The Internet: Orwellian Big Brother is a Reality: "Government in Your Internet"

From the Snowden leaks to the recent passage of the Brazilian government “Marco Civil da Internet”, a set of legislation designed to enforce net neutrality, freedom of expression and privacy, there is no mistaking that this is a critical time for the internet and it’s digital citizens.

Cloud and hosting providers need to pay close attention to developing legislation and technologies to address the privacy and security needs of its customers in this fast changing environment.

Shortly after the NSA’s PRISM program was first reported, Forrester Research predicted that US cloud providers could lose up to $180 billion in business over the next three years due to concerns around the scope of surveillance the program enabled.

In a March Ted Talk Snowden said, “The best way to understand PRISM, because there has been a little bit of controversy, is to first talk about what prism isn’t. Much of the debate in the US has been about meta data. They’ve said ‘it’s just meta data, it’s just meta data’ and they’re talking about a specific legal authority called section 215 of the Patriot Act. That allows sort of a warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance of the entire country’s sort of phone records, things like that…PRISM is about content, it’s a program through which the government could compel corporate America, it could sort of deputize corporate America to do it’s dirty work for the NSA.”

Some companies initially resisted compliance, challenging the NSA in court, but they all lost. Later after the Snowden revelations, a new ruling forced the declassifying of the 2008 Prism decision.
“It was never tried by an open court, they were tried only by a secret court,” Snowden said. “And something that we’ve seen…15 federal judges have reviewed these programs and found them to be lawful, but what they don’t tell you is those are secret judges in a secret court based on secret interpretations of law that’s considered 34,000 warrant requests over 33 years, and in 33 years only rejected 11 government requests.

These aren’t the people that we want deciding what the role of corporate America in a free and open internet should be.”

Although the NSA continually tries to explain the measures and secrets as an important part of national security and characterizes its data collection as “only meta data”, it’s having a hard time spinning the Snowden revelations in its favor. Even late night political comedians are picking up on this topic. John Oliver addressed NSA policies Sunday in an interview with former NSA agency chief Keith Alexander which resulted in a funny yet powerful commentary on the organization.

In a blog post Monday, the NSA again addressed its policies in relation to internet security and the Heartbleed vulnerability. It explained some of its thinking on keeping threats secret.

“But there are legitimate pros and cons to the decision to disclose, and the trade-offs between prompt disclosure and withholding knowledge of some vulnerabilities for a limited time can have significant consequences,” Michael Daniel, special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator said.

“Disclosing a vulnerability can mean that we forego an opportunity to collect crucial intelligence that could thwart a terrorist attack stop the theft of our nation’s intellectual property, or even discover more dangerous vulnerabilities that are being used by hackers or other adversaries to exploit our networks.”

Discussion and news on privacy, net neutrality and data sovereignty happens daily. Multi- stakeholder governance as a means to address keeping governments out of the internet or at least equally represented is a hot topic. At the two day NetMundail conference last week,  guidelines were discussed for future internet governance.

As the discussion continues to evolve it’s important for cloud and web hosting providers to stay informed of the issues and new legislation so they can best serve their customers in whatever part of the globe they happen to be. As cloud services become more prevalent and are hosted in multiple countries, service providers may be facing more restrictions based on where data is physically stored and which country has domain over the data.

The WHIR interviewed  Jelle Frank van der Zwet of Interxion at World Hosting Days in Germany. When asked about the need for data centers in foreign countries, he had this to say, “If you want to do business in Germany, you must have a data center and infrastructure in Germany. That goes for Amazon, that goes for any cloud provider, small or large if you want to do business in Germany I recommend you have your infrastructure in Germany. I would say the same for France.”

His comment in the context of the greater discussion about data sovereignty and NSA backdoor access into United States based company’s data underscores the importance of where data is hosted in relation to local laws and policies, a growing concern among cloud and hosting providers.

For example, the US Supreme Court ruled recently that a government search warrant will require American companies providing internet, email, and online storage services to hand over data stored anywhere in the world.

Read more: Orwellian Big Brother is a Reality: Government in Your Internet - WHIR

Spying Scandal: U.S. companies are cozier with the NSA than previously thought - by Jeff Larson and Julia Angwin

Newly disclosed National Security Agency documents suggest a closer relationship between American companies and the spy agency than has been previously disclosed.

