Why Edward Snowden is blasting corporate push to gather consumer metadata

Fugitive U.S. whistleblower warns Vancouver audience corporate data laws ‘not stringent enough’  

Edward Snowden didn’t hesitate to paint an Orwellian portrait of the future for Vancouverites inclined to be passive observers of creeping government surveillance.

It might be fitting, as he spoke for more than an hour April 5 via live stream from Russia, his head blanketing a giant screen before a sold-out crowd at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

“Rather than being partner to government, we have become subject to it,” he said as his imposing image dominated the stage, eliciting images of George Orwell’s 1984.

But the American whistleblower, who in 2013 leaked thousands of National Security Agency documents that revealed widespread government surveillance, also took aim at the private sector during a big-data webcast hosted by Simon Fraser University (SFU).

Between sharing his insights on the Panama Papers and Bill C-51 (now the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015), Snowden criticized corporate efforts to collect consumer data for targeted online advertisements.

Targeted ads rely on metadata – or, as Snowden calls it, “a perfect record of a private life” – to learn about users’ personal information, such as age, sex and buying habits, which is collected through online activity and other means.

He compared this kind of data collection to that of a private investigator who follows people around, observes their movements and reports on interactions with other people.

“These are all things that increasingly we have access to in the corporate context because there are not stringent enough regulations about how metadata should be handled,” he said.

Read more @ https://www.biv.com/article/2016/4/snowden-blasts-corporate-push-gather-consumer-data/

European privacy watchdogs have 'concerns' about a key new transatlantic data transfer agreement

European privacy watchdogs say they have a number of significant “concerns” with new international data transfer scheme Privacy Shield, promising further legal uncertainty for the thousands of companies reliant on transatlantic data flows.

The Article 29 Working Party praised improvements of Privacy Shield compared to its predecessor on Wednesday, but still raised concerns, including on bulk surveillance and the lack of powers of the proposed ombudsman.

The Working Party’s decisions are not legally binding, but carry significant weight — particularly ahead of likely legal challenges to the agreement.

Privacy Shield is designed as a replacement to Safe Harbour — a transatlantic legal mechanism that legitimised the transfer of personal data from Europe to the US, despite America’s lesser privacy protections.

Read more @ http://www.businessinsider.com.au/article-29-working-party-verdict-on-privacy-shield-data-transfer-mechanism-2016-4

EU privacy regulators: Commission ‘could do better’ on Privacy Shield

Read more @ http://www.computerworld.com/article/3055918/cloud-computing/privacy-regulators-commission-could-do-better-on-privacy-shield.html

EU Regulators Call for Changes to EU-U.S. Privacy Accord

Read more @ http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-regulators-dont-endorse-eu-u-s-data-deal-1460548439

EU watchdogs demand revisions to Safe Harbour replacement

Read more @ http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36036531

Microsoft offers first major endorsement of new EU-U.S. data pact

* EU, U.S. data transfer pact agreed in February

* Previous one struck down on U.S. spying concerns

* Microsoft is first major U.S. firm to endorse new framework

* EU member states still have to approve new data pact

BRUSSELS, April 11 Microsoft became on Monday the first major U.S. tech company to say it would transfer users' information to the United States using a new transatlantic commercial data pact and would resolve any disputes with European privacy watchdogs.

Data transfers to the United States have been conducted in a legal limbo since October last year when the European Union's top court struck down the Safe Harbour framework that allowed firms to easily move personal data across the Atlantic in compliance with strict EU data transferral rules.

EU data protection law bars companies from transferring personal data to countries deemed to have insufficient privacy safeguards, of which the United States is one, unless they set up complex legal structures or use a framework like Safe Harbour.

Microsoft said it would sign up to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, the new framework that was agreed by Brussels and Washington in February to fill the void left by Safe Harbour and ensure the $260 billion in digital services trade across the Atlantic continues smoothly.

"I'm pleased to announce today that Microsoft pledges to sign up for the Privacy Shield, and we will put in place new commitments to advance privacy as this instrument is implemented," John Frank, Vice President of EU Government Affairs, wrote in a blog.

Read more @ http://www.reuters.com/article/microsoft-dataprotection-eu-idUSL5N17E2RY

And so it should, governments shouldn’t have the right to snoop into everyone’s lives!  If Muslims are the center of the problem then countries should stop taking them in. smiley: eyes

Homeland Security official shares agency's priorities in lecture at AU

Deputy secretary says encryption trend growing

ANDERSON – Radicalization of domestic terrorists, cybersecurity and encryption, and the potential chilling effect on travel and tourism because of increased vigilance at airports are some of the matters that weigh heavily on officials in the federal Office of Homeland Security, the agency’s second in command said.

