Watched from a waste bin: UK pulls plug on ‘spy’ trash cans

The City of London has demanded that an advertising firm cease its ‘spy bin’ program which uses high-tech trash cans to track people walking through the city's financial district. The bins follow Wi-Fi signals and capture smartphone serial numbers.

Renew installed 200 bomb-proof bins with built-in Wi-Fi and digital screens inside London’s Square Mile during and after the 2012 Olympic Games. The firm initially offered to place advertisements and financial information on its “pods.” But in June, the agency started testing the bins’ wireless potential, subsequently launching a smartphone-tracking campaign.

The company’s ‘ORB’ technology scanned the streets for smartphones, indentifying the manufacturer of every device through unique media access control (MAC) addresses. It also detected the owner’s “proximity, speed and duration” of stay. Renew had hoped the program would attract advertisers and help companies in their marketing campaigns.

“The technology enables clients to accumulate data readings that will aid in compounding statistical analysis on trending demographics in high profile locations (and particularly a client’s own market share within the City relative to peers in the handheld manufacturing example),” the website’s press release said at the start of the ‘Renew ORB’ beta-testing.

The captured data – which encompassed 4,009,676 devices in just one week of testing – was to be sold to advertisers in “raw form.” Shop owners, for example, could find it very useful for analyzing their customers’ visit time and loyalty.

Instead, the program triggered a media storm, building on ‘spy bins’ hype. This was followed by public outrage and an official ban. Questions were raised regarding whether the scheme was completely legal.

Responding to the turbulent reaction, Renew’s ORB technology CEO attempted to downplay the trash bins’ data collection capabilities.

“I’m afraid that in the interest of a good headline and story there has been an emphasis on style over substance that makes our technology trial slightly more interesting than it is,” Kaveh Memari said in a Monday statement published on Renew’s website. He added that “none” of the proposed capabilities “are workable right now.”

Memari also assured that the MAC addresses collected during the pods’ beta-testing were totally “anonymized and aggregated.” He stressed that no personal details could be devised from analyzing such data, comparing the process to the work of a website counter.

Earlier, Renew promised the technology would enable it to “cookie the street.” The comment was in reference to internet cookies – tiny files created by websites to track an individual’s activity.

A City of London spokesman took a different position on the matter, saying, “Irrespective of what’s technically possible, anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public.”

According to the spokesman, the issue has been taken to the Information Commissioner’s Office – a UK public body dealing with data protection and freedom of information.

Renew appeared to be ready both for public discussion and for a legal battle, saying that “the law has not yet fully developed and it is our firm intention to discuss any such progressions publicly first and especially collaborate with privacy groups…to make sure we lead the charge on this as we are with the implementation of the technology.”

However, the firm admitted that such technology required “the future levels of protection” and “people being comfortable with interactive technology.”

Meanwhile, Nick Pickles of Big Brother Watch – a civil liberties and privacy pressure group - said that questions need to be asked “about how such a blatant attack on people’s privacy was able to occur.”

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‘1984 Day’: Restore the Fourth movement kickstarts nationwide anti-surveillance protest

Image from facebook.com

The protests “1984 Day,” named for George Orwell’s classic novel about an ultramodern surveillance state, have taken place across the nations, most notably in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.   A grassroots movement of Fourth Amendment activists is rallying across at least 20 US cities to protest illegal surveillance techniques by the American government.

Image from facebook.com

The rallies have been organized by a number of social media initiatives by a grassroots organization called Restore the Fourth that demands an end to “unconstitutional surveillance of digital communications.” 

"By rallying this Sunday, we are sending a very loud message to our Representatives that to earn our trust they must restore the Fourth Amendment, and support the passage of legislation to revoke the NSA's authorization to conduct mass surveillance of US and foreign citizens,” their website says. 

Image from facebook.com

The movement has been gathering momentum since initially starting after Edward Snowden’s revelations about the activities of the NSA. Guest speakers include Danniel Ellsberg, a former US military analyst, author, and activist who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, revealing the systematic deception of four presidencies. He is scheduled to speak in San Francisco. ..................................................

Source: RT

Licensed criminals: FBI informants authorized to break the law 5,600 times in one year

AFP Photo / Joe Raedle

After much redacting by the authorities, the watered-down FBI's 2011 report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that agents had been authorizing 15 crimes a day on average, in order to get the necessary information from their informants. In at least 5,658 cases in a single year alone, the FBI authorized its informants to commit crimes varying from selling drugs to plotting robberies, according to a copy of an FBI report obtained by USA Today.

