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Posted in News Roundup at 4:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Very recent news about privacy infringement, mass surveillance, government coverup, and assassinations
NSA Dropbox (PRISM)
Dropbox Lands $250 Million in Funding, Report SaysDropbox valuation tops $10bn following $250m fundraising
Privacy
LCA 2014: Keynote by Dr. Suelette Dreyfus on mass surveillance and whitleblowers [MP4]The Whistle-Blower Who Freed DreyfusPicquart, like many of his contemporaries, was casually anti-Semitic. It came as no surprise to him when Dreyfus — the only Jew on the general staff — was suspected of passing secret intelligence to the Germans. It was Picquart who provided a sample of Dreyfus’s handwriting to the investigators. And when expert analysis seemed to confirm Dreyfus’s guilt, it was Picquart who met his unsuspecting former pupil in the Ministry of War so he could be quietly bundled off to prison.[...]It was then that Picquart, after 25 years’ army service, realized he had no alternative but to break ranks. He passed his evidence against Esterhazy to a senior politician, the vice president of the senate, Auguste Scheurer-Kestner. Then, at the end of 1897, he provided Émile Zola with the information that enabled the novelist to write his celebrated exposé of the affair, “J’Accuse …!” Picquart’s reward was to be dismissed from the army, framed as a forger and locked up in solitary confinement for more than a year.It was not until 1906 that justice was finally done; Dreyfus’s conviction was quashed, and Picquart was restored to the army with the rank of brigadier general. That fall, when his friend and fellow Dreyfusard, Georges Clemenceau — the owner of the newspaper that published “J’Accuse …!” became prime minister, he made Picquart minister of war, a post he held for three years.[...]And yet the injustices against which he fought so courageously — the inherent unreliability of secret courts and secret evidence, the dangers of rogue intelligence agencies becoming laws unto themselves, the instinctive response of governments and national security organizations to cover up their mistakes, the easy flourishing of “national security” to stifle democratic scrutiny — all these continue. “Dreyfus was the victim,” Clemenceau observed, “but Picquart was the hero.” On this day, he deserves to be remembered. Google working on smart contact lens for diabetes patientsGoogle has a highly secretive ‘X’ division which works on futuristic technologies and the ‘smart contact lens’ is emerging from this division. Unlike Google Glass which is ‘wearable’ computer for entertainment and communication, ‘smart contact lens’ initially (as the company is projecting it right now) looks like a medical solution for patients with diabetes.
NSA
NSA Spying and Search Engine “Tracking Technologies”NSA surveillance: American debate, British denialBarack Obama’s speech on NSA surveillance was in many ways the Democratic president at his best and the United States at its best too. George Bush would certainly not have made the speech. Nor, arguably, would Bill Clinton. What is more, no modern British prime minister of either party would have come anywhere near it. And no Chinese or Russian leader would even think of such a thing. It would be hard to imagine, outside the realm of Hollywood fiction, a more balanced and serious response to the vexed issues of security and privacy abuse than the one Mr Obama offered today .NSA as Massa of the Global Sigint PlantationCraig Murray caused quite a fuss in 2004 when, as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, he openly criticized the systemic and severe human rights abuses of the Karimov regime. He was publicly and pointedly stomped on by the British government, with the full encouragement of the Bush administration, for complicating Western access to the Karshi-Khanabad airbase and queering the Global War on Terror pitch.[...]Murray had complained that intel provided by the Uzbek government through the CIA to the UK was tainted by the fact that it was obtained through torture. Beyond the fact that tortured detainees often provide false information in order to stop their mistreatment, the UK is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture and, by the interpretation of Murray and others, was precluded from possessing (as well as using in a court of law) evidence obtained under torture.The strange connection between the NSA and an Ontario tech firmAnd since 1995, any software developer building encryption for technology they intended to sell to the American or Canadian government has had to consult something called the Cryptographic Module Validation Program. It’s a list