Snowdon is a dummy

"Observing the fact that there has been no violation of any Constitutional rights

The only thing Snowden has done is help al-Qa'ida murder innocent Americans.

The people who struggle to keep us safe should always be rewarded with a kick in the balls

In the US, the official response to Snowden's revelations celebrates journalism and calls for real change. In Britain, the picture has been rather different
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Only 10 weeks ago British spy chiefs were doing their best to ventilate their "cease and desist" rhetoric on journalists – implying they had no right to venture into their territory. A distinguished former editor wrote a rather shameful article wholeheartedly agreeing: "If MI5 warns that this is not in the public interest," ran the headline, "who am I to disbelieve them?"

Obama's panel of experts profoundly disagree: "It will not do for the press to be fearful, intimidated or cowed by government officials," they write. "If they are, it is 'We the People' who will suffer. Part of the responsibility of our free press is to ferret out and expose information that government officials would prefer to keep secret when such secrecy is unwarranted."

And so – informed initially by journalism, not by anything that congressional oversight or the courts have brought into the open – Obama's panel set down to write a report which calls for more than 40 changes in the way the NSA collects, stores and analyses information; how it deals more openly with Congress, the courts and the public; and how it relates to tech companies, foreign governments and the internet itself.

The report followed on from two other notable consequences – this week alone – from the reporting of the Guardian and others of material leaked by Edward Snowden.
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In contrast with their American counterparts on the senate oversight committee, not a single member of the ISC has yet murmured any significant disquiet about the existing arrangements for oversight, nor the workings, legal framework or behaviour of the UK agencies. It will be interesting to see if they come up with anything as imaginative as Obama's panel – a special presidential adviser on privacy, for example, or the establishment of a civil liberties and privacy protection board.
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It remains to be seen whether Obama endorses his panel's (not especially radical) recommendations. But it is, as I say, a relief to see these things openly discussed.

oralloy wrote:

Observing the fact that there has been no violation of any Constitutional rights

Even federal courts are disagreeing with you there.

oralloy wrote:

The only thing Snowden has done is help al-Qa'ida murder innocent Americans.

Sorry having private information on the whole US population as well as most of the first world is not very useful in dealing with Al-Qaida. Take note while there was computers there was not one cell phone, land lines or internet connection into Bin Laden compound. He used human couriers.

Merry Christmas Oralloy

The chief congressional critics of the US National Security Agency said Thursday that a White House review panel report gave them momentum to end bulk domestic surveillance, but expressed reservations about one of the panel’s central proposals.

In an indication of the changing political landscape for the NSA, Representative James Sensenbrenner, the chief House sponsor of a bill preventing the agency from collecting US domestic phone data, said Thursday that “President Obama’s hand-picked panel” highlighted “the need to enact the USA Freedom Act.

But Sensenbrenner, in an interview with the Guardian, was wary of its recommendation that phone companies or other private parties should store communications data for the NSA to search.

"The administration has not yet made the case that increased data retention is necessary, but I welcome any proposals that serve our national security interests without undermining constitutional rights” Sensenbrenner said.

Sorry we will just need to disagree that most of the first world need to completely give up our privacy in order to deal with a few middle east terrorists.

Bill, I don't think anyone is suggesting we "COMPLETELY GIVE UP OUR PRIVACY"...and I do not think "a few middle east terrorists" properly captures the essence of what is going on in the world right now.

Under any circumstances...our "privacy" is eroding as a result of our technological evolution. We have less of it; we ought expect less of it; we are going to have even less of it in the future.

Documents from the archive of whistleblower and former NSA worker Edward Snowden show that Britain's GCHQ signals intelligence agency has targeted European, German and Israeli politicians for surveillance.
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According to the documents, the GCHQ Bude station didn't just list telephone numbers from the government network in Berlin in its target databases, but also ones from German embassies, including the one in Rwanda. That, at least, was the case in 2009, the year the document in question was created. Other documents indicate that the British, at least intermittently, kept tabs on entire country-to-country satellite communication links, like "Germany-Georgia" and "Germany-Turkey," for example, of certain providers.

