Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 7

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Battle brews as tech companies attempt to fend off NSA hacking

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The NSA allegedly gathered millions of records from Google and Yahoo data centers around the world, but soon, the agency might have a much harder time trying to collect this type of data.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, and other prominent technology companies are investing heavily in stronger, 2048-bit encryption. Due to computing power constraints, it's expected to be more than a decade before this type of encryption can be easily overcome.

Google, one of the leaders in the effort, announced in May that it would switch over to 2,048-bit encryption keys by the end of 2013. Yahoo recently confirmed to Bloomberg, which spoke with several tech companies that are investing in new encryption, that it will make 2048-bit encryption standard by January 2014 for all its Mail users. Facebook also plans to move to 2048-bit encryption, a spokeswoman told Bloomberg, and will roll out "perfect forward secrecy," a feature that prevents snoopers from accessing user data even if they can access the company's security codes.

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UK's reputation is damaged by reaction to Edward Snowden, says UN official

Special rapporteur on freedom of expression says he is alarmed at political response to revelations of mass surveillance

A senior United Nations official responsible for freedom of expression has warned that the British government's response to the mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is doing serious damage to the UK's international reputation for investigative journalism and press freedom.

Frank La Rue, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, said he was alarmed at the political reaction following the revelations about the extent and reach of secret surveillance programmes run by Britain's eavesdropping centre, GCHQ, and its US counterpart, the National Security Agency (NSA).

"I have been absolutely shocked about the way the Guardian has been treated, from the idea of prosecution to the fact that some members of parliament even called it treason," said La Rue. "I think that is unacceptable in a democratic society."

La Rue's intervention comes as a delegation of the world's leading editors and publishers prepares for a "press freedom mission" to the UK to raise their own concerns about the British government's position.

Organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), the delegation will arrive in January and include publishers and editors from five continents. WAN-IFRA says the mission is the first of its kind to the UK and has been prompted by growing concerns about UK government interference in press regulation and the political pressure on the Guardian. The delegation is expected to meet government and opposition leaders, press industry figures and civil society organisations.

"We are concerned that these actions not only seriously damage the United Kingdom's historic international reputation as a staunch defender of press freedom, but provide encouragement to non-democratic regimes to justify their own repressive actions," said Vincent Peyrègne, chief executive of the Paris-based WAN-IFRA.

The Guardian, and major media organisations in other countries, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, began disclosing details of the extent and reach of secret surveillance programmes run by GCHQ and the NSA in June.

The articles have sparked a global debate on the scale and oversight of surveillance by the US and UK intelligence agencies. However, in the UK there has been growing political pressure on the Guardian, with calls for it to be prosecuted, a decision to call the editor, Alan Rusbridger, to give evidence to the home affairs select committee and a warning from David Cameron that he would take "tougher measures" against the newspaper unless it demonstrated "some social responsibility".

On Friday the New York Times voiced its concern over the political climate in the UK. In an editorial entitled "British press freedom under threat" it stated: "Britain has a long tradition of a free, inquisitive press. That freedom, so essential to democratic accountability, is being challenged by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron."

It pointed out that unlike the US, Britain has no constitutional guarantee of press freedom. "Parliamentary committees and the police are now exploiting that lack of protection to harass, intimidate and possibly prosecute the Guardian newspaper for its publication of information based on National Security Agency documents that were leaked by Edward Snowden … The global debate now taking place about intelligence agencies collecting information on the phone calls, emails and internet use of private citizens owes much to the Guardian's intrepid journalism. In a free society, the price for printing uncomfortable truths should not be parliamentary and criminal inquisition."

In an interview with the Guardian La Rue said the political fallout in the UK was unacceptable.

"When you are in public office you understand that the role of the press is to investigate things that are done right or things that are done wrong and make it known to the public. And if you are in office you know that you come under public scrutiny and public scrutiny comes with public criticism and you cannot use national security as an argument and much less challenge as treason something that is informing the public, even if it is embarrassing information for those that are in office."

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Britse geheime dienst bespioneert hotels

De Britse geheime dienst GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) houdt elke dag in de hele wereld reserveringen in hotels in de gaten waar doorgaans veel hoge regeringsfunctionarissen of diplomaten komen. De reserveringssystemen worden bespied met het programma 'Koninklijke Conciërge'. Dit blijkt zondag volgens het Duitse weekblad Der Spiegel uit publicaties van de Amerikaanse 'klokkenluider' Edward Snowden.

Van minstens 350 hotels weet GCHQ wie er wanneer verblijven. Dat kan aanleiding zijn om telefoons of computers in de betreffende hotelkamers af te luisteren of spionnen naar het hotel in kwestie te sturen.

Systeembeheerder Snowden heeft een schat aan vertrouwelijke informatie gestolen bij zijn voormalige werkgever, de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA (National Security Agency). Hij doet sindsdien boekjes open over de omvangrijke en technisch geraffineerde wijze waarop de Amerikaanse en Britse geheime diensten communicatie bespioneren en in kaart brengen.

Diplomatieke rel
De Brits-Amerikaanse spionage leverde een diplomatieke rel op toen uitlekte dat ook regeringsleiders, onder wie de Duitse bondskanselier Angela Merkel, zijn afgeluisterd door de NSA. De Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken John Kerry hoopt die schade snel te repareren.

Volgens Der Spiegel wil Kerry naar Berlijn komen zodra de nieuwe Duitse regering geïnstalleerd is. Hij hoopt een 'renaissance' in de transatlantische betrekkingen te realiseren. President Barack Obama beloofde eerder al dat Merkel niet afgeluisterd wordt of zal worden. Over spionage in het verleden liet hij zich niet uit.

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Grilling of spy chiefs ‘a total pantomime’

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AN UNPRECEDENTED public appearance by UK spy chiefs has been labelled a “total pantomime” after it emerged that they were told of questions in advance.

A private deal was struck with the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to ensure they did not face any surprises when they were grilled before an audience, sources close to Westminster’s secretive intelligence and security committee (ISC) have revealed.

The agreement followed a year of delicate negotiations and was a condition for the three spy bosses to subject themselves to public cross- examination.

The disclosure explains the apparently “soft” line of questioning during the hearing and why there were relatively few revelations. Some MPs on the committee believe the meticulous choreography and scripted questions were a reasonable price for securing cooperation from the three agency's for the 90-minute televised session.

