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“Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information “inadvertently” collected from domestic US communications without a warrant. The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence …
“Since the first disclosure of documents regarding the US National Security Agency (NSA)’s collection of US phone records from 5 June 2013 the British public has witnessed a series of alarming disclosures regarding the extent of the surveillance programmes operated by US and UK intelligence services. The source for the vast majority of these reports …
Ryan Gallagher, via Slate’s Future Tense blog: “As part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act suit launched by civil liberties group the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the FBI is turning over information on its use of cellphone surveillance technology variously known as “Stingrays,” “Cell Site Simulators,” “IMSI Catchers,” or “Digital Analyzers.” These devices function …
What the Government Does with Americans’ Data, by Rachel Levinson-Waldman, October 8, 2013. “After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the government’s authority to collect, keep, and share information about Americans with little or no basis to suspect wrongdoing dramatically expanded. While the risks and benefits of this approach are the subject of intense debate, …
Via GovDocs Listserv: “Just thought I’d give this group a heads-up about what’s going on with LOCKSS-USDOCS (http://lockss-usdocs.stanford.edu) and the government shutdown. I talked with Mary Alice Baish as soon as I heard about the possibility of a shutdown. She basically told me the same thing as what was in the GPO the press release …
Secret servers and a privileged position on the internet’s backbone used to identify users and attack target computers, by Bruce Schneier, October 4, 2013. “The online anonymity network Tor is a high-priority target for the National Security Agency. The work of attacking Tor is done by the NSA‘s application vulnerabilities branch, which is part of …
One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets’ computers by James Ball, Bruce Schneier and Glenn Greenwald “The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the …
Selling Secrets of Phone Users to Advertisers – by Claire Cain Miller and Somini Sengupta, October 5, 2013 “Now, smartphones know everything — where people go, what they search for, what they buy, what they do for fun and when they go to bed. That is why advertisers, and tech companies like Google and Facebook, …
[October 1, 2013] “release of the 2013 Secrecy Report, the 9th annual review and analysis of indicators of secrecy in the federal government by OpenTheGovernment.org, comes amid shocking revelations that cast doubt on the accuracy and the meaningfulness of the government’s statistics about surveillance. As is highlighted in the introduction to this report and in …
Via Jeff J. Berns: “Per http://blog.archive.org/2013/10/02/governmentblackout/, the Internet Archive grabbed copies of a number of federal agency websites just before they were taken offline due to the lapse in appropriations. You can access the archives through the links on the blog entry. The databases, search engines, etc. may not work, but the static pages should …
THOMAS.gov and beta.congress.gov remain online. FEMA.gov is partially available. BLS.gov and BEA.gov are closed. Via Gretchen Gould: a list of government websites that were completely offline or “dark” as of the evening of October 1, 2013: Bureau of Economic Analysis (bea.gov) Business.gov Census.gov Copyright.gov Data.gov Disability.gov ED.gov ERIC (eric.ed.gov) FCC.gov FTC.gov FTC.gov Library of Congress …
“Due to the Federal government shutdown, NOAA.gov and most associated web sites are unavailable. Only web sites necessary to protect lives and property will be maintained. See Weather.gov for critical weather information or contact USA.gov for more information about the shutdown. NOAA Federal Employees: For access to the Notice to Federal Employees About Unemployment Insurance (SF-8), please …
