NSA director backs FBI claim that N. Korea is behind Sony cyber attack NSA – Video

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NSA director backs FBI claim that N. Korea is behind Sony cyber attack NSA
The U.S. National Security Agency has echoed the FBIs conclusion that North Korea was behind the recent cyber attack on Sony Pictures. NSA Director Michael Rogers told The Daily Beast that...

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NSA director backs FBI claim that N. Korea is behind Sony cyber attack NSA - Video

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NSA Intercepts Reveal Paris Event Just the Start of Attacks In Europe – Video

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NSA Intercepts Reveal Paris Event Just the Start of Attacks In Europe
http://www.undergroundworldnews.com Dahboo7 On Zeekly: http://zeeklytv.com/user/Dahboo77 The deadly events that unfolded in France over the last week may be the first in a wave of attacks...

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NSA Intercepts Reveal Paris Event Just the Start of Attacks In Europe - Video

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The Fallout From the NSA's Backdoors Mandate

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The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is widely believed to have mandated high-tech vendors build backdoors into their hardware and software. Reactions from foreign governments to the news are harming American businesses and, some contend, may result in the breakup of the Internet.

For example, Russia is moving to paper and typewriters in some cases to move certain types of information, Private.me COO Robert Neivert told the E-Commerce Times.

Governments are pushing to enact laws to force the localization of data -- generally meaning they won't allow data to be stored outside their borders to protect citizens against NSA-type surveillance -- a move that's of particular concern to American businesses, according to a Lawfare Research paper.

That's because they deem U.S. firms untrustworthy for having provided the NSA with access to the data of their users.

"There's an increased use of networks on behalf of Europe and other allies that do not pass through U.S. companies or U.S.-controlled networks," Neivert said. Some countries are even proposing to break up the Internet.

However, "people who say these things threaten the Internet itself are misunderstanding things," Jonathan Sander, strategy & research officer of Stealthbits Technologies, told the E-Commerce Times. "The Internet produces too much wealth for too many people and organizations for anyone, including the U.S., to threaten it."

The U.S. economy "is one of the best weapons we have in the technology war," Sander continued. The U.S. market "is too big for foreign governments to ignore," which is why foreign companies continue doing business with the U.S.

Concern has been expressed about invasions of privacy through surveillance, but this issue is "a matter of policy" and there are differences in how citizens of different countries approach it, Sander pointed out. "In the EU and, to a lesser extent [Australia and New Zealand], privacy is an issue at the ballot box so there are laws reflecting that."

In the U.S., however, privacy "has yet to seriously break through as an issue, so there has been less motion," Sander remarked.

In August of last year, the German government reportedly warned that Windows 8 could act as a Trojan when combined with version 2.0 of the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), a specification for a secure cryptoprocessor.

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NSA Officials: Snowden Emailed With Question, Not Concern

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The Obama administration on Thursday released an email sent by Edward Snowden to the NSA's general counsel last year - an important document in the debate over whether the leaker of classified government documents attempted to raise questions "through channels" about the agency's domestic surveillance programs.

The email is the lone document found so far, according to U.S. officials, that could be seen as offering support for Snowden's claim that he attempted to alert officials at the NSA to what he considered improper or illegal domestic surveillance by the agency before he began leaking the secret documents.

The document is a request for clarification about a legal point in training materials for a mandatory course regarding policies and procedures restricting domestic surveillance by the NSA. The lack of context surrounding the email leaves room for interpretation on Snowden's motives for making the inquiry.

In an exclusive interview with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams last week in Moscow that was broadcast Wednesday night, Snowden said he had warned the NSA, while working as an contractor, that he felt the agency was overstepping its bounds.

"I actually did go through channels, and that is documented," he asserted. "The NSA has records, they have copies of emails right now to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks, from me raising concerns about the NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities. The response more or less, in bureaucratic language, was, 'You should stop asking questions.'"

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement on Thursday saying that the email does not support Snowden's account.

"The email, provided to the committee by the NSA on April 10, 2014, poses a question about the relative authority of laws and executive orders it does not register concerns about NSA's intelligence activities, as was suggested by Snowden in an NBC interview this week," she said.

The NSA released this Edward Snowden email to the Office of General Counsel asking for an explanation of some material that was in a training course he had just completed, Thursday May 29, 2014.

U.S. officials initially disputed Snowden's claim that he had raised such questions, telling the Washington Post six months ago that no evidence of Snowden's alleged objection existed. "After extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden's contention that he brought these matters to anyone's attention," said the agency in a statement

Snowden sent the email released Thursday to the NSA's lawyers on April 5, 2013, while he was on temporary assignment at NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md.