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Yahoo to add encryption to all services in wake of NSA spying revelations

CEO Marissa Mayer moves to calm privacy fears after reports US spy agency gained access to Google and Yahoo data centres

Yahoo will add encryption to all its products by spring 2014, chief Marissa Mayer has announced, in a bid to tackle users’ privacy fears in the wake of reports that the National Security Agency had accessed the tech firm's data centres.

In a blogpost on Monday, Mayer said: “We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it. As you know, there have been a number of reports over the last six months about the US government secretly accessing user data without the knowledge of tech companies, including Yahoo.

“I want to reiterate what we have said in the past: Yahoo has never given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency. Ever. There is nothing more important to us than protecting our users’ privacy.”

Mayer’s move comes after the Washington Post reported last month that the NSA had broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centres around the world.

According to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials, the NSA, in partnership with its British counterpart GCHQ, has been copying large amounts of data as it flows across fibre-optic cables that carry information between the companies’ worldwide data centres.

After the story broke, Yahoo said government attempts to circumvent its online security systems offered “substantial potential for abuse”. Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, called the news “really outrageous”.

Yahoo recently announced it was beefing up security on its email service by introducing https (SSL – Secure Sockets Layer) encryption with a 2048-bit key across its network by 8 January 2014.

The company said it would now:

Encrypt all information that moves between its data centers by the end of the first quarter of 2014;

Offer users an option to encrypt all data flow to/from Yahoo by the end of Q1 2014;

Work closely with international partners to ensure that Yahoo co-branded mail accounts are https-enabled.

Google too is racing to encrypt its data. Executives at the tech giant refer to an “arms race” with US authorities and others who want unauthorised access to its users’ data. Executives say the company has been improving and extending its encryption of data since the Snowden stories first broke, doubling the length of its digital keys and implementing new measures to detect fraudulent attempts to access its information.

Similar moves to add greater encryption and other security measures are under way at Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. All the tech giants feel that their reputations have been damaged by the Snowden leaks and insist that they never hand over information to the NSA without a legal order.

The tech firms are currently lobbying to be allowed to make more disclosures about the number of NSA orders they receive. Currently those orders are dealt with under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the companies are gagged from disclosing details.

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Surveillance technology out of control, says Lord Ashdown

Former Lib Dem leader says it is time for high-level inquiry to address fundamental questions about privacy in 21st century

The technology used by Britain's spy agencies to conduct mass surveillance is "out of control", raising fears about the erosion of civil liberties at a time of diminished trust in the intelligence services, according to the former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown.

The peer said it was time for a high-level inquiry to address fundamental questions about privacy in the 21st century, and railed against "lazy politicians" who frighten people into thinking "al-Qaida is about to jump out from behind every bush and therefore it is legitimate to forget about civil liberties". "Well it isn't," he added.

Ashdown talks frequently to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and is chair of the the Liberal Democrats' general election team. Though he said he was speaking for himself, his views are understood to be shared by other senior members of the Liberal Democrats in government, who are also keen for some kind of broad inquiry into the subject.

This idea is also supported by Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ. He told the Guardian he was in favour of an inquiry and thought it would be wrong to "dismiss the idea of a royal commission out of hand". It was important to balance the need for the agencies to have powerful capabilities, and the necessity of ensuring they did not use them in a way parliament had not intended, Omand added.

Ashdown is the latest senior politician to demand a review of the powers of Britain's intelligence agencies – GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – and the laws and oversight which underpin their activities.

In an interview with the Guardian, Ashdown said surveillance should only be conducted against specific targets when there was evidence against them. Dragnet surveillance was unacceptable, he added.

Ashdown made clear revelations in the Guardian about GCHQ and its American counterpart, the National Security Agency, had raised important issues that "could not be ignored or swept aside in a barrage of insults".

He also criticised the Labour party, which was in power when the agencies began testing and building many of their most powerful surveillance capabilities. Labour's former home secretary Jack Straw was responsible for introducing the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act 2000 (Ripa), which made the programmes legal.

"Ripa was a disgraceful piece of legislation," Ashdown said. "Nobody put any thought into it. Labour just took the words they were given by the intelligence agencies. I don't blame the intelligence agencies.

"We charge them with the very serious business of keeping us secure and of course they want to have powers. But it's the duty of government to ensure those powers don't destroy our liberties and Labour utterly failed to do this."

One consequence of Labour's negligence was the development of surveillance techniques that could damage civil liberties and erode privacy, said Ashdown.

He said that he was "frightened by the erosion of our liberties" and while accepting that there was a need to keep the nation safe it was the "habit of politicians who are lazy about the preservation of our liberties or don't mind seeing them destroyed, to play an old game.

"They tell frightened citizens: 'If you give me some of your liberties, I will make you safer'".

Ashdown said that as a young man in 1960s he was taken to a vast Post Office shed in central London where spies were steaming open letters. Recalling being met by "a deep fog of steam" after entering the room, he said that the place was "filled with diligent men and women, each with a boiling kettle on their desk, steaming open letters". It was appropriate for the state to intervene in the private communications of its citizens, but the peer added "only in cases where there is good evidence to believe the nation's security is being threatened, or arguably, when a really serious crime has been committed".

The former party leader said that intercepting communications needed to be "targeted on an individual and not classes of individuals or, as at the moment, the whole nation" and argued that ought to be sanctioned by a third-party, preferably by a judge, or if not a member of the cabinet.

Ashdown said he did not believe Britain's intelligence agencies were out of control, but he said the same was not true of technology.

"We need a proper inquiry to decide what liberties and privacies ought to be accorded in the new interconnected world, and what powers of intrusion ought to be given to the state. The old laws that applied in the age of the steaming kettle will no longer do. The old protections are no longer good enough," he said.

Ashdown said the Guardian's reporting of the NSA files had been "helpful because it had raised this important issue to the point where sensible people understand this inquiry is now necessary".

An inquiry also needed to be set in the context of people's privacy expectations, he added, noting: "People today seem more casual about their privacy than they used to be. They don't seem to mind when their privacy is breached when they use Google, Facebook and other social media."

He added that he hoped this had not "changed the public's attitude towards the state's power to intrude into their privacy" but argued this was the fundamental question that needed to be addressed.

