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Tag Archives: NSA

GailForce: Standby for More Debates on Privacy vs Security

GailForce:  Standby for More Debates on Privacy vs Security

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to gets his pants on.” –Winston Churchill On October 4th, the House Judiciary Committee introduced a bill that would extend the controversial Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire at the end of December, for […]

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Is The Five Eyes Network Still Relevant Today?

Is The Five Eyes Network Still Relevant Today?

In one word—yes.

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Gailforce: Aspen Security Forum Part II

Gailforce: Aspen Security Forum Part II

During the Forum, Secretary Johnson focused on the evolving nature of the terrorism threat, what we need to do in response, and the need for resiliency.

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The Snowden Conversation We Aren’t Having

The Snowden Conversation We Aren’t Having

In the first few months after Snowden’s leaks first exploded onto headlines, the public, and the media, struggled to fathom how private individuals figured into this story, and how close the U.S. had come to that “Orwellian state” Edward Snowden warned us of. If Google Trends are any indication, the story reached a peak in […]

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NSA: From Angry Birds to the GOP

NSA: From Angry Birds to the GOP

On the heels of Obama’s signal intelligence speech and just a day before the president’s State of the Union address, yet another Snowden document dump has come to the fore, this time detailing data collection activities from leaky mobile apps, such as Angry Birds. Mobile networks have proven to be a rich resource for the […]

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Transatlantic Snooping – National versus transatlantic interests

Transatlantic Snooping – National versus transatlantic interests

The snowball effect of the Snowden revelations is finally picking up. Between the revelations of the National Security Agency eavesdropping on Merkel’s cellphone and massive collection of European citizens’ emails and phone calls (as demonstrated by the illustration below), Europeans are furious and have been asking questions to a reluctant Obama administration. US Secretary of […]

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Brazil’s World Class Industrial Espionage Problem

Brazil’s World Class Industrial Espionage Problem

Recent news from the information provided by Edward Snowden has placed the United States out of favour with Brazil when it was revealed that the U.S. has been spying on Brazil. Along with the U.S. allegation, Canada was also brought into the debate when it was alleged that Canadian intelligence agents have been sourcing private […]

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A Candid Discussion with Ron Deibert

A Candid Discussion with Ron Deibert

Ronald J. Deibert, is Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Canada Center for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs,at the University of Toronto. Dr. Deibert is also a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor. Considered one of the world’s leading experts on cyber […]

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Miranda Writes: Guardian vs. Government

Miranda Writes: Guardian vs. Government

Metal surrenders to the heat, slinking away to dust.  The remnants, lumped on the floor, are loomed over by an audience of intelligence agents — dispatched to watch the burn and all too pleased with the task – and journalists confounded by the absurdity of the scene.  As if ripped from the old celluloid of […]

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Morsi Ouster: Is There a Backstory?

Morsi Ouster: Is There a Backstory?

  There usually is. The Egyptian military, mirroring, it says, the will of the Egyptian people, has thrown Morsi’s band of Islamists out of office and set in motion the kind of parliamentary and electoral process that millions of neighboring Syrians want to see materialize in their own country. Instead, the Syrian people remain trapped […]

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The Lives of Others: Does Patriot Act Give NSA Authority to Tap Your Phone?

The Lives of Others: Does Patriot Act Give NSA Authority to Tap Your Phone?

  “The Lives of Others,” a film documenting the workings of a surveillance state run by the Stasi, the secret domestic spymasters who kept the Soviet lid on in East Germany from the end of World War II until the wall came down, paints a grim picture of what happens when a government begins to […]

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The Dilemma of Snowden’s leak

The Dilemma of Snowden’s leak

Should Europe care about the Snowden’s leak? Absolutely, but don’t expect too much from the EU and its Member States to fully defend privacy rights of European citizens. Earlier this week, Edward Snowden, a former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton contracted by the NSA, leaked top-secret […]

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The FPA’s Must Reads (March 22 to March 29)

The FPA’s Must Reads (March 22 to March 29)

Obama’s Crackdown on Whistleblowers By Tim Shorrock The Nation Since 2009, the World War I-era Espionage Act has been used to prosecute whistleblowers in the name of national security. Shorrock focuses on four NSA whistleblowers — Thomas Drake, William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis — who exposed the failed system called Trailblazer. My […]

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Europeans Weary of US Bank Regulations

Europeans Weary of US Bank Regulations

According to UPI and NYTs reports about WikiLeaks diplomatic cables, ‘when the European Parliament ordered a halt in February to an American government program to monitor international banking transactions for terrorist activity, the US administration was blindsided by the rebuke from among our closest allies in continental Europe.  “Paranoia runs deep especially about US intelligence […]

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