Re: Obama Administration Spying on Americans (NSA)
Oh, I can agree Snowden has done little to harm our country. He made us all aware as in confirmed what was suspected anyway. The program is still going on and all they need to do is change some policies of access. Yes, it is embarrassing to the Fed, but again, we already knew, just not how extensive it was. A tool like this is like a power drug. It will not go away easily.
Re: Obama Administration Spying on Americans (NSA)
Home Depot co founder makes his assessment of the Snowden release. Would throw a porty for Snowden for taking a stand to protect our rights. He compared the Pentagon Paper release to this matter.
Re: Obama Administration Spying on Americans (NSA)
Lindsey Graham is opening his stupid mouth. He basically just demanded that Obama "do something" about capturing Snowden. In the process essentially called the President a loser, and Puting a dictator who is yanking our chain.
(I'm looking for the exact statement right now, above is very paraphrased)
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Re: Obama Administration Spying on Americans (NSA)
I suspect they are trying to create an international incident over this so that Putin will cave, and Obama will look like a hero.
At this point, that's precisely what will happen. The media and public will tout O as some "strong leader" that "stood up against communism, and therefore can't be a marxist himself".
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Sen. John McCain weighed in on the Edward Snowden saga on Tuesday, saying that Russia's actions in the wake of the accused National Security Agency leaker's reported arrival in Moscow harkens back to the Cold War.
"It's reminiscent of the days of the Cold War, when you hear a Russian spokesman saying that [Snowden’s] not in Russia when every shred of evidence indicates that he is,” McCain said on CNN. “We've got to start dealing with Vladimir Putin in a realistic fashion for what he is. He’s an old KGB colonel apparatchik that dreams of the days of the Russian empire, and he continues to stick his thumb in our eye in a broad variety of ways. Most importantly to me, of course, and should be to the world, is their continued support of [Syrian President] Bashar al Assad and the massacre taking place in Syria."
"Putin always seems almost eager to stick a finger in the eye of the United States—whether it is Syria, Iran and now of course with Snowden," New York Sen. Charles Schumer said on CNN's "State of the Union." "Allies are supposed to treat each other in decent ways."
"The freedom trail is not exactly China-Russia-Cuba-Venezuela," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on "Fox News Sunday." "So I hope we’ll chase [Snowden] to the ends of the Earth, bring him to justice and let the Russians know there’ll be consequences if they harbor this guy.”
At a news conference in Finland on Tuesday, Putin said Snowden was still in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, and that Russia would not hand him over to the American government.
Putin added that he hoped the Snowden case would not affect Russia's relations with the United States.
"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier on Tuesday. “There are no legal grounds for such conduct of U.S. officials.”
Speaking in Saudi Arabia, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, “We are not looking for a confrontation. We are not ordering anybody. We are simply requesting under a very normal procedure for the transfer of somebody.”
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Re: Obama Administration Spying on Americans (NSA)
No. Putin will not be capturing Snowden for extradition. Before that would happen, Snowden will spirit away.
Consider something. Snowden obviously either has knowledge on how to avoid capture through loopholes or is being aided to do so. I think it is a combo of both with CIA in discreet and Wikileaks on the public side.
FOR a spy novelist like me, the Edward J. Snowden story has everything. A man driven by ego and idealism — can anyone ever distinguish the two? — leaves his job and his beautiful girlfriend behind. He must tell the world the Panopticon has arrived. His masters vow to punish him, and he heads for Moscow in a desperate search for refuge. In reality he’s found the world’s most dangerous place to be a dissident, where power is a knife blade and a sprinkle of polonium. For now he’s safe. He’s of use to his new Russian friends. But if they change their minds ...
I wish I’d written it.
But Mr. Snowden is real, not a character. And I am sorry to watch his true life unraveling.
Two weeks ago his case had a whiff of farce. Despite all the huggle-muggle about his initial revelations, anyone who has been paying attention knows that the National Security Agency is colonoscopy-deep in the world’s electronic communications. In my novels, characters assume that every e-mail they send will be seen and every phone call heard.
