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Questioning of spy agency chiefs ‘wouldn’t have scared a puppy’

UK intelligence chiefs get off scot-free from TV grilling on NSA leaks

They didn’t even bother to prepare for it …

“We don’t spy on  the majority of people” – Just half of them then? 49%?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24847399

Britain’s security services defend – rather than undermine – freedom and democracy, the head of MI5 has said. Well, fancy that.

 

I’m  firmly of the opinion that there are very few terrorists and that people such as these grossly overexaggerate for their political masters and to keep getting very well paid thank you. I know that it’s bullshit because I am one of many victims of their bullshit.

Some others may believe it but at this level they know fully well what’s going down – they are the heads of UK intelligence agencies after all – they are in charge of thousands upon thousands of spies and tap into transatlantic cables, snoop on mobile phones, bug Angela Merkel’s phone, etc. They know very well and go along with it, play their part in that bullshit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24847399

They’d walk out. Oh, FO.

The absolute rubbish they come out with …

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Tim Berners-Lee condemns spy agencies as heads face MPs

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/tim-berners-lee-encryption-spy-agencies

Inventor of world wide web condemns ‘dysfunctional and unaccountable’ oversight as intelligence chiefs face MPs

 Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist who created the world wide web, has called for a “full and frank public debate” over internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ, warning that the system of checks and balances to oversee the agencies has failed.

The damning assessment was given as the heads of GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 prepared to face questioning by MPs in the Commons on Thursday. In an unprecedented hearing in Westminster, questions over the conduct of Britain’s spy agencies will be raised when the heads of the three secret services – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – go before parliament’s intelligence and security committee.

The 90-minute session will give the nine-strong committee, led by Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a chance to question the agencies about the reach of the mass surveillance programmes that have provoked a global debate about privacy in the internet age. While critics have often despaired of the ISC’s lack of clout, Rifkind has promised to use new powers to provide robust scrutiny of the agencies and restore public confidence in what they have been doing.

As the inventor of the global system of inter-connectivity known as the web, with its now ubiquitous www and http, Berners-Lee is uniquely qualified to comment on the internet spying revealed by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In an interview with the Guardian, he expressed particular outrage that GCHQ and the NSA had weakened online security by cracking much of the online encryption on which hundreds of millions of users rely to guard data privacy.

He said the agencies’ decision to break the encryption software was appalling and foolish, as it directly contradicted efforts of the US and UK governments to fight cybercrime and cyberwarfare, which they have identified as a national security priority. Berners-Lee also said it was a betrayal of the technology industry.

In contrast to several senior British politicians – including the prime minister, David Cameron – who have called for the Guardian to be investigated over reporting of the Snowden leaks, Berners-Lee sees the news organisation and Snowden as having acted in the public interest.

“Whistleblowers, and responsible media outlets that work with them, play an important role in society. We need powerful agencies to combat criminal activity online – but any powerful agency needs checks and balances and, based on recent revelations, it seems the current system of checks and balances has failed,” he said.

As the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that seeks to forward global standards for the web, Berners-Lee is a leading authority on the power and the vulnerabilities of the internet.

He said the Guardian’s coverage of the Snowden leaks had to be seen within the context of the failure of oversight of GCHQ’s and the NSA’s surveillance activities. “Here is where whistleblowing and responsible reporting can step in to protect society’s interests.

“It seems clear that the Guardian’s reporting around the scale and scope of state surveillance has been in the public interest and has uncovered many important issues which now need a full and frank public debate.”

Talking in his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Berners-Lee said that though he had anticipated many of the surveillance activities exposed by Snowden, including taps on the internet through the Prism program, he had not been prepared for the scale of the NSA/GCHQ operations. “I didn’t realise it would be so big,” he said.

At worst, such spying could damage the public’s confidence in the intimate privacy of the internet as a free and safe place to interact. “When you take away the safe space, you take away a lot of the power of human problem solving,” he warned.

Berners-Lee will mark the 25th anniversary of his invention of the web next year by campaigning for greater public awareness of threats to the internet and by pushing for a charter that would codify the rights of all its users. As head of the World Wide Web Foundation, on 22 November he will release the 2013 Web Index, which measures the web’s growth, utility and impact across about 80 countries – including indicators on censorship and surveillance.

 Al Gore: Snowden ‘revealed evidence’ of crimes against US constitution

Former US vice-president Al Gore has described the activities of the National Security Agency as “outrageous” and “completely unacceptable” and said whistleblower Edward Snowden has “revealed evidence” of crimes against the US constitution.

Gore, speaking Tuesday night at McGill University in Montreal, said he was in favour of using surveillance to ensure national security, but Snowden’s revelations showed that those measures had gone too far.

“I say that as someone who was a member of the National Security Council working in the White House and getting daily briefings from the CIA,” Gore said, in comments reported by the Canadian Press.

Gore had previously said he believed the practice of the NSA collecting US citizens phone records was unlawful and “not really the American way”, but his comments on Tuesday represent his strongest criticism yet.

Asked about Snowden, the NSA whistleblower whose revelations have been reported extensively by the Guardian, Gore said the leaks had revealed uncovered unconstitutional practices.

“He has revealed evidence of what appears to be crimes against the Constitution of the United States,” Gore said.

Continue ReadingTim Berners-Lee condemns spy agencies as heads face MPs

Revealed: Britain’s ‘secret listening post in the heart of Berlin’

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-britains-secret-listening-post-in-the-heart-of-berlin-8921548.html

Image of GCHQ donught buildingClaims that GCHQ has maintained spying operations even after US pulled out

Concerns were raised tonight that Britain operates a top-secret listening post from its Berlin embassy to eavesdrop on the seat of German power.

