Hasta La Gadget!

The mounting national debt? Yeah, you’re probably better off just ignoring why exactly it’s mounting. The Guardian is continuing the blow the lid off of the whole NSA / PRISM saga, today revealing new documents that detail how the NSA paid out “millions” of dollars to cover PRISM compliance costs for a multitude of monolithic tech outfits. As the story goes, the National Security Agency (hence, tax dollars from American taxpayers) coughed up millions “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.” The likes of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are expressly named, and while Google is still angling for permission to reveal more about its side of the story, other firms have conflicting tales.

For whatever it’s worth, a Yahoo spokesperson seemed a-okay with the whole ordeal, casually noting that this type of behavior is perfectly legal: “Federal law requires the US government to reimburse providers for costs incurred to respond to compulsory legal process imposed by the government. We have requested reimbursement consistent with this law.” Meanwhile, Facebook stated that it had “never received any compensation in connection with responding to a government data request.” Microsoft, as you might imagine, declined to comment, though we heard that Steve Ballmer could be seen in the distance throwing up a peace sign. At any rate, it’s fairly safe to assume that your worst nightmares are indeed a reality, and you may have a far more enjoyable weekend if you just accept the fact that The Man knows everything. Better, right?

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: The Guardian

The neverending Edward Snowden saga is getting some new characters with a new Reuters report that tracks the origins of his secret document-stashing not to the NSA but to former employer Dell Computer. Wait, Dell? What do they have to do with spying? You’d be surprised.

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After the NSA’s top secret spying programs were brought to light, by former CIA technical analyst Edward Snowden, many people are started speaking out against widespread surveillance of online activity. The documents leaked by Snowden reveal programs that are capable of tapping in to Skype audio and video calls, monitoring internet history and even accessing the content of emails. Lavabit, an encrypted email provider that Snowden used, recently shut down because apparently its owner and operator didn’t want to become “complicit in crimes against the American people.” It is believed that rather than comply with a surveillance order, Lavabit chose to shut down. Another secure email provider, Silent Mail, also shut down because it saw the “writing on the wall.” So there’s evidently a void needs to be filled, and that’s where Kim Dotcom’s Mega comes in.

Mega CEO Vikram Kumar says that they have been doing “very hard” work in order to develop a secure email service. He says that since the service is going to be based on true end-to-end encryption, its becoming hard to provide features that users expect from a conventional email provider. Kumar says that they are doing “cutting edge stuff.” Kim Dotcom, the founder of Mega says that the company won’t retain decryption keys for customer accounts, thus making itself unable to read user’s email, and as a result, being unable to comply with a surveillance order. No word as yet on when this encrypted email service will go live.

Mega Developing “Cutting Edge” Encrypted Email Service original content from Ubergizmo.

The NSA, everybody’s favorite opaque government agency, would very much like for a leak like Edward Snowden’s to never happen again, so it’s firing all of the whistleblower’s old colleagues. Well, almost all.

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Last month a string of highly classified documents were leaked by former CIA technical analyst Edward Snowden. Those documents revealed that the UK’s GCHQ was apparently tapping in to undersea fiber optic cables that go through the country for collecting data. At that time it was not known if any telecommunication companies were aiding the program, which is known as Tempora. According to German newspaper Süddeutsche, which claims to have received documents from none other than Edward Snowden, Verizon Wireless allegedly aided the GCHQ’s Tempora program.

Apart from Verizon, four small providers, BT and Vodafone have also been named in the report. The documents are said to be from 2009. Previous information leaked about Tempora reveals that the program is capable of intercepting some 600 million “telephone events” daily, apart from collecting petabytes of internet data. The companies mentioned in the report have declined to comment on this situation. Verizon is one of the biggest providers in the U.S., one can only imagine what it customers would think knowing that their provider is allegedly aiding UK’s eavesdropping efforts. The report claims that data collected through Tempora is shared between GCHQ and US’s very own National Security Agency.

Verizon Wireless Allegedly Aided UK’s Tempora Eavesdropping Program original content from Ubergizmo.