What Mr. Snowden at first seemed to want — and rightly — was to force our electronic spies to answer, in plain English, are you saving e-mails, Skype and other Internet communications? What about phone calls? For how long? Who can get access to this data, and is a warrant required in each case? How are calls between Americans treated? Et cetera. Despite many promises of disclosure from the White House, the answers to all those questions remain murky.
So Mr. Snowden seemed to have done the world a service. But in the last week both he and his former employers have misplayed their hands, and his story has become far trickier. Mr. Snowden did not start out as a spy, and calling him one bends the term past recognition. Spies don’t give their secrets to journalists for free.
Did he think he would be seen as a hero? Maybe. At least, as The Times’s Keith Bradsher reported Monday, he seems to have believed he would be allowed to stay quietly in Hong Kong while the world digested his revelations.
Given the Obama administration’s record of pursuing leakers, Mr. Snowden’s plans to live happily ever after were optimistic, at best. In fact, the fury from Washington and the intelligence community knew no bounds. Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, a late if enthusiastic convert to the antiterrorism cause, called Mr. Snowden a “defector.” Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said Mr. Snowden had committed “treason.” Federal prosecutors prepared a sealed (naturally) indictment. The White House asked Hong Kong to repatriate Snowden — and, unbelievably, seemed to think its extradition request would be handled like any other. We’ll just fax the papers, and you ship him to county, O.K., sheriff?
Faced with the prospect of decades in prison, Mr. Snowden panicked. Instead of waiting for the territory or its masters in Beijing to decide his fate, he packed his laptops and headed for Moscow. Now he gets to see a soft dictatorship (such a lovely phrase) up close. On Sunday, the willful naïfs from WikiLeaks who are “helping” Mr. Snowden said that Sheremetyevo airport would simply be a stopover. But why would the Russian government let him go before it has squeezed him dry? In interviews, Mr. Snowden has said he has plenty of secrets left on his hard drives, and there’s no reason to doubt him. He has already disclosed details of American and British spying on a conference in 2009 in London.
Mr. Snowden has put himself in a terrible spot. Moscow will surely protect him for as long as it feels like irritating Washington. But by the time the Russians are finished sifting through his laptops, he’ll be their spy, whether or not he meant to be. Beijing may have already pulled the same trick; some intelligence officers believe that Chinese spy agencies copied Mr. Snowden’s hard drives during his Hong Kong stay.
We have treated a whistle-blower like a traitor — and thus made him a traitor. Great job. Did anyone in the White House or the N.S.A or the C.I.A. consider flying to Hong Kong and treating Mr. Snowden like a human being, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial? Maybe he would have gone with President Vladimir V. Putin anyway, but at least he would have had another option. The secret keepers would have won too: a Congressional hearing would have been a small price to bring Mr. Snowden and those precious hard drives back to American soil.
It’s hard not to see the last couple of weeks as a tragedy for Mr. Snowden — who seems to have started down this road with decent motives and is now looking at life as an exile or in prison — as well as a huge self-inflicted wound for the American intelligence community. If the masters of the apparatus were really ready to have an honest discussion about their powers, Mr. Snowden might have wound up not in Moscow, but back in Washington, his girl by his side on the Capitol steps, headed for a few years in prison and then a job with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
That would have been the Hollywood ending. Real life is tougher.
Alex Berenson, a former reporter for The New York Times, is the author of seven novels, including “The Faithful Spy,” winner of the Edgar Award. His most recent novel is “The Night Ranger.”
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Re: Obama Administration Spying on Americans (NSA)
And NSA ain't the only ones....
Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
Summary: Facebook said Friday it fixed a bug that exposed contact info for over six million accounts. The admission revealed its 'shadow profile' data collection activities, and users are furious. UPDATED.
