US security officials said NSA leaker, journalist should be ‘disappeared’ – report
A US editor has alleged he overheard security officials saying that the NSA leaker and the Guardian columnist who broke his story should be “disappeared.” Leaker Edward Snowden said that American spies often prefer silencing targets over due process.
Rand Paul: NSA Surveillance Programs Warrant Supreme Court Challenge
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday that he is weighing a Supreme Court challenge to the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance programs, calling the organization’s collection of records an “extraordinary invasion of privacy.” “I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level,” Paul said on Fox News Sunday. “I’m going to be asking all the internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class action lawsuit.
For more than a decade now, Americans have made peace with the uneasy knowledge that someone — government, business or both — might be watching. Now, though, paranoid fantasies have come face to face with modern reality: The government IS collecting our phone records. The technological marvels of our age have opened the door to the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance of Americans’ calls.
The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications. The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.
Military told not to read Obama-scandal news
Obama has said the outrage over the federal government’s decision to monitor citizens’ phone activity is all “hype.” He might want to share his opinion with the U.S. Air Force, which is ordering members of the service not to look at news stories about it. WND has received an unclassified NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that warns airmen not to look at news stories related to the data-mining scandal.
Edward Snowden was NSA Prism leak source – Guardian
A former CIA technical worker has been identified by the UK’s Guardian newspaper as the source of leaks about US surveillance programmes. Edward Snowden, 29, is…an ex-CIA technical assistant… He told the paper…”We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.”
Hague: Law-abiding Britons have nothing to fear from GCHQ
“Law-abiding” citizens have “nothing to fear” from the British intelligence services, the foreign secretary says. William Hague said reports that the UK’s eavesdropping centre GCHQ had circumvented the law to gather data on British citizens were “nonsense”. But he refused to confirm or deny claims GCHQ has had access to a US spy programme called Prism since June 2010.
Few options for companies to defy US intelligence demands
U.S. Internet companies that want to resist government demands to hand over customer data for intelligence investigations have few legal options, due to the classified nature of such probes and a court review process shrouded in secrecy.
Officials: NSA mistakenly intercepted emails, phone calls of innocent Americans
The National Security Agency has at times mistakenly intercepted the private email messages and phone calls of Americans who had no link to terrorism, requiring Justice Department officials to report the errors to a secret national security court and destroy the data, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials.