phone records has been overturned by a federal appeals court, which determined that a privacy advocate did not sufficiently demonstrate his data was collected through the program.

According to TechCrunch and the Wall Street Journal, the three-judge panel issued its decision on Friday, as two of those judges wrote that they doubted longtime conservative activist named Larry Klayman would be able to prove that his phone records had been collected under the NSA surveillance program, and thus did not have standing to bring the case.

Read more @ http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1113408265/court-overturns-nsa-phone-record-collection-ruling-082915/

 

Appeals Court Reverses Judge’s Order Against NSA Phone Surveillance

Read more @ http://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-reverses-judges-order-against-nsa-phone-surveillance-1440774423

NSA wins battle over its phone records collection, as court lifts injunction, but fight isn't over

Read more @ http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/583372/nsa-wins-battle-over-its-phone-records-collection-court-lifts-injunction-fight-isn-t-over/?fp=2&fpid=1

 

Snowden Documents Provide Undeniable Evidence of NSA-AT&T Collusion

The US government cannot deny enlisting private companies for espionage, given recent revelations by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden on AT&T’s collusion with the NSA, former AT&T technician turned whistleblower Mark Klein told Sputnik on Monday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Leandra Bernstein — On Saturday, The New York Times published a story detailing the close collaboration between telecommunications giant AT&T and the NSA.

According to documents provided by Snowden, AT&T maintained a "highly collaborative" relationship with the NSA on a broad range of classified activities, including tapping all internet communications from certain customers.

"Snowden blew the government out of the water because he had documents from the ‘horse’s mouth’ — the NSA — which cannot be denied by the government, and it’s a good thing it’s now all out there," Klein said.

The program is known to have been operational from 2003 until at least 2013, when Snowden left the NSA.

Klein said he feels "vindicated" over the release of the latest Snowden leaks on AT&T.

Read more @ http://sputniknews.com/military/20150818/1025856295.html

 

Matt Damon Says New Bourne Film Inspired By Edward Snowden & Greek Financial Crisis

It has been 8 years since Matt Damon (EuroTrip) played Jason Bourne -- 2007s The Bourne Ultimatum. Since then, the world has changed quite a bit and two major developments: Edward Snowden exposing the NSA's questionable surveillance practices and Greece's financial crisis that shook the European Union (EU), inspired Damon and director Paul Greengrass to return to the Bourne franchise.

"Without giving too much of it away, it’s Bourne through an austerity-riddled Europe and in a post-Snowden world," Damon told BuzzFeed while promoting The Martian. "It seems like enough has changed, you know? There are all these kinds of arguments about spying and civil liberties and the nature of democracy."

Read more @ http://comicbook.com/2015/08/29/matt-damon-says-new-bourne-film-inspired-by-edward-snowden-greek/

 

Matt Damon talks about Snowden's influence on the Bourne franchise

It’s been eight years since we last saw Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. Apparently, that time lag was no accident. In a recent interview with BuzzFeed, Damon said that he and director Paul Greengrass would talk every few years about new Bourne, but it wasn’t until recently, in the wake of Edward Snowden’s NSA whistleblowing and the Greek austerity debates, that they felt the world had changed enough to merit a new story.

“We always looked at those movies as really about the Bush presidency, and so we kind of had to wait for the world to change,” Damon told BuzzFeed. “Without giving too much of it away, it’s Bourne through an austerity-riddled Europe and in a post-Snowden world. It seems like enough has changed, you know? There are all these kinds of arguments about spying and civil liberties and the nature of democracy.”

According to Damon, the new film will begin in Greece, both the birthplace of democracy and the center of much recent political turmoil in Europe.

Read more @ http://www.ew.com/article/2015/08/28/matt-damon-bourne-snowden

 

 

How technology has changed the face of the US, for Americans and non-Americans alike

From surveillance to drone attacks, advances in technology are so swift that it's difficult for anyone even to keep up with the latest innovations, much less to resolve how to adjust legal regimes to the digital agel, writes David Cole

On June 2, 2015, after a US Senate cliffhanger that featured a lengthy filibuster by Rand Paul and a resounding defeat for Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Congress enacted the USA Freedom Act. The act, whose name echoes the USA Patriot Act, does not exactly mark the restoration of freedom. But it is the first time Congress has limited intelligence powers since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The act ended, at least partially, the National Security Agency's collection in bulk of nearly every American's phone records. It requires the government to limit its demands for phone data and other business records to those related to specific "selectors" – for example, names, phone numbers or addresses  suspected of terrorism.

The act also improved the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court process, by requiring the appointment of lawyers with security clearances to argue for privacy in the court's closed-door sessions, until now attended only by the government. And it increased transparency, requiring the government to report on the frequency of its demands for records, and allowing businesses to report how many times they have been approached for records. These are significant victories for privacy.

But consider what the USA Freedom Act didn't do. It didn't address the NSA's practices of collecting enormous amounts of personal data on and communications of foreigners overseas, even when they are communicating with Americans. It said nothing about the NSA hacking into overseas internet trunk lines to vacuum up indiscriminately data on millions of users, including Americans. It didn't stop the NSA from inserting vulnerabilities into computer networks and encryption systems so that the agency can more easily conduct surveillance.

Nor did the USA Freedom Act address the increasingly common practice of police obtaining "location data" about citizens from cell-phone and internet service providers that maintain detailed records of everywhere your cell phone goes. It did not change a 1986 law that allows the government to obtain, without probable cause or a warrant, the contents of any email the sender or a recipient have saved for more than 180 days. It did nothing to check the powers of Google, Facebook, website owners and internet service providers to collect, analyse, and sell data about your most private thoughts, desires, associations and communications. And it was silent on the issue of cybersecurity, notwithstanding the increasingly common data breaches that leave all of us vulnerable to fraud, theft and worse.

