Privacy

Day Of Action Against C-51 Across Canada

March 15, 2015 The Canadian Press, www.macleans.ca Resist! Canada, Mass Surveillance, Police, Privacy

MONTREAL — Thousands of Canadians came together to loudly denounce the Conservative government’s proposed anti-terror legislation in rallies held across the country on Saturday. In a park in Montreal’s north end, a few dozen of the hundreds of demonstrators taped their mouths shut in protest of the bill, which opponents say would allow the government to stifle protest and dissent. As they marched toward the office of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, many of the large contingent waved signs bearing messages such as “Stop Harper,” and “Activism is not a crime.” The Conservative government introduced the legislation, known as Bill C-51, in January. The wide-ranging bill would give police much broader powers and allow them to detain terror suspects and give new powers to Canada’s spy agency.

ACLU, Wikimedia & Others Sue NSA To Take Back The Internet

March 11, 2015 Patrick Toomey, www.aclu.org Resist! ACLU, Law, NSA, Privacy, Snowden, Surveillance

Every time you email someone overseas, the NSA copies and searches your message. It makes no difference if you or the person you're communicating with has done anything wrong. If the NSA believes your message could contain information relating to the foreign affairs of the United States – because of whom you're talking to, or whom you're talking about – it may hold on to it for as long as three years and sometimes much longer. A new ACLU lawsuit filed today challenges this dragnet spying, called "upstream" surveillance, on behalf of Wikimedia and a broad coalition of educational, human rights, legal, and media organizations whose work depends on the privacy of their communications. The plaintiffs include Amnesty International USA, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and The Nation magazine, and many other organizations whose work is critical to the functioning of our democracy.

If Mass Surveillance Is A Permanent State — We Resist

March 9, 2015 Hendrik Alexandersson, www.hax.5july.org Resist! Mass Surveillance, Privacy, Resistance, Technology

From the Snowden files, people know for sure. There is mass surveillance. It is conducted on a global scale by various NSA schemes. In most countries there are national surveillance programmes. And in the EU, data retention means logging all our phone calls, text messages, e-mails, net connections and mobile positions. (This is done in most EU countries, despite the European Court of Justice having invalidated the EU data retention directive for breaching human rights.) Then we have the things we do not know. Obviously the Russians and the Chinese have their own global mass surveillance systems. And in the western world there are many surveillance programmes still unknown for the public. (Sometimes outsourced to private contractors.)

Snowden: There’s ‘No Fair Trial Available’ If I Return

March 5, 2015 Solarina Ho, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Edward Snowden, NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

Most sentient people rationally accept that the U.S. media routinely disseminates misleading stories and outright falsehoods in the most authoritative tones. But it’s nonetheless valuable to examine particularly egregious case studies to see how that works. In that spirit, let’s take yesterday’s numerous, breathlessreports trumpeting the “BREAKING” news that “Edward Snowden now wants to come home!” and is “now negotiating the terms of his return!” Ever since Snowden revealed himself to the public 20 months ago, he has repeatedly said the same exact thing when asked about his returning to the U.S.: I would love to come home, and would do so if I could get a fair trial, but right now, I can’t.

Canadian Spies Collect Domestic Emails In Secret Security Sweep

February 26, 2015 Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald, www.firstlook.org Educate! Canada, Privacy, Surveillance

Canada’s electronic surveillance agency is covertly monitoring vast amounts of Canadians’ emails as part of a sweeping domestic cybersecurity operation, according to top-secret documents. The surveillance initiative, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, is sifting through millions of emails sent to Canadian government agencies and departments, archiving details about them on a database for months or even years. The data mining operation is carried out by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. Its existence is disclosed in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives

February 18, 2015 Joseph Menn, www.reuters.com Educate! NSA, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives. That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations. Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria.

‘Privacy Critical To Human Freedom’

February 14, 2015 John Queally, www.commondreams.org Educate! Freedom, NSA, Privacy, Snowden, Surveillance

During a unique conversation hosted by the New School and the New York Times on Thursday, the three people most responsible for bringing the story of mass global surveillance programs orchestrated by the U.S. National Security Agency were brought together for the first time since they first met in a Hong Kong hotel in 2013. Filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald sat with the New York Times media columnist David Carr on stage while the whistleblower himself, Edward Snowden, appeared via videolink from Russia where he remains under asylum protection. "Yes, governments possess extraordinary powers—but at the end of the day there are more of us than there are of them." —Edward Snowden

FBI Monitored African-American Writers For Decades

February 10, 2015 Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com Educate! FBI, Privacy, Racial Justice, Surveillance

Newly declassified documents from the FBI reveal how the US federal agency under J Edgar Hoover monitored the activities of dozens of prominent African American writers for decades, devoting thousands of pages to detailing their activities and critiquing their work. Academic William Maxwell first stumbled upon the extent of the surveillance when he submitted a freedom of information request for the FBI file of Claude McKay. The Jamaican-born writer was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, author of the sonnet If We Must Die, supposedly recited by Winston Churchill, and Maxwell was preparing an edition of his complete poems. When the file came through from the FBI, it stretched to 193 pages and, said Maxwell, revealed “that the bureau had closely read and aggressively chased McKay” – describing him as a “notorious negro revolutionary” – “all across the Atlantic world, and into Moscow”.