The name of the European Union's competition commissioner and current European Commission vice president, Joaquin Almunia, also appears in lists as well as email addresses that are listed as belonging to the "Israeli prime minister" and the defense minister of that country.

The details from the British intelligence agency's databases could have political consequences. The British will now face an uncomfortable debate over their activities, which are apparently also directed against partner countries in the EU and the political leaders of those nations. SPIEGEL already reported in September on a GCHQ attack on partly government-owned Belgian telecommunications provider Belgacom.
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The documents also show that the surveillance net cast by GCHQ and its political overseers is remarkably comprehensive. From Bude and other GCHQ sites, the agency appears to be systematically monitoring international country-to-country telephone calls made through satellite connections, as well as email communications (known as "C2C," or computer-to-computer). This is evidenced by, for example, long lists relating to connections between places like Belgium and various African countries.

The entry "EU COMM JOAQUIN ALMUNIA" appears in an "informal" analysis of the communication paths between Belgium and Africa prepared in January 2009. At the time, the peak of the euro crisis, the Spaniard was still the EU economics and finance commissioner and he already had his own entry and personal identification code in the British target database, with the codename "Broadoak."

It's unlikely that the surveillance interest in him -- at least when it comes to industrial espionage -- has diminished since. Almunia, who is now the EU's competition minister, is currently ruling on, among other issues, whether US Internet giant Google is abusing its market power, thereby harming European Companies. Almunia recently imposed fines on US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, as well as financial companies like Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase.
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In addition to many political and "diplomatic targets," the lists contain African leaders, their family members, ambassadors and businesspeople. They also include representatives of international organizations, such as those of United Nations agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). A noticeably large number of diplomatic missions to the United Nations in Geneva are also listed.

Even non-governmental organizations like Doctors of the World (Médicins du Monde) appear on the British intelligence agency lists, along with a representative of the Swiss IdeasCentre and others. Individual companies can also be found on the list, especially in the fields of telecommunications and banking. The partly government-owned French defense contractor Thales, along with Paris-based energy giant Total, is also mentioned.
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The close cooperation between Britain and the United States could prove highly controversial because the intelligence workers in Bude also targeted Israel. At least four Israeli targets are named in GCHQ lists, including an email address named as the "Israeli prime minister." The paper dates from 2009, when Ehud Omert was in office. Another email address is also sensitive. For a time, [email protected] was central to Israeli foreign and security policy. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his then chief of staff Yoni Koren personally used the mailing list. In its reporting, SPIEGEL learned that Barak coordinated a part of Israel's Iran policies using this account. It wasn't a forum for top-secret operations, but it was one for many internal decision-making processes.
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The words "German Emb in Rwanda" -- the German Embassy in the capital Kigali -- are noted next to the number "250-252575141." Further reporting revealed that the telephone number was the main line for the German Embassy in Kigali until 2011.

Five hits farther down the list, a combination of numbers leads directly to the German capital: "49-30-180 German Government Network." Those numbers include the country code for Germany, the area code for Berlin and the prefix for the Federal Government Information Network, to which government ministries in Berlin are connected. Any agency that would include that prefix for German government numbers must have considerable interest in political developments in Berlin.

SPIEGEL contacted several intelligence experts, who expressed the opinion that the list of German numbers under the term hits could only mean that GCHQ essentially declared these numbers to be surveillance targets. ... ... ...

It is unclear what the eavesdroppers gleaned. The documents include a few fragmentary transcripts of conversations and messages, but otherwise contain only hints that further information was available elsewhere, possibly in a larger database.

In a statement, the N.S.A. denied that it had ever carried out espionage to benefit American businesses.

“We do not use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line,” said Vanee Vines, an N.S.A. spokeswoman.

But she added that some economic spying was justified by national security needs. “The intelligence community’s efforts to understand economic systems and policies, and monitor anomalous economic activities, are critical to providing policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security,” Ms. Vines said.

At the request of the GCHQ, The Times agreed to withhold some details from the documents because of security concerns.