Ashdown said he thought the agencies would welcome an inquiry too, saying that they "recognise the mechanisms are no longer sufficient" and he doubted whether such an exercise would be "inimical to the heads of the secret services".

The Lib Dem also dismissed the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkind, which is supposed to scrutinise the agencies.

He said that it was an institution "wholly incapable of coping" with the new circumstances.

Although he was careful to be respectful of its Conservative chair, Ashdown argued that "we are no longer in the age when a grandee's emollient words are enough to assure us that our liberties are safe" and concluded that the committee was "past its time".

Ashdown defended the Guardian's reporting of the issues over the last five months, and the paper's right to publish material that it deemed in the public interest.

He said: "I am not going to back every single thing the Guardian has done. But overall, in my view, the Guardian has done a very important in job exposing a really important issue that must now be properly considered."

But he also criticised Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked files to the Guardian, the Washington Post and Der Spiegel.

"When Snowden first broke cover, I had quite a lot of admiration for him. Here was a whistleblower breaking surface on an issue that is certainly important. But I have to say that the way he has behaved since has diminished that admiration enormously. It seems to me this is becoming more about vanity."

Meanwhile, Omand said the ISC had to be given a chance to review the work of the agencies in an inquiry that it announced last month.

"Much now depends first upon the ISC and whether their latest inquiry can rise above the current clamour to a calm and dispassionate examination of the capabilities needed to keep our people safe and secure, and at the same time, how public confidence can be maintained that under no circumstances could these powerful capabilities be used in ways that parliament did not intend."

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Fisa court order that allowed NSA surveillance is revealed for first time

Fisa court judge who authorised massive tapping of metadata was hesitant but felt she could not stand in the way

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A secret court order that authorised a massive trawl by the National Security Agency of Americans' email and internet data was published for the first time on Monday night, among a trove of documents that also revealed a judge's concern that the NSA "continuously" and "systematically" violated the limits placed on the program.

The order by the Fisa court, almost certainly its first ruling on the controversial program and published only in heavily redacted form, shows that it granted permisson for the trawl in part beacause of the type of devices used for the surveillance. Even the judge approving the spying called it a “novel use” of government authorities.

Another later court order found that what it called "systemic overcollection" had taken place.

Transparency lawsuits brought by civil liberties groups compelled the US spy agencies on Monday night to shed new light on the highly controversial program, whose discontinuation in 2011 for unclear reasons was first reported by the Guardian based on leaks by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In a heavily redacted opinion Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the former presiding judge of the Fisa court, placed legal weight on the methods of surveillance employed by the NSA, which had never before collected the internet data of “an enormous volume of communications”.

The methods, known as pen registers and trap-and-trace devices, record the incoming and outgoing routing information of communications – traditionally phone calls made between individual users. Kollar-Kotelly ruled that acquiring the metadata, and not the content, of email and internet usage in bulk was harmonious with the “purpose” of Congress and prior court rulings – even though no surveillance statute ever authorized it and top officials at the justice department and the FBI threatened to resign in 2004 over what they considered its dubious legality.

“The court recognizes that, by concluding that these definitions do not restrict the use of pen registers or trap-and-trace devices to communication facilities associated with individual users, it is finding that these definitions encompass an exceptionally broad form of collection,” wrote Kollar-Kotelly in an opinion whose date is redacted.

The type of data collected under the program included information on the "to", "from" and "bcc" lines of an email rather than the content. According to the government’s declaration to Kollar-Kotelly the NSA would keep the internet metadata “online” and available to analysts to search through for 18 months, after which it would be stored in an “‘offline’ tape system” available to relatively few officials. It would have to be destroyed four and a half years after initial collection.

Metadata, wrote Kollar-Kotelly, enjoyed no protection under the fourth amendment to the US constitution, a precedent established by the supreme court in 1979 in a single case on which the NSA relies currently.

Still, Kollar-Kotelly conceded that she was blessing “a novel use of statutory authorities for pen register/trap and trace surveillance”.

While at times Kollar-Kotelly appeared in her ruling to be hesitant about granting NSA broad authorities to collect Americans’ internet metadata, “deference”, she wrote, “should be given to the fully considered judgment of the executive branch in assessing and responding to national security threats and in determining the potential significance of intelligence-related information.”

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Repeated attacks hijack huge chunks of Internet traffic, researchers warn

Huge chunks of Internet traffic belonging to financial institutions, government agencies, and network service providers have repeatedly been diverted to distant locations under unexplained circumstances that are stoking suspicions the traffic may be surreptitiously monitored or modified before being passed along to its final destination.

Researchers from network intelligence firm Renesys made that sobering assessment in a blog post published Tuesday. Since February, they have observed 38 distinct events in which large blocks of traffic have been improperly redirected to routers at Belarusian or Icelandic service providers. The hacks, which exploit implicit trust placed in the border gateway protocol used to exchange data between large service providers, affected "major financial institutions, governments, and network service providers" in the US, South Korea, Germany, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Libya, and Iran.

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Exclusive: Inside America's Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere

The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable.

The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network. The stakes are high, particularly in Washington -- which is seeking to contain an international backlash against NSA spying -- and in Brasilia, where Brazilian President Dilma Roussef is personally involved in monitoring the U.N. negotiations.

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Meet the Spies Doing the NSA's Dirty Work

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When the media and members of Congress say the NSA spies on Americans, what they really mean is that the FBI helps the NSA do it, providing a technical and legal infrastructure that permits the NSA, which by law collects foreign intelligence, to operate on U.S. soil. It's the FBI, a domestic U.S. law enforcement agency, that collects digital information from at least nine American technology companies as part of the NSA's Prism system. It was the FBI that petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to order Verizon Business Network Services, one of the United States' biggest telecom carriers for corporations, to hand over the call records of millions of its customers to the NSA.

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NSA infected 50,000 computer networks with malicious software

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The American intelligence service - NSA - infected more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide with malicious software designed to steal sensitive information. Documents provided by former NSA-employee Edward Snowden and seen by this newspaper, prove this.

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NRC: NSA kijkt in 50.000 netwerken

_{zaterdag 23 nov 2013, 03:43 (Update: 23-11-13, 08:30)}

De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA heeft wereldwijd 50.000 computernetwerken besmet. Dat blijkt uit een geheime presentatie van de dienst, schrijft NRC Handelsblad. De krant heeft documenten ingezien van NSA-klokkenluider Edward Snowden.

