Ukraine Moves Towards NATO: Kremlin slams ‘counterproductive’ Ukrainian rejection of non-bloc status – Video


Ukraine Moves Towards NATO: Kremlin slams #39;counterproductive #39; Ukrainian rejection of non-bloc status
Ukraine #39;s parliament has voted to drop the country #39;s non-aligned status and work towards NATO membership. Russian officials criticized the vote, calling it "counterproductive" and said it...

By: UKRAINE TODAY

Read the rest here:

Ukraine Moves Towards NATO: Kremlin slams 'counterproductive' Ukrainian rejection of non-bloc status - Video

VOA60: Kasar Ukraine Takara Daukar Matakin Zama Memba a Kungiyar NATO, Ukraine, Disamba 23, 2014 – Video


VOA60: Kasar Ukraine Takara Daukar Matakin Zama Memba a Kungiyar NATO, Ukraine, Disamba 23, 2014
Originally published at - http://www.voahausa.com/media/video/kasar-ukraine-takara-daukar-matakin-zama-memba-a-kungiyar-nato-/2570904.html.

By: SashenVOAHausa

See the original post here:

VOA60: Kasar Ukraine Takara Daukar Matakin Zama Memba a Kungiyar NATO, Ukraine, Disamba 23, 2014 - Video

Russia blames NATO for Ukraine abandoning nonaligned status

Top Russian security officials Wednesday accused NATO of pressuring Ukraine to drop its post-Soviet nonaligned status and warned that Moscow's relations with the Western alliance would be damaged beyond repair if it extends membership to the longtime Kremlin ally.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear with his seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region and his support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine that he regards Kiev's political turn toward the European Union and NATO as a threat to Russia's regional security.

Lawmakers in Kiev on Tuesday voted to end Ukraine's nonaligned status, a posture the westernmost former Soviet republic adopted after the communist federation's breakup in 1991. At that time Ukraine was seeking to calm fears in Moscow that the geographically strategic republic where Russia's Black Sea fleet is based wouldn't drift into the West's sphere of influence.

Ukraine's Supreme Council voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to drop the nonaligned commitment as an initial step toward eventual membership in NATO. The 28-nation defense bloc already includes the three former Soviet Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as all Eastern European states once tethered to Moscow under the Warsaw Pact military alliance.

NATO membership for Ukraine is years away at best, as the country must first conduct sweeping reforms of its armed forces to meet alliance "interoperability" requirements, as well as resolve the armed conflict that broke out in eastern Ukraine after Russia annexed Crimea in March. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said his economically constrained country cannot reasonably expect to be in shape for NATO accession before 2020.

Still, Russian officials have reacted angrily to the renunciation of nonalignment and warned of dire consequences should Ukraine join NATO.

"Under the slogan of Russian threat, NATO is building its military potential in the Baltic states, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania," Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov told news agencies in Russia.

If Ukraine joins NATO, "we will have a complete collapse with NATO, which will be practically impossible to rebuild," Antonov said, according to the Sputnik news site.

"NATO countries prompted Ukraine to take a counterproductive decision while trying to turn Ukraine into a forward line of confrontation with Russia, Antonov was quoted as saying by the Tass news agency.

Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also lashed out at Ukraine and NATO over the nonaligned status change, calling it "counterproductive as it only enhances the confrontation by creating an illusion that the adoption of such laws can resolve the deep internal state crisis in Ukraine."

See the original post:

Russia blames NATO for Ukraine abandoning nonaligned status

Why I Spoke Out Against the NSA | John Napier Tye | TEDxCharlottesville – Video


Why I Spoke Out Against the NSA | John Napier Tye | TEDxCharlottesville
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. NSA State Dept Whistleblower John Napier Tye is Legal Director and Campaign Director at Avaaz, the...

By: TEDx Talks

See more here:

Why I Spoke Out Against the NSA | John Napier Tye | TEDxCharlottesville - Video

Posted in NSA

NSA releases 12 years of damaging oversight reports on Christmas Eve

The National Security Agency released documents on Christmas Eve revealing surveillance activities that may have violated the law for U.S. policy over more than a decade, reports David Lerman at Bloomberg.

Compelled by an ACLU FOIA request, the agency published 12 years of quarterly reports that were created for the Presidents Intelligence Oversight Board between 2001 and mid-2013.

