Former CIA and NSA employee source of intelligence leaks

[Iormlund]

[Valmy]

[Maximus]

Anyway, given that what I am currently doing is DARPA and IARPA- funded research on natural language processing this hits a little close.

[11B4V]

(Newser) – All the furor about real-life Big Brother-esque surveillance has a lot of people reaching for the fictional version. As of this morning, Amazon sales of George Orwell's 1984 had jumped 6,021% in 24 hours, NPR reports. The dystopian classic is now No. 164 on the online bookseller's charts. Current events have a way of rippling on sales charts like that. During the 2008 financial crisis, Atlas Shrugged was tearing up the charts. And call us crazy (or maybe thought criminals?), but it reminds us a bit of this musical sales spike.

[citizen k]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/11/cnews-us-usa-security-germany-idCABRE95A0T820130611

Germans accuse U.S. of Stasi tactics before Obama visit
By Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday, potentially casting a cloud over a visit that was designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of the dreaded Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens.

In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports that the United States could access and track virtually all forms of Internet communication were "deeply disconcerting" and potentially dangerous.

"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she said.

"The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the U.S. administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table."

Markus Ferber, a member of Merkel's Bavarian sister party who sits in the European Parliament, went further, accusing Washington of using "American-style Stasi methods".

"I thought this era had ended when the DDR fell," he said, using the German initials for the failed German Democratic Republic.

Opposition parties have jumped on the issue, keen to put a dampener on the Merkel-Obama talks and prevent them from boosting the chancellor as she gears up for a September parliamentary election in which she is seeking a third term.

"This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever," Greens leader Renate Kuenast told Reuters.

TEMPERED ENTHUSIASM

Obama is due to land in Berlin on Tuesday night, hold talks and a news conference with Merkel on Wednesday and then give a speech in front of thousands at the Brandenburg Gate.

It is his first trip to the German capital since he passed through in 2008 during his first campaign for the presidency, giving a speech at the Victory Column in the Tiergarten park that attracted 200,000 adoring fans.

Five years on, Germans are still enamored of Obama: a poll last week showed 82 percent view him favorably.

But his failure to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, extensive use of drones to kill suspected al Qaeda militants and the latest revelations about the secret surveillance program, codenamed PRISM, have tempered enthusiasm.

According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, the program gave U.S. officials access to emails, web chats and other communications from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Skype.

Obama has defended it as a "modest encroachment" on privacy and reassured Americans that no one is listening to their phone calls.

But U.S. law puts virtually no eavesdropping restrictions on the communications of foreigners, meaning in theory that Washington could be delving into the private Internet communications of Germans and other Europeans.

Peter Schaar, the German official with responsibility for data privacy, said this was grounds for "massive concern" in Europe.

"The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance program," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans."

[11B4V]

  Stasi

[grumbler]

No, it is not an imagined unfairness. It is an unfairness. Period. Otherwise the consumer protection law does not apply.  Perhaps that is where you go wrong in your argument.

There are laws that apply to fair use agreements, and they have been enacted by elected legislatures.  Your objection has been noted, and deemed moot, because what you are arguing does not exist does, in fact, exist.

Where you go wrong in your assumptions is that contracts are only valid between "equal" partners.  Most contracts are valid when this is not true.

[Iormlund]

I was taking a look at how US companies operate in europe, and this is what  US-EU Safe Harbor Privacy Pronciples say:


    Notice - Individuals must be informed that their data is being collected and about how it will be used.
    Choice - Individuals must have the ability to opt out of the collection and forward transfer of the data to third parties.
    Onward Transfer - Transfers of data to third parties may only occur to other organizations that follow adequate data protection principles.
    Security - Reasonable efforts must be made to prevent loss of collected information.
    Data Integrity - Data must be relevant and reliable for the purpose it was collected for.
    Access - Individuals must be able to access information held about them, and correct or delete it if it is inaccurate.
    Enforcement - There must be effective means of enforcing these rules.


I don't know how many of those are violated here, but at least Notice, Choice and especially Access seem to fit the bill.

Nothing is going to happen, of course. But seeing how we can't make Apple and their ilk pay taxes on their profits, I'd love to see them bled dry for this.

[Phillip V]

Edward Snowden's girlfriend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQc-_zUq1JI

NSFW

[Iormlund]

10/10 would wiretap

[Sheilbh]

If monopoly status is what defines your indicator for a issue, then surely the cellular phone market is in good shape - I have MANY choices when it comes to what cellular phone I want to purchase.

I find it really interesting that this thread has highlighted what seems to be two real philosophical divisions between Anglophone and continental. I agree entirely with the points made by the Yanks about government intervention and contracts as well as about surveillance.

However this point does interest me because I think there is market abuse in some sectors. In the UK I'm suspicious of the often private monopolies in utilities and would like the government to bust them. And I'm very worried about monopolies in the tech sector - especially companies like Google and Amazon. But I agree that actually the mobile market's in good shape. I'd add that often I think monopolies arise because of over-regulation from government, which benefits large operators who can afford the costs at the detriment of potential competitors.

