Maybe the prevalent business model on the Internet is about to change? Into what though?
Majorities think their personal data is less secure now, that data collection poses more risks than benefits, and believe it is not possible to go through daily life without being tracked.
Top secret data from the National Security Agency, shared with The Intercept by WikiLeaks, reveals that the U.S. spy agency targeted the cellphones and other communications devices of more than a dozen top Brazilian political and financial officials, including the country’s president Dilma Rousseff, whose presidential plane’s telephone was on the list. President Rousseff just yesterday returned to Brazil after a trip to the U.S. that included a meeting with President Obama, a visit she had delayed for almost two years in anger over prior revelations of NSA spying on Brazil.
That Rousseff’s personal cell phone was successfully targeted by NSA spying was previously reported in 2013 by Fantastico, a program on the Brazilian television network Globo Rede. That revelation – along with others exposing NSA mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Brazilians, and the targeting of the country’s state-owned oil company Petrobras and its Ministry of Mines and Energy – caused a major rupture in relations between the two nations. But Rouseff is now suffering from severe domestic weakness as a result of various scandals and a weak economy, and apparently could no longer resist the perceived benefits of a high-profile state visit to Washington.
But these new revelations extend far beyond the prior ones and are likely to reinvigorate tensions. Beyond Rousseff, the new NSA target list includes some of Brazil’s most important political and financial figures, such as the Finance Ministry’s Executive Secretary Nelson Barbosa; Luiz Awazu Pereira da Silva, a top official with Brazil’s Central Bank; Luiz Eduardo Melin de Carvalho e Silva, former Chief of Staff to the Finance Minister; the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s chief of economics and finance, Luis Antônio Balduíno Carneiro; former Foreign Affairs Minister and Ambassador to the U.S. Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado; and Antonio Palocci, who formerly served as both Dilma’s Chief of Staff and Finance Minister under former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Most notable about the list, published simultaneously by WikiLeaks, is the predominance of officials responsible for Brazil’s financial and economic matters (last four digits of the listed telephone numbers are redacted; click to enlarge):...The shoes continue to drop. Brazil ripped. US elite apoplectic.
“The US is a surveillance superpower,” [Assange] told Rossiya-1 in an interview, slated to be broadcast later on Sunday.
“This country spends on surveillance 60 percent of what the entire world spends on espionage,” he said. “They spy on everyone, including their allies. And use the information for their political and economic goals.”
The draft anti-terror law fits into broader plans by the Chinese government to evacuate “key sectors” of foreign software. Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the government to use more domestic technology as early as a year ago, at the first meeting of the Internet security and informatization group. In Xi’s view, for China to become a more secure cyber power, it needs to know how its critical software was developed and minimize opportunities for foreign cyber infiltration. This means by 2020, China will look to entirely wean itself off Microsoft operating systems and IBM software solutions to homegrown alternatives (China released its ”people’s OS” in August 2014)....
[U.S. Trade Representative Michael] Froman has already said that the new law “[isn't] about security,” alleging instead that it is “about protectionism and favoring Chinese companies.” The United States will have a tough time convincing Beijing of the same. Given the confluence of cybersecurity and anti-terrorism issues in this law — two incredibly sensitive topics for China — negotiations will not be easy, if they are possible at all...The CIA calls this "blowback."
India can lead the way in this new understanding at the global level, since this understanding is necessary to reconcile different viewpoints on the issue of religion. Indians of all faiths and non-religious Indians generally share an understanding of pluralism in the spiritual sphere that is quite different than the understanding found in countries like China or the United States. Whether or not true, religion is here to stay and will not be fading away anytime soon, though its form and organization may change. It is likely that just as religion, or ritual and belief in something metaphysical was around 10,000 years ago, something will be around 10,000 years from now. The tendencies to worship (whether a god or a celebrity in modern times), to create rituals, to attribute meaning to events, and to organize beliefs into systems are all deeply rooted in human nature, and could very likely be evolutionarily built into human psychology. Therefore, religion is a reality of the human experience, and one that needs to be approached with nuance and understanding. In this, the traditions and experience of India can lead the way.The Diplomat
Law enforcement agencies’ efforts to conceal the kinds of mass surveillance tools available to them are anti-democratic and will draw a public backlash, an ACLU attorney argued in an essay this week.