Dat de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst buitenlandse computersystemen infiltreerde was al langer bekend. De NSA installeert in het geheim kwaadaardige software, zogenoemde malware, op computersystemen. Zo kan op grote schaal vertrouwelijke informatie worden weggesluisd.

85.000
De operatie draagt de codenaam GENIE. De Amerikaanse krant Washington Post meldde in augustus dat het aantal besmette netwerken in 2008 20.000 bedroeg.

Nu blijkt dus uit de niet eerder door Snowden openbaar gemaakte presentatie dat het aantal al meer dan verdubbeld is. Volgens de documenten die de NRC heeft ingezien moet het aantal computernetwerken waar de NSA mee kan kijken binnen een paar jaar zijn uitgegroeid naar 85.000.

Hackers
De operaties worden uitgevoerd door honderden hackers van een speciale NSA-eenheid. Niet alleen kan informatie worden weggesluisd, ook kan met de schadelijke software cyberaanvallen worden uitgevoerd.

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The persecution of Barrett Brown - and how to fight it

The journalist and Anonymous activist is targeted as part of a broad effort to deter and punish internet freedom activism

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Aaron's Swartz's suicide in January triggered waves of indignation, and rightly so. He faced multiple felony counts and years in prison for what were, at worst, trivial transgressions of law. But his prosecution revealed the excess of both anti-hacking criminal statutes, particularly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and the fixation of federal prosecutors on severely punishing all forms of activism that challenge the power of the government and related entities to control the flow of information on the internet. Part of what drove the intense reaction to Swartz's death was how sympathetic of a figure he was, but as noted by Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor in the DOJ's computer crimes unit and now a law professor at GWU, what was done to Swartz is anything but unusual, and the reaction to his death will be meaningful only if channeled to protest other similar cases of prosecutorial abuse:

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But the work central to his prosecution began in 2009, when Brown created Project PM, "dedicated to investigating private government contractors working in the secretive fields of cybersecurity, intelligence and surveillance." Brown was then moved by the 2010 disclosures by WikiLeaks and the oppressive treatment of Bradley Manning to devote himself to online activism and transparency projects, including working with the hacktivist collective Anonymous. He has no hacking skills, but used his media savvy to help promote and defend the group, and was often referred to (incorrectly, he insists) as the Anonymous spokesman. He was particularly interested in using what Anonymous leaked for his journalism. As Brown told me several days ago in a telephone interview from the Texan prison where he is being held pending trial, he devoted almost all of his waking hours over the last several years to using these documents to dig into the secret relationships and projects between these intelligence firms and federal agencies.

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N.S.A. May Have Penetrated Internet Cable Links

SAN FRANCISCO — The recent revelation that the National Security Agency was able to eavesdrop on the communications of Google and Yahoo users without breaking into either companies’ data centers sounded like something pulled from a Robert Ludlum spy thriller.

How on earth, the companies asked, did the N.S.A. get their data without them knowing about it?

The most likely answer is a modern spin on a century-old eavesdropping tradition.

People knowledgeable about Google and Yahoo’s infrastructure say they believe that government spies bypassed the big Internet companies and hit them at a weak spot — the fiber-optic cables that connect data centers around the world that are owned by companies like Verizon Communications, the BT Group, the Vodafone Group and Level 3 Communications. In particular, fingers have been pointed at Level 3, the world’s largest so-called Internet backbone provider, whose cables are used by Google and Yahoo.

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NSA surveillance: Europe threatens to freeze US data-sharing arrangements

After Edward Snowden revelations, EU executive underlines US compliance with European law and 'how things have gone badly'

The EU executive is threatening to freeze crucial data-sharing arrangements with the US because of the Edward Snowden revelations about the mass surveillance of the National Security Agency.

The US will have to adjust their surveillance activities to comply with EU law and enable legal redress in the US courts for Europeans whose rights may have been infringed, said Viviane Reding, the EU's justice and rights commissioner who is negotiating with the US on the fallout from the NSA scandal.

European businesses need to compete on a level playing field with US rivals, Reding told the Guardian.

The EU commissioner said there was little she or Brussels could do about the activities of the NSA's main partner in mass surveillance, Britain's General Communications Headquarters or GCHQ, since secret services in the EU were the strict remit of national governments. The commission has demanded but failed to obtain detailed information from the British government on how UK surveillance practices are affecting other EU citizens.

"I have direct competence in law enforcement but not in secret services. That remains with the member states. In general, secret services are national," said the commissioner, from Luxembourg.

As a result of the Snowden disclosures, the EU has reviewed existing data-sharing agreements with the Americans concerning commercial swaps between US and European companies, information traded aimed at suppressing international terrorist funding, and the supply of information on transatlantic air passengers. It is also rethinking ongoing negotiations over exchanging data with the Americans on judicial and police co-operation. And it is drafting new Europe-wide data protection rules requiring US internet companies operating in the EU to obtain permission to transfer data to the US and to restrict US intelligence access to it.

Pressing the Americans in negotiations in Washington last week, Reding was unable to obtain US figures on the scale of the US surveillance of Europeans.

The commercial data exchange, known as "Safe Harbor", was found to be flawed.

"The commission will underline that things have gone very badly indeed. Our analysis is Safe Harbor seems not to be safe. We're asking the US not just to speak, but to act," Reding said. "There is always a possibility to scrap Safe Harbor … It's important that these recommendations are acted on by the US side by summer 2014. Next summer is a Damocles sword. It's a real to-do list. Enforcement is absolutely critical. Safe Harbor cannot be only an empty shell."

The commission is to come forward on Wednesday with a set of recommendations addressing the risks exposed by Snowden. The package was agreed in Brussels on Monday, said senior officials, but is opposed by Britain's representative in the commission, Lady Ashton.

The Snowden disclosures are "a wake-up call for the EU and its member states to advance swiftly on data protection reform", the commission is expected to say."The question has arisen whether the large-scale collection and processing of personal information under US surveillance programmes is necessary and proportionate to meet the interests of national security … EU citizens do not enjoy the same rights and procedural safeguards as Americans."

Reding stressed that US concessions on legal redress were central to Brussels' demands. American citizens in Europe can go to the courts if they feel their rights are infringed. Europeans without right of residence in America may not.

