Category Archives: NSA Domestic Spying

Reset the Net Today!

Leave a reply

 

Reset the NetRead about it on BoingBoing here.

Download your privacy pack here.

From BoingBoing:

Today is the day we Reset the Net! It’s been one year since the Edward Snowden disclosures hit the news and the whole world woke up to the scale of mass, indiscriminate Internet surveillance — a spying campaign that was only possible because our own tools leak our private information in great gouts. Reset the Net provides you with a technical, political, and social toolkit to harden our Internet against the spies; and Boing Boing is proud to be playing a role.

Glenn Greenwald Drops A Bombshell On Colbert

Leave a reply

I’m about a week behind on my Colbert these days. Shame on me! Last week, Glenn Greenwald was on plugging his new book, No Place To Hide, about Edward Snowden’s adventure and Glenn Greenwald’s (and others) involvement in helping him get his story out.

During the interview, Colbert asks him for a new shocking piece of dirt to give us that is revealed for the first time in his book. Greenwald says that the NSA was working with internet router companies to intercept the end of the manufacturing process (or the beginning of the shipping process), in order to insert physical tracking devices within the hardware before it is shipped to consumers. The implications of this are enormous. What other devices that are all over our business, homes, and mobile lives have been tampered with before sent to us in the mail or sold to us a store?

It’s right here, one minute in to Part Two of the Interview (Part 1 below, for your convenience):

 

 

This Wednesday Night: NSA Comedy Night at the Internet Archive

Leave a reply

HeaderShot

While looking forward to this Wednesday night’s NSA Comedy Night, I noticed a few more interesting developments that have hit the news last week on this subject.

Brian Knappenger, Director of the the upcoming documentary about Aaron Swartz, “The Internet’s Own Boy,” published a video op-ed video for the New York Times.  The five minute film addresses the popular question “Why Care About the N.S.A.?” in a short film exploring whether ordinary Americans should be concerned about online surveillance.

Also, it came out that our cell phone records were part of the N.S.A.’s larger plan.

All this makes it even more pertinent to have anonymous whistleblowing software, such as Secure Drop, which Forbes and the New Yorker are already using. The Freedom of the Press Foundation’s SecureDrop team, headed up by James Dolan and Garrett
Smith, both recently spoke at the Aaron Swartz Day celebration, and Aaron Swartz Hackathon kick-off, at the Internet Archive on November 8th. (Video of their talk here.)  Code from the hackathon has already been rolled into the latest download of SecureDrop.

SecureDrop was originally started by Wired’s Kevin Poulsen and the late Aaron Swartz. Poulsen is the plaintiff in the FOIA court case against the government over the release of Swartz’s Secret Service and FBI files, and has just released another 148 documents  as a result of his case. (Direct link to documents.)

So I hope to see you this Wednesday night at NSA Comedy Night, where we can all learn more about protecting our constitutional rights, and then proceed to let Will Durst shine a little laughter on the situation.

Act NOW to keep NSA cases in public court


Go to the EFF’s Action Center now real quick and
Keep the NSA Wiretapping Case In Non-Secret Court
from boing boing:

Cindy Cohn, EFF’s stellar Legal Director, sez, “Senator Specter and the Bush Administration today announced that they have reached a deal to send all of the cases concerning the illegal NSA wiretapping (including EFF’s) to the secret FISA court. This is being spun in the press as a big concession by the Administration but in truth it’s an abomination — the FISA court acts in secret and doesn’t even hear argument from both sides. This bill will likely move fast, so we only have a limited window to try to stop it.

(Thanks Cory!)