The document does not indicate the severity of the crimes authorized by the agency, nor does it include material about violations that were committed without the government's permission. It just sites a number of 5,658 Tier I and II infractions committed by criminals to help the bureau battle crime.

According to the Department of Justice Tier I is the most severe and includes “any activity that would constitute a misdemeanour or felony under federal, state, or local law if engaged in by a person acting without authorization and that involves the commission or the significant risk of the commission of certain offenses, including acts of violence; corrupt conduct by senior federal, state, or local public officials; or the manufacture, importing, exporting, possession, or trafficking in controlled substances of certain quantities.”

The Tier II includes the same range of crimes but committed by informants acting without authorization from a federal prosecutor but only from their senior field manager in FBI.  

In the past, the newspaper revealed, the violations ranged from drug dealing to bribery. 

As an example of severe crime committed by an authorized informant, the newspaper references the case of James Bulger, a mobster in Boston who was allowed by the Federal government to run a gang ring in exchange for insider information about the Mafia. Since then, the US Justice Department ordered the FBI to track and record the wrongdoings of the informants, results of which are due annually. 

AFP Photo / Kevin Wolf

The FBI remains secretive about its informants. It is known that in 2007, the FBI estimated that around 15,000 confidential sources were employed by the bureau. 

The Justice Department has requirements in place which spell out the rules of engagement with informants and “otherwise illegal activity.” Authorization of violent crimes are not allowed by field agents and serious offenses must first be approved by federal prosecutors. But as the publication notes, the FBI’s Inspector General concluded in 2005 that the agency routinely failed to abide by those rules. 

The FBI’s scheme to gather information using such methods is believed to be only the tip of the iceberg as other local, state and federal agencies also reportedly engage in similar practices. The FBI’s share of criminal prosecutions in court only amount to 10 percent of all criminal cases. 

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the FBI, Denise Ballew, declined to comment the report saying only that the circumstances in which the bureau allows its informants to break the law are "situational, tightly controlled.” 

Source: RT

Digital religion: Russian Pirate Church eyes registration

Photo from www.churchofkopimism.org.uk

Activists in five Russian cities: Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Khabarovsk will officially apply documents to register a church of their own Monday – so that they could launch an assault on copyright laws that “insult religious feelings of the believers”, the chairman of the Russian Pirate Party Pavel Rassudov told Izvestia. Russian adepts of free web data flow plan to register their own religious organization to battle copyright laws. Adherents of the Kopimi, or Copy Me, movement believe the process of exchanging data is sacred and intend to bring the argument to court.

“The church registration process will take years but adepts of kopimism will have the right to sue the anti-pirate laws,” Rassudov insisted.

The Kopimi community was established by the founders of the Pirate Bay file sharing service and has been officially registered as religion in Sweden.

Kopimism is based on the belief that any information is inherently valuable. According to the dogmas of the new religion, the Internet is sacred while copying and distribution of information is morally justified. 

Kopimi activists are battling the copyright owners who in their belief prevent free information distribution.

According to the law “On freedom of conscience and on religious associations” Russian citizens have a right to organize into a religious groups without obligatory official registration. No less than ten people could make up a group that after 15 years of proven existence could be registered as a legal entity. Three such groups can form a centralized religious organization.

The new church intends to stream into being on the wave of 2 recent laws that stirred media frenzy in Russia. The first one is the freshly signed piece of legislation on insulting believers’ feelings that materialized after the furor Pussy Riot’s caused in Moscow Christ the Savior Cathedral.

The other one is the new anti-piracy law, which came into force on Thursday, allowing pre-trial blocking of web-pages to protect movies and TV series from unlicensed downloading. Some 1,700 Russian websites blacked out to protest upcoming unwarranted shutting down on August 1. 

At the same time the current legal prospects for the Kopimi church in Russia are vague, believe experts.

Russia is a secular state where any church is separated from power, so religious organizations do not have serious influence on national the legislature, legal expert Viktor Naumov told Izvestia newspaper.

A direct appeal to the Constitutional Court is probably the only chance for the Kopimi activists because only this organization could decide that the rights of a new religious group are being violated, Naumov said.

Moreover, Russia’s Pirate Party itself has been consistently denied registration as the Central Election Commission says it’s promoting piracy – which in the authorities’ understanding is an assault on sea vessels and is punishable under the Criminal Code. 

Source: RT

All NSA can spy us

NSA keeps trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases which they can access anytime with simple screen programs, "these programs are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address."