"For two years I have asked for reciprocity," said Reding. "I couldn't get that. It needs a change of [US] legislation and the administration has always told me they couldn't get that through."

Senior EU officials are cautiously confident that the Obama administration realises the damage done to transatlantic trust by the Snowden leaks and that it will act to assuage some of the EU concerns.

"The US tone has changed," said a senior official present at the Washington negotiations last week. "The Americans were always stonewalling. Now the cat is out of the bag. We are seeing movement."

US flexibility contrasted with outright British hostility to EU moves to reinforce privacy rights, the officials said. The new EU rules being drafted on data protection were opposed openly "150%" by the British, said another senior official. "There's nothing new here."

But the Germans were also opposed, arguing that the new regime was not strict enough. The Scandinavians and some east Europeans also had some reservations about new data privacy rules from Brussels, suggesting they will have trouble surviving in current form.

The aim is to get the new regulations through the legislative cycle by next May, but that looks unlikely.

Cecilia Malmström, the commissioner for home affairs, is to declare on Wednesday that the onus is on Washington to come clean about the Snowden disclosures.

"Serious concerns still remain following the revelations," she will say. "If the US wants to overcome current tensions, they need to shed full light on these allegations. Our co-operation with the US in the fight against terrorism has been put into question by the NSA revelations."

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Guardian will not be intimidated over NSA leaks, Alan Rusbridger tells MPs

Editor tells parliamentary committee that stories revealing mass surveillance by UK and US have prompted global debate

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MPs' questions to Alan Rusbridger: do you love this country?

twitter:

ggreenwald twitterde op dinsdag 03-12-2013 om 19:29:25 Watching @arusbridger hauled before Parliament & interrogated on whether he loves Britain was one of the creepier events in quite some time reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 3 december 2013 22:19 schreef VeX- het volgende:
Schijnbaar is het percentage aan uitgebracht materiaal van wat Snowden heeft gelekt nog maar 1 procent.

Dat belooft nog eens wat.

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Microsoft: US government is an 'advanced persistent threat'

Brad Smith, Microsoft's EVP of Legal and Corporate Affairs, labeled the American government as an "advanced persistent threat" in a December 4 post on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Smith wrote in Protecting customer data from government snooping:

(...) Like many others, we are especially alarmed by recent allegations in the press of a broader and concerted effort by some governments to circumvent online security measures – and in our view, legal processes and protections – in order to surreptitiously collect private customer data.

In particular, recent press stories have reported allegations of governmental interception and collection – without search warrants or legal subpoenas – of customer data as it travels between customers and servers or between company data centers in our industry.

If true, these efforts threaten to seriously undermine confidence in the security and privacy of online communications. Indeed, government snooping potentially now constitutes an “advanced persistent threat,” alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks.

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NSA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, former U.S. officials say

Morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency’s surveillance activities, according to former officials who say they are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support.

A White House spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, noted that top White House officials have been to the agency to “express the president’s support and appreciation for all that NSA does to keep us safe.”

It is not clear whether or when Obama might travel the 23 miles up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to visit Fort Meade, the NSA’s headquarters in Maryland, but agency employees are privately voicing frustration at what they perceive as White House ambivalence amid the pounding the agency has taken from critics.

An NSA spokeswoman had no comment.

Obama in June defended the NSA’s surveillance as lawful and said he welcomed the public debate prompted by revelations from former contractor Edward Snowden beginning that month.

Though Obama has asserted, for instance, that the NSA’s collection of virtually all Americans’ phone records is lawful and has saved lives, the administration has not endorsed legislation that would codify it. And his recent statements suggest he thinks some of the NSA’s activities should be constrained.

A senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record said that the White House would normally not endorse legislation so early in the process but that “it’s been clear . . . that we prefer legislation” that preserves the phone records program “while making some changes . . . to potentially strengthen oversight and transparency.”

Said Hayden: “The president has the highest respect for and pride in the men and women of the intelligence community who work tirelessly to protect our nation. He’s expressed that directly to NSA’s leadership and has praised their work in public. As he said: ‘The men and women of our intelligence community work every single day to keep us safe because they love this country and believe in our values. They’re patriots.’ ”

She noted that in recent weeks, Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, and Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, visited Fort Meade “to express the president’s support and appreciation for all that NSA does to keep us safe.”’

Supporters of the NSA say staffers are not feeling the love.

“The agency, from top to bottom, leadership to rank and file, feels that it is had no support from the White House even though it’s been carrying out publicly approved intelligence missions,” said Joel Brenner, NSA inspector general from 2002 to 2006. “They feel they’ve been hung out to dry, and they’re right.”

A former U.S. official — who like several other former officials interviewed for this story requested anonymity because he still has dealings with the agency — said: “The president has multiple constituencies — I get it. But he must agree that the signals intelligence NSA is providing is one of the most important sources of intelligence today.

“So if that’s the case, why isn’t the president taking care of one of the most important elements of the national security apparatus?”

The White House, observers say, is caught between competing desires to preserve what it has said are valuable national security programs and to shield the president from criticism from allies abroad and civil-liberties advocates at home.

Some observers said it is not surprising that Obama would not travel to Fort Meade before internal and external reviews of surveillance activities have been completed. The reviews are expected to be done soon.

The NSA’s director, Gen. Keith Alexander, who is retiring in the spring after 81 / 2 years, has been the most vocal defender of the agency’s 35,000 employees. In speeches he has noted that more than 6,000 of them went to Iraq and Afghanistan to support the military. He has spoken of how 22 cryptologists were killed. “They’re the heroes — not the media leaker,” he said in a September speech, in a reference to Snowden.

NSA counterterrorism analysts have worked “every weekend for eight years since I’ve been here. . . . Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, they’re there to defend us,” he said then.

On Thursday, Obama said on MSNBC that he would be proposing “some self-restraint on the NSA” and “some reforms that can give people more confidence.”

In an interview with NBC last month, he said: “In some ways, the technology and the budgets and the capacity [at NSA] have outstripped the constraints. And we’ve got to rebuild those in the same way that we’re having to do on a whole series of capacities . . . [such as] drone operations.”

Civil-liberties advocates generally agree with that sentiment, but they would go further and say that the NSA’s bulk collection of domestic phone records is unlawful and ought to be ended.

