Ryan Gallagher and Peter Maas at The Intercept have an important story about how the NSA has been hunting and hacking the systems administrators of companies.
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Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Ryan Gallagher and Peter Maas at The Intercept have an important story about how the NSA has been hunting and hacking the systems administrators of companies.
[Read more…]
In a lesser noticed story that is once again based on Edward Snowden’s documents, Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani write in the Washington Post that the NSA has “built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place.”
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For some reason, people seem to be seeking ways to attack Michelle Obama although as far as I can see, she seems to have been an exemplary First Lady. The fact that nothing has stuck suggests that she has been very savvy about her words and behavior. One continuous strain has been to mock her focus on childhood obesity and her drive to get people to eat more healthily and exercise and has been used to paint her as some kind of health food fanatic.
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Der Spiegel has released another big story yesterday based on the Edward Snowden documents, this time targeting China’s top political leaders and companies that pose a threat to American technology companies. It seems likely that this news release was timed to coincide with Michelle Obama’s current visit to China so that the news would have maximum impact.
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As the Edward Snowden revelations keep coming out about how the NSA and GCHQ and the rest of the ‘Five Eyes’ club have been pretty much spying on everyone including the leaders of foreign governments, there have been loud protestations about these practices by foreign leaders that this was being done without their knowledge and consent. As Glenn Greenwald poses the question: “Were these top officials truly unaware, or were they pretending to be, in order to distance themselves from surveillance operations that became highly controversial once disclosed?”
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As the Snowden hits keep coming, the NSA seems to be flailing around like a punch-drunk boxer, aiming at random. For example, Dan Froomkin at The Intercept reports on the bizarre reaction by Robert Litt, general counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, when asked by top news editors to show exactly what damage had been caused by the Edward Snowden revelations.
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The Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate the Iran-Contra affair died yesterday at the age of 102. His work on the case highlights for me two things. One is the danger of prejudging people based on the labels that are affixed to them; and the other is how we have a system whereby criminal acts in the service of power are excused and condoned at the highest levels.
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I recently attended a Safe Zone training program at my university. It is designed to help faculty and staff be more aware of LGBT issues and thus create a more welcoming atmosphere. After completing it, one gets a Safe Zone badge that one can stick on one’s door so that anyone who comes there knows that you are accepting of them.
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The big US internet technology companies protested loudly that the mass spying by the NSA on the people using their systems was done without their knowledge or consent. One could be excused for being skeptical of their claims of innocence and now a top lawyer for the NSA confirms our doubts, saying on Wednesday that Silicon Valley companies knew all along that the NSA was spying on their systems.
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