Snowdon is a dummy

According to documents contained in the archive of material provided to The Intercept by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the NSA has spied on hundreds of companies and organizations internationally, including in countries closely allied to the United States, in an effort to find security weaknesses in cellphone technology that it can exploit for surveillance.
[...]
The NSA documents reveal that, as of May 2012, the agency had collected technical information on about 70 percent of cellphone networks worldwide—701 of an estimated 985—and was maintaining a list of 1,201 email “selectors” used to intercept internal company details from employees. (“Selector” is an agency term for a unique identifier like an email address or phone number.) From November 2011 to April 2012, between 363 and 1,354 selectors were “tasked” by the NSA for surveillance each month as part of AURORAGOLD, according to the documents. The secret operation appears to have been active since at least 2010.
[...]
One of the prime targets monitored under the AURORAGOLD program is the London-headquartered trade group, the GSM Association, or the GSMA, which represents the interests of more than 800 major cellphone, software, and internet companies from 220 countries.

The GSMA’s members include U.S.-based companies such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, Cisco, and Oracle, as well as large international firms including Sony, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, and Vodafone.

By covertly monitoring GSMA working groups in a bid to identify and exploit security vulnerabilities, the NSA has placed itself into direct conflict with the mission of the National Institute for Standards and Technology, or NIST, the U.S. government agency responsible for recommending cybersecurity standards in the United States. NIST recently handed out a grant of more than $800,000 to GSMA so that the organization could research ways to address “security and privacy challenges” faced by users of mobile devices.

The revelation that the trade group has been targeted for surveillance may reignite deep-seated tensions between NIST and NSA that came to the fore following earlier Snowden disclosures. Last year, NIST was forced to urge people not to use an encryption standard it had previously approved after it emerged NSA had apparently covertly worked to deliberately weaken it.

This is empty gesticulation. No modern society can prevent leaks.

Report by Nils Muižnieks, commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, says ‘secret, massive and indiscriminate’ intelligence work is contrary to rule of law

The “secret, massive and indiscriminate” surveillance conducted by intelligence services and disclosed by the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden cannot be justified by the fight against terrorism, the most senior human rights official in Europe has warned.

In a direct challenge to the United Kingdom and other states, Nils Muižnieks, the commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, calls for greater transparency and stronger democratic oversight of the way security agencies monitor the internet. He also said that so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing treaty between the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada should be published.

“Suspicionless mass retention of communications data is fundamentally contrary to the rule of law … and ineffective,” the Latvian official argues in a 120-page report, The Rule of Law on the Internet in the Wider Digital World. “Member states should not resort to it or impose compulsory retention of data by third parties.”

As human rights commissioner, Muižnieks has the power to intervene as a third party in cases sent to the European court of human rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. His report is published the week after the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) found that the legal regime governing mass surveillance of the internet by the monitoring agency GCHQ is “human rights compliant”.

In his report, Muižnieks wrote: “In connection with the debate on the practices of intelligence and security services prompted by Edward Snowden’s revelations, it is becoming increasingly clear that secret, massive and indiscriminate surveillance programmes are not in conformity with European human rights law and cannot be justified by the fight against terrorism or other important threats to national security. Such interferences can only be accepted if they are strictly necessary and proportionate to a legitimate aim.”
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This guy, the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, doesn't want to commit suicide but did what he was asked for and what is part of his job: writing a report as a third party in a case sent to the European court of human rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.

He is asking people to fight a war against terrorism...by passing laws that place us in an extreme disadvantage...and then to rigorously abide by those idiotic laws.

He IS trying to commit suicide...and he IS inviting all of us to join him.

This, however, is something I do not understand: how could his report invite "all of us" and "to join" him?

Probably because they spy as much as the US does. I suppose you haven't been keeping up ISIS problem?

Frank is saying, (how you can't see it, I am not sure) is that with the report, if nations follow it, it would be detrimental t0 nations safety.

Well, perhaps we really all should better become a police state.

but I think Europe will survive Islamic terror...