The piece by ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump argues that law enforcement policies at all levels, from the NSA to your local police department, are guided less by the moral calculus than by technical capability. If an act of surveillance or interdiction can be done, the rationale to do so tends to be developed later, she argues.
“The limits of law enforcement surveillance are being determined by what is technologically possible, not what is wise or even lawful,” she said Friday in a paper published at ACLU.org. “And it’s not uncommon for the police to use a new technology in secret for as long as they can, and then allow the courts to sort out legality once the issue finally comes before them.
Crump points toward automatic license plate readers, surveillance cameras mounted on unmanned drones, and the location history of your cell phone as examples of technology outstripping legal and ethical considerations.The Raw Story
Revelations about the US government’s vast data collection programs have already started hurting American technology firms, according to an industry survey released this week.
The Cloud Security Alliance said 10 percent of its non-US members have cancelled a contract with a US-based cloud provider, and 56 percent said they were less likely to use an American company.Doh. Ya think?
Supporters of democracy ought to think long and hard before prosecuting people like Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Snowden. If we think that democracy is a good thing, then we must believe that the public should know as much as possible about what the government it elects is doing. Snowden has said that he made the disclosures because “the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.”
He’s right about that. How can a democracy determine whether there should be government surveillance of the kind that the NSA is conducting if it has no idea that such programs exist? Indeed, Snowden’s leaks also revealed that National Intelligence Director James Clapper misled the US Congress about the NSA’s surveillance practices in his testimony at a hearing held in March by the Senate Intelligence Committee.Project Syndicate
[Le Monde] said the DGSE intercepted signals from computers and telephones inFrance, and between France and other countries, although not the content of phone calls, to create a map of "who is talking to whom". It said the activity was illegal.
"All of our communications are spied on," wrote Le Monde, which based its report on unnamed intelligence sources as well as remarks made publicly by intelligence officials....
The Guardian newspaper reported last month that Britain had a similar spying program on international phone and Internet traffic and was sharing vast quantities of personal information with the American NSA.Reuters
It is certain to become a major issue between the United States and Europe.McClatchy
In that same conversation, Nixon anticipated a story saying ''the President authorized a super-duper activity in 1970'' involving ''burglary, etc., and wiretapping.'' Defiantly, he said Americans would understand the plan was to control riots by people protesting the Vietnam War.Zero Hedge
Where oversight and accountability have failed, Snowden's leaks have opened up a vital public debate on our rights and privacyThe Guardian (UK)
“I think the notion of what is an unreasonable level of paranoia has shifted in the past couple of weeks,” said Alex Stamos, an NCC Group security consultant and self-described “white hat” hacker.
Ironically, some tools for eluding detection come from US government-funded programs aimed at helping people living under authoritarian regimes.The Raw Story
The five uncontrollable urges of a secrecy-surveillance world.The Nation
Both governments think they are doing what is best for the state and people. But, as I know, such abuse of power can ruin livesThe Guardian (UK)
A Department of Homeland Security division produced daily briefings on "peaceful activist demonstrations" during the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests, documents released Tuesday revealed.
The 252 pages of documents were obtained in a March 14 letter from DHS by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which in November 2011 launched a campaign to unearth public records that would show whether the federal government was spying on Occupy Wall Street. FBI records obtained by the group in Decembershowed that the bureau investigated Occupy as a potential "domestic terrorism" threat.
"Taken together, the two sets of documents paint a disturbing picture of federal law enforcement agencies using their vast power in a systematic effort to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, said in a statement. "The federal agencies’ actions were not because Occupy represented a 'terrorist threat' or a 'criminal threat,' but rather because it posed a significant grassroots political challenge to the status quo."The Huffington Post
Ever hear of Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 20? Bet not. The more you’ve never heard of something, the more worried you should be....
The ostensible rationale for the tightening of the digital security grip is to track potential foreign cyber-threats. It is, however, evident that federal agencies are increasingly surveilling the electronic lives of ordinary Americans.AlterNet | Civil Liberties