Friday Facebook announced the fix of a bug it said inadvertently exposed the private information of over six million users when Facebook's previously unknown shadow profiles accidentally merged with user accounts in data history record requests.
Sunday, June 23, 8:15 PM PST: Updated at page bottom to reflect response statements from Facebook.
The personal information leaked by the bug is information that had not been given to Facebook by the users - it is data Facebook has been compiling on its users behind closed doors, without their consent.
A growing number of Facebook users are furious and demand to know who saw private information they had expressly not given to Facebook.
Facebook was accidentally combining user's shadow profiles with their Facebook profiles and spitting the merged information out in one big clump to people they 'had some connection to' who downloaded an archive of their account with Facebook's Download Your Information (DYI) tool.
According to the admissions in its blog, posted late Friday afternoon, Facebook appears to be obtaining users' offsite email address and phone numbers and attempting to match them to other accounts. It appears that the invisible collected information is then being stored in each user's 'shadow profile' that is somehow attached to accounts.
Users were clearly unaware that offsite data about them was being collected, matched to them, and stored by Facebook.
Looking at comments on Facebook's blog and community websites such as Hacker News, Facebook users are extremely angry that the phone numbers and email addresses that are not-for-sharing have been gathered and saved (and now accidentally shared) by Facebook.
Facebook stated in its post yesterday that the bug was resolved, but Facebook users are telling a different story today in the comments.
One man commented this afternoon, "I just downloaded the "extended backup" and I'm still viewing emails and phone numbers that are NOT PUBLIC!!!!"
Facebook explained in its post that the bug shared information about a user that had been scraped from a source other than the personal data the user had ever entered into Facebook about themselves.
The action of the bug is that if a user downloaded their own Facebook history, that user would also download email addresses and phone numbers of their friends that other people had in their address books, without their friends ever knowing Facebook had gathered and stored that information.
This data is being gathered by Facebook about individuals through their friends' information about them - harvested when a user grants Facebook address book or contact list access.
Facebook did not specify which app or contact database tool was utilized when collecting and matching offsite-sourced data about users.
The social network said that it was harvesting and matching the offsite-sourced data to user profiles - creating these shadow profiles - "to better create friend suggestions" for the user.
Facebook users are deftly reading between the lines. One commenter on Hacker News observed wisely,
The blog says the fix was made in the DYI tool. That means they would continue to maintain "shadow profiles", but would stop letting others know that FB has a shadow profile on you.
Facebook's post downplays the significance of the data breach by telling users that while six million accounts were exposed, very few people saw the personal phone and email data because it could only be seen when a user downloaded their Facebook history.
The social giant assured users their shadow profiles were shared only with Facebook users they were somehow connected to,
if a person went to download an archive of their Facebook account through our Download Your Information (DYI) tool, they may have been provided with additional email addresses or telephone numbers for their contacts or people with whom they have some connection.
Facebook did not specify in its post what is meant by "somehow connected to" and comment speculation is attempting to fill in the gaps.
According to Reuters, who spoke with a Facebook representative, the data was being exposed in this manner for about a year.
What the revelation means is that Facebook has much more information on us than we know, it may not be accurate, and despite everyone's best efforts to keep Facebook from knowing our phone numbers or work email address, the social network is getting our not-for-sharing numbers and email addresses anyway by stealing them (albeit through 'legitimate' means) from our friends.
The yearlong gap of exposure as described by Reuters creates a scenario of horrifying possibilities for any woman who has begin to experience harassment, abuse or stalking by an ex within the past year. Or, anyone being maliciously stalked and harassed by a tech-savvy aggressor (or a stalker's Facebook sock puppet) they may have accidentally friended over the past year.
This could be remedied and harm would be greatly reduced if Facebook addressed and answered the growing demands of its users to know who has seen their non-Facebook private data.
What it means for me is that even though I've been very careful not to give my phone number to Facebook or the men in my "friends," the guys I've 'friended' might have gotten my phone number anyway, regardless of my consent. I did not know they may have been able to get my phone number throughout the course of a year, and now I have no way of finding out who might have gotten my phone number.