of algorithms blessed by the CMVP that are, according to the government agencies that publish it, “accepted by the Federal Agencies of both countries for the protection of sensitive information.”Why the NSA’s Spying on Offline Computers Is Less Scary Than Mass SurveillanceThe relevant NSA documents hosted on Cryptome date back to 2008, which means the NSA’s capabilities have undoubtedly improved beyond the technologies described in the documents. But the documents still provide a useful glimpse of how the agency might go about planting such spy tools—which are mostly made from off-the-shelf components—inside computers that don’t have wired or wireless Internet connections. They also show why such frighteningly precise spying is far more limited than the NSA’s broader mass surveillance of Internet data and cellphones.Jimmy Wales says he’d go “ballistic” if NSA tried to gain backdoor into his new mobile operatorWikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has told TechDigest that he will go “ballistic” if the NSA try to gain backdoor access into The People’s Operator, the new mobile phone network that it has just been announced Wales will become co-chair of.The NSA Is Scary GoodMany of these same conversations also occurred in 2006, when it was reveled that the NSA was collecting data from billions of phone calls made by normal citizens. Curiously, the support for these programs seems to be very closely tied to the political leanings of the commander-in-chief. In 2006, with a Republican in office, 71% of Republicans supported the actions of the NSA. Conversely, with a Democrat in office, Republican approval plummeted to 32%.Alan Rusbridger defends Snowden leaks as Obama prepares to announce NSA reformsGood morning. Barack Obama will today set out his plans for reforming the NSA in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations – published in the Guardian and elsewhere – about the vast scope of the US intelligence agency’s secret surveillance of Americans and foreigners.Briefings to US media organisations have suggested the president may introduce changes to the way the NSA collects telephone metadata regarding every American phone call – who called whom and when – although an idea put forward by a White House review panel that the telecom companies rather than the NSA should store this data has faced opposition from the companies themselves. It is thought Obama may pass this issue to Congress to resolve – easier said than done, since Congress is deeply divided over the issues raised by Snowden.NSA goes on declassification spree ahead of Obama reformUS National Intelligence director James Clapper has thrown open the books on hundreds of previously classified documents detailing national and international surveillance, as President Obama’s scheme to reform the NSA goes into operation. The new batch of declassified files brings the total number of released documents to around 2,300 pages, DNI Clapper wrote, including orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), documents the NSA and others have previously submitted to Congress, and data about the legality of the ways in which the NSA collects telephone metadata and other programs currently operating.
Obama Speech/Statement
Obama Calls for Overhaul of N.S.A.’s Phone Data Collection ProgramObama’s NSA ‘reforms’ are little more than a PR attempt to mollify the publicObama is draping the banner of change over the NSA status quo. Bulk surveillance that caused such outrage will remain in placeObama presents NSA reforms with plan to end government storage of call dataObama’s NSA speech leaves more questions than answersObama’s Speech, Annotated VersionObama acknowledges Edward Snowden disclosures in NSA reform speechObama NSA reforms receive mixed response in Europe and BrazilEuropeans were largely underwhelmed by Barack Obama’s speech on limited reform of US espionage practices, saying the measures did not go far enough to address concerns over American snooping on its European allies.Obama bans spying on allies in NSA reformsPresident Barack Obama has vowed to ban the surveillance of American allies under major reforms to the country’s spying apparatus in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations.Obama’s NSA speech: an affirmation that mass surveillance has a futureThe president’s rhetoric pursued balance but his speech suggests an NSA victory in its fight against restrictionsWe need oversight to stop NSA cheating – former intel analystThe NSA needs oversight to ensure the NSA adheres to the reforms announced by President Obama, a former analyst has said. The US president curtailed the NSA’s mass gathering of metadata which had been branded as “unconstitutional” on