The surveillance reports show American and British spies’ deep appetite for information. The French companies Total, the oil and gas giant, and Thales, an electronics, logistics and transportation outfit, appear as targets, as do a French ambassador, an “Estonian Skype security team” and the German Embassy in Rwanda.

Germany is especially sensitive about American spying since reports emerged that the agency listened to Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s cellphone calls. Negotiations for a proposed agreement between Germany and the United States on spying rules have recently stalled for several reasons, including the refusal of the United States to guarantee that it would never spy on German officials other than the prime minister.

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Bill, I don't think anyone is suggesting we "COMPLETELY GIVE UP OUR PRIVACY"...and I do not think "a few middle east terrorists" properly captures the essence of what is going on in the world right now.

First, data bases of almost everyone phones calls in and of itself is an attacked on everyone privacy just to start with. The abilities and even the plans of the government being able to find everyone internet browsing history in order to either blackmail people the government is not happy with or to discredit them is another example of the dark side of this total surveillance state.

Can see all this information being used to control congress in the same manner as Hoover is said to had done with far less information to work with. If you do not vote our way the fact that you are having a secret homosexual affair will be reveal for example.

Second, a few middle east terrorists is a very fair pictures of the threat level we are dealing with now as compare to the old threats concerns that we both grow up under of large scale nuclear war at any time breaking out. I and you both had live during the Cuba Missile crisis and was taught to drive under our school desks and to know where to find fall out shelters.

Quote:

Under any circumstances...our "privacy" is eroding as a result of our technological evolution. We have less of it; we ought expect less of it; we are going to have even less of it in the future.

Nonsense as just as technology allowed a large scale attacked on our privacy technology and the law can defend our privacy and we can have as must privacy as we wish to have and we demand to have.

The threat, Bill...is a great deal more than just a few middle east terrorists.

Quote:

Germany is especially sensitive about American spying since reports emerged that the agency listened to Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s cellphone calls. Negotiations for a proposed agreement between Germany and the United States on spying rules have recently stalled for several reasons, including the refusal of the United States to guarantee that it would never spy on German officials other than the prime minister.

The threat, Bill...is a great deal more than just a few middle east terrorists.

Frank Apisa wrote:

The threat, Bill...is a great deal more than just a few middle east terrorists.

For instance German officials (but not the chancellor):

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Quote:

Germany is especially sensitive about American spying since reports emerged that the agency listened to Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s cellphone calls. Negotiations for a proposed agreement between Germany and the United States on spying rules have recently stalled for several reasons, including the refusal of the United States to guarantee that it would never spy on German officials other than the prime minister.

Keep dreaming. Go into any city...and tell the technology not to track you. There are more ready-to-go cameras in the hands of more people than any science fiction writer of a decade or two ago could have dreamed of.

But does that mean that the threat is from just a few terrorists in the middle east???

Frank Apisa wrote:

The threat, Bill...is a great deal more than just a few middle east terrorists.

Why don't you tell us what that threat is as you see it? The phrase 'War on Terror' was a grave error. It elevated criminal murderers to the status of enemy soldiers and inadvertently acted as a recruiting sergeant for those angry young men who wanted to blame America for all the World's woes.

I'm not being argumentative, I want to know what you think the threat is, because for once I find myself in the same camp as BillRM on this particular issue.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Keep dreaming. Go into any city...and tell the technology not to track you. There are more ready-to-go cameras in the hands of more people than any science fiction writer of a decade or two ago could have dreamed of.

In Germany, we have data protection laws.

CCTV to monitor places open to the public, is only lawful as far as
1. necessary for:
a) public bodies to perform their duties;
b) to exercise the right to determine who shall be allowed or denied access;
or
c) to pursue legitimate interests for specifically defined purposes;
and
2. there are no indications of overriding legitimate interests on the part of the subject of the data.

That means, we don't have a lot of "public" cameras.

Frank Apisa wrote:

But does that mean that the threat is from just a few terrorists in the middle east???

No. But the targets - both of the NSA and the GCHQ - go well beyond potential criminals and terrorists (e.g. UNICEF, Médecins du Monde, ...)