I am glad I've never used a Facebook app or allowed Facebook access to my contacts in any way whatsoever. (Yay paranoia.) The private numbers and emails of my friends and colleagues should remain exactly that: private.
Facebook has officially stated that it does not know of any malicious use derived from the bug.
This appears to be the first time Facebook has publicly admitted that users' shadow profiles contain more than native data (such as posts or information you deleted but are retained by Facebook) and also contain data that Facebook has harvested.
Meanwhile, anger continues to rise on the Facebook post, and as of this writing there are no representatives from Facebook in the comments to quell the storm.
UPDATE Sunday, June 23, 8:15 PM PST: In an email today from Facebook Policy Communications, ZDNet learned that concern about collection, storage and shadow profiling of contact data is the sole fault of users who failed to read (or remember) the Facebook policies they agreed to when they were getting started on Facebook.
Facebook said that users should already know about the contact collection practices because they are told about it on this page. It states that their address book contacts will be saved to Facebook servers and stored, then used in cross-matching contact data to other users.
(However, I'd be remiss not to point out that this page does not tell users they are agreeing to have this type of data collection done about them, as well.)
Facebook did not directly answer my request for a statement in response to user anger regarding data being collected about them and attached to their accounts without their consent (the shadow profiles).
In answer to this question, Facebook again directs users to re-read the "Finding Friends" section of Help Center > Get Started on Facebook.
Facebook's emails did help to clarify some aspects of its users' shadow profiles - users' combined data.
Facebook's representative told me that the data is not obtained through an app or database tool. Data about you is obtained by the seemingly innocuous voluntary actions on Facebook of people you know.
In Facebook's explanation, it is obtaining data on individuals in a form of third party collection through voluntary user submission. It is reasonable to conclude that the data is only involuntarily collected and saved for the people the data is matched to - in this case, the six million accounts that were affected.
Facebook said that it would take "precise and coincidental timing" for a malicious person to use the DIY tool with intent and obtain Facebook's combined (shadow profile) data on a targeted user. Yet we know the bug was live for a year, and combined with Facebook's admission in the blog post regarding false positives, it's a fair guess on our side to suspect that a non-trivial risk remained.
Facebook did not respond to my request for a statement regarding user demands to know who had seen their shadow profile contact information.
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Re: Obama Administration Spying on Americans (NSA)
On Facebook, I have never used a third party app or played a single game. I actually do not have a ton posted either, but do have links and likes on things I appreciate.
Signs are growing that fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden doesn't possess documents allowing him to travel further than Moscow.
US President Barack Obama has sought to calm tensions surrounding fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden's stay in a Moscow airport.
Signs are also growing that Snowden doesn't possess documents allowing him to travel further.
Snowden, who is wanted by the US authorities for leaking sensational details of US surveillance to the media, is said by the Kremlin to have been in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport since arriving on a flight from Hong Kong on Sunday.
But in a mystery that has captivated the world, there has not been a single sighting of Snowden at the airport and his onward travel plans remain an enigma after he failed to board a flight on which he was booked to Havana on Monday.
The episode risks further ratcheting up tensions between Washington and Moscow, as well as Beijing, which are already strained by the conflict in Syria.
But Obama insisted the United States - which has revoked Snowden's passport - would not scramble jets to intercept him should he fly from Russia.
"I am not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker," Obama said on a visit to Senegal, oddly giving the wrong age for the 30-year-old former National Security Agency (NSA) technician.
Obama also said he had not called the President Xi Jinping of China or Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the issue.
Putin has indicated that Moscow is keen to see the back of its unexpected visitor, while also strongly rejecting US pressure to hand over Snowden as the two countries have no extradition treaty.
"The sooner this (he flies onwards from Moscow) happens, the better," said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Ecuador, whose embassy in London is already giving refuge to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as he faces extradition to Sweden on allegations of sexual assault, has said it is considering an asylum request from Snowden.