The reports are heavily redacted but include details of intentional and unintentional misuse of the NSAs signals intelligence gathering systems.

The reports detail unauthorized signals intelligence gathering that included data about U.S. citizens, unauthorized personnel using the intelligence gathering systems and abuses of the NSAs spying tools for personal use. NSA signals intelligence includes phone call metadata gathered through the NSAs links to telecommunications companies, as well as much more granular communications scooped up by the agencys electronic spy network. There are also several references to employees failing to complete required refresher training on signals intelligence systems.

In many instances, NSA employees ran poorly constructed or unauthorized queries in the NSA systems, and ended up gathering data on U.S. citizens or unintended targets. In most of these cases the data was then destroyed.

In one case, detailed in the third quarter of 2007, an NSA instructor ran an unauthorized search during a training session:

Lerman also reports on instances of NSA systems misuse that were already publicly known:

Those cases included a member of a U.S. military intelligence unit who violated policy by obtaining the communications of his wife, who was stationed in another country. After a military proceeding, the violator was punished by a reduction in rank, 45 days of extra duty and forfeiture of half of his pay for two months, according to the letter.

In a 2003 case, a civilian employee ordered intelligence collection of the telephone number of his foreign-national girlfriend without an authorized purpose for approximately one month to determine whether she was being faithful to him, according to the letter. The employee retired before an investigation could be completed.

In August, 2013, Judy Woodruff spoke with former NSA analyst Russell Tice who said the agency collects every domestic communication, word for word.

Read this article:

NSA releases 12 years of damaging oversight reports on Christmas Eve

Posted in NSA

NSA targeted Chinese tech giant Huawei

US intelligence agencies hacked into the email servers of Chinese tech giant Huawei five years ago, around the time concerns were growing in Washington that the telecommunications equipment manufacturer was a threat to US national security, a report says.

The National Security Agency began targeting Huawei in early 2009 and quickly succeeded in gaining access to the company's client lists and email archive, German weekly Der Spiegel reported on Saturday, citing secret US intelligence documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Among the people whose emails the NSA was able to read were Huawei president Ren Zhengfei, the magazine said.

The operation, which Der Spiegel claims was co-ordinated with the CIA, FBI and White House officials, also netted source codes for Huawei products.

Advertisement

One aim was to exploit the fact that Huawei equipment is widely used to route voice and data traffic around the world, according to the report.

But the NSA was also concerned that the Chinese government itself might use Huawei's presence in foreign networks for espionage purposes, it said.

In 2012, the House Intelligence Committee recommended that Huawei be barred from doing business in the US, citing the threat that its equipment could enable Chinese intelligence services to tamper with American communications networks.

Huawei didn't immediately respond to a request for comment late on Saturday.

In January, the company rejected a previous Der Spiegel report claiming that its equipment was vulnerable to hacking.

Go here to see the original:

NSA targeted Chinese tech giant Huawei

Posted in NSA

NSA Reports Show Agency May Have Violated Laws For A Decade By Spying On Americans

The National Security Agency may have violated U.S. law for over a decade with the unauthorized surveillance of U.S. citizens'overseas communications, according to new reports on the agency's intelligence collection practices released by the NSA on Wednesday.

The U.S. spy agency released the highly confidential reports in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).According to documents posted on the NSA website on Christmas Eve, the examples of violations include sending data on Americans to unauthorized recipients, storing such data on unprotected computers and retaining them after they were meant to be destroyed, according to Bloomberg.

In general, each NSA report contains similar categories of information, including an overview of recent oversight activities signals intelligence activities affecting certain protected categories; and descriptions of specific incidents which may have been unlawful or contrary to applicable policies, NSA said, on its website.

The reports include a series of quarterly and annual accounts that have been made available to the presidents Intelligence Oversight Board, Bloombergreported, adding that the reports cover the period between the fourth quarter of 2001 and the second quarter of 2013.

In one instance of an unauthorized surveillance practice, in 2012, an NSA analyst searched a U.S. organization in a raw traffic database without formal authorization because the analyst incorrectly believed that he was authorized to query due to a potential threat, according to the fourth-quarterreportfrom 2012. The surveillance found nothing suspicious.