The documents, published last week by The Intercept, describe “contractual relationships” between the NSA and U.S. companies, as well as the fact that the NSA has “under cover” spies working at or with some U.S. companies.

While not conclusive, the material includes some clear suggestions that at least some American companies are quite willing to help the agency conduct its massive surveillance programs.

The precise role of U.S. companies in the NSA’s global surveillance operations remains unclear. Documents obtained by Edward Snowden and published by various news organizations show that companies have turned over their customers’ email, phone calling records and other data under court orders.

But the level of cooperation beyond those court orders has been an open question, with several leading companies, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, asserting that they only turn over customer information that is “targeted and specific” in response to legal demands.

Read more: U.S. companies are cozier with the NSA than previously thought - Salon.com

European Lawsuit vs Facebook for NSA Collaboration

 Facebook has been given four weeks to respond to a class action, launched against it by an Austrian activist and supported by 60,000 users. The suit claims Facebook violated users' privacy, by cooperating with the NSA's PRISM program.

The class action initiated by Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer, data privacy activist and founder of Europe vs. Facebook group has passed its first review in the Vienna Regional Court.

Facebook Ireland, which runs the social network’s activities outside the US and Canada, has been given four weeks to respond to the action.

Facebook has been given four weeks to respond to a class action, launched against it by an Austrian activist and supported by 60,000 users. The suit claims Facebook violated users' privacy, by cooperating with the NSA's PRISM program.

The class action initiated by Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer, data privacy activist and founder of Europe vs. Facebook group has passed its first review in the Vienna Regional Court.

Read more: MINA Breaking News - European Lawsuit vs Facebook for NSA Collaboration

NSA Spy Case: 4 Americans Meet With Wistleblower Snowden as His Father Arrives

Four former U.S. officials who met with fugitive U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden on Wednesday said he had no regrets about releasing classified information.

The group, comprised of people who formerly worked for the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and NSA, announced the meeting with Snowden on Thursday. They said they'd met with the fugitive at a secret location a day earlier to present him with the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, The Associated Press reported.

"He spoke about going out and about and getting to understand Russia and its culture and the people," said Thomas Drake, a former NSA executive who provided a newspaper with inside information about an electronic espionage program.

The plane carrying Lon Snowden father of Edward arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport at 7:50 a.m on Thursday, television channel Rossia 24 reported.

Upon his arrival at the airport, Lon Snowden said he believed Russia was the safest place for his son, echoing earlier comments in which he thanked President Vladimir Putin for taking the fugitive in.

“I think that my son will stay in Russia, although I haven't spoken to him yet,” he told Rossia 24, adding that he planned to visit Russia again in the future and would be satisfied if his son decided to live in the country permanently.

Read more: 4 Americans Meet With Snowden as His Father Arrives | News | The Moscow Times

Encrypted networks: Secret NSA documents show campaign against Tor encrypted network - by Barton Gellman, Craig Timberg and Steven Ric

On Nov. 1, 2007, the National Security Agency hosted a talk by Roger Dingledine, principal designer of one of the world’s leading Internet privacy tools. It was a wary encounter, akin to mutual intelligence gathering, between a spy agency and a man who built tools to ward off electronic surveillance.

According to a top secret NSA summary of the meeting, Dingledine told the assembled NSA staff that his service, called Tor, offered anonymity to people who needed it badly — to keep business secrets, protect their identities from oppressive political regimes or conduct research without revealing themselves. To the NSA, Tor was offering protection to terrorists and other intelligence targets.

Beginning at least a year before Dingledine’s visit, the NSA had mounted increasingly successful attacks to unmask the identities and locations of Tor users, according to documents provided by former agency contractor Edward Snowden.

In some cases, the NSA has succeeded in blocking access to the anonymous network, diverting Tor users to insecure channels. With a tool called MJOLNIR — the name of the hammer used by Thor, the Norse god of thunder — it has been able to monitor and control the paths of communications that are supposed to be chosen randomly as they pass through Tor. Another operation, called MULLENIZE, can “stain” anonymous traffic as it enters the Tor network, enabling the NSA to identify users as it exits.

