Aug 01
Edward Snowden—the former NSA contractor who revealed
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Aug 01
Edward Snowden has finally escaped his month-long Moscow airport purgatory and arrived in Russian territory, according to the Associated Press. The NSA whistleblower had already been granted temporary asylum by the Putin-led government after Bolivia and Venezuela also offered to take the fugitive, and was awaiting paperwork in order to leave Sheremetyevo Airport. The NSA’s arch-enemy will be granted a year’s stay, according to his Russian lawyer, and will be able to re-apply to remain after that. Now that his Russian residency has been established, most press outlets expect a strong reaction from the US government after it assured Moscow that Snowden wouldn’t face the death penalty if deported. For its part, Russia said it has no intention of handing over the man who blew the lid off the pervasive PRISM monitoring program.
Filed under: Misc
Source: AP (Twitter), WSJ
Jul 31
The Daily Roundup for 07.31.2013
Posted in: Today's Chili
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Jul 31
Michele Catalano, a writer for Forbes, Boing Boing, and other publications, received a friendly visit from the FBI at her home today, which according to her Twitter profile is in Long Island, NY.
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Jul 31
By now you might have heard of NSA’s data collection programs. The leaks started over a month ago when a former CIA technical analyst, Edward Snowden, leaked documents pertaining to NSA’s PRISM program. We then saw documents related to NSA’s Boundless Informant tool. Snowden has now leaked a cache of documents about yet another program of the National Security Agency, a program that allows it to collect “nearly everything” an individual does on the internet. The program is called XKeyscore, and according to an alleged NSA document, its the agency’s “widest reaching” program.
Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | XKeyscore Is NSA’s “Widest Reaching” Program For Collecting Data Online original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Jul 31
Just when you thought the scale of the NSA’s surveillance programs couldn’t get more superlative, new details about a special software suite show that analysts can access "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet." If it uses HTTP, the NSA can get it.
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Jul 31
Today brings another victory for transparency as the US government has just declassified three documents pursuant to the collection of telephonic metadata authorized by section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. The documents, released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, include the 2009 and 2011 reports concerning the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act as well as the order for business record collection. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the subject, NSA Deputy Director John Inglis made public for the first time the mechanism for accessing the metadata at the government’s disposal. According to Inglis, telephonic information — which does not include names, addresses, or social security numbers — exists in databases but cannot be accessed without reasonable suspicion of association with terrorists. Deputy Attorney General James Cole went on to say, “Nobody is listening to anybody’s conversations.” This revelation might be cold comfort to those concerned about the government’s ownership of this data to begin with, but it does pull back the curtain somewhat on the NSA’s policies and procedures. To read these declassified — and heavily redacted — documents in full, head on over to the source link below.
Filed under: Misc
Jul 31
The Guardian: NSA’s XKeyscore tool is its ‘widest reaching’ system for collecting online data
Posted in: Today's Chili
Edward Snowden has said that he still has more information about the NSA than what he’s already leaked, and we’re now getting a look at another big piece of that. According to a new set of documents provided to The Guardian, the NSA is using a tool called XKeyscore that is said to be its “widest reaching” system for collecting information from the internet — one that lets it examine “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet,” as one presentation slide explains. That apparently includes both metadata and the contents of emails, as well as social media activity, which can reportedly be accessed by NSA analysts without prior authorization; as The Guardian notes, a FISA warrant is required if the target of the surveillance is a US citizen, but not if a foreign target is communicating with an American.
According to The Guardian, the amount of data collected is so large that content is only able to stored in the system for three to five days, or as little as 24 hours in some cases, while metadata is stored for 30 days. That’s reportedly led the NSA to develop a multi-tiered system that lets it move what’s described as “interesting” content to other databases where it can be stored for as much as five years. In a statement provided to The Guardian, the NSA says that “XKeyscore is used as a part of NSA’s lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system,” and that “allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA’s analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks.” The agency further adds that “every search by an NSA analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law.”
Filed under: Internet
Source: The Guardian, NSA
Jul 25
Real life privacy is an easy thing to understand. Don’t peek into my windows! Don’t put up surveillance cameras on every corner! Don’t tap my phone calls! But what about online privacy? What should the government (ahem, NSA) be able to know about us? How much data should companies give them? And just how the heck did we get here with online privacy?
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Jul 25
An amendment designed to stop the NSA from collecting phone records of millions of Americans has been narrowly defeated, 205 votes to 217, in the House of Representatives.
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