The Freedom Watch

The Real, Terrifying Reason Why British Authorities Detained David Miranda

"Those in power were angry and impulsively acted on that anger. They're lashing out: sending a message and demonstrating that they're not to be messed with -- that the normal rules of polite conduct don't apply to people who screw with them. That's probably the scariest explanation of all. Both the U.S. and U.K. intelligence apparatuses have enormous money and power, and they have already demonstrated that they are willing to ignore their own laws. Once they start wielding that power unthinkingly, it could get really bad for everyone." Continue reading →

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NSA’s surveillance “most serious attacks on free speech we’ve ever seen.”

"The chilling of free speech isn’t just a consequence of surveillance. It’s also a motive. We adopt the art of self-censorship, closing down blogs, watching what we say on Facebook, forgoing 'private' email for fear that any errant word may come back to haunt us in one, five or fifteen 15 years. 'The mind's tendency to still feel observed when alone... can be inhibiting,' writes Janna Malamud Smith. Indeed. Peggy Noonan, describing a conversation with longtime civil liberties advocate Nat Hentoff, writes that 'the inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship.' Hentoff stressed that privacy invasions of this magnitude are 'attempts to try to change who we are as Americans.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA’s surveillance “most serious attacks on free speech we’ve ever seen.”

Banish the trolls, but web debate still needs anonymity

"So the proprietor of the Huffington Post has decided to ban anonymous commenting from the site. It seems like common sense [that people will behave better]. Whether it is supported by evidence is uncertain. The most striking study I’ve come across is the experiment conducted by the (South) Korea Communications Commission from July 2007. From that month onwards, anyone wanting to comment on any of the 146 Korean websites with more than 100,000 members was required by law to submit resident registration or credit card details. The hypothesis behind the requirement was that people would behave better online if they were easily identifiable. But it didn’t turn out that way. Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBanish the trolls, but web debate still needs anonymity

NSA broke encryption on UN communications: report

"The move provided the agency with 'a dramatic improvement of data from video teleconferences and the ability to decrypt this data traffic.' The NSA, on one occasion, also allegedly caught the Chinese secret services eavesdropping on the UN in 2011, it added, quoting an internal report. Der Spiegel also claims that the US agency kept tabs on the European Union after it moved into new offices in New York in September 2012. Earlier reports in Der Spiegel and Britain’s the Guardian newspaper had detailed alleged widespread covert surveillance by the NSA of EU offices, including diplomatic missions in Washington and at the United Nations in New York, as well as Brussels." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA broke encryption on UN communications: report

Russia closes 700 schools amid dramatic drop in birth rates

"Russia saw birth rates drop dramatically in the turbulent 1990s and its demographic situation has remained negative, with more deaths than births, ever since. President Vladimir Putin last year urged Russians to have at least three children. 'We plan to close 733 schools this year,' said the outspoken public health official Gennady Onishchenko, quoted by the Interfax news agency. 'You understand the reason: there aren’t enough children.' 'For some reason we have forgotten why we came into the world and we came with only one aim: to create new life, to continue our line,' said Onishchenko, who has three children. A recent uptick in births is partly driven by a wave of immigrants." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingRussia closes 700 schools amid dramatic drop in birth rates

Drone crashes into crowd at American ‘Running of the Bulls’

"The inaugural installment of an American adaptation of the famous Spanish 'Running of the Bulls' ended up with an unintended sideshow when a drone filming the action crashed into the audience. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that five people suffered minor injuries during the incident at the first 'Great Bull Run' in Virginia on Saturday, when the drone, operated by event organizers, went down, leading an unidentified person filming it to yell, 'It just hit that dude in the face!'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDrone crashes into crowd at American ‘Running of the Bulls’

NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests

"National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said. The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT. Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of 'INT,' such as 'SIGINT' for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and 'HUMINT' for human intelligence, or spying. The LOVEINT violations involved overseas communications, officials said, such as spying on a partner or spouse." Continue reading →

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UK’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks

"Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, The Independent has learnt. The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region. The information is then processed for intelligence and passed to GCHQ in Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. The Government claims the station is a key element in the West’s 'war on terror' and provides a vital 'early warning' system for potential attacks around the world." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingUK’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks

NSA; The Not Secure Agency

"It's not a 'sophisticated' bypass, the NSA didn't protect databases from Database and Systems Administrators. Here's a blog article by a database security product vendor's research group about this widely known problem from January of last year. Even then, the information in the blog article was long in the tooth. This implies that everything the NSA has said about the careful auditing they do to prevent unauthorized access by employees and contractors is a joke - it's not possible when you don't take these basic precautions." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA; The Not Secure Agency

Guardian teams up with New York Times over Snowden documents

"In a brief story posted on its website, the Guardian said it 'struck a partnership' with the Times after the British government threatened the Guardian with legal action unless it either surrendered or destroyed files it received from Snowden about Government Communications Headquarters - Britain's equivalent of NSA. 'In a climate of intense pressure from the UK government, the Guardian decided to bring in a US partner to work on the GCHQ documents provided by Edward Snowden. We are working in partnership with the NYT and others to continue reporting these stories,' the British newspaper said in a statement." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGuardian teams up with New York Times over Snowden documents