Source: RT

NSA admits to spying on more people than previously thought

Testimony elicited during a Wednesday oversight hearing in Washington revealed that the United States intelligence community regularly collects email and telephone metadata from way more persons than previously thought.

Quizzed about the government’s investigative methods during a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing early Wednesday, National Security Agency Deputy Director Chris Inglis said that the government obtains basic information pertaining to the communication records of potentially millions of more Americans than leaked NSA documents previously suggested.

After former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released classified files to the Guardian newspaper, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman cited one of those documents that said US investigators "analyzed networks with two degrees of separation (two hops) from the target" while conducting probes.

“In other words, the NSA studied the online records of people who communicated with people who communicated with targeted individuals,” the journalists wrote.

On Wednesday, however, Inglis enlarged the scope of that surveillance program by saying the NSA actually investigates persons that can come within three “hops” of an intelligence target.

NSA analysts can perform "a second or third hop query,” Inglis admitted during questioning.

Although powers vested in the US through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act forbid it from specifically targeting Americans, lawmakers critical of the program have cautioned that the personal data of too many US citizens are regularly swept up as government officials attempt to connect-the-dots using telephone and Internet metadata. By investigating persons within a third degree of separation and not just two, authorities broaden their probes by putting records from potentially millions of more persons, American and otherwise, into their hands.

Weighing in after the revelation, the Guardian’s Ackerman authored a new piece exploring just how extensive these powers really are.

“A three-hop query means that the NSA can look at data not only from a suspected terrorist, but from everyone that suspect communicated with, and then from everyone those people communicated with, and then from everyone all of those people communicated with,” Ackerman wrote.

“Do the math,” tweeted Cato Institute research fellow and author Julian Sanchez. “Your whole contact list. All their contact lists. All THOSE people's contact lists. That's a LOOOT of people.”

Philip Bump of The Atlantic Wire noted in his report after the hearing that a University of Milan study in 201 found that everyone on Internet, on average, is only 4.74 steps away from anyone else. According to Inglis’ comment, the NSA can then consider anyone within three of those steps when conducting an investigation.

A Pew Internet study conducted that same year found that the average American has 634 ties in their overall Internet network, with more experienced Web surfers having that many more connections.

Alex Abdo, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Atlantic Wire that the "two-hop" standard "will inevitably sweep in Americans,” notwithstanding the government’s insistence that Americans aren’t targeted.

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EXCLUSIVE: 'You are being tracked': ACLU reveals docs of mass license plate reader surveillance

The American Civil Liberties Union has released documents confirming that police license plate readers capture vast amounts of data on innocent people, and in many instances this intelligence is kept forever.

According to documents obtained through a number of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by ACLU offices across the United States, law enforcement agencies are tracking the whereabouts of innocent persons en masse by utilizing a still up-and-coming technology.

License place readers are among the latest items being regularly added to the arsenal of law enforcement gizmos and gadgets, but documents obtained through the FOIA requests have prompted the ACLU to acknowledge that safeguards that would properly protect the privacy of Americans are largely absent.

When a police department deploys license plate readers on top of patrol cars or at fixed locations, it lets officers see a snapshot of every vehicle that passes by a particular point. From there, that information can be matched against a database that contains automobiles involved in criminal investigations or cars whose owners may already be in trouble with the law. According to the ACLU, though, the data that’s collected and routinely stored reveal much more than the location of suspected scofflaws.................

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Hack this: Researchers turn Verizon device into ‘mobile spy station’

Security experts said they have managed to spy on Verizon Wireless mobile phone customers by hacking into devices sold by the US carrier, further fueling the controversy over privacy issues in the wake of the NSA leaks.

Tom Ritter and Doug DePerry demonstrated for Reuters how it is technically possible to eavesdrop on text messages, photos and phone calls made with an Android phone and an iPhone by using compromised Verizon products. 

The hacking requires nothing more than a femtocell, which serves as a small cellphone tower to boost signal reception, which Verizon sells for $250; dozens of other carriers also offer the same technology. 

The finding comes at a time of intense international debate about privacy after former NSA analyst Edward Snowden last month blew the whistle on a top-secret US surveillance program, known as PRISM, which has the capability to collect and store records on telephone and internet communications around the world. 

The Verizon discovery, however, would put the power of spying into the hands of ordinary citizens, according to the researchers. 

"This is not about how the NSA would attack ordinary people. This is about how ordinary people would attack ordinary people," said Tom Ritter, a senior consultant with the security firm iSEC Partners. 