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Court rules NSA doesn't have to divulge what records it has

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A federal judge on Tuesday said the National Security Agency is not obligated to confirm nor deny it has someones specific phone records, shooting down a conservative think tanks effort to try to use the spy agency to reveal secrets that other federal agencies want kept hidden.

The case served as an early test of the limits for researchers who had hoped to use the National Security Agencys phone records collection program as a treasure trove for their efforts. But Judge James A. Boasberg, sitting in the federal district court in Washington, D.C., said the NSA is within its rights to refuse to say what kinds of records it has, and unless researchers can specifically prove the agency has them, the NSA doesnt have to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests.

Because of the potential consequences that additional disclosures could have on national security, the court will not require the agency to tip its hand any further, the judge wrote in a 24-page opinion.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which for years has been battling the EPA to try to get access to text messages sent by senior agency executives, had asked the court to force the NSA to turn over EPA phone records and email or text messages the spy agency might have scooped up in its snooping.

The CEI is trying to get a glimpse at messages it believes were sent by former Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson and current boss Gina McCarthy. The EPA has turned over thousands of text messages but has declined to turn over others, saying it doesnt believe it has them and that it doesnt think it even has a duty to preserve text messages.

CEI lawyers are fighting the EPA in another case, but after the revelations about the National Security Agencys phone-snooping program they figured they would try to see if they could get the spy agency to release the records. The NSA said it could neither confirm nor deny that it had any such records, and that launched the court case.

The CEI argued that since the NSA admitted it had scooped up phone metadata records from Verizon customers, that must include Ms. McCarthys phone and Ms. Jacksons personal email account with Verizon.

Judge Boasberg countered that the CEI was going on a fishing expedition, saying the NSA has never admitted it had Ms. McCarthys or Ms. Jacksons records specifically, nor has it even admitted it scooped up text or email data.

The judge said he wouldnt force it to do so now.

In essence, were the agency required to confirm or deny the existence of records for specific individuals, it would begin to sketch the contours of the program, including, for example, which providers turn over data and whether the data for those providers is complete, the judge wrote.

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#FreedomOfSpeech: What that means in the US, Britain and France

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LONDON, UK The attacks against French newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week have sparked a worldwide conversation about free speech.

Now the satirical paper is going to print again with its first post-attack edition, and the freedom of expression debate is raging on.

Whats on the cover? You guessed it a new cartoon of Prophet Muhammad. That's forbidden in Islam, but Charlie Hebdo and its fast-growing fan base insist the paper has the right to print it.

Some are wondering what that right is all about. Americans know something about their First Amendment. International law also protects freedom of expression and opinion its in the second sentence of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. In practice, it varies considerably by country, even within Europe.

Heres a brief explainer on the different legal interpretations of free speech in the United States, Britain and France.

The US has the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.What First Amendment protections exist in say France or Britain?

None. The Bill of Rights applies only in the US.

Thats irritating.

Sorry. But both France and Britain are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights and theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which spell out countries obligation to protect citizens rights to free expression, even of controversial or inflammatory opinions. (The US has signed on to the ICCPR as well.) They have national laws protecting free speech as well.

And citizens here are serious about that freedom. When marchers mobbed the streets across France this weekend, many raising pens toward the sky, they were showing solidarity with the slain staff of Charlie Hebdo. But demonstrators were also taking a stand for the newspapers right to express itself through controversial cartoons.

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#FreedomOfSpeech: What that means in the US, Britain and France

Satire and Sanity: Where Do You Draw the Line? (News Analysis)

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"We have the right to make dumb jokes."

-- Tina Fey

I'm a free speech advocate. I've been arrested and I have served jail time for exercising my First Amendment rights. As a reporter, magazine editor and political cartoonist, I've received complaints (and a few rare death threats) for my work. So it goes without saying that I share the global outrage over the brutal murders of the cartoonists and staff at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. It chills the blood to imagine any American cartoonist being placed in the crosshairs of a Kalashnikov. No matter your race, religion, history or lifestyle, murder is a heinous crimefar worse than even the most wounding insult.

But after dwelling on the causes and effects of this tragedy, I find that I have some qualms about the argument that there should be no limits to the exercise of free speech.

My concerns begin with a question: "At what point does satire become bullying?" At what point does satire morph from a deftly wielded surgical tool into a blunt instrument of personal or cultural assault? As we have seen, a pen can draw a cartoon but a weaponized cartoon can draw blood. Does the cause of "free speech" bind us to defend slanders, lies and defamation?

Many advocates of free speech make a point of defending uncensored and fearless public expressionbut only so long as the speech does not veer into venomous and hateful rhetoric. When "free speech" devolves into racist or misogynistic invective, it can prove as devastating to public peace as yelling "Fire!" in the legendary "crowded auditorium." Such mean-spirited expressions are classified as "hate speech" and are characterized by content that "offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits."

