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CIA officer alleges unlawful surveillance | 545 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
And in copyright news...
Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 02:28 PM EDT
Link

You can't make this stuff up.

---

You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Feds May Have To Reveal FISA Phone Records In Murder Case
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 02:51 PM EDT
This is gold. One of the defendants in a criminal trial for an armed robbery in which a guard was shot and killed, may be able to force the government to produce phone records that the NSA collected under one of those blanket FISA warrants we've recently been reading about. The government previously said they went to the phone provider and asked for the records and the provider didn't have them anymore, but the Court seems sympathetic to his argument that they are exculpatory and that the NSA apparently has collected them, so the government might be forced to produce them.

Story at techdirt.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Wondering Wayback...
Authored by: Ed L. on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 03:39 PM EDT
Does anyone recall ten years ago our gracious hostess declined a cherished para-position at PubPat out of (not all would say well-founded) fear of conflict of interest with her work here at Groklaw?

---
Real Programmers mangle their own memory.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

FISC now has a website
Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 04:09 PM EDT
http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/courts/fisc/index.html

---

You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

CIA officer alleges unlawful surveillance
Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 04:30 PM EDT
Link

---

You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Facebook policy on mastectomy photos spotlighted by petition
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 07:07 PM EDT
CBS News

When perusing her twitter, Scorchy Barrington noticed some people complaining that mastectomy pictures from non-profit organization The SCAR Project, which features inspiring photos of amputees, had been taken down from Facebook. In addition, she found out that the photographer behind the project, David Jay, had been banned from the social network for 30 days for putting up questionable material./

When she went to bed after the first day of the petition's posting, there were 6,000 signatures. When she woke up, more than 20,000 people were supporting her cause.

Here's a link to the petition:

https://www.change.org/facebooksurvivors

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

An Open Letter to the NSA
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 07:32 PM EDT
Link
Brilliant!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

NSA folks scratching their heads
Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 08:02 PM EDT
Link

Ok, so it was Ed, with the thumb drive, by the computer.

Or so they say. But...

Officials said they still don’t know how Snowden got access to an order marked "Top Secret" from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or a highly-classified directive from President Obama authorizing a military target list for cyber attacks. Neither document would be widely shared, or normally available to a low-level NSA employee.

Well, perhaps he stumbled upon them because others higher up in the food chain were secretly collecting them.

Or perhaps because they use Windows? Maybe he discovered a trojan network and/or bot command and control already in place inside that was already collecting files.

Perhaps everything now known to the public has already been exfiltrated by other parties but they are keeping it secret so as to continue to exfiltrate more data.

Maybe it really is the tip of the iceberg.

---

You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Bad Piggies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 11:04 PM EDT
f-secure.com and followup

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

NSA whistleblower comes forward:
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 01:02 AM EDT
Edward Snowden has a lot to say, does anyone want to do a
transcript ...

href="http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?
v=9988C0C07C1CF71E9ADE598760F70DA2">link<
/a>


[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Opt out of PRISM ---> PRISM-BREAK.org
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 01:14 AM EDT
"Stop reporting your online activities to the American government with these free alternatives to proprietary software."

Link list:
http://prism-break.org/

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Lawsuit: "Happy Birthday" is not in ©, and Warner owes the world $100s of millions
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 03:27 AM EDT
Copyright scholars have long been pretty certain that "Happy Birthday to You" is in the public domain, despite the fact that Warner/Chappell claims copyright on it and charges impressive licensing fees to use it in public performances.

Those fees, however, are much lower than a copyright lawsuit would be, so everyone shrugs and pays them. Until now.

A documentary film company working on a movie about "Happy Birthday" has assembled a huge body of evidence showing that the song has been in the public domain since the 1920s, and is suing Warner to get them to return the hundreds of millions they've improperly charged in licensing since. This is gonna be great.

Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 03:36 AM EDT
Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said.
Michael Riley, Bloomberg

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Delaware an embarrassment ?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 06:22 AM EDT
G8 'Tax Haven' remarks. We've commented plenty on some aspects of Delaware's attitude to business here, but not this one AFAIK.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Mayor Ford's crack scandal (cont.)
Authored by: JamesK on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 10:23 AM EDT
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article about an alleged video of Toronto mayor Rob Ford supposedly smoking crack. He denied there ever was such a video. However, in the course of a recent drug bust, it appears the wire taps revealed discussion of the video, including the mayor's involment, weeks before news of it hit the media.

‘I don't answer to the mayor,’ says Bill Blair as Rob Ford scandal deepens with police raids

Grilled about Rob Ford, Toronto's top cop refuses to rule out the possibility of raid evidence related to the mayor.

---
The following program contains immature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Microsoft Said To Give Zero Day Exploits To US Government Before It Patches Them
Authored by: DannyB on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 10:42 AM EDT
Microsoft Said To Give Zero Day Exploits To US Government Before It Patches Them
Bloomberg came out with quite a bombshell last night, discussing how lots of tech companies apparently work with the NSA and other government agencies, not to pass data on users over to the government, but to share exploit information, sometimes before it's public or patched -- in some cases so it can be useful for the US government to use proactively. Last month, we had written about how the feds were certainly collecting hacks and vulnerabilities for offensive purposes, but it wasn't clear at the time that some of these exploits were coming directly from the companies themselves.