Verizon announced it has updated the software on its femtocells to thwart hackers from carrying out a similar attack on its system. 

But Ritter said diligent hackers will be able to discover other ways to hack mobile phone customers of Verizon, as well as those offered by other carriers. 

The two researchers, who plan to give more intensive demonstrations at the upcoming Black Hat and Def Con hacking conferences in Las Vegas, declined to show how they were able to compromise the software. 

The researchers admitted that, with a little effort, they could have ‘weaponized’ the system for ‘stealth attacks’ by bundling the equipment needed for a surveillance operation into a backpack that could be dropped near a specific target, Reuters reported. 

They gave as an example “a group interested in potential mergers might place such a backpack in Manhattan restaurants frequented by investment bankers.” 

Verizon's website said the booster device has a 40-foot range, but the researchers believe that range could be expanded by adding special antennas. 

While the iSEC researchers admit they are not the first to demonstrate the vulnerabilities of femtocells, they say they are the first to hack the femtocells of an American carrier, and one that operates on a wireless standard known as CDMA. 

CTIA, a wireless industry group headquartered in Washington, in February published a report that pointed to femtocells as a potential point of weakness in the wireless system. 

John Marinho, CTIA's vice president for cyber security and Technology, said the group has been more concerned about other potential attacks, such as malicious apps. He said he is unaware of any incidences where an attack was launched via femtocells. 

Still, he added, the wireless industry is monitoring the issue: "Threats change every day," he told Reuters. 

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Espionnage US: le renseignement allemand était au courant (journal)

Le Service fédéral de renseignement allemand (BND) était au courant de l'espionnage du Web mené par l'Agence nationale de sécurité américaine (NSA) contre les citoyens allemands, rapporte lundi le journal Bild. 

"Il est bien connu qu'il existe une coopération de longue date entre les services spéciaux américains et allemands. Mais le gouvernement fédéral ne divulgue pas les détails de cette collaboration, il n'en informe que la commission parlementaire créée à cette fin", écrit la revue se référant à une source gouvernementale américaine. 

D'après le journal, au cours de ces dernières années, le BND a même sollicité une aide auprès des services spéciaux américains sur des enlèvements de citoyens allemands à l'étranger, particulièrement en Afghanistan et au Yémen. Le renseignement allemand a notamment demandé à son homologue américain que lui soient fournis les détails des échanges menées par ses ressortissants par le bais de différents moyens de communications.

Edward Snowden, informaticien de 29 ans qui a travaillé pour l'Agence nationale de sécurité américaine (NSA) et ancien agent de la CIA, a révélé début juin à deux quotidiens, le Guardian et le Washington Post, l'existence d'un réseau mondial de surveillance des échanges par mail, messageries instantanées, téléphone et réseaux sociaux qui impose aux sociétés du secteur américaines, et même étrangères, un accès à leurs serveurs, archives et données d'utilisateurs.

Ce programme baptisé Prism permet à la NSA et au FBI d'accéder à des données concernant des personnes vivant hors Etats-Unis via neuf géants de l'Internet, dont Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, et Yahoo.

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1984: Blueprint for US Authoritarianism | Happy Birthday George Orwell

St. Louis police chief wants drones to monitor city

“To help keep officers safe, to help keep the community safe. For monitoring public spaces – things like the upcoming Fair St. Louis [and] baseball games – for terrorists, suspicious activity,” St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson told KSDK.

“Criminals believe, and with some truth, that if they flee from police officers, officers will not pursue and they will ultimately elude capture,” Dotson wrote in hisMarch 25letter to the FAA. “If we are serious about crime reduction strategies, we must look to new technologies which help keep officers and the public safe and apprehend criminals.”...................

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NSA leaks hint Microsoft may have lied about Skype security

Microsoft may have misled millions of Skype users around the world by making claims last year that have since been contradicted by intelligence leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

National Security Agency documents leaked by Snowden to the Guardian and Washington Post last week have grabbed the attention of Americans concerned over the NSA’s blanketing surveillance of communications involving United States citizens. The NSA is regularly retaining the phone records for millions of Verizon customers, the documents revealed, and a separate program called PRISM allegedly lets federal investigators access Internet use information for customers of the biggest online services. One of those documents, a slideshow examining how the NSA has access to conversations conducted over nine major Internet services, may have caught Silicon Valley giant Microsoft in a lie.

Ryan Gallagher of Slate noted this week that one of the slides cited by the Washington Post was labeled a “User’s Guide for PRISM Skype Collection,” suggesting that the NSA has in place a method for eavesdropping on conversations conducted over the popular Web client acquired in 2011 by Microsoft.