Former officials note how President George W. Bush paid a visit to the NSA in January 2006, in the wake of revelations by the New York Times that the agency engaged in a counterterrorism program of warrantless surveillance on U.S. soil beginning after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “Bush came out and spoke to the workforce, and the effect on morale was tremendous,” Brenner said. “There’s been nothing like that from this White House.”

A second former official said NSA workers are polishing up their résumés and asking that they be cleared — removing any material linked to classified programs — so they can be sent out to potential employers. He noted that one employee who processes the résumés said, “I’ve never seen so many résumés that people want to have cleared in my life.”

Morale is “bad overall,” a third former official said. “The news — the Snowden disclosures — it questions the integrity of the NSA workforce,” he said. “It’s become very public and very personal. Literally, neighbors are asking people, ‘Why are you spying on Grandma?’ And we aren’t. People are feeling bad, beaten down.”

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Edward Snowden to give evidence to EU parliament, says MEP

British Conservatives oppose video appearance by NSA whistleblower, which Green MEP says could happen this year

The European parliament is lining up Edward Snowden to give evidence by video link later this month, in spite of resistance by British Conservatives, a Green MEP has announced.

German Green Jan Philipp Albrecht said MEPs wanted Snowden to appear before the assembly's committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs (LIBE).

Albrecht said it would represent a "great success" for the parliament's investigation into mass surveillance of EU citizens. "Half a year after the first publications from his collection of numerous NSA documents, the truth of which has not so far been refuted, there are still consequences as far as political responsibility is concerned," he said.

"The basic political will is there," he said on Sunday "Now we will need to see if we can get a formal majority for a hearing and hope that Snowden can keep his promise to answer question on the affair".

The LIBE committee would most likely want to seek questions on what role other European information services have played in gathering data for the NSA, as well as whether servers and data networks in the EU were used as part of the process.

Albrecht claims Snowden had expressed an initial interest via his lawyers in July, and that recent communications had firmed that up. In October, Green party MEP Christian Ströbele travelled to Moscow to meet Snowden in person.

Sources within the European parliament considered it likely that committee members would vote in favour of a Snowden hearing, with the only vocal opposition represented by British Conservative MEPs. Since the Tories are no longer part of the European People's party alliance of centre-right parties, however, one MEP described their reluctance as "not crucial".

Since a real-time video testimony could allow Snowden's location to be pinpointed, the committee would send questions to the US whistleblower and then play back pre-recorded answers in front of the parliament.

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Acht grote techbedrijven protesteren in brief tegen afluisteren NSA

AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter en Yahoo hebben in een gezamenlijke brief protest aangetekend tegen het grootschalig afluisteren van internetdiensten en hun gebruikers.

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Op maandag 9 december 2013 10:51 schreef Perrin het volgende:
Acht grote techbedrijven protesteren in brief tegen afluisteren NSA

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Op maandag 9 december 2013 19:23 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:

[..]

Ja, nu ineens allemaal dit soort acties. Had Snowden niet gelekt was het allemaal gewoon doorgegaan. En ik kan me toch moeilijk voorstellen dat Google en Apple etc dit internetbackbone-aftappen niet doorhadden.

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Op maandag 9 december 2013 19:23 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:

[..]

Ja, nu ineens allemaal dit soort acties. Had Snowden niet gelekt was het allemaal gewoon doorgegaan. En ik kan me toch moeilijk voorstellen dat Google en Apple etc dit internetbackbone-aftappen niet doorhadden.

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Europarlement wil Edward Snowden horen

De Amerikaanse klokkenluider Edward Snowden zal gehoord worden door het Europees Parlement (EP). Over de manier waarop wordt nog onderhandeld, zo klonk het donderdag in Straatsburg.

quote:

Op maandag 9 december 2013 19:23 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:

[..]

Ja, nu ineens allemaal dit soort acties. Had Snowden niet gelekt was het allemaal gewoon doorgegaan. En ik kan me toch moeilijk voorstellen dat Google en Apple etc dit internetbackbone-aftappen niet doorhadden.

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Op vrijdag 13 december 2013 01:36 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:

[..]

De vraag is, wisten de CEO's van Google en Apple het? Ik denk van niet. Die zijn namelijk constant aan het reizen voor meetings en praatjes en hebben vrij weinig inspraak over wat er op technisch vlak gebeurd. Bovendien kunnen ze het op die manier altijd oprecht ontkennen.

Zulke bedrijven zijn dermate groot dat binnenin makkelijk geheime deals kunnen sluipen.

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Op vrijdag 13 december 2013 08:19 schreef Perrin het volgende:

[..]

Dan nog zouden ze actie moeten ondernemen zodra ze het te weten kwamen via de media.

Maar ik denk eerlijkgezegd juist dat dit op topniveau wordt geregeld en dat er relatief weinig onderknuppels vanaf weten.

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Op vrijdag 13 december 2013 11:02 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:

M'n punt is, ik zie niet in waarom de CEO's van een bedrijf op de hoogte zouden moeten zijn.

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Op vrijdag 13 december 2013 11:05 schreef Perrin het volgende:

[..]

Omdat me het 't waarschijnlijkst lijkt dat de overheid contact met hen heeft.

En idd een klein team technici zal er ook vanaf weten, maar het lijkt me plausibeler dat die intern worden aangestuurd en niet als infiltranten stiekem op de NSA-loonlijst staan.

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Op vrijdag 13 december 2013 11:06 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:

[..]

Ja, maar in zo'n groot bedrijf heb je natuurlijk wel 10 lagen van bestuur. Dat kleine team kan prima aangestuurd worden door de CTO bijvoorbeeld die er dan vanaf weet, maar die zegt niets tegen de CEO's...

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Op vrijdag 13 december 2013 11:07 schreef Perrin het volgende:

[..]

En zodra de CEO via een omweg komt te weten wat er speelt in zijn bedrijf, wat denk je dat die met zo'n CTO gaat doen die achter zijn rug om vanalles bekokstooft?

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Officials Say U.S. May Never Know Extent of Snowden’s Leaks

WASHINGTON — American intelligence and law enforcement investigators have concluded that they may never know the entirety of what the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden extracted from classified government computers before leaving the United States, according to senior government officials.