Another report revealed an incident, also in 2012, when an analyst searched her spouses personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting. According to the report, the analyst was advised to cease her activities.

The ACLU, which filed the lawsuit to access the NSA reports, claimed that the intelligence information collected by the spy agency was sometimes misused.

The government conducts sweeping surveillance under this authority -- surveillance that increasingly puts Americans data in the hands of the NSA, Patrick C. Toomey, staff attorney with the ACLUs National Security Project, told Bloomberg in an e-mail. Despite that fact, this spying is conducted almost entirely in secret and without legislative or judicial oversight.

Meanwhile, the NSA said that it has multi-layered protections in place to ensure that no further errors occur in intelligence-gathering and retention.

The vast majority of compliance incidents involve unintentional technical or human error. In the very few cases that involve the intentional misuse of a signals intelligence system, a thorough investigation is completed, NSA said in an executive summary. NSA goes to great lengths to ensure compliance with the Constitution, laws and regulations.

Read more:

NSA Reports Show Agency May Have Violated Laws For A Decade By Spying On Americans

Posted in NSA

NSA waits until Christmas Eve to reveal a decade's worth of its mistakes

The National Security Administration campus in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Image: Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

By Jessica Plautz2014-12-25 22:24:44 UTC

The National Security Agency went all out on a Christmas gift this year: a decade's worth of declassified documents on the unauthorized surveillance of Americans.

Turns out it's the NSA that sees you when you're sleeping, and knows when you're awake.

The documents were released Wednesday afternoon, in response to an ACLU lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. They cover the agency's activities from mid-2001 through early 2013 and they are heavily redacted.

Even so, the reports detail numerous "errors" over the years as NSA analysts searched through its information databases and accessed the communications of Americans, which is prohibited.

The vast majority of compliance incidents involve unintentional technical or human error, the NSA said in the executive summary. "These materials show, over a sustained period of time, the depth and rigor of NSAs commitment to compliance."

"NSA goes to great lengths to ensure compliance with the Constitution, laws and regulations.

Indeed, much of the reports detail things like accidental queries on the wrong "targets," or overly broad searches that reveal a lack of proper training for analysts. However, some of the errors were intentional.

Continued here:

NSA waits until Christmas Eve to reveal a decade's worth of its mistakes

Posted in NSA

Reports Show Irregular Surveillance Of US Citizens

Provided by IBT US NSA_surveillance

The National Security Agency may have violated U.S. law for over a decade with the unauthorized surveillance of U.S. citizens'overseas communications, according to new reports on the agency's intelligence collection practices released by the NSA on Wednesday.

The U.S. spy agency released the highly confidential reports in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).According to documents posted on the NSA website on Christmas Eve, the examples of violations include sending data on Americans to unauthorized recipients, storing such data on unprotected computers and retaining them after they were meant to be destroyed, according to Bloomberg.

In general, each NSA report contains similar categories of information, including an overview of recent oversight activities signals intelligence activities affecting certain protected categories; and descriptions of specific incidents which may have been unlawful or contrary to applicable policies, NSA said, on its website.

The reports include a series of quarterly and annual accounts that have been made available to the presidents Intelligence Oversight Board, Bloombergreported, adding that the reports cover the period between the fourth quarter of 2001 and the second quarter of 2013.

In one instance of an unauthorized surveillance practice, in 2012, an NSA analyst searched a U.S. organization in a raw traffic database without formal authorization because the analyst incorrectly believed that he was authorized to query due to a potential threat, according to the fourth-quarterreportfrom 2012. The surveillance found nothing suspicious.

Another report revealed an incident, also in 2012, when an analyst searched her spouses personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting. According to the report, the analyst was advised to cease her activities.

The ACLU, which filed the lawsuit to access the NSA reports, claimed that the intelligence information collected by the spy agency was sometimes misused.

The government conducts sweeping surveillance under this authority -- surveillance that increasingly puts Americans data in the hands of the NSA, Patrick C. Toomey, staff attorney with the ACLUs National Security Project, told Bloomberg in an e-mail. Despite that fact, this spying is conducted almost entirely in secret and without legislative or judicial oversight.

Meanwhile, the NSA said that it has multi-layered protections in place to ensure that no further errors occur in intelligence-gathering and retention.

View original post here:

Reports Show Irregular Surveillance Of US Citizens

Posted in NSA