According to the slide, NSA agents can listen in or watch Skype chats “when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of 'audio, video, chat, and file transfers' when Skype users connect by computer alone.”

“This piece of information is significant for a number of reasons,” wrote Gallagher, but the most crucial perhaps is how it compares to Microsoft’s remarks last year. As RT wrote in 2012, Microsoft was awarded a patent that summer that provides for “legal intercept” technology that allows for agents to “silently copy communication transmitted via the communication session” without asking for user authorization.

At the time, Gallagher was one of the most critical reporters examining the patent, and grilled Microsoft relentlessly to see if this meant that a program previously considered highly-encrypted and tough to crack could provide a backdoor to government agents at the drop of a hat. However, Skype Corporate VP of Product Engineering & Operations Mike Gillet also explained to ExtremeTech.com that the company was making changes in its infrastructure, but that they were being done to “improve the Skype user experience.”

“Skype rejected the charge in a comment issued to the website Extremetech, saying the restructure was an upgrade and had nothing to do with surveillance,” Gallagher wrote at the time, “But when I repeatedly questioned the company on Wednesday whether it could currently facilitate wiretap requests, a clear answer was not forthcoming. Citing ‘company policy,’ Skype PR man Chaim Haas wouldn’t confirm or deny, telling me only that the chat service ‘co-operates with law enforcement agencies as much as is legally and technically possible.’”

This week, Gallagher revisited the issue and explained how Microsoft’s explanation last year is now under fire thanks to NSA leak. Gallagher recalled that Microsoft was driven to releasing a transparency report last year, in which a significant chunk was set aside solely for details on settling requests for Skype data made by law enforcement.

“The report devoted an entire section to Skype and claimed that in 2012, it hadn’t handed any communications content over to authorities anywhere in the world. Microsoft also said in notes accompanying the transparency report that calls made between Skype-Skype users were encrypted peer-to-peer, implying that they did not pass through Microsoft’s central servers and could not be eavesdropped on — except maybe if the government deployed a spy Trojan on a targeted computer to bypass encryption,” Gallagher wrote.

Now enter the “User’s Guide for PRISM Skype Collection” slide, and the story is much different. “That the NSA claims to be able to grab all Skype users’ communications also calls into question the credibility of Microsoft’s transparency report — particularly the claim that in 2012 it did not once hand over the content of any user communications,” Gallagher wrote. “Moreover, according to a leaked NSA slide published by the Post, Skype first became part of the NSA’s PRISM program in February 2011 — three months before Microsoft purchased the service from U.S. private equity firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz.”

In a statement emailed from Microsoft to Slate, the company said it “went as far as it was legally able in documenting disclosures in its Law Enforcement Requests Report” and that “there should be greater transparency on national security requests and Microsoft would like the government to take steps to allow companies to do that.”

Microsoft’s statement came the same week that one of their largest competitors, Google, pleaded with the government to let them provide more details in their regular transparency reports published online. In a letter sent to US Attorney General Eric Holder and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday, Google asked the Obama administration to allow it to share more information.

"Google's numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made," said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer. "Google has nothing to hide.”

During testimony made Thursday morning before Congress, Mueller said the NSA leaks attributed to Snowden “have caused significant harm to our nation and to our safety” and that the FBI and Justice Department will take “all necessary steps to hold the person responsible.” Meanwhile, US Reps. John Conyers (D-Michigan) and Justin Amash (R-Michigan) plan to propose legislation this week that would require that the government provides “specific and articulable facts” before it requests phone records of US citizens.

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Islande, l'île aux pirates

Edward Snowden, l'ex-employé de l'Agence américaine de sécurité nationale (NSA), qui a révélé l'existence de Prism, le système de surveillance mondiale de l'Internet mis en place par les Etats-Unis, garde l'espoir d'échapper à la justice de son pays. Le 9juin, alors qu'il était réfugié à Hongkong, il a déclaré à des journalistes qu'il souhaitait obtenir l'asile politique dans un pays démocratique. Et il a mentionné l'Islande.

Drôle d'idée, penseront certains. Froide, grise, humide, l'île attire les touristes en quête de geysers, moins les expatriés à la recherche de vie paisible. Sauf que depuis 2010 l'Islande a entrepris de se transformer en sanctuaire de la liberté d'expression sur Internet, et en centre de résistance contre la surveillance du réseau.