Investigators remain in the dark about the extent of the data breach partly because the N.S.A. facility in Hawaii where Mr. Snowden worked — unlike other N.S.A. facilities — was not equipped with up-to-date software that allows the spy agency to monitor which corners of its vast computer landscape its employees are navigating at any given time.

Six months since the investigation began, officials said Mr. Snowden had further covered his tracks by logging into classified systems using the passwords of other security agency employees, as well as by hacking firewalls installed to limit access to certain parts of the system.

“They’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of man-hours trying to reconstruct everything he has gotten, and they still don’t know all of what he took,” a senior administration official said. “I know that seems crazy, but everything with this is crazy.”

That Mr. Snowden was so expertly able to exploit blind spots in the systems of America’s most secretive spy agency illustrates how far computer security still lagged years after President Obama ordered standards tightened after the WikiLeaks revelations of 2010.

Mr. Snowden’s disclosures set off a national debate about the expansion of the N.S.A.’s powers to spy both at home and abroad, and have left the Obama administration trying frantically to mend relations with allies after his revelations about American eavesdropping on foreign leaders.

A presidential advisory committee that has been examining the security agency’s operations submitted its report to Mr. Obama on Friday. The White House said the report would not be made public until next month, when Mr. Obama announces which of the recommendations he has embraced and which he has rejected.

Mr. Snowden gave his cache of documents to a small group of journalists, and some from that group have shared documents with several news organizations — leading to a flurry of exposures about spying on friendly governments. In an interview with The New York Times in October, Mr. Snowden said he had given all of the documents he downloaded to journalists and kept no additional copies.

In recent days, a senior N.S.A. official has told reporters that he believed Mr. Snowden still had access to documents not yet disclosed. The official, Rick Ledgett, who is heading the security agency’s task force examining Mr. Snowden’s leak, said he would consider recommending amnesty for Mr. Snowden in exchange for those documents.

“So, my personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about,” Mr. Ledgett told CBS News. “I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part.”

Mr. Snowden is living and working in Russia under a one-year asylum. The Russian government has refused to extradite Mr. Snowden, who was indicted by the Justice Department in June on charges of espionage and stealing government property, to the United States.

Mr. Snowden has said he would return to the United States if he was offered amnesty, but it is unclear whether Mr. Obama — who would most likely have to make such a decision — would make such an offer, given the damage the administration has claimed Mr. Snowden’s leaks have done to national security.

Because the N.S.A. is still uncertain about exactly what Mr. Snowden took, government officials sometimes first learn about specific documents from reporters preparing their articles for publication — leaving the State Department with little time to notify foreign leaders about coming disclosures.

With the security agency trying to revamp its computer network in the aftermath of what could turn out to be the largest breach of classified information in American history, the Justice Department has continued its investigation of Mr. Snowden.

According to senior government officials, F.B.I. agents from the bureau’s Washington field office, who are leading the investigation, believe that Mr. Snowden methodically downloaded the files over several months while working as a government contractor at the Hawaii facility. They also believe that he worked alone, the officials said.

But for all of Mr. Snowden’s technical expertise, some American officials also place blame on the security agency for being slow to install software that can detect unusual computer activity carried out by the agency’s work force — which, at approximately 35,000 employees, is the largest of any intelligence agency.

An N.S.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.

After a similar episode in 2010 — when an Army private, Chelsea Manning, gave hundreds of thousands of military chat logs and diplomatic cables to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks — the Obama administration took steps intended to prevent another government employee from downloading and disseminating large volumes of classified material.

In October 2011, Mr. Obama signed an executive order establishing a task force charged with “deterring, detecting and mitigating insider threats, including the safeguarding of classified information from exploitation, compromise, or other unauthorized disclosure.” The task force, led by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence, has the responsibility of developing policies and new technologies to protect classified information.

But one of the changes, updating computer systems to track the digital meanderings of the employees of intelligence agencies, occurred slowly.

“We weren’t able to flip a switch and have all of those changes made instantly,” said one American intelligence official.

Lonny Anderson, the N.S.A.’s chief technology officer, said in a recent interview that much of what Mr. Snowden took came from parts of the computer system open to anyone with a high-level clearance. And part of his job was to move large amounts of data between different parts of the system.

But, Mr. Anderson said, Mr. Snowden’s activities were not closely monitored and did not set off warning signals.

“So the lesson learned for us is that you’ve got to remove anonymity” for those with access to classified systems, Mr. Anderson said during the interview with the Lawfare blog, part of a podcast series the website plans to run this week.

Officials said Mr. Snowden, who had an intimate understanding of the N.S.A.’s computer architecture, would have known that the Hawaii facility was behind other agency outposts in installing monitoring software.

According to a former government official who spoke recently with Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the N.S.A. director, the general said that at the time Mr. Snowden was downloading the documents, the spy agency was several months away from having systems in place to catch the activity.

As investigations by the F.B.I. and the N.S.A. grind on, the State Department and the White House have absorbed the impact of Mr. Snowden’s disclosures on America’s diplomatic relations with other countries.

“There are ongoing and continuing efforts by the State Department still to reach out to countries and to tell them things about what he took,” said one senior administration official. The official said the State Department often described the spying to foreign leaders as “business as usual” between nations.

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NSA Can 'Easily' Break Cellphone Encryption, Report Says

quote:

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has the technical capacity to crack the most commonly-used cellphone encryption technology, and in doing so it can decode and access the content of calls and text messages, according to a Washington Post report published Friday.

Citing a top-secret document leaked by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the report states that the agency can easily break a technology called A5/1, the world's most common stream cipher used to encrypt cellular data as it transmits to cell towers.

SEE ALSO: Will Obama Rein in NSA Surveillance Powers?

Privacy and security researcher Ashkan Soltani, co-author the Post's report, explains that encryption experts have long been aware of the weakness of A5/1. The technology makes use of decades-old 2G GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) cellular network technology.

The so-called "summer of revelations" on NSA surveillance tactics, fueled by Snowden's leaked documents, has brought to light the agency's vast data-collecting capabilities. The NSA's considerable abilities to collect and decode cellular data would seem to allow it to track private conversations on a very wide scale.

Of course, it would be against the law for the NSA to use these capabilities to spy on Americans without a court order. But experts believe other nations have probably developed many of these same surveillance technologies.

