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Today, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych promised to reshuffle his government and release protesters from jail. It’s a big step forward for protesters in Kiev who have filled the streets since November 21, when the president’s cabinet announced that it would abandon an agreement to strengthen ties with the European Union, and instead seek closer cooperation with Moscow. The protests have been mostly peaceful, but after violent clashes on Sunday that killed several protesters, something strange happened on Tuesday. A chilling text message showed up on cell phones in Ukraine earlier this week. “Dear Subscriber,” it read, “you are registered as...

The NSA orchestrated Internet vulnerabilities against the directive of Congress Every child learns not to touch a neighbor’s mailbox. “That’s a federal crime,” he’s told, and for good reason. However, the transactions and love-hate letters that used to go through physical mailboxes now go through electronic ones. The U.S. government cannot protect their privacy. What the laws and customs that surround the U.S. mail once did is now done by encryption. Government’s own role is problematic, because many of its various agencies want to look into our mailboxes by defeating encryption. We can understand how serious a matter this is...

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. …

Obama Aides: He Didn't Know Extent of NSA Surveillance "I think it was disturbing to most people, and I think he found it disturbing.” President Obama doesn’t merely claim ignorance of the IRS’ targeting of politically conservative groups or the Department of Justice’s targeting of journalists: according to The New York Times, Obama was also ignorant of the extent of NSA surveillance. According to the Times, “aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, just how far the surveillance had gone.” David Plouffe, Obama’s advisor, said, “Things seem...

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....

Obama to speak on the NSA surveillance scandal from the Justice Department around 11 a.m. EST today.C-SPAN's description:The President delivers remarks at the Department of Justice presenting the outcomes of the Administration's review of U.S. signals intelligence programs. He is expected to focus on steps that increase oversight and transparency while leaving the framework of the surveillance programs in place. In addition, according to officials, the President will turn to Congress for guidance regarding the future of NSA data collection. The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies recommended more than 40 suggested changes at the NSA in a...

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks. While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials. The technology, which has been used by the agency since at least...

United States President Barack Obama invited German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Washington on Wednesday, hoping to mend fences after a row provoked by revelations of U.S. eavesdropping on her cellphone, AFP reports. Obama called Merkel to wish her a speedy recovery after her recent skiing injury and invited her to visit at a “mutually agreeable time in the coming months,” the White House said in a statement quoted by the news agency. Merkel reacted furiously towards the end of 2013 to revelations that the National Security Agency had been listening in on her mobile, telling Obama in October that this...

"Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other elected officials?" That's the question Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put to the National Security Agency's chief in a bluntly worded letter Friday. It seems, however, that the agency cannot categorically say no. Sanders didn't use the word "spy" lightly. He was careful to define his terms, indicating he meant the collection of phone records from personal as well as official telephones, "content from Web sites visited or e-mails sent," and data that companies collect but don't release to the public.

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.

A German magazine, citing internal documents, claims the NSA’s hacking unit uses James Bond-style spy gear to obtain data, including intercepting computer deliveries and outfitting them with espionage software.

Summary: The Reform Government Surveillance group, an alliance between eight major technology firms, aims to persuade the U.S. government to stop undermining the privacy rights of the general public. Household names including Apple and Google have formally called for changes to U.S. surveillance practices and policy, arguing that current operations undermine the freedom of people. Eight companies, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and LinkedIn have formed an alliance called the Reform Government Surveillance group. Although usually fierce competitors, the group have come together in agreement over the U.S. government's spying programs -- brought to light by former National...

The National Security Agency is reportedly collecting almost 5 billion cell phone records a day under a program that monitors and analyses highly personal data about the precise whereabouts of individuals, wherever they travel in the world. Details of the giant database of location-tracking information, and the sophisticated ways in which the NSA uses the data to establish relationships between people, have been revealed by the Washington Post, which cited documents supplied by whistleblower Edward Snowden and intelligence officials. The spy agency is said to be tracking the movements of “at least hundreds of millions of devices” in what amounts...

The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, according to the officials and the documents, which were provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. New projects created to analyze that data have provided the intelligence community with what amounts to a mass surveillance tool.

A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has criticised the US government for ignoring guidelines surrounding the National Security Agency's (NSA) Prism programme for domestic surveillance of web users. FISC set out suggested regulations for the Prism programme, which spied on citizens' emails and web use for around 10 years before being shut down in 2011... "NSA exceeded the scope of authorised acquisition continuously during the more than [redacted] years of acquisition under these orders," wrote Judge Bates in a 117 page document. He added that guidelines stated that the government should only gather data on those for whom there was...

The Supreme Court is refusing to intervene in the controversy surrounding the National Security Agency, rejecting a call from a privacy group to stop NSA from collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers in the United States. While the justices on Monday declined to get involved in this issue, other lawsuits on the topic are making their way through the lower courts around the country. But in the case at hand, the Electronic Privacy Information Center bypassed lower courts and said that only the Supreme Court can overrule a decision by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose...

Following recent revelations about NSA spying, Spiegel has learned that Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution recently issued a security warning to authorities in the country’s 16 states. The domestic intelligence agency warned in an Oct. 30 letter that “an emotional response from certain segments of the population cannot be ruled out” and recommended that “security measures aimed at protecting US facilities in Germany should be increased.” The agency said the background behind the “potential threat” was ongoing discussions about the “collection of Germans’ data by the United States.” …

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt called reports of the U.S. government spying on the company's data centers "outrageous" and if proven true, potentially illegal. "It's really outrageous that the National Security Agency (NSA) was looking between the Google data centers, if that's true," Schmidt told The Wall Street Journal. "The steps that the organization was willing to do without good judgment to pursue its mission and potentially violate people's privacy, it's not OK." According to Schmidt, Google has registered complaints against President Obama, the NSA and members of Congress.