Elle a donc lancé un projet ambitieux baptisé IMMI (Icelandic Modern Media Initiative). Sur le plan technique, le pays se dote peu à peu de serveurs sécurisés pour héberger les documents confidentiels de journalistes soumis à la censure, de dissidents vivant dans des pays dictatoriaux, ou d'ONG travaillant sur des dossiers sensibles... Sur le plan légal, il est en train de construire un "bouclier juridique"destiné à protéger les données hébergées sur son territoire contre les attaques judiciaires venues de l'étranger, et à garantir le secret des activités sur ses serveurs.

PROBLÈME : L'ISLANDE FAIT PARTIE DE L'ESPACE SHENGEN

Dès que les médias ont révélé l'identité d'Edward Snowden et son désir de venir en Islande, ...

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Germany most-spied-on EU country by US - leaked NSA report

The color-coded map of secret surveillance activities by the NSA ranks countries according to how much surveillance they are currently undergoing - green for the least and red for the most watched. Germany appears to be the most snooped on EU country by the US, the map of secret surveillance activities by the National Security Agency shows. ‘Boundless Informant’ is among the data disclosed by former CIA contractor and NSA consultant Edward Snowden.

While all EU member states boast variant shades of green, Germany stands out color-coded orange.

The source behind the revelation of the top-secret NSA surveillance program, already referred to as one of the most significant intelligence leaks in US history, was uncovered late last week. 29-year-old Snowden asked The Guardian to reveal his identity, having fled to Hong Kong to escape retaliation by the US authorities.

"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting,” he told The Guardian.

“I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wire-tap anyone … even if you are not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded,” he added.

The Boundless Informant documents show NSA collecting up to 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013, according to The Guardian. The tool reportedly allows users to select a country on a map, view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against this or that state.

Germany's Interior Ministry had already been in contact with US officials to find out whether there had been any infringement of German citizens' privacy lately. Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to raise the issue of the NSA's eavesdropping on Germany with President Barack Obama, who said the monitoring program is a means of defense against terrorism. 

Iran is on top of the surveillance list, with more than 14 billion data reports in March, while Pakistan came in a close second at 13.5 billion reports. Jordan, a close US ally, as well as Egypt and India are also near the top, according to the data.

Senior European Union officials are also expected to discuss the impact of NSA’s programs on the privacy of EU citizens during a trans-Atlantic ministerial meeting in Dublin on Thursday.

"This case shows that a clear legal framework for the protection of personal data is not a luxury or constraint, but a fundamental right," European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding said.

The European Parliament said it is always firm on data protection within the EU, as well as when negotiating with third countries, including the US.

"It would be unacceptable and would need swift action from the EU if indeed the US National Security Agency were processing European data without permission," Guy Verhofstadt of the parliament's liberal bloc said.

NSA's tradition to survey international communities reportedly goes back to the Cold War era, when the agency used monitoring sites in Germany, Britain and other countries to spy on communications within the Soviet Union and its East European allies.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has meanwhile cancelled his trip to Washington to speak about The Guardian’s latest NSA report.

He assured parliament that accusations that the UK government allegedly used information provided by the Americans to circumvent laws were "baseless."

"Our agencies practice and uphold UK law at all times," he stated, "even when dealing with information from outside the UK."

In an interview with the British newspaper, successful NSA consultant Snowden leaked top-secret documents that revealed the existence of the US National Security Agency’s extensive internet spying program PRISM, which records digital communications and allows for real-time online surveillance of US citizens. PRISM gives US intelligence agencies direct access to files stored on the servers of major internet companies, including Google and Facebook, to identify and target potential terror suspects. 

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NSA leaker Snowden supported Ron Paul’s presidential run

As news continues to surface about classified NSA documents leaked last week, the man who blew the whistle on the secret spy program is quickly becoming the center of attention.

Follow RT's LIVE UPDATES on NSA leak fallout 

With all eyes turned to 29-year-old Edward Snowden, the former CIA analyst who leaked documents about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying is already on his way to becoming the most discussed man in America. Less than 24 hours after the Guardian went public with Snowden’s identity on Sunday, the leaker’s personal life and politics have already taken center stage.

Now at the center of some discussions is Snowden’s endorsement of Ron Paul during last year’s presidential race, a revelation that is providing a rare glimpse into the ideologies of a man who will likely face decades in prison for going public.

According to donation info published by the Center for Responsive Politics’ website OpenSecrets.org, Snowden made two contributions totaling $500 to the presidential campaign of then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) during the last calendar year. Snowden made a $250 contribution to Rep. Paul on March 18, 2012, and another $250 donation on May 6.