[ . . . omitted text . . . ]

That's fairly incredible. You'd expect Microsoft and other tech companies to be focused on fixing the bugs first, not letting the NSA exploit the vulnerabilities on foreign computers.
Wow. I feel more secure already.

I'm sure foreign governments are glad that when they pay monopoly prices to a foreign convicted monopolist that they can rest assured that the US government won't have back doors into their computers.

Nevermind that story about NSA Key in Microsoft code from more than a decade ago.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

---
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Ahead of the Bell: Myriad shares continue slide
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 12:20 PM EDT
Investor focus will now shift from the court case to a competitive landscape that already appears to be growing more intense, said Jefferies analyst Brandon Couillard. He noted that competitors like Bio-Reference Laboratories and Quest Diagnostics Inc. plan to provide alternative BRCA tests.

Ahead of the Bell: Myriad shares continue slide

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

TOLD YA SO DEPARTMENT: Apples CLAIM 19 HAS BEEN ALLOWED
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 01:08 PM EDT
Claim 19 in the re-exam 90/012,304 of U.S. Patent 7,469,381 has now been allowed
(as of June 12) and the re-exam has been terminated.


So, don't get all excited and carried away the next time you read about a
"Final Office Action". Final, don't mean final.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

What's Next For Gene Patenting?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 03:33 PM EDT
Is this the last word on gene patenting?

Stanford University lawyers apparently don't think so. The human body doesn't naturally make cDNA like the synthetic BRCA1 and BRCA2 that Myriad makes—but viruses are able to make cDNA. The Supreme Court ruling addressed this by saying that it's a rare phenomenon. But how rare is rare enough? This issue may make its way to courts in the future, Stanford law fellow Jake Sherkow wrote in a blog post.

In addition, cDNA may not hold up to patent challenges in the future because the methods for making cDNA are well known and commonly used...

W hat's Next For Gene Patenting?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

NSA spying legal analysis by lawyer
Authored by: designerfx on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 03:35 PM EDT
Phandro id: 4th amendment/fisa surprising to be on Phandroid, but it's well written.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The lunch problem
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 04:46 PM EDT
When I first joined Carleton, just three out of thirty professors in the economics department were female. Then one retired, one moved to Montreal, and I was the only female professor around on a regular basis.

For the most part, I didn't mind. If I was the kind of person who objected to being in a male-dominated profession, I wouldn't have gone into economics in the first place. But the absence of women meant I had to socialize with male colleagues, or not socialize at all. I had to work out what kinds of interactions with my male colleagues were socially or otherwise acceptable. It wasn't obvious, at first, where to draw the line.

Frances Woolley, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

NSA, terrorists, what can possibly go wrong?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 14 2013 @ 08:57 PM EDT
terrorist labeling
Who gets to pass out the "terrorist" label? Non-violent activists are labeled as possible terrorists. Gosh, privatizing so many functions of the government these days!

--
Bondfire "its not terrorism if the government does it"

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Facebook Releases Data, Including All National Security Requests
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 15 2013 @ 01:08 AM EDT
June 14, 2013
By Ted Ullyot, Facebook General Counsel

https://newsroom.fb.com/News/636/Facebook-Releases-Data- Including-All-National -Security-Requests

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Google opts out of FISA disclosure deal made by Facebook and Microsoft - 'a step back for users'
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 15 2013 @ 01:23 AM EDT
Here's what a Google spokesperson said to The Verge (emphasis ours):
We have always believed that it's important to differentiate between different types of government requests. We already publish criminal requests separately from National Security Letters. Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.
Dieter Bohn, The Verge

---

Twitter agrees - Benjamin Lee, Legal Director at Twitter: "We agree with @Google: It's important to be able to publish numbers of national security requests—including FISA disclosures—separately"

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

George Zimmerman, stealth jurors, and social media.
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 15 2013 @ 01:48 AM EDT
An interesting thing happened in the Zimmerman trial jury selection this week. A
crazy ( if the attempt to get on the jury wasn't proof enough, the subsequent
trespass of the juror is ) person tried to become a stealth to get on the jury,
but got caught due to a facebook posting.

In some subsequent discussions people were suggesting that the man should have
made his account private.

An interesting question then pops up, can a judge require that potential jurors
give attorneys access to their social media accounts?
MouseTheLuckyDog

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The Balloon's Gone Up
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 15 2013 @ 02:25 AM EDT
Where will the madness end?
Google begins world-first balloon-borne broadband trial in Canterbury National Business Review
Google's 'internet balloons' offer remote areas web access The Telegraph

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Leaked: NSA's Talking Points Defending NSA Surveillance
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 15 2013 @ 02:31 AM EDT
from the you-have-to-be-kidding-me dept

The government has been passing around some "talking points" to politicians and the press trying to spin the NSA surveillance story. We've got the talking points about scooping up business records (i.e., all data on all phone calls) and on the internet program known as PRISM.

Mike Masnick, TechDirt

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Three Years for not paying dinner bill ..
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 15 2013 @ 03:33 PM EDT
"Anthony M. Malabehar finished a sumptuous meal that included crab, lobsters and dessert and then announced that he had no money to pay the $69.27 tab.

He was arrested, pleaded guilty and earlier this month was sentenced to three years in prison.

In delivering the prison term, the judge took into consideration that Malabehar, 47, of Mattoon, Ill., had 70 prior arrests. He also had been released from jail the day before his meal for not paying at another restaurant
." link

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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