Some responses to the Snowden revelations

Opinion: NSA’s surveillance programs are the “most serious attacks on free speech we’ve ever seen.”

[He] stressed that privacy invasions of this magnitude are “attempts to try to change who we are as Americans.” In fact, they are attempts to define who we are as human beings.

Our human rights to speak and to communicate, to report and to assemble, are all at stake. “What I do know is it’s not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7,” writes Groklaw’s Jones.

We must return to a place where we feel that we can speak freely without consequence.

We must roll back the NSA’s surveillance apparatus.

Groklaw – Forced Exposure ~pj
The owner of the campaigning website Groklaw explains why she sees no other option than shutting down. A funeral speech to privacy. (local mirror)

Lavabit, email service Snowden reportedly used, abruptly shuts down
Another secure email provider, Silent Circle, followed suit and physically destroyed their servers, without warning to their users, to preempt being commandeered by the NSA.

Surviving in a Feudal Security World
Bruce Schneier talk (video).

NSA secrets kill our trust

More revelations, another funky logo

PRISM looked interesting. Now here’s another Big Data surveillance program, this time not run by the NSA but by the DEA, the US drug enforcement agency. The title is HEMISPHERE, and it’s got a great logo. The leaked PDF says we shouldn’t mention it, though, it’s top secret!

Turns out they have a complete record of all calls going through AT&T’s switches, going back to 1987. That’s 26 years.

hemisphere

I wonder what those two vertical lines on the sides of the globe signify. Everything under control? What do you think? Leave a comment.

Footnote links from my Off-Topic essay

Footnote links from my soon-to-be published Off-Topic essay

Forced Exposure ~pj http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175

Cory Doctorow: The Coming War on General Purpose Computation http://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html

Bruce Schneier: Surveillance and the Internet of Things https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/05/the_eyes_and_ea.html

Bundesbehörden sehen Risiken beim Einsatz von Windows 8 http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2013-08/trusted-computing-microsoft-windows-8-nsa

NSA and GCHQ: the flawed psychology of government mass surveillance http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2013/aug/26/nsa-gchq-psychology-government-mass-surveillance

 

International Day of Privacy – #StopWatchingUs

Morgen um 13h erheben wir am Bahnhofsvorplatz (vor dem Dom) unsere Stimme gegen eine multimediale Überwachung seitens verschiedener Geheimdienste. Genau so verurteilen wir das verantwortungslose Verhalten unserer Regierung in diesem Zusammenhang.

Irgendwie war es in den letzten Wochen so gruselig still um den Größen Bespitzelungsskandal aller Zeiten. Drum wollen wir jetzt um so lauter sein. Bringt Trommeln, Vuvuzelas, Trillerpfeifen usw. mit.

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At The Control Room – Patrick Raddatz

http://ion.li/projekte-projects/at-the-control-room

According to a legend, the then newly elected president of the USA, Ronald Reagan, asked upon introduction to the White House: ‘Where is the War Room?’. At The Control Room is a visual study of work environments like Control and Observation Room, in which complex and integrated work processes are reduced to a few cues and movements and furthermore, in which work takes place on a highly abstract level. These work environments first appeared in the heydays of industrialization, their complexion always directly reflecting the positions of the workers and their superiors, the technological evolution and it’s contemporary formal principles. The photographs are showing rooms from different domains, they are not only showing the technological state of the art they allow for conclusions of the then valid aesthetic, corporative and social relation of mankind to it’s technology from the perspective of the industry and the workers.