Rep. Paul was vying for the Republican Party’s nomination as president during last year’s election, ultimately losing that slot to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Paul ended his active campaigning phrase shortly after Snowden’s second contribution was made and retired from Congress in early 2013 after serving decades on Capitol Hill.

Although other links between Snowden and Paul haven’t been published yet, the leaker did say in an interview this week that he supported a third party presidential candidate during the 2008 race that ultimately ended in a win for Barack Obama, a Democrat.

"A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises. I was going to disclose it [but waited because of his election]. He continued with the policies of his predecessor,” Snowden told the Guardian.

Before Barack Obama won his bid for the White House in 2008, he campaigned on a promise of having the most transparent presidential administration in the history of the United States. Today his office continues to stand by that vow despite spearheading an unprecedented war against leakers. The Obama administration has so far charged seven people under the Espionage Act, and more leakers have been prosecuted under that legislation than by every previous president combined.

Snowden is reported to currently be in Hong Kong after fleeing his apartment in Hawaii at the beginning of last month. He previously worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and, most recently, defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. He only worked there for three months before the Guardian published top secret documents last week about the NSA’s phone and Internet surveillance programs, operated for years under a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and a well-hidden program called PRISM.

"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records [and] credit cards,” Snowden told the Guardian.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."

Before the Guardian went public with Snowden’s allegations about the spy program — then later his identity — the leaker went to the Washington Post and asked them to publish his evidence of PRISM.

“Snowden asked for a guarantee that The Washington Post would publish — within 72 hours  —  the full text of a PowerPoint presentation describing PRISM, a top-secret surveillance program that gathered intelligence from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley giants,” Post reporter Barton Gellman admitted this week.

“I told him we would not make any guarantee about what we published or when,” Gellman recalled for the Post. According to Gellman, “The Post sought the views of government officials about the potential harm to national security prior to publication and decided to reproduce only four of the 41 slides.”

Snowden’s attempt to expose the secretive program through the Washington Post draws an eerie parallel to the case of Bradley Manning, the 25-year-old Army private who gave hundreds of thousands of sensitive government files to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks — but not before his phone calls to the Post and New York Times were ignored.

On the campaign trail last year, then-Rep. Paul said he’d protect Bradley Manning and other whistleblowers if elected to the White House.

“I maintain that government becomes more secret and the people’s privacy is being destroyed. We should protect the people’s privacy and we should make the government much more open,” Paul said last April during a campaign stop in San Antonio, Texas.

“I would certainly lean in the direction of protecting people that are trying to tell the truth,” said Paul. “The more openness the better. That’s what a free society is all about. It wouldn’t be so critical if the government was a lot smaller, but because it is so big it is big issue because there is so much that could be hidden.”

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Manning 2.0? Former NSA consultant behind massive US surveillance leak

The source behind the leak of the top-secret NSA surveillance program – one of the most significant leaks in US history – has been revealed. A 29-year-old former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has fled to Hong Kong to avoid the fate of Bradley Manning.

The former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, had asked the Guardian to reveal his identity and had never planned on hiding. 

“I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said in an interview.

Snowden predicts that the government will launch an investigation against him, however it was “a matter of principle” for him because he believes that the people should know how the government intrudes into their privacy. According to Snowden he acted out of a desire to protect "basic liberties"and to “send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.”

“I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building,” said the whistleblower. 

Snowden leaked top-secret documents to The Guardian that included the existence of a US National Security Agency’s extensive spying program called PRISM. The program was designed to collect information about digital communications allowing real-time online surveillance of US citizens.....................................

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Top-secret court order reveals NSA's daily data collection on millions of Americans

The US National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of unwitting individuals via a secret court order issued in April obtained by The Guardian newspaper, which has posted it online.

Unlike warrants that have been issued to collect the information of suspects targetted by intelligence agencies, the newly disclosed top secret order requires Verizon, one of the largest telecom agencies in the US, to provide both the FBI and the NSA information on all telephone calls made through its systems, both domestically and to foreign countries. 

According to a copy of the order, Verizon is required to disclose the numbers of both parties during a call, as well as location, call duration, and other unique data on an "ongoing, daily basis.” Meaning that, regardless of whether an individual is suspected of or linked to any crime, the data of all Verizon customers is currently being delivered in bulk to the intelligence agency. 

As to the authority claimed by the government via this order, that is specifically cited to fall under the “business records” provision of the PATRIOT Act of 2001, which was granted a four-year extension by President Obama in May of 2011. 

