Via cnet – “Facebook, Google, and other tech firms apparently aren’t the only ones who’ve been fascinated by the potential of “social graphs” — maps of people’s social connections. The NSA has reportedly been tapping its giant repositories of phone and e-mail data to create complex diagrams of some Americans’ interactions, including lists of associates… Continue Reading
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Search Results for: Snowden
Declassified FISA Court Opinion Released – Addresses Legality of Phone Metadata Collection
Ellen Nakashima – Washington Post: “A federal surveillance court on Tuesday released a declassified opinion upholding the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s sweeping collection of billions of Americans’ phone records for counterterrorism purposes. The gathering of “all call detail records” from phone companies is justified as long as the government can show that it… Continue Reading
Guardian – US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet
James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald – NSA and GCHQ unlock encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records: “US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward… Continue Reading
Web Resource Documents Latest Firestorm over NSA
“Recent press disclosures about National Security Agency (NSA) electronic surveillance activities — relying on documents provided by Edward Snowden — have sparked one of the most significant controversies in the history of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Today, the nongovernmental National Security Archive at The George Washington University posts a compilation of over 125 documents —… Continue Reading
New leaked NSA documents hightlight extensive US cyber-ops
Washington Post: U.S. spy agencies mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, documents show, By Barton Gellman and Ellen Nakashima “U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war, according to top-secret documents obtained by The… Continue Reading
New Leaked Documents Reveal $52B National Intelligence Program Budget
Washington Post – By Barton Gellman and Greg Miller: “U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government’s top-secret budget. The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post… Continue Reading
Guardian – NSA paid millions to cover Prism compliance costs for tech companies
Ewen MacAskill in New York, The Guardian, Thursday 22 August 2013: “The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency’s activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian. The technology companies, which the NSA says includes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, incurred… Continue Reading
NSA Director – SysAdmin Cuts of 90% in Progress
(Reuters) – “The National Security Agency, hit by disclosures of classified data by former contractor Edward Snowden, said [August 8, 2013] it intends to eliminate about 90 percent of its system administrators to reduce the number of people with access to secret information.” Continue Reading
Guardian – NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens’ emails and phone calls
Spy agency has secret backdoor permission to search databases for individual Americans’ communications – “The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens’email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden. The previously… Continue Reading
EC – consequences of living in an age of total information
Statement by EC Vice President Neelie Kroes “on the consequences of living in an age of total information”: “If businesses or governments think they might be spied on, they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone else to hold… Continue Reading
NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’
Glenn Greenwald, TheGuardian.com: “A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching”… Continue Reading
How America’s Top Tech Companies Created the Surveillance State
National Journal – They’ve been helping the government spy on people for a very long time. The cozy relationships go back decades. By Michael Hirsh – July 25, 2013 “The saga of the private sector’s involvement in the NSA’s scheme for permanent mass surveillance is long, complex, and sometimes contentious. Often, in ways that appeared… Continue Reading
