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Edward Snowden is expected to offer his opinion of President Obama's NSA reforms during a Webcast question-and-answer session on Thursday. It will be Snowden's first live chat since he began releasing classified internal documents last June that revealed the National Security Agency's surveillance programs, according to FreeSnowden.is, the support site hosting the hour-long Q&A. Snowden, who is currently living in exile in Russia, was charged with espionage after reportedly stealing 1.7 million classified documents from US government computers.

The government has accused its largest security background check contractor of defrauding the U.S. of millions of dollars by filing more than 660,000 flawed background investigations. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department made the claims in a 25-page civil complaint that joined a whistleblowers' lawsuit against US Investigations Services, LLC in U.S. District Court in Alabama. USIS was the firm that conducted background checks on NSA leaker Edward Snowden, as well as Aaron Alexis, a defense contractor who fatally shot 12 people before killing himself at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. this past September. Federal officials...

The US cloud industry faces up to €25.8 billion in lost revenues following revelations about US-led snooping on EU citizens. “The surveillance revelations will cost the US cloud computing industry USD 22 to 35 billion in lost revenues over the next three year,” said EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding on Sunday (19 January) at the Digital Life Design Conference in Munich. …

Gospodin Snowden Posted by William A. Jacobson Sunday, January 19, 2014 at 4:45pm How did Edward Snowden so carefully thread the needle to download a massive trove of highly secret documents from across the NSA and intelligence networks without detection? How did he know exactly which job to go after in Hawaii to give him that access, and how was his escape so neatly orchestrated that he ends up first in Chinese controlled Hong Kong with its difficult extradition rules, and then on to Vladimir Putin’s arms?

Video - only Streamed live on Jan 17, 2014 President Barack Obama address changes to government surveillance practices.

The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents. The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in...

As a young lawmaker defining himself as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama visited a center for scholars in August 2007 to give a speech on terrorism. He described a surveillance state run amok and vowed to rein it in. “That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens,” he declared. “No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime.” ....................................................... Feeling little pressure to curb the security agencies, Mr. Obama largely left them alone until Mr. Snowden began disclosing secret programs last year. Mr. Obama was angry at the revelations, privately excoriating Mr....

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world - but not in the United States - that allows the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The Times cited NSA documents, computer experts and U.S. officials in its report about the use of secret technology using radio waves to gain access to computers that other countries have tried to protect from spying or cyberattacks....

Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden conclusively prove that the United States has been ruled by a race of tall, white space aliens who also assisted the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. These revelations about our alien overlords might not cost you any sleep. But the part that should concern you a tad is that the UFO story was just published by the Fars News Agency, the English-language news service of Iran, a nation that may be very close to acquiring nuclear weapons. This being a crazy conspiracy theory, naturally the Russians are behind it. The alleged...

The Obama administration plans to overhaul the nation’s security clearance system to prevent future intelligence leaks like the one by former defense contractor Edward Snowden. The changes, part of a package of reforms President Obama is expected to announce Friday during a speech at the Justice Department, will include more stringent — and more frequent  — vetting of security clearances, according to sources familiar with the administration’s plans.  The president is embracing some of the proposals offered by an advisory panel he appointed. The panel recommended security clearances become more highly differentiated and that a new clearance level be created...

[....] First and foremost, the surveillance state is robust. It is robust politically, legally, and technically. I can name three different NSA programs to collect Gmail user data. These programs are based on three different technical eavesdropping capabilities. They rely on three different legal authorities. They involve collaborations with three different companies. And this is just Gmail. The same is true for cell phone call records, Internet chats, cell-phone location data. [....] Our choice isn't between a digital world where the NSA can eavesdrop and one where the NSA is prevented from eavesdropping; it's between a digital world that is...

Former CIA Director James Woolsey has pronounced that the proper punishment for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden would be for him to be "hanged by his neck until he is dead." The news media want to hand him not a rope but a pedestal. The Guardian editorialized last week that its high-profile source is a hero worthy of a presidential pardon. Likewise, The New York Times opined that the Obama administration should offer Snowden "a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home" and serve less time than the three decades he faces...

Trey Gowdy on with the Judge and speaks about various issues, Benghazi, Sisters of the Poor, Snowden.

In room-size metal boxes, secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world. According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled, “Penetrating Hard Targets.” Much of the work is hosted under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park.

The editorial board of The New York Times is urging the Obama administration to grant Edward Snowden clemency. “It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community,” an editorial published Wednesday said. The paper argues Snowden blew the whistle on National Security Agency activities that have “exceeded its mandate...

Many Israelis were scandalized when documents released by Edward Snowden revealed that their best friend, America, had in 2009 targeted a former prime minister and defense minister for secret surveillance. But their political leaders were not surprised. For years, the United States has been running a complex eavesdropping and surveillance web to spy on friends and foes alike, including Israel. Satellites gather and transmit data to command centers, “informers” operate in the field and the most fertile sources of all are not human but the instruments which bug cell phones, tablets and social networks. The US National Security Agency, NSA,...

Journalist Glenn Greenwald was asked by MSNBC's Kristen Welker if he was acting as a spokesman for so-called whistle-blower Edward Snowden: "I think that's ludicrous is what I say to that,” Greenwald said. "Every journalist has an agenda. We're on MSNBC now, where close to 24 hours a day the agenda of President Obama and the Democratic Party are promoted, defended, glorified, the agenda of the Republican Party is undermined. That doesn't mean the people who appear on MSNBC aren't journalists, they are."

... Hi, and merry Christmas. I’m honored to have a chance to speak to you and your family this year. Recently, we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book: microphones, video cameras, TVs that watch us —are nothing compared to what we have today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what that means for the privacy of the average...

As we reported on Tuesday, NSA leaker Edward Snowden will deliver Channel 4 UK’s “Alternative Christmas Message,” the network’s annual response to the Queen’s address. They aired on Christmas Day at 4:15 p.m. local time in England. Snowden’s remarks were filmed by Glenn Greenwald‘s film collaborator Laura Poitras, from an undisclosed location in Russia. Full remarks transcribed below, followed by the video: Hi and Merry Christmas. I’m honored to have a chance to speak with you and your family this year. Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide system of mass surveillance...

Hi and Merry Christmas. I’m honored to have a chance to speak with you and your family this year. Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide system of mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book -– microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us –- are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for...