It remains unclear as to whether the order, which spans a three-month period, represents a single instance, or is indicative of recurring cases of Verizon and other telephony providers being ordered to disclose all their clients' call records. ................

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Google dépose un brevet inquiétant pour les libertés individuelles

Google a déposé un brevet pour contrôler automatiquement ce qu’écrit un utilisateur. Une tierce personne sera immédiatement informée si le contenu du message viole une règle privée ou publique.

Nous savons que Google regarde dans les documents que nous lui confions afin de mieux cibler les publicités qu’il nous propose. Un brevet déposé le 2 mai montre que la firme de Mountain View pourrait, bientôt, « lire » les mails que vous écrivez et vous dire si c’est légal. Dans le cas contraire, un signalement sera automatiquement transmis à une tierce personne.

Vous êtes en train d’écrire un mail quand soudain, une fenêtre pop-up surgit et vous informe que ce que vous êtes en train d’écrire pourrait être en infraction avec le règlement intérieur de votre entreprise, ou les termes de confidentialité de votre contrat de travail.

Dans le même temps, le service juridique de votre employeur reçoit une notification: « Monsieur X. est peut-être en train d’enfreindre telle ou telle loi. » C’est ce que la technologie nouvellement brevetée par Google serait, théoriquement, en mesure de faire.

Big Brother contrôle ce que vous écrivez

Le formulaire du brevet déniché par Slashdot.org et relayé par le HuffingtonPost.com précise que le « Policy Violation Checker » (vérificateur de violation de règles) est capable de reconnaître une série de « phrases problématiques » inscrites dans une base de données, qui présentent « des implications légales pour une personne ou une compagnie ». C’est un peu comme si l’on avait un avocat dans notre boîte mail, nous avertissant lorsque ce que nous écrivons risque de se retourner contre nous, ou notre entreprise.

Certaines entreprises, qui utilisent Gmail comme système de mail professionnel, pourraient s’en servir pour contrôler la correspondance de leurs employés avec des critères qui leur sont propres. En effet, chaque entreprise serait libre de choisir et paramétrer les éléments déclencheurs. On peut imaginer, par exemple, que tout message semblant dénigrer son entreprise soit automatiquement relevé par la direction, qu’il soit à destination de ses partenaires, de ses collègues, ou de son délégué syndical.

Mais Big Brother ne se contente plus de lire, il contrôle ce que vous écrivez. Car le système est en mesure de proposer des reformulations plus acceptables envers le règlement intérieur.

Sanctionné avant même d’avoir commis un impair

Cet outil menace-t-il les libertés individuelles? Pas le moins du monde, selon la doctrine d’Eric Schmidt, à l’époque PDG de Google.

Il avait déclaré, dans une interview donnée à la chaîne CNBC en 2010, au sujet des traces personnelles laissées sur le Web: « S’il y a quelque chose que vous voulez tenir secret, peut-être n’auriez-vous pas dû le faire en premier lieu. » Utilisant, au passage, le fameux argument du « ceux qui n’ont rien à cacher n’ont pas à le craindre » qui abolit à lui tout seul tout concept de vie privée, en partant du principe que ceux qui maîtrisent ces technologies seront toujours animés des meilleures intentions.

Dans ce monde merveilleux, des gens pourront être sanctionnés avant même d’avoir commis les faits qui leur seront reprochés, puisque le système sera activé à la frappe et une tierce personne prévenue avant l’envoi du mail ou la transmission du document. Mais tout va bien, nous explique Google dans le brevet : « C’est dans l’intérêt des entreprises de prévenir les violations de leurs règles ou lois avant qu’elles aient lieu. »

Vers une surveillance généralisée des internautes ?

Mais que se passera-t-il si ces bases de données, compatibles avec tout type de terminal, comme un smartphone géolocalisé, sont utilisées par des patrons un peu trop autoritaires? Par des régimes moins démocratiques que le nôtre? Google va-t-il être tenu de livrer les malfaiteurs à la police? De rendre automatiquement public les écarts sentimentaux des personnages publics? De mettre en place, en fait, une surveillance généralisée de ses utilisateurs?

Déposer un brevet ne veut pas dire l’exploiter, et il reste à voir comment il sera appliqué. Mais si d’aventure la firme de Mountain View devait mettre en marche un tel système, un grand débat pourrait naître tant ses possibilités théoriques sont inquiétantes. Cela pourrait être le faux-pas qui ferait définitivement de Google « le mal incarné » aux yeux du public, comme Microsoft en son temps.

Source : 01net.