Washington’s Blog | 24 May 2015 American spy agencies have intentionally weakened digital security for many decades. This breaks the functionality of our computers and of the Internet. It reduces functionality and reduces security by – for example – creating backdoors that malicious hackers can get through. The spy agencies have treated patriotic Americans who want…
Converge | May 19, 2015 Poor John Key. It must be hard for a Prime Minister to keep up a far-fetched façade for as long as John Key has in denying GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau) involvement in mass surveillance of New Zealanders. Confusing and confounding the public with smelly red herrings is a normal part…
NewZealandHerald / DominionPost | May 21 2015 Herald story triggers look at agency’s role in minister’s bid for top world trade job + Is it a whitewash from the outset? A new inquiry into NZ’s electronic surveillance service is being started as the country’s intelligence watchdog tries to find out if it makes good decisions about…
The Anti Media | 14 May 2015 The US Surveillance State is scrambling to save itself in the wake of a federal ruling that declared the bulk collection of metadata under a provision of the Patriot Act, which is set to expire on June 1, illegal . But the reason for so many ‘experts’ touting…
Stanford Daily | 18 May 2015 ‘If I Had Taken [the NSA] Documents to Congress, I Would’ve Gone to Jail’ Edward Snowden, former NSA infrastructure analyst turned whistleblower, spoke on May 15 to Cubberley Auditorium to discuss the philosophical tensions of whistleblowing and government surveillance. The 2015 Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker, Snowden spoke via video…
Common Dreams | May 21, 2015 The ‘Five Eyes’ alliance exploited weaknesses in popular browser and planned to hijack links to app stores to implant spyware on mobile phones, new documents show The intelligence alliance known as Five Eyes—comprising the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Australia—exploited security weaknesses in one of the world’s…
Boing Boing | 18 May 2015 Over the weekend, the US government announced that special forces soldiers entered Syria to conduct a raid that killed an alleged leader of ISIS, Abu Sayyaf. In the process, anonymous US officials leaked classified information to the New York Times that’s much more sensitive than anything Edward Snowden ever…
NZ Herald | 18 May 2015 A reality television show similar to Border Patrol would show Kiwis they have nothing to fear from the country’s domestic intelligence agency, its director says. Rebecca Kitteridge, director of the Security Intelligence Service, made her comments during an address to a privacy and identity conference in Wellington. Such a…
Glenn Greenwald | 14 May 2015 We learned recently from Paris that the Western world is deeply and passionately committed to free expression and ready to march and fight against attempts to suppress it. That’s a really good thing, since there are all sorts of severe suppression efforts underway in the West — perpetrated not by…
Future of Freedom Foundation | 12 May 2015 After Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s secret mass surveillance scheme to the American people and the world, there have been those who consider what he did to be treasonous rather than patriotic. That adverse reaction to what Snowden did is a perfect example of how the national-security…