Two, if I would have to argue for a market faliure I would argue that the consumer cannot make an informed choise regarding the privacy policies for phones and tablets.

Why is it the market's fault if people choose not to inform themselves? I mean if a company is refusing to show them the contract, or they're somehow unable to compare different providers then that's an abuse. But if someone simply doesn't do the research the government shouldn't be intervening to protect people from themselves. They've signed up to an honestly presented contract and that should be enforced not meddled with.

Ok, there you have your argument that invalidates the privacy agreements with tablets and smartphones then.

Not really. The Apple privacy agreement was significantly less convoluted and legalistic than the mobile phone contract with my provider.

I don't necessarily agree with him, but I did see something last night that concerned me a lot about the level of oversight being used. The Feds asked the court for somewhere around 2000 requests to peruse this data last year. And the FISA court approved every single request, without exception.

I think there are legitimate concerns about surveillance here, from a UK legal blogger:

The only part of the Surveillance State which I have first hand experience of is the RIPA regime in the United Kingdom.  Under RIPA, various organs of the UK State can obtain from telecoms company data about users.  This can range from a registered user's name to every piece of information on a customer held by the telecoms company.
You may wonder how may of these requests are made.
They surely would be exceptional.
In fact, in 2010-11 (the latest year where figures are available) there were 494,078 requests.
None of this is hidden from the UK citizen; the figures are published by a "Interception of Communications Commissioner" in plain view.  The figure of 494,078 is at section 7.3 in this report.  But as it is buried in a public report, few really care.  (Wise civil servants know the advantage of dull public disclosure over needless glamorous secrecy.)
This is State appropriation of user data on an industrial scale.  As it is only data (and not interceptions) then no warrant is required, just a signed certificate.  The information is usually provided on the nod.  And the provision of such information can be crucial: the police obtaining data about a caller on a suddenly aborted 999 call can mean the difference between life and death.  However, such purposes do not account for all the requests, and there is little in place to prevent abuse.

Clearly this Prism-system is a massive, systematic breach of integrity of those affected by it.

Doesn't seem at all clear to me. As I say I think Prism seems proportionate and justifiable, based on what we know so far.

The information on Prism is vague so I suppose some paranoia is explicable.

Yeah, as I say, from what's come out so far I'm not entirely sure this all needed to be secret.

Fox is reporting the ACLU has filed suit.

God bless the ACLU

[KRonn]

I don't trust the government with this info on all citizens. Especially after IRS-gate, Justice Dept targeting of journalists and more.

When Bush was President Obama and Biden, and many on the left railed against this. Now after Obama has doubled down on it and strengthened it, those same people are for it. At first I was guardedly for it, waiting to find out more. During and after Bush years I became wary of it and wanted some reforms done. Parts of the Patriot Act are needed but it may go too far.

I don't want any President or his administration's leaders to have access to this info. There were laws against what the IRS did, targeting groups and especially giving info to groups on their opposition.

Who's to say that this info won't be done the same sometime? Get the phone number of a political opponent, credit cards, web info and see where he/she has gone, and turn something up to give to opposition groups to use as coercion. Same as the IRS did.

Intelligence Chief James Clapper is now under fire for possible untruthful answers to Congress. This goes on and on, untruths, half lies, the "I know nothing", "we only just learned about it". It's nuts, and this is our government.

So no, I no longer trust the government with so much info. Just collecting info of all kinds. I heard on the news that the courts received twenty thousand requests on the info and only a few were denied.
Just waiting for more on this to come out but we won't get the truth from anyone involved. They all lie, obfuscate.

This isn't about Obama. The next President could be Republican and I'd be just as wary of them having so much power.

[alfred russel]

A serious problem with people's ability to sign away their privacy rights is that it is almost there is now an electronic fingerprint to almost everything someone does. My cell phone tracks where I am, who I call, and my internet search history. My ATM card and credit cards track my purchase histories. Add in amazon, facebook, twitter, bill pay services, my banking history, ebay, investment companies, etc. and it won't take much to figure out what I am doing almost every day of my life.

I'm a boring and unimportant person, so if anyone that wants to go through all that data can knock themselves out (so long as they aren't interested in identity theft). But it would be very important to many people, and despite being probably more sophisticated than most people have no idea how to keep from generating so many fingerprints. I imagine it would be disruptive to one's life to try to do so.

[sbr]

Who's to say that this info won't be done the same sometime? Get the phone number of a political opponent, credit cards, web info and see where he/she has gone, and turn something up to give to opposition groups to use as coercion. Same as the IRS did.

I must have missed this part of the IRS story, could you elaborate?

[Neil]

Why is "accept or log out" by definition unfair?

Why is "accept that your doctor or lawyer can sell your data or go without healthcare or legal counsel" by definition unfair?

If my doctor wanted to sell my data, I would find another doctor. So these is a classic false dilemma - there is not "go without healthcare" repercussion.

Oh dear, allowing me to make a choice! Can't have that! I might make the wrong one!

And when all doctors decide to sell your data, because after all it is free money, then you can always choose to forgo healthcare, right?