This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2013/10/16/nsa-roundup/.
Posted in Action at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Newest stories about the NSA and its allies
THE NSA saga is far from over. There are new revelations all the time and the corporate press is trying to distract us by speaking about China [1] and Russia [2]. Don’t take this hypocritical bait.
As an MI5 whistleblower puts it, “US/UK spy chiefs cover up NSA surveillance scandal” [3] while Glenn Greenwald, a US citizen living in Brazil, finds independence by forming a new media outlet with help from eBay’s founder [4]. He will hopefully help nations which are victims of NSA espionage [5] without getting censored by The Guardian.
Tor, which is a project that came from the US military and is run by pseudonyms, is getting more attention from the NSA [6] and is becoming less safe to use [7], despite Edward Snowden’s promotion of it.
Snowden, the whistleblower who shamed the NSA, has his father visit him in Russia (despite or because of warnings about collaborations with the FBI) [8] and personal awards are being granted [9], with more possibly on the way [10]. Snowden is a hot target for the US government right now [11].
Richard Stallman has just published a long article about surveillance [12] and the EU Parliament, a famous victim of espionage managed by the NSA, is now turning its back on privacy [13,14].
Moves are being made to decentralise the US-centric Internet [15,16] as the NSA’s mischiefs go deeper and deeper [17,18], with complicity from US tech giants [19-22]. Lavabit is in the headline again, mostly for being the exception when it comes to selling customers down the river, only to be hunted down by the US government [23,24].
More interesting revelations come out of Britain, the US’ ally in espionage [25-28], with similar actions seen in Canada (also “Conservatives” [29]).
The NSA is fortunately having some growing pains [30]. The leaks can’t be helping Big Brother. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
China has more internet monitors than soldiersRussian embassy set up to intercept secrets: ASIORussia used its embassy in Canberra to intercept Australian intelligence and political communications, targeting the capital’s main telecommunications tower, the Defence Department, Australian electronics firms and the Tidbinbilla space tracking station, according to confidential accounts of ASIO counter-espionage in the Cold War obtained by Fairfax Media.US/UK spy chiefs cover up NSA surveillance scandalThe disparity in response to Edward Snowden’s disclosures within the USA and the UK is astonishing. In the face of righteous public wrath, the US administration is contorting itself to ensure that it does not lose its treasured data-mining capabilities: congressional hearings are held, the media is on the warpath, and senior securocrats are being forced to admit that they have lied about the efficacy of endemic surveillance in preventing terrorism.Just this week General Alexander, the head of the NSA with a long track record of misleading lying to government, was forced to admit that the endemic surveillance programmes have only helped to foil a couple of terrorist plots. This is a big difference from the previous number of 54 that he was touting around.Cue calls for the surveillance to be reined in, at least against Americans. In future such surveillance should be restricted to targeted individuals who are being actively investigated. Which is all well and good, but would still leave the rest of the global population living their lives under the baleful stare of the US panopticon. And if the capability continues to exist to watch the rest of the world, how can Americans be sure that the NSA et al won’t stealthily go back to watching them once the scandal has died down — or just ask their best buddies in GCHQ to do their dirty work for them?Glenn Greenwald announces departure from the GuardianJournalist who broke stories about widespread NSA surveillance leaving to pursue ‘once-in-a-career journalistic opportunity’Glenn Greenwald to publish Snowden leaks on France and SpainReport: NSA has little success cracking TorThe agency has attacked other software, including Firefox, in order to compromise the anonymity tool, according to documentsHow the NSA identifies Tor users in 6 easy stepsSnowden’s father arrives in RussiaSnowden Accepts Whistleblower AwardThough former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been indicted for leaking secrets about the U.S. government’s intrusive surveillance tactics, he was honored by a group of former U.S. intelligence officials as a courageous whistleblower during a Moscow ceremony, reports ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern who was there.Open letter by 23 European organisations in support of Snowden’s nomination for the Sakharov prizeToday, 23 European non-governmental organisations released an open letter to the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament in support of Edward Snowden’s nomination for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2013.Snowden: DOJ Won’t Prosecute Official For Lying, But Will Stop At Nothing To Persecute Someone For Telling The TruthStallman: How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?The current level of general surveillance in society is incompatible with human rights. To recover our freedom and restore democracy, we must reduce surveillance to the point where it is possible for whistleblowers of all kinds to talk with journalists without being spotted. To do this reliably, we must reduce the surveillance capacity of the systems we use.Using free/libre software, as I’ve advocated for 30 years, is the first step in taking control of our digital lives. We can’t trust non-free software; the NSA uses and even creates security weaknesses in non-free software so as to invade our own computers and routers. Free software gives us control of our own computers, but that won’t protect our privacy once we set foot on the internet.Will EU Parliament Sacrifice our Privacy for Electoral Reasons?A crucial vote for EU Citizens fundamental right to privacy will take place on October 21st, in the “Civil Liberties” committee (LIBE) of the European Parliament. The future of the EU Regulation on the protection of individuals to the processing of their personal data will be decided by a vote on “compromise amendments”1. The rapporteur seems willing to request a mandate to enter closed-doors negotiations to severely cut short any chance of public debate. La Quadrature du Net calls on all citizens to contact the members of the LIBE committee to urge them to refuse this obscure hijacking of the democratic debate.[Video] Will EU Parliament Sacrifice our Privacy for Electoral Reasons?The US is losing control of the internetNSA Blowback Spreads to Internet Governance OrganizationsThe unexpected disclosures of NSA activities by Edward Snowden presents a splendid example of U.S. government, as well as popular, indifference to world opinion. As part of its efforts to control the political damage of the embarrassing revelations, the Obama administration repeatedly stressed that only foreign nationals had been the targeted. As the breathtaking breadth of the data accessed and analyzed became clear, this rationale raised the question of how the foreign citizens – and even leaders – of U.S. allies might feel about being considered to be fair game for the NSA’s attention.The answer to that question is that they weren’t happy. Nor, as we will see, were a group of NGOs that had no reason to think they were targeted at all.Some foreign governments doubtless communicated their concerns privately through diplomatic channels. But others made their displeasure very public indeed. Brazil’s President Dima Rouseff, for one, cancelled a bilateral summit with President Obama after it was reported that her telephone calls and email had been intercepted. Late last week, she went a step further, announcing that Brazil will host a global summit to oppose U.S. surveillance. The NSA’s New CodebreakersBut TAO doesn’t just spy on America’s rivals. In 2012, the group reportedly compromised the encryption system used by an important G8 country to transmit sensitive diplomatic communications via satellite to its embassies around the world. The same is true with a number of countries in the Middle East and South Asia, including Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Pakistan, although the details of these successes are not yet known. And finally, sources report that TAO has successfully compromised the privacy protection systems currently used on a range of 4G cell phones and hand-held devices, thanks in large part to help from a major American telecommunications company. NSA Has Spurred Renewed Interest In Thorough Security Audits Of Popular ‘Secure’ SoftwareIn yet another bit of fallout from the NSA surveillance efforts — and, specifically, the NSA’s covert takeover of security standards to insert vulnerabilities — it appears that there’s suddenly much more skepticism towards well-known security offerings. This is a good thing. There have already been some revelations concerning attempts to compromise Tor, and security researcher Matthew Green has now called for a thorough security audit of TrueCrypt, the (very) popular disk encryption tool. Green and some others have kicked off the project on the aptly named website IsTrueCryptAuditedYet.com. If the Internet were a game of Risk, Facebook and Google would be winningTech titans’ muted response on NSA data miningLatest NSA revelation is black eye for Yahoo Yahoo plans to make encryption a default setting for all Yahoo Mail users in January — four years after rival Google took what is considered a basic security step.NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globallyThe National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers. Meet Lavabit’s founder: An American hero hiding in plain sightLavabit Case Shows Why We Need Tech Literate Judges While there’s plenty of attention being paid to Lavabit’s temporary re-opening for the sake of letting people export their accounts, a much more interesting issue is the recent development in the legal case. Lavabit has filed its latest brief, and there are some interesting discussions about the details of the case. From my reading, Lavabit makes a very strong argument that the government has no right to demand the production of Lavabit’s private SSL keys, as it’s an overreach way beyond what traditional wiretapping laws allow. Lawyer Orin Kerr’s analysis argues that Lavabit’s case is weak, mainly arguing that the federal government can subpoena whatever the hell they want, and just because it conflicts with your business model: too bad. Lavabit argues that complying with the government’s order is oppressive because it would effectively mean it would be committing fraud on all its customers…Interview on London Real TVThe Empire Strikes BackSir Andrew Parker, the recently elevated Director General of the UK’s domestic security Service (MI5) yesterday made both his first public speech and a superficially robust defence of the work of the intelligence agencies. Reading from the outside, it sounds all patriotic and noble.Snowden leaks: David Cameron urges committee to investigate GuardianDavid Cameron speaks during prime minister’s questions, where he said: ‘The plain fact is that what has happened has damaged national security.’ Photograph: PAParliamentarians warn of ‘deliberate failiure’ to conceal GCHQ capabilityShortly after Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, condemned the way the new head of MI5 had dismissed calls for greater scrutiny several senior figures involved in the scrutiny of the draft communications data bill have said that Britain’s spy agencies may be operating outside the law in the mass internet surveillance programmes uncovered by Edward Snowden.Conservatives Set To Kill Growing VPN IndustryWindows Becomes Freeware, Adobe Cracked & More…This week we were treated to the surprising news (not) that the NSA has been going after users of TOR. We also learned that the opening of the huge data center the agency is building in the Utah desert has been again delayed, this time due to power surges that have been burning out about $100,000 in equipment with each incident. Meanwhile, as more items revealed by Edward Snowdon are released, companies offering online anonymity find their business booming.
Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Permalink Send this to a friend
=> Permalink | ↺ Send this to a friend
=> Techrights
➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.
text/gemini;lang=en-GBThis content has been proxied by September (ba2dc).