Samsung’s Smart TV Can Spy On You Even When Off

February 10, 2015 Thomas Newton, www.recombu.com Educate! Media, Privacy, Surveillance

Is your Samsung smart TV spying on you? Korean connected telly maker Samsung has been embroiled in a micro-scandal for allegedly failing to protect the privacy of its customers. Samsung smart TV sets like the £850-ish UE50H6400 feature voice controls that let you change the channel, search for new TV shows and browse the interface without having to use that clunky old remote. But much like voice controls on phones, smart TV voice-activated commands are a little rusty. In our experience, voice activated controls don’t respond that well and most of the time it’s simply been easier for us to reach for the good old-fashioned remote control. Like any manufacturer worth its salt, Samsung isn’t content to let the situation stand as it is and so it’s constantly striving to improve its voice recognition software.

Court: US-UK Surveillance Scheme Illegal For 7 Years

February 7, 2015 Owen Bowcott, www.theguardian.com Educate! NSA, Privacy, Snowden, Surveillance

The regime that governs the sharing between Britain and the US of electronic communications intercepted in bulk was unlawful until last year, a secretive UK tribunal has ruled. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) declared on Friday that regulations covering access by Britain’s GCHQ to emails and phone records intercepted by the US National Security Agency (NSA) breached human rights law. Advocacy groups said the decision raised questions about the legality of intelligence-sharing operations between the UK and the US. The ruling appears to suggest that aspects of the operations were illegal for at least seven years – between 2007, when the Prism intercept programme was introduced, and 2014.

Canada Casts Global Surveillance Dragnet

January 29, 2015 Ryan Gallagher, www.firstlook.org Educate! Canada, Privacy, Surveillance

Canada’s leading surveillance agency is monitoring millions of Internet users’ file downloads in a dragnet search to identify extremists, according to top-secret documents. The covert operation, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, taps into Internet cables and analyzes records of up to 15 million downloads daily from popular websites commonly used to share videos, photographs, music, and other files. The revelations about the spying initiative, codenamed LEVITATION, are the first from the trove of files provided by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to show that the Canadian government has launched its own globe-spanning Internet mass surveillance system.

Game Plan To End Global Mass Surveillance

January 27, 2015 Rainey Reitman, www.eff.org Strategize! NSA, Privacy, Surveillance

For years, we’ve been working on a strategy to end mass surveillance of digital communications of innocent people worldwide. Today we’re laying out the plan, so you can understand how all the pieces fit together—that is, how U.S. advocacy and policy efforts connect to the international fight and vice versa. Decide for yourself where you can get involved to make the biggest difference. This plan isn’t for the next two weeks or three months. It’s a multi-year battle that may need to be revised many times as we better understand the tools and authorities of entities engaged in mass surveillance and as more disclosures by whistleblowers help shine light on surveillance abuses.

Illinois Schools Demand Students Social Media Passwords

January 25, 2015 Zaid Jilani, www.alternet.org Educate! Privacy, Students

In 2013, Illinois passed a lawrequiring schools to ask elementary and secondary students to provide passwords to their social media accounts if they believe that they violated a rule or policy. The policy went into effect this month, and one school district, the Triad Community Unit School District #2, already sent out letters to parents informing them of the new policy. “It’s one thing for me to take my child’s social media account and open it up, or for the teacher to look or even a child to pull up their social media account, but to have to hand over your password and personal information is not acceptable to me,” said Sarah Bozarth, one of the parents in the district. “The district understands student privacy interests," Superintendent Leigh Lewis told The Washington Post, "and will not haphazardly request social media passwords unless there is a need, and will certainly involve parents throughout the process."

Judge Orders NYPD To Release Records On X-Ray Vans

January 11, 2015 Michael Grabell, www.propublica.org Educate! Police abuse, Privacy, Surveillance

A state judge has ordered the New York City Police Department to release records on a secretive program that uses unmarked vans equipped with X-ray machines to detect bombs. The ruling follows a nearly three-year legal battle by ProPublica, which had requested police reports, training materials, contracts and any health and safety tests on the vans under the state's Freedom of Information Law. ProPublica filed the request as part of its investigation into the proliferation of security equipment, including airport body scanners, that expose people to ionizing radiation, which can mutate DNA and increase the risk of cancer. Richard Daddario, then the NYPD's deputy commissioner of counterterrorism, told the court in 2013 that releasing the documents would hamper the department's ability to conduct operations and endanger the lives of New Yorkers. Disclosing them, he said, would "permit those seeking to evade detection to conform their conduct to the times, places and methods that avoid NYPD presence and are thus most likely to yield a successful attack." But Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan called the NYPD's argument "mere speculation" and "patently insufficient" to outweigh the public's right to know.

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