Documents leaked by the US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden show that GCHQ is, together with the US and other key partners, operating a network of electronic spy posts from diplomatic buildings around the world, which intercept data in host nations.

An American intercept “nest” on top of its embassy in Berlin – less than 150 metres from Britain’s own diplomatic mission – is believed to have been shut down last week as the US scrambled to limit the damage from revelations that it listened to mobile phone calls made by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But the NSA documents, in conjunction with aerial photographs and information about past spying activities in Germany, suggest that Britain is operating its own covert listening station within a stone’s throw of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, and Ms Merkel’s offices in the Chancellery, using hi-tech equipment housed on the embassy roof.

The potentially toxic allegation that Britain has a listening station in the capital of a close European Union ally will test relations between London and Berlin only days after the row between Germany and the US about its own clandestine activities. Jan Albrecht, an MEP for Germany’s Green Party and a leading campaigner on privacy and data protection, told The Independent: “If GCHQ runs a listening post on the top of the UK’s Berlin embassy, it is clearly targeting politicians and journalists. Do these people pose a threat?

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingRevealed: Britain’s ‘secret listening post in the heart of Berlin’

Google and Yahoo furious at reports NSA secretly taps data centres

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http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/30/google-reports-nsa-secretly-intercepts-data-links

Files obtained from Edward Snowden suggest NSA can collect information sent by fibre optic cable between Google and Yahoo data hubs ‘at will’

google-data-center-street-view
Google and Yahoo, two of the world’s biggest tech companies, reacted angrily to a report on Wednesday that the National Security Agency has secretly intercepted the main communication links that carry their users’ data around the world.

Citing documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials, the Washington Post claimed the agency could collect information “at will” from among hundreds of millions of user accounts.

The documents suggest that the NSA, in partnership with its British counterpart GCHQ, is copying large amounts of data as it flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the worldwide data centers of the Silicon Valley giants. The intelligence activities of the NSA outside the US are subject to fewer legal constraints than its domestic actions.

The story is likely to put further strain on the already difficult relations between the tech firms and Washington. The internet giants are furious about the damage done to their reputation in the wake of Snowden’s revelations.

guardian-sourced-NSA-google-interception

According to a top-secret document cited by the Post dated 9 January 2013, millions of records a day are sent from Yahoo and Google internal networks to NSA data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. The types of information sent ranged from “metadata”, indicating who sent or received emails, the subject line and where and when, to content such as text, audio and video. [edit:  This is discussing data knowingly sent by Google and Yahoo to NSA under the Prism system.]

The Post’s documents state that in the preceding 30 days, field collectors had processed and sent on 181,280,466 new records.

Internet firms go to great lengths to protect their data. But the NSA documents published by the Post appear to boast about their ability to circumvent those protections. In one presentation slide on “Google Cloud Exploitation,” published by the Post, an artist has added a smiley face, in apparent celebration of the NSA’s victory over Google security systems.

The Post said that the interception took place on the cables that connect the internet giants’ data centers. The New York Times reported on Wednesday evening that one of the companies that provides such cables for Google was Level 3. It said in a statement provided to the Times: “We comply with the laws in each country where we operate. In general, governments that seek assistance in law enforcement or security investigations prohibit disclosure of the assistance provided.

The Post said that by collecting the data overseas, the NSA was able to circumvent the legal restrictions that prevent it from accessing the communications of people who live in the United States, and that it fell instead under an executive order, signed by the president, that authorised foreign intelligence operations.

In response, the NSA specifically denied that it used the presidential order to circumvent the restrictions on domestic spying, though the agency said nothing about the rest of the story.

The Independent reports that: The infiltration is striking because the NSA, under a separate programme known as Prism, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingGoogle and Yahoo furious at reports NSA secretly taps data centres

David Cameron makes veiled threat to media over NSA and GCHQ leaks

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/david-cameron-nsa-threat-newspapers-guardian-snowden

Prime minister alludes to courts and D notices and singles out the Guardian over coverage of Edward Snowden saga

Image of David CameronDavid Cameron has called on the Guardian and other newspapers to show “social responsibility” in the reporting of the leaked NSA files to avoid high court injunctions or the use of D notices to prevent the publication of information that could damage national security.

In a statement to MPs on Monday about last week’s European summit in Brussels, where he warned of the dangers of a “lah-di-dah, airy-fairy view” about the dangers of leaks, the prime minister said his preference was to talk to newspapers rather than resort to the courts. But he said it would be difficult to avoid acting if newspapers declined to heed government advice.

The prime minister issued the warning after the Tory MP Julian Smith quoted a report in Monday’s edition of the Sun that said Britain’s intelligence agencies believe details from the NSA files leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden have hampered their work.

The Sun quoted a “top surveillance source” as saying that terrorists have “gone quiet” after the publication of details about NSA and GCHQ operations.

Cameron told MPs: “We have a free press, it’s very important the press feels it is not pre-censored from what it writes and all the rest of it.

“I don’t want to have to use injunctions or D notices or the other tougher measures. I think it’s much better to appeal to newspapers’ sense of social responsibility. But if they don’t demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act.”

Guardian: The NSA files

[I’m surprised that Cameron thinks that censoring the press on these issues is wise. Surely it’s too late for that now? I find it strange that Cameron prefers to pretend that this wholesale and unwarranted spying on whole populations is not happening.]

Continue ReadingDavid Cameron makes veiled threat to media over NSA and GCHQ leaks