Read more @ http://www.afr.com/news/world/north-america/how-technology-has-changed-the-face-of-the-us-for-americans-and-nonamericans-alike-20150819-gj2fxs

 

Researchers find many more modules of Regin spying tool

Researchers from Symantec found 49 new modules for the malware program

Security researchers from Symantec have identified 49 more modules of the sophisticated Regin cyberespionage platform that many believe is used by the U.S. National Security Agency and its close allies.

This brings the total number of modules known so far to 75, each of them responsible for implementing specific functionality and giving attackers a lot of flexibility in how they exploit individual targets.

Regin came to light in November last year, but it has been in use since at least 2008 and antivirus companies have known about it since 2013.

It is one of the most sophisticated malware threats discovered to date and has been used to target Internet service providers, telecommunications backbone operators, energy firms, airlines, government entities, research institutes and private individuals.

Most of the infections detected by Symantec were in Russia and Saudi Arabia, but compromised targets have also been found in Mexico, Ireland, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Belgium, Austria and Pakistan.

Regin has a modular architecture, which allows its creators to add or remove specific features to the malware program depending on their target and goal.

Some of the modules implement basic malware functions like command-and-control communications, taking screen shots, controlling the mouse, stealing passwords, capturing network traffic, gathering information about programs running on the infected computers, recovering deleted files and more.

Other modules are much more specialized and built with specific targets in mind. "One module was designed to monitor network traffic to Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) web servers, another was observed collecting administration traffic for mobile telephony base station controllers, while another was created specifically for parsing mail from Exchange databases," the Symantec researchers said in an updated version of their white paper published Thursday.

The malware also has a complex command-and-control infrastructure that uses peer-to-peer communications between infected computers, virtual private networking and six different transport protocols that are implemented as separate modules: ICMP, UDP, TCP, HTTP Cookies, SSL, and SMB.

Read more @ http://www.cio.com.au/article/583361/researchers-find-many-more-modules-regin-spying-tool/

 

Symantec identifies 49 new modules associated with Regin

Read more @ http://www.scmagazine.com/symantec-identifies-49-new-modules-associated-with-regin/article/435496/

 

Hero’s Welcome or Handcuffs? What Will Happen When Snowden Returns?

According to Sir Oscar Wilde, “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” I only learned that quote when Sean Connery said it in The Rock. Which is true, that men would do what it takes to defend his homeland and maintain security and that may sometimes include some despicable things such as killing and considering the very citizens of the homeland as potential threats, by spying on them.

That is what happened when the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001), enacted shortly after 9/11, allowed the US government, through the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens. Some people, like Edward Snowden, couldn’t take it anymore and decided to blow the whistle on the many surveillance programs being done by the NSA on America’s own citizens. Amidst the backlash and following the expiry of some of the Patriot Act’s provisions, the US government recently passed into law the USA FREEDOM Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring) on June 15, 2015 and minimizes the NSA’s surveillance on the American citizenry.

The Freedom Act practically vindicates NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, currently a fugitive living in Russia. It basically says that Mr. Snowden was right all along. And without Snowden, the Freedom Act might not even exist and the NSA would still be eating up taxpayers’ money on surveillance equipment and storage media to infringe on the privacy of said taxpayers. It’s been almost two years and the former NSA contractor probably misses home by now. Since he’s actually the good guy, will Edward Snowden be allowed to come back home especially now that he’s been proven right about America’s feelings on privacy? What would happen if he comes back? Will he have a hero’s welcome or will there be a reckoning?

Read more @ http://movietvtechgeeks.com/heros-welcome-or-handcuffs-what-will-happen-when-snowden-returns/

 

Tor and the deep web going mainstream

Amid new anti-privacy measures, “deep web” networks such as Tor – The Onion Router – are becoming more popular, and not just among law-breakers.

Three months ago, a clean-cut former Boy Scout by the name of Ross Ulbricht pleaded for clemency in front of a Manhattan Federal Court.

Ulbricht is a Silicon Valley start-up kid who loves his mum and plays the djembe, but he’s also the Dread Pirate Roberts, founder of the anonymous online market Silk Road, an enterprise that began in libertarian idealism and ended in a mess of six contracted murders but no actual deaths, Mormon drug runners, crooked cops and doublecrosses.  

More than 100,000 users traded more than $200 million in drugs and contraband on Silk Road until the FBI arrested Ulbricht in October 2013. In his pre-sentencing letter, Ulbricht wrote that “Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit. What it turned into was, in part, a convenient way for people to satisfy their drug addictions.”

At his sentencing, he told the court: “I never wanted that to happen. I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path.”

The judge handed down five sentences: five years, 15 years, 20 years, and two for life, with no chance of parole. “No drug dealer from the Bronx has ever made this argument to the court,” she told Ulbricht. “It’s a privileged argument and it’s an argument made by one of the privileged.”

Within days of Ulbricht’s arrest, Silk Road 2 had popped up. But even before that newer, “better” Silk Roads were appearing – Atlantis opened with all the trappings of a normal internet start-up, right down to a twee, clean-cut YouTube video featuring a dude named Charlie who just needed a blunt.

Read more @ https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2015/08/29/tor-and-the-deep-web-going-mainstream/14407704002293


"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~