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Tech firms meet Obama to press their case for NSA surveillance reform

A delegation of 15 from Silicon Valley, including Tim Cook and Marissa Mayer, visit White House for face-to-face talks

quote:

Senior executives from some the world’s largest technology firms were meeting face to face with Barack Obama on Tuesday to press their case for a major rollback of National Security Agency surveillance.

The White House is hosting the 15-strong delegation from Silicon Valley, which includes the chief executives of Apple, Yahoo and Google, less than 24 hours after a federal judge ruled that the NSA program to collect telephone metadata is likely to be unconstitutional.

Many of the senior tech leaders meeting the president and the vice-president, Joe Biden, have already made public their demand for sweeping surveillance reforms in an open letter that specifically called for a ban on the kind of bulk data collection that the judge ruled on Monday was probably unlawful.

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Tech firms push back against White House efforts to divert NSA meeting

quote:

The top leaders from the worlds biggest technology companies pressed their case for reform of the National Security Agencys controversial surveillance operations at a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, resisting attempts by the White House to portray the encounter as a wide-ranging discussion of broader priorities.

Senior executives from the companies whose bosses were present at the meeting said they were determined to keep the discussion focused on the NSA, despite the White House declaring in advance that it would focus on ways of improving the functionality of the troubled health insurance website, healthcare.gov, among other matters.

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Merkel compared NSA to Stasi in heated encounter with Obama
German chancellor furious after revelations US intelligence agency listened in on her personal mobile phone

In an angry exchange with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel has compared the snooping practices of the US with those of the Stasi, the ubiquitous and all-powerful secret police of the communist dictatorship in East Germany, where she grew up.

The German chancellor also told the US president that America's National Security Agency cannot be trusted because of the volume of material it had allowed to leak to the whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to the New York Times.

Livid after learning from Der Spiegel magazine that the Americans were listening in to her personal mobile phone, Merkel confronted Obama with the accusation: "This is like the Stasi."

The newspaper also reported that Merkel was particularly angry that, based on the disclosures, "the NSA clearly couldn't be trusted with private information, because they let Snowden clean them out."

Snowden is to testify on the NSA scandal to a European parliament inquiry next month, to the anger of Washington which is pressuring the EU to stop the testimony.

In Brussels, the chairman of the US House select committee on intelligence, Mike Rogers, a Republican, said his views on the invitation to Snowden were "not fit to print" and that it was "not a great idea".

Inviting someone "who is wanted in the US and has jeopardised the lives of US soldiers" was beneath the dignity of the European parliament, he said.

He declined to comment on Merkel's alleged remarks to Obama. In comments to the Guardian, he referred to the exchange as "a conversation that may or may not have occurred".

Senior Brussels officials say the EU is struggling to come up with a coherent and effective response to the revelations of mass US and British surveillance of electronic communication in Europe, but that the disclosure that Merkel's mobile had been monitored was a decisive moment.

A draft report by a European parliament inquiry into the affair, being presented on Wednesday and obtained by the Guardian, says there has to be a discussion about the legality of the NSA's operations and also of the activities of European intelligence agencies.

The report drafted by Claude Moraes, the British Labour MEP heading the inquiry, says "we have received substantial evidence that the operations by intelligence services in the US, UK, France and Germany are in breach of international law and European law".

Rather than resorting to a European response, Berlin has been pursuing a bilateral pact with the Americans aimed at curbing NSA activities and insisting on a "no-spying pact" between allies.

The NYT reported that Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser, had told Berlin that there would be not be a no-espionage agreement, although the Americans had pledged to desist from monitoring Merkel personally.

A high-ranking German official with knowledge of the talks with the White House told the Guardian there had been a "useful exchange of views", but confirmed a final agreement was far from being reached.

The Germans have received assurances that the chancellor's phone was not being monitored and that the US spy agency is not conducting industrial espionage.

However the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said German and US officials were still in the process of negotiating how any final agreement – the details of which could remain secret between both governments – would be formalised.

Their discussions, which include talks about so-called confidence building measures, are also bound-up with wider discussions with the EU regarding special privacy assurances that might be afforded to its citizens under a future arrangement.

"We want to be assured that not everything that is technically possible will be done," the German official added.

In Germany, the main government minister dealing with the NSA fallout, Hans-Peter Friedrich, has fallen victim to a reshuffle in the new coalition unveiled in Berlin at the weekend. Friedrich, from Bavaria's Christian Social Union, is not seen as an ally of Merkel's and was widely viewed to have performed less than robustly in the exchanges with the Americans.

His replacement as interior minister, by contrast, is a close ally of Merkel's – her former chief of staff and former defence minister, Thomas de Maiziere. Additionally, Merkel has brought a former senior intelligence official into the new coalition.

Alongside De Maiziere at the interior ministry, she has appointed Klaus-Dieter Fritsche, previously deputy head of the domestic intelligence service, Germany's equivalent of MI5.

http://www.theguardian.co(...)ares-nsa-stasi-obama

quote:

Red de democratie, doe als wij en word klokkenluider

Enkele internationaal bekende klokkenluiders en ex-inlichtingenfunctionarissen roepen vandaag in NRC Handelsblad mensen op zich in hun organisaties, net als zij ooit, verdienstelijk te maken als klokkenluider. Wilt u geen tirannie van spionnen in de wereld, meld u dan als klokkenluider, schrijven de zeven whistleblowers.

In elk geval na september 2001 hebben de westerse regeringen en inlichtingendiensten alles in het werk gesteld om het bereik van hun macht te vergroten, ten koste van onze privacy, burgerlijke vrijheden en publieke controle op het beleid.

De doofpot- en complotfantasieën die altijd als paranoïde en Orwelliaans werden beschouwd bleken na Snowden nog niet eens het hele verhaal te zijn.
Het opmerkelijkste is dat we al jaren voor deze gang van zaken worden gewaarschuwd: massale surveillance van hele bevolkingen, militarisering van het internet, het einde van de privacy.

Alles gebeurt in naam van de ‘nationale veiligheid’, die min of meer een kreet is geworden om discussie af te houden en te vermijden dat overheden verantwoording afleggen – verantwoording af kúnnen leggen – omdat alles zich in het duister afspeelt: geheime wetten, geheime uitleg van geheime wetten door geheime rechtbanken – en geen enkele doeltreffende parlementaire controle.