That’s a change from a year ago when the threat of terrorism from abroad was the agency’s primary focus, Alejandro Mayorkas told about 120 people in a lecture Wednesday at Anderson University.

“It’s a very different paradigm,” he said.

Invited to speak by AU President John Pistole, Mayorkas is President Barack Obama’s appointee as deputy secretary of the Office of Homeland Security, the U.S. government’s third-largest department with a $60 million budget and workforce of 240,000 worldwide.

Mayorkas also opened up the floor to questions from the audience on topics including human trafficking, Homeland Security’s role in tracking money transferred internationally through apps and the naturalization of young undocumented immigrants who have never known any other nation as home.

Read more @ http://www.heraldbulletin.com/news/local_news/homeland-security-official-shares-agency-s-priorities-in-lecture-at/article_f0287e0a-a14f-5297-8e96-5ae6cd39075a.html

NSA appoints first transparency officer

The National Security Agency has appointed its first transparency officer — three years after leaks made by former contractor Edward Snowden exposed the agency’s surveillance programs and led to calls for increased public disclosures.

Rebecca Richards, who already serves as director of the NSA’s Civil Liberties and Privacy, will take on the dual role as the agency’s transparency officer.

A brief NSA announcement of the appointment states that the dual role “complements ongoing initiatives to ensure that NSA has the best civil liberties and privacy practices.” Officials did not immediately respond to questions regarding why a stand-alone position was not created.

As the NSA transparency officer, Ms. Richards will serve on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Intelligence Transparency Council, which the NSA describes as a forum meant to develop and coordinate transparency measures.

Read more @ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/12/nsa-appoints-first-transparency-officer/

Spying in St Louis: US spy agency HQ to be built in Missouri city

A US spy agency’s new $1.7 billion western headquarters will be constructed in St Louis, Missouri, where the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has had its offices for 70 years.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) hopes to build its new western HQ in north St Louis, where it was offered free land on the site of the failed Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex.

Read more @ https://www.rt.com/usa/338099-stlouis-nga-spy-agency-headquarters/

Why the Panama Papers Matter

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Blowing the Whistle

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers. His position as a United States military analyst gave him access to information that he felt should not be hidden from the public. The papers he copied and distributed to the New York Times contained evidence showing that what the government was telling the public it was doing in Vietnam was not true. They sent more troops than they said they were sending. They told the public that the war was winding down when in fact they were broadening their reach in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers had proof that more than one administration during the Vietnam War put their desire for reelection ahead of ending the war.

In a hotel room in Hong Kong in 2013, Edward Snowden, a government contractor and former CIA employee, passed on classified information he obtained from the National Security Agency to a couple of trusted journalists. The documents he and the subsequent journalists revealed have given the public an idea of just how far the government can reach into our private lives. Because of Edward Snowden we know that 90% of the people placed on surveillance in the United States are ordinary citizens.

On Sunday, April 3, 2016, numerous media organizations, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) based in Washington DC, began releasing information gleaned from the 11.5 million documents that an anonymous person obtained from the Panamanian law firm Massack Fonseca nearly a year ago. The orchestrated release of the documents, now called the Panama Papers, has given the public insight into how some of the world’s richest and most powerful individuals have used the law firm and its services to hide their wealth in offshore tax havens.

In all three of these cases individuals had access to information they felt should not be kept from the public. In all three of these cases the investigative journalists they trusted with the information agreed with them. In all three of these cases, individuals put their lives and their freedom on the line in order to inform the public of the truth they were able to obtain.

Money Management vs. Wealth Management

Most adults know what it means to manage money. We have to earn money, buy groceries, pay utility bills, and hopefully save for the unexpected events that inevitably arise. We also have to pay our taxes. If we’re lucky we can plan for our immediate future and possibly for our retirement.

There is another class of people though, that has wealth to manage. They are working on an entirely different scale than the rest of us. According to an Oct. 26, 2015 article in The Atlantic by Brooke Harrington, a woman who actually trained to become a wealth manager in order to understand more about the profession, the ultra wealthy are able to “pay wealth management professionals hefty fees to help them avoid taxes, debts, legal judgments, and other obligations the rest of the world considers part of everyday life.”

