Hasta La Gadget!

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.

Filed under: Misc, Sony

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NSA’s information gathering practices have been further detailed in court papers revealed by The Guardian. While the agency has continued to reiterate that it doesn’t collect its data indiscriminately, the leaked papers detail several loopholes that allow it to gather data from both American and foreign origins without the need for a warrant. If you use data encryption or other privacy tools, your communications are likely to receive extra attention, and the agency can indefinitely keep any information assembled for “crypto-analytic, traffic analysis or signal exploitation purposes” — in short, if the NSA believes may be relevant in the future.

One reason to hold onto said files could simply be the fact that the data is encrypted and NSA wants to be able to analyze its protection. The security agency can also give the FBI and other government organizations any data if it contains a significant amount of foreign intelligence, or information about a crime that has (or will be) committed. Any data that’s “inadvertently acquired” through the NSA’s methods — and could potentially contain details of US citizens — can be held for up to five years before it has to be deleted. The Guardian‘s uploaded the leaked papers in full — hit the source links for more.

Filed under: Internet

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Via: The Guardian, Forbes

Source: The Guardian (1), (2)

In the past couple of weeks, the NSA has, unsurprisingly, responded with a series of secret briefings to Congress that have left the public in the dark and vulnerable to misstatements and word games. Congress has many options at its disposal, but for true accountability any response must start with a special investigative committee. A coalition of over 100 civil liberties groups agrees. Such a committee is the right way the American people can make informed decisions about the level of transparency and the reform needed.

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When I was a kid, there was no image more closely associated with surveillance than the CCTV camera. Big Brother is watching, we were warned. The government is keeping tabs on you with video cameras on every street corner. Soon they may even install cameras in your home, they insisted. Honestly, that may have been preferable to what we ended up getting.

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Google and other companies have already made general calls for more transparency in the wake of the PRISM revelations, and it looks like Mountain View is now escalating those requests to a court challenge. As The Washington Post reports, Google is asking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for some additional leeway with the government requests for data that it’s able to disclose, and it’s citing the First Amendment to make its case.

In a statement provided to us (included in full after the break), a Google spokesperson says that the company is specifically asking the court to let it “publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately,” adding that “lumping national security requests together with criminal requests – as some companies have been permitted to do – would be a backward step for our users.” That’s in line with a statement Google made on Friday, which was echoed by Twitter, although there’s no word yet on it or any other companies joining Google in the court challenge at this time.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: The Washington Post