Read more: Secret NSA documents show campaign against Tor encrypted network - The Washington Post

Internet encryption protocols compromised by US - NSA and British - GCHQ, according to leaked documents - by James Vincent

Intelligence agencies from Britain and the US have cracked many of the encryption protocols used to secure communications on the internet, according to documents leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.


The fresh information reveals that the US National Security Agency has worked in collaboration with the the UK's GCHQ to compromise online privacy.

"For the past decade, NSA has lead [sic] an aggressive, multi-pronged effort to break widely used internet encryption technologies,” reads a GCHQ document from 2010. "Vast amounts of encrypted internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable."

Various methods have been pursued in order to break or circumvent the security protecting the personal data of billions of people.

These include breaking encryption with “brute force” attacks conducted by super computers; using court-orders to force companies into handing over master keys to their software, and one program that “actively engages US and foreign IT industries to covertly influence and/or overtly leverage their commercial products' designs”.

This latter scheme, named the Sigint Enabling Project, costs the NSA $254.9m a year according to a 2013 budget document provided by Snowden. Sigint stands for "signal intelligence". An internal memo from the agency records the reaction from British analysts: “Those not already briefed were gobsmacked!”

“These frightening revelations imply that the NSA has not only pursued an aggressive program of obtaining private encryption keys for commercial products […] but that the agency has also attempted to put backdoors into cryptographic standards designed to secure users' communications,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in response.

“Additionally, the leaked documents make clear that companies have been complicit in allowing this unprecedented spying to take place, though the identities of cooperating companies remain unknown.”
In response to the leaked documents - which were handed from Mr Snowden to The Guardian, The New York Times and the non-profit news site Pro Publica - Google have claimed that no such "active engagement" has taken place.

Note EU-Digest: Strange and maybe even suspicious is that the EU Parliament and EU Commission seem to be taking these allegations for granted and so far have hardly said anything about it . 

As for the US foreign policy team,  they might benefit to take note of the biblical quote "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brothers eye, but considerest not the beame that is in thine owne eye?" Matthew 7, verse 3

Read more: Encryption protocols compromised by NSA and GCHQ, according to leaked Edward Snowden documents - UK - News - The Independent

Germany: America's “soft totalitarianism”. - Why NSA Snooping Is A Bigger Deal In Germany - by Jannis Brühl

Germans like posting baby pictures, party snapshots and witty comments on Facebook just like anyone else. They just do not want to get caught doing it. Many of us use fake names for their profiles – silly puns, movie characters or anagrams and “remixes” of their real names.

What makes Germans so sensitive about their data? Many have pointed to Germany’s history: Both the Nazi secret police Gestapo and the East German Stasi spied extensively on citizens, encouraging snitching among neighbors and acquiring private communication.

But that’s not the whole story. Politics and the media in Germany today are dominated by (male) citizens raised in the democratic West who have no personal recollection of either of the Stasi or Gestapo.
Germany lacks the long tradition of strong individual freedoms the state has guaranteed in the U.S. for more than 200 years. Precisely because of that, these values, imported from the Western allies after 1945, are not taken for granted.

Indeed, there have been battles about privacy – and against a perceived “surveillance state” – in Germany for decades.

While the student rebellion of the late Sixties was partly driven by anger over the Vietnam war, it was also fueled by the parliament considering emergency laws that would have limited personal freedoms. And in the seventies, as left-wing terrorist groups were attacking the state ruthlessly, government answered with then-new “dragnet tracing”, identifying suspects by matching personal traits through extensive computer-based searches in databases.

Many considered this to be unfair profiling. In 1987, authorities wanted to ask Germans about their life – but the census faced protests and a widespread boycott because people saw the collection of data as an infringement of their rights. Citizens transformed into transparent “glass humans” (“gläserner Mensch”) were a horror scenario in the late and nineties in Germany summoned up on magazine covers and in T.V. shows.

Then, there is also the disappointment of the buddy who realizes he is not, as he thought, one of the strongest guys’ best friend.

The oft-celebrated partnership with the U.S. served as a pillar of Germanys’ comeback in international politics after the war and the Holocaust. Now it turns out Germany is not only ally, but also target. According to documents Edward Snowden disclosed, 500 million pieces of phone and email metadata from Germany are collected each month by the NSA – more than in any other EU country.