Read more @ http://www.alaskacommons.com/2016/04/05/why-the-panama-papers-matter/

 

Edward Snowden's Tweet About Obama's Hillary Clinton Email Comments Was A Deliciously Snarky Dig

Edward Snowden hasn't let his temporary asylum status stop him from injecting his own analysis of hot-button U.S. issues into national discourse. While the controversial whistleblower may be living somewhere under the radar in Russia, he's still very much clued into what's going on in Washington. Most recently, Snowden got snarky with Obama over Hillary Clinton's emails.

Snowden took to Twitter with a short but snarky quip shortly after President Barack Obama said he still did not believe Clinton had jeopardized U.S. national security by using a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State because she wasn't sending highly sensitive information during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. "What I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there are — there's classified, and then there's classified," Obama said.

"If only I had known," the whistleblower wrote in a retweet of CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller's report on Obama's "classified" comments. Clearly, Snowden already knows that sometimes the best digs are the subtlest.

"There's stuff that is really top-secret, top-secret," Obama told Fox News. "And there's stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state, that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open-source."

If only I had known. https://t.co/yrPg8uxiQO

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 10, 2016

This isn't the first time Snowden has weighed in on the FBI's investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while serving as secretary of State. Snowden said it was "completely ridiculous" to assume a private server would be more secure than a system operated by the government, in an interview with Al-Jazeera last September.

Read more @ http://www.bustle.com/articles/153798-edward-snowdens-tweet-about-obamas-hillary-clinton-email-comments-was-a-deliciously-snarky-dig

Exclusive Edward Snowden Is Coming To Australia In May 2016

If you are like me in love with technology and politics then you want to meet with Edward Snowden – the infamous man who is in virtual war (but real) against the US government.

Edward Snowden brings his story to Australia in May 2016.

Edward Snowden Is Coming To Australia In May 2016

The public lashing back against a governmental recording of private civilian data in the name of national security will be granting an audience to one of the most revered champions of individual freedom of the 21st century thus far: Edward Snowden.

Risking his life and his freedom, Snowden is renowned for fighting back against the injustice of unauthorised government surveillance by exposing the invasive actions of the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies during his time as a high-level technology and cyber security specialist across US government agencies. Snowden revealed in 2013 that the NSA was secretly seizing private records from everyday civilians, which led to a nationwide scandal resulting in the most significant US surveillance policy reform in three decades and, consequently, criminal charges being laid against Snowden, leading him to flee the country. Facing controversial “espionage” charges in the US, he currently has legal residence in Russia, though he maintains that “Truth has its costs, but I would rather be without a State than without a voice.”

Read more @ https://womenlovetech.com/exclusive-edward-snowden-coming-australia-may-2016/

The man behind the biggest security leak in history will tell his story

Former CIA employee Edward Snowden is bringing his story to Australia in a series of shows around the country this May.

In 2013 Snowden leaked classified information from the National Security Agencey (NSA) that he gained during his time as a high level cyber security specialist, regarding global surveillance programs run with the co-operation of telco companies and several European governments.

The leak lead to a national security scandal, and thereafter he was charged by the US Department of Justice for two counts of violating the US Espionage Act and for theft of government property, following which Snowden fled to Russia to seek political asylum, where he remains to this day.

Recently, Snowden addressed and criticised the Australian government's own new security surveillance initiatives. "Just months ago, an aggressive new ‘bulk collection’ program came into effect in Australia, mandating the indiscriminate interception of private records without regard to an individual’s guilt or innocence," he said. "This is the most classic form of mass surveillance, and it radically redefines the balance of power between citizen and state…a battle is beginning, and the internet and democracy hang in the balance.”

Read more @ http://www.craveonline.com/site/975417-edward-snowden-touring-australia-2016-sort

 

Edward Snowden Infiltrated a Teen Group Chat to School Them About Government Spying

Recently, Edward Snowden, scourge of the National Security Agency, was pulled into a Twitter group chat of teenage cheerleaders and competitive dancers, an unexpected consequence of being an infamous whistleblower. 

Snowden, who introduced himself as Ed — "Not a big fan of formality," he said — had just one question for these enterprising kids: 

Where do you get your news?

Welp, @Snowden has joined the teen chat and is asking questions now. What a world.pic.twitter.com/uPCCRMKTnZ

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfxP-QcXIAA__tu.jpg:large

Most adults who are pulled into random roving group chats full of Twitter teens don't have time to keep in touch with the crew throughout the day. This is not a problem if you're currently serving out your asylum, like Snowden is — a situation that might give you some extra hours to go through your inbox.