Unclothed Emperors Versus the Naked Masses

Satire, as a form of mockery, reads entirely differently depending on where and how it is directed. Ridicule directed against the powerfulwhether the target be a wealthy member of the elite or a multinational corporationis most easily recognized as the proper use of the satiric tool. However, ridicule directed against the powerless, the disenfranchised, or the disabled can be seen as inappropriate and coldhearted bullying.

Even hate speech can be nuanced by the interplay of social realities. It's one thing for the oppressed to call for the elimination of the ruling classes; it's another matter for the rulers to call for the elimination of masses. Regicide and genocide are both crimes but there is a vast difference in scale.

Satire, as defined by Wikipedia, is "a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement."

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Quinn: Twitter takes a free speech stand against U.S. government

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While not quite as momentous as the legal tussle over the Pentagon Papers, in the ongoing push-pull between the First Amendment and national security, Twitter is taking an important stand against government overreach.

Last year, thanks to pressure brought by tech companies such as Google, LinkedIn and Facebook, the government relaxed the gag rules associated with national security-related warrants and subpoenas. But it still dictated exactly how much the companies could disclose about these requests.

Twitter, which has probably been the most aggressive of the major tech companies in pushing against these limits, argues in a suit it filed in federal court in San Francisco that it should be able to publish more detailed information about the requests, citing its First Amendment right to free speech.

This fight may seem a small matter given past battles between speech rights and government's powers. The Twitter case does not raise the same grave matters as the Pentagon Papers, secret documents that described the history of American involvement in Vietnam, which were at the center of one of the most important free-speech cases in U.S. history. Nor is this as important as the current debates over the government's broad crackdown on journalists reporting on counterterrorism efforts.

But the principle is the same: how to strike the balance between the free-flow of information in a democracy versus the need to keep some secrets from our enemies. And it comes in this post-Snowden world of ours, whose disclosures of National Security Agency surveillance have raised profound questions about the government's efforts to monitor communications in its hunt for terror plots. In the wake of those disclosures, it seems to me that it's more important than ever for us to have a better understanding of just what the government is up to in our name.

"Twitter's efforts go to the core of informing the public what type of surveillance state we live in," said Alex Abdo, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. "The government wants to have it both ways. It wants to conscript the tech companies to spy on their customers. But it won't let them inform the public."

The battle this time is in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, with the most recent development coming late last week when the government filed a motion to dismiss much of the Twitter case.

Like a lot of lawsuits, Twitter's struck me at first as splitting hairs.

For example, when it comes to National Security Letters, an administrative subpoena that gives the FBI broad search powers, the government demands that Twitter disclose only how many it receives in increments of thousands; Twitter wants to disclose them in a more narrow range, by the one-hundreds. Likewise, when describing all national security requests, Twitter wants to talk about requests in groups of 25, not 250, as the government prescribes.

For its part, the government argues that there isn't a free speech constitutional issue, and that it needs "to maintain the secrecy of information that could reveal sensitive investigative techniques and sources and methods of intelligence collection."

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Silk Road Reloaded ditches Tor for I2P

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The notorious online black market Silk Road Reloaded has left the Tor web browser to join a more anonymous network known as I2P.

Following the decision, Silk Road Reloaded has also made a number of policy changes, including ending its exclusivity with bitcoin. The site now allows transactions to take place with other cryptocurrencies such as dogecoin and anoncoin.

However, the website will now enforce a one percent administrative fee for converting other currencies into bitcoin.

As news breaks regarding the Silk Road developments, Ross Ulbricht, the man accused of operating the original version of the site, is standing trial. Silk Road 2.0, the second iteration of the site, was also closed in November of last year and its alleged owner, Blake Benthall, arrested.

I2P sites, also on the so-called dark netba, do not show up in Google searches and require special software to access them. Although it operates in a similar way to the Tor browser, I2P or "eepsites" are believed to offer increased security.

I2P or The Invisible Internet Project claims that its objective is to circumvent surveillance from Internet service providers (ISPs) and government agencies. Although anonymous networks are often associated with criminal activity, I2P operators say that the network is used "by many people who care about their privacy; activists, oppressed people, journalists and whistleblowers, as well as the average person".

Silk Road Reloaded deals in the trade of a number of illegal products, including drugs, counterfeit money and fake identity documents. However, weapons and stolen credit cards, both of which can be found on some Tor sites, are not permitted.

The sites new administrator wrote that Silk Road Reloaded defended a key human right.

"We created this to allow the most basic of human activities to occur unimpeded, that being trade", they wrote. "It's not only a major disruption of progress, but it is an interference to control someone to the degree that their free will is compromised. We may not be able to stop this but we certainly won't contribute to it".

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Silk Road Reloaded ditches Tor for I2P