This ProPublic story was co-produced with The New York Times and The Guardian. “When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spy agencies have plotted how to lurk in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and other personal information, according to secret… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Free Speech
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board Issues Report on NSA Massive Metadata Surveillance
Report on the Telephone Records Program Conducted under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and on the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. January 23, 2014. “The PCLOB is an independent bipartisan agency within the executive branch established by the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007.6 The Board is comprised of… Continue Reading
A Reporter’s Guide to the Millennium Development Goals
Editor’s Note/Global Investigative Journalism Network: “For the next two weeks, GIJN is running a series drawn from the newly released Reporter’s Guide to the Millennium Development Goals: Covering Development Commitments for 2015 and Beyond, published by the International Press Institute. Agreed to in 2000, the UN Millennium Goals comprise an ambitious agenda to improve quality of life around the world,… Continue Reading
Russian Political, Economic, and Security Issues and U.S. Interests
CRS – Russian Political, Economic, and Security Issues and U.S. Interests. Jim Nichol, Coordinator, Specialist in Russian and Eurasian Affairs, January 9, 2014. “After the Soviet Union’s collapse, the United States sought a cooperative relationship with Moscow and supplied almost $19 billion in aid for Russia from FY1992 through FY2010 to encourage democracy and market reforms and in particular to prevent… Continue Reading
HuffPo: James Risen Takes His Press Freedom Fight To The Supreme Court
Jack Mirkinson: “New York Times reporter James Risen said Monday that he has formally taken his legal battle to prevent him from having to reveal confidential sources all the way to the Supreme Court. Risen was ordered last year to testify in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent charged with leaking classified information… Continue Reading
Small San Francisco mobile company first to release transparency report
Wired – Kim Zetter: “A small telecom believed to be at the center of a historic court battle over government surveillance published its first transparency report on Thursday, noting that it had received 16 government requests for customer data in 2013. But the report may be most significant for what it doesn’t say. Credo Mobile, the… Continue Reading
CRS – National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations
National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: Legal Background, January 3, 2014: “Five statutory provisions vest government agencies responsible for certain foreign intelligence investigations (principally the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)) with authority to issue written commands comparable to administrative subpoenas. A National Security Letter (NSL) seeks customer and consumer transaction information in national security investigations from communications providers,… Continue Reading
Trends in transition from classical censorship to Intenet censorship: selected country overviews
Dr Constance Bitso, Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, Lynnwood Road, Pretoria, South Africa; Prof Ina Fourie, Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, Lynnwood Road, Pretoria, South Africa; Prof Theo Bothma, Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, Lynnwood Road, Pretoria “Censorship is no longer limited to printed media and videos. Its impact is felt much more strongly… Continue Reading
Internet Monitor 2013: Reflections on the Digital World
Internet Monitor 2013: Reflections on the Digital World, Urs Gasser….a collection of essays from roughly two dozen experts around the world, including Ron Deibert, Malavika Jayaram, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Molly Sauter, Bruce Schneier, Ashkan Soltani, and Zeynep Tufekci, among others. The report highlights key events and recent trends in the digital space. “This publication is the first… Continue Reading
Foreign Policy – THE LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS OF 2013
Foreign Policy – THE LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS OF 2013 THE SURVEILLANCE STATE DECISION-MAKERS CHALLENGERS NATURALS INNOVATORS ADVOCATES CHRONICLERS HEALERS ARTISTS MOGULS Continue Reading
Judge Grants Motion to Dismiss in NSA Surveillance Case
ACLU: “A federal court issued an opinion and order in ACLU v. Clapper [American Civil Liberties Union v. Clapper, 13-cv-03994, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)], the ACLU’s challenge to the constitutionality of the NSA’s mass call-tracking program, ruling that the government’s bulk collection of phone records is lawful under Section 215 of the Patriot Act and under… Continue Reading
Research – MetaPhone: The NSA’s Got Your Number
by Jonathan Mayer, a grad student at Stanford – Co-authored with Patrick Mutchler – via the Web Policy Blog “MetaPhone is a crowdsourced study of phone metadata. If you own an Android smartphone, please consider participating. In earlier posts, we reported how automated analysis of call and text activity can reveal private relationships, as well as how phone subscribers are closely… Continue Reading