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Re: Obama Administration Spying on Americans (NSA)
Phil, this certainly lends credulity to your theory....
Documents fabricated for Snowden?
read this:
Ecuador says Snowden asylum document unauthorized
AP Photo/Sergei Grits Russia NSA Surveillance
Planes of different air companies are parked at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow early Thursday, June 27, 2013. Russia's President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has remained in Sheremetyevo's transit zone, but media that descended on the airport in the search for him could not locate him there.
Posted: Thursday, June 27, 2013 10:34 am
Associated Press |
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — An Ecuadorean diplomatic employee issued a safe conduct pass for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden to travel to Ecuador to seek political asylum, but the action was unauthorized and the pass has no validity, government officials said Thursday.
Ecuador's scramble to explain the document, revealed by the Univision television network, came as President Obama was seeking to downplay the international chase for "a 29-year-old hacker" and lower the temperature of an issue that has already raised tensions between the U.S. and uneasy partners Russia and China.
Obama said in Senegal that the damage to U.S. national security has already been done and his top focus now is making sure it can't happen again.
Ecuadorean officials have repeatedly expressed sympathy for Snowden for revealing secret global U.S. surveillance programs, but have insisted they have taken no decision on granting him asylum, and they rushed to distance themselves from the unsigned letter shown by Univision.
Secretary of Political Management Betty Tola told a news conference that "any document of this type has no validity and is the exclusive responsibility of the person who issued it."
Another government official said that while the document is authentic, it was issued without approval from the Foreign Ministry or other officials in the capital and thus has no legal power. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
Tola told reporters that Snowden's asylum application hadn't been processed because he was not in Ecuador as required by law. She also threatened legal action against whoever had leaked the document. She and other officials offered no further details about his case.
The back-and-forth over the document appears to be part of broader debate within Ecuador's leftist government about whether to offer asylum to Snowden, who is believed to remain in limbo in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after flying in from Hong Kong.
Snowden's American passport has been revoked by U.S. authorities. Ecuadoran officials have defended Snowden in public, saying his revelations of U.S. spying benefited the world, but also seem taken aback by the intensity of global attention and U.S. criticism focused on Ecuador for considering his asylum request.
Communications Minister Fernando Alvarado reacted defiantly on Thursday, saying the country rejects economic "blackmail" to force its hand. He said "Ecuador unilaterally and irrevocably renounces" tariff benefits on hundreds of millions of dollars in trade that are up for renewal by the U.S. Congress. Nearly half of Ecuador's foreign trade depends on the U.S.
The program, initially meant to help Andean countries aiding in the fight against drugs, was facing an uphill fight for renewal. Alvarado did not explicitly mention a separate effort to win trade benefits under a presidential order.
On Wednesday, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, promised to lead an effort to block extension of the tariff benefits aid if Ecuador grants asylum to Snowden.
In Senegal, President Barack Obama said Thursday that The United States won't be scrambling military jets or engaging in high-level diplomatic bartering to get Snowden extradited to the U.S.
"I'm not going to have one case with a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly be elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues, simply to get a guy extradited so he can face the justice system," Obama said at a joint news conference with Senegal's President Macky Sall.
Snowden's intercontinental efforts to evade U.S. authorities — taking him from a hotel hideout in Hong Kong to an airport transit zone in Moscow, where he's believed to be holed up — has already undercut Obama's efforts to strengthen ties with China and threatened to worsen tensions with Russia just as Obama is seeking Moscow's cooperation on Syria. At the same time, Snowden's attempts to seek asylum from Ecuador and other nations have underscored Obama's limited sway in a number of foreign capitals.
Obama's comment came on the first full day of a weeklong, 3-country trip to Africa, his first major tour of sub-Saharan Africa since he took office more than four years ago.
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Re: Obama Administration Spying on Americans (NSA)
AP Photo/Sergei Grits
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