I went inquiring after the secret teen chat, and was suddenly pulled into the world of Taylor, Talia, Gabby and an assortment of curious "olds" who were pulled into the discussion at one point or another.

Once embedded, I showed the group some modeling pics of Snowden when he was a teenager.

"His modeling photos are the single greatest thing I have ever seen — he should really abandon scamming for a full time modeling career," Abby Misbin, who identifies as Queen of the Memes and "part time scam lord," told Mic in a direct message. 

Read more @ http://mic.com/articles/140466/edward-snowden-infiltrated-a-teen-group-chat-to-school-them-about-privacy#.J5OvPAAwM

Edward Snowden's Comments About The Panama Papers Were The Right Call From The Whistleblower

Former intelligence contractor and transparency rights activist Edward Snowden hasn't let his exile in Russia prevent him from staying involved in the global discourse on secrecy and corruption. After the first stunning revelation that 2.6 terabytes of data from a posh offshoring firm had been hacked and given to journalists, he wasted no time weighing in on the drama. Here's a look at what the prominent whistleblower is saying about the Panama Papers leak.

As soon as the leak was announced, Snowden went on Twitter curating information for his followers. Staying up after midnight in Moscow, Snowden began sending out links to Süddeutsche Zeitung's main landing page for its findings. He then tweeted out a link from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to its coverage of the event, followed by a note that traffic to the story crashed the SZ servers temporarily.

The meta-story of the whole affair so far, according to Snowden, is that "courage is contagious." He tweeted out this talking point in apparent reference to his public exposure as a whistleblower himself. Encouraging whistleblowers to come forward when they have information vital to public discourse is one of the ways Snowden continues on his activist work from overseas, despite not being allowed to travel back to the U.S. for fear of prosecution.

Read more @ http://www.bustle.com/articles/151785-edward-snowdens-comments-about-the-panama-papers-were-the-right-call-from-the-whistleblower

And again, Putin is not implicated in the Panama Papers…. The media keep saying he is when clearly he isn’t.

Edward Snowden's Panama Papers Tweets Are Ignoring This Key Stone-Faced Figure

Edward Snowden, of "leaked NSA documents" fame, has been tweeting up a storm since the Panama Papers were released Sunday. He posted about the leaked documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that has allegedly spent the last 40 years helping its clients — including many prominent politicians and their associates — launder money, avoid sanctions, and lower their tax bills. He's retweeted with abandon and even declared that "Courage is contagious." He's clearly proud of his fellow leaker, whoever they may be. So it's curious, then, that Snowden ignored one key figure from the Panama Papers: Vladimir Putin.

His first tweet on the matter was covered in U.S. media: "Biggest leak in the history of data journalism just went live, and it's about corruption." So why ignore one of the biggest stories on the corruption that was revealed? The Guardian reports that a $2 billion trail of offshore accounts leads to close friends of the Russian president. And yet Snowden's Tweets have largely focused on Iceland and its embattled prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, which has led at least one German journalist to call him out. The answer is very simple: The only person keeping Snowden out of a U.S. jail cell is Putin himself.

Read more @ http://www.bustle.com/articles/152061-edward-snowdens-panama-papers-tweets-are-ignoring-this-key-stone-faced-figure

How Laura Poitras Explored Spying and the War on Terror at the Whitney

There is always this question," Laura Poitras tells me. "How do you penetrate into topics that are being ignored?” The filmmaker, who won an Academy Award and shared a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures, has spent the past 15 years making movies that aim to keep the public talking about America’s war on terror and the growth of the surveillance state. For her most recent exploration of these topics, though, Poitras chose to make not a documentary, but an art exhibition.
Read more @ http://www.vulture.com/2016/04/laura-poitras-on-her-spying-themed-whitney-show.html

Daniel Radcliffe is returning to the New York stage in the Edward Snowden-inspired play Privacy

Privacy examines the darker side of our digital footprint, basing its story on the testimony of real-life journalists, politicians and tech pioneers (via BBC News).

Radcliffe has been cast as The Writer in a production that actually encourages audiences to contribute by texting during the show.

Read more @ http://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/theatre/news/a790437/daniel-radcliffe-is-returning-to-the-new-york-stage-in-edward-snowden-inspired-play-privacy/


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