Friday.4 questionable claims Obama has made on NSA surveillanceFormer NSA employee Thomas Drake argues that even if Snowden were a government employee who went through the proper legal channels, he still wouldn’t have been safe from retaliation. Drake says while he reported his concerns about a 2001 surveillance program to his NSA superiors, Congress, and the Department of Defense, he was told the program was legal. Drake was later indicted for providing information to the Baltimore Sun. After years of legal wrangling, Drake pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and got no prison time.Should Obama be tried for treason after his NSA speech on Friday?Floating an administration source’s trial balloon on just where Obama is trying to go on this NSA thing, the New York Times has divulged that Obama is seeking to declare the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution null and void once and for all.The language of the amendment, which embodies the sentiment in Patriot speeches of the American Revolution that “a man’s house is his castle,” is beautifully crystalline in clarity as all the Founding Fathers’ declarations were.NSA will suck data anytime it wantsObama invoked the memory of 9/11 and mentioned massive cyberattacks. He spoke of bombs being made in basements and said, oddly enough, “our electric grid could be shut down by operators an ocean away.”Obama’s NSA promises fail to quell European fearsObama’s NSA Reform: Electronic Frontier Foundation Levies Harsh ScoreCardInternet rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation took the trouble to “score” President Obama’s promises on reforming the National Security Agency’s snooping practices.Obama’s NSA speech does little to calm privacy fearsU.S. President Barack Obama’s orders to change some American surveillance practices puts the burden on Congress to finally deal with a national security controversy that has spooked Americans and outraged foreign allies.Supporters decry absence of amnesty for Snowden in Obama’s NSA speechSupporters of Edward Snowden complained of a glaring omission in the White House’s pledge on Friday to rein in government surveillance activities: amnesty for the fugitive leaker who’s now holed up in Russia after revealing the secrets that led to this shake-up.In news releases, on television and across social media, the former contractor’s supporters drove home the message that the reforms announced on Friday came solely because of Snowden’s unauthorised disclosures.In Keeping Grip on Data Pipeline, Obama Does Little to Reassure IndustryGoogle, which briefly considered moving all of its computer servers out of the United States last year after learning how they had been penetrated by the National Security Agency, was looking for a public assurance from President Obama that the government would no longer secretly suck data from the company’s corner of the Internet cloud.Obama Defends the Indefensible He believes privacy invasion intrusiveness should comfort us. He lied claiming it makes us safer. How does destroying civil liberties protect them?Those NSA ‘reforms’ in full: El Reg translates US Prez Obama’s pledgesPrez Obama’s speech is presented below in bold, with our annotations throughout. Where to stockpile mountains of NSA data?Figuring out where to house mountains of data collected by the National Security Agency is the thorniest challenge the United States faces in curtailing its massive surveillance, officials said Sunday.In a long-awaited speech designed to quell a furor over the programs exposed by fugitive former contractor Edward Snowden, President Barack Obama said he was trimming the reach of NSA phone sweeps.He also vowed to halt spy taps on friendly world leaders and proposed new shields for foreigners caught in US data collection.Barack Obama: NSA Reform Is InadequateObama: NSA Debate Was ‘Not Worth’ the LeaksObama’s promise to curb NSA snooping fails to please criticsObama’s NSA reforms won’t solve Silicon Valley’s trust problemWhen Barack Obama announced his reforms of National Security Agency surveillance programmes today, few people were as interested as Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Marissa Mayer, and Steve Ballmer.Signifying NothingThe image was the thing. Those serried American flags beneath their burnished and distinctly imperial eagles. Obama’s speech on the NSA was devoid of meaningful content. The threats against Snowden and the references to America’s right to spy on its potential enemies – which seemed to mean everybody – were obviously heartfelt. The “restrictions” on the NSA were devoid of intent, mumbled and hedged around. Actually you don’t have to analyse what he said. The picture says it all.
Germany
Obama placates Germany over NSAPresident Barack Obama has told Germany’s ZDF public television that US intelligence services will continue to spy on foreign governments, but he would not let such work damage relations with Germany. German Interior Minister de Maiziere warns over NSA ‘fixation’The German interior minister contradicted a suggestion that Obama’s speech contained “few concrete changes,” denying that the government in Berlin was disappointed.Actions must follow Obama’s words on NSA, Germans say
Brazil
Brazil to closely assess US vow to limit NSA spyingBrazil, smarting from NSA spying, says it’s closely following US reformsSpokesman Thomas Traumann is using the official blog of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to say the government has closely analyzed Friday’s speech on NSA reforms by U.S. President Barack Obama. He calls the speech “a first step.”Brazil says to follow NSA developments closely
Shane Todd
Singapore’s IME audited for spyingSingapore says US officials invited to inspect the work of a local research institute to probe spy claims have been ‘satisfied’ with the audit findings.The state-linked Institute of Microelectronics (IME) was first thrust into the spotlight in February when the London-based Financial Times cast doubt on the apparent suicide of one of its former researchers – US electronics engineer Shane Todd, who was found hanged in his Singapore flat in June 2012.Shane Todd’s death: US govt satisfied with IME audit resultsResponding to media queries, an MFA spokesman said the voluntary audit of IME was an offer made by Minister for Foreign Affairs K. Shanmugam to US Secretary of State John Kerry in March this year. The offer was made “in the spirit of cooperation and openness to satisfy the US that allegations of illegal transfers of US technology from IME to the Chinese company Huawei were completely untrue and without basis,” said the MFA spokesman.‘Satisfied’ US audits Singapore institute over spy claims
Assassination Based on NSA Kill Lists
Pentagon & NSA Officials say They Want Snowden Extrajudicially AssassinatedPresident Obama claims the right to extrajudicially execute American citizens, keeps a so-called “kill list,” and has bragged he’s “really good at killing people.” This isn’t bluster. Obama has backed this up with action, having killed U.S. citizens — including a 16-year-old boy – without charging, much less convicting, any of them with a single crime.The implications are profound (and profoundly disturbing), and raise questions about Americans’ constitutional right to due process, the most basic constraints on presidential power, and our treatment of whistleblowers. Indeed, how can anyone expect those who witness executive-branch crimes to blow the whistle when the head of the executive branch asserts the right to instantly execute anyone he pleases at any time?All of this may sound theoretical, academic, or even fantastical, straight out of a dystopian sci-fi flick. But it isn’t. It is very real. After all, only a few months ago, the chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee publicly offered to help extrajudicially assassinate NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. And now, according to a harrowing new report that just hit the Internet, top NSA and Pentagon officials are doing much the same, even after court rulings and disclosures have concluded that Snowden is a whistleblower who exposed serious government crimes.US has taken targeted killings to new high: Author Mark MazzettiAgreeing that targeted killings have been used by certain countries, notably Israel, Mazzetti said Israel also invented drones but never used both of these to the extent US has employed them.Humanitarian aspect of drone attacksWashington’s Terrorism or Counterterrorism in Somalia
Gaza
Israeli drone strike wounds twoIn Extra-Judicial Execution Attempt, Israeli Drone Targets Motorbike Wounding Member of Palestinian Armed Group and Child in North GazaTwo Gazans hurt as Israel strike targets Islamic Jihad Gaza emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said the strike had hit a motorcycle in the northern neighbourhood of Saftawi, leaving its rider, a 22-year-old man, in critical condition.A 12-year-old boy who was standing nearby suffered moderate head wounds in the raid, he told AFP.
UK
Judges reject case over UK role in US drone strikesPakistan drone strike relative loses GCHQ court caseJudges say case would involve ‘sitting in judgment’ on US and block move by Noor Khan, whose father died in a 2011 attack
Yemen
Yemen says US drone crashed after hitting mountainA military source said last Thursday that a US drone had fallen near the border with neighboring Oman. What really happened when a U.S. drone hit a Yemeni wedding convoy?Three men killed from Jishm left behind 17 children between them, and another will be born in about six months. Their fathers either eked out livings growing qat – the mild narcotic plant chewed by a majority of Yemenis – in the barren landscape surrounding the village, or sneaked across Yemen’s northern border into Saudi Arabia looking for work.Yemeni children traumatized by US drone strikesThe Yemeni children are experiencing psychological problems as a consequence of unending U.S. drone attacks… New technologies reshape the future of warThe evolution of surveillance technologies, space weapons and autonomous unmanned systems of all sorts is also transforming how wars are fought Yemen sets up drone counseling center for kids following US attacks
Laws to Allow Abuse of Domestic Population
Emmett, Idaho, Nullifies Indefinite Detention of NDAAAnother American town has decided its citizens will not be denied due process by the president of the United States.Michigan Passes Law Nullifying NDAA Indefinite Detention
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