The outrage at the U.S.’s snooping has continued despite a follow-on revelation that it was actually the German secret service, the BND, that handed over the data to the NSA.

The German debate also has to be understood as being fueled by a widespread but low-level Anti-Americanism, an ugly staple of the German left as well as the right. The short-lived love for Obama (200,000 people celebrated him during his Berlin speech in 2008) was an exception to the widespread perception of American hubris and imperialism. Germans have managed to live with the cognitive dissonance of protesting U.S. interventions while embracing Californian culture, rap music and even Tom Cruise.

Jakob Augstein, columnist for the countries’ biggest news site Spiegel Online, considers Prism an addition to the body of evidence that already includes Abu Ghraib and the drone war: The U.S., Augstein writes, is becoming a country of “soft totalitarianism”. The only thing not to be disputable about this statement is the Germans’ expertise when it comes to totalitarianism.

While the U.S. has few laws concerning data privacy, Germany has something unknown to Americans: 17 state data protection supervisors (one national and one for each state), who watch over the compliance of authorities and companies with data privacy laws. Since the German state Hesse introduced the first of these laws in 1970, strict oversight like this has become common in Europe.

Some of the German data supervisors have been regular talking heads in the media for years, bashing U.S. companies like Facebook for their alleged violations of privacy of their customers. When Google photographed German streets for its Street View service, they were pushing the company to give citizens the possibility of opting out. That is why today, tens of thousands of buildings in Germany are blurred on Street View.

Now the data protection supervisors have an even bigger target: the National Security Agency. After the Snowden revelations, they have discontinued giving out new licenses to companies under the so-called Safe Harbor principles, which are meant to guarantee that personal data is only transferred to countries with sufficient data protection, for example when Germans use American companies’ cloud storage space.

After the revelations about the Prism program, the supervisors consider user data in the hands of U.S. companies not safe anymore.

Opposition parties have picked the “NSA scandal” – as German media call it – as the big (and, since Chancellor Angela Merkel is leading all polls, only) chance for the opposition to turn around the election. Merkel has been accused of having known more about the extent of the spying before the story broke than she admitted. Since German services are coordinated from the Chancellery, her opponents don’t believe her that she did not know about the American spy efforts.

Yet it is unlikely that the revelations will seriously influence the outcome of the election. This is not only because Merkel has an economy surprisingly immune to the European crisis. It is also because the biggest opposition party, the Social Democrats, has been tainted by its proximity to power. While smaller left-wing parties such as the former communists or the Greens make bold statements, including offering Snowden asylum, Social Democrats have a hard time doing so. One of their heads, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, used to be coordinator for Merkels predecessor Gerhard Schröder. In that position, Steinmeier was responsible for the services and intensified U.S.-German intelligence cooperation in the years after 9/11. He later became Secretary of State under Merkel. Even though that was before Prism started, socialists and conservatives bash him in rare unanimity “as if he’d personally founded the NSA and tapped transatlantic internet cables”, as my colleague Michael König put it for Sueddeutsche.de.

The government’s response to concerns about the spying reads like it was written in the Pentagon: The U.S. said it was only spying on individuals suspected of organized crime or terrorism. And the NSA said it was acting according to U.S. and German law. There is no blanket surveillance of European citizens.

But Germans don’t trust Merkel. A poll found two-thirds of questioned people voicing discontent with her dealing with the affair. Germans hoped for a more forceful reaction, like that from Brazil, another democratic country targeted by the NSA: Brazilian foreign minister Antonio Patriota publicly found strong words standing next to Secretary of State John Kerry last week: "In case these challenges are not solved in a satisfactory way, we run the risk of casting a shadow of distrust on our work.”

In Germany, the government sounds more apologetic than angry.

The U.S. is at least throwing Germany a bone. According to the government in Berlin, the NSA has offered a treaty: No more spying on each other. Georg Mascolo, former editor-in-chief of news Magazine Der Spiegel and now writing for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, considers this an “historical chance for Angela Merkel”: A treaty, if formulated without loopholes for American spying, would give new value to the German-American alliance.

In any case, we’ll keep on making up fake names on Facebook. Just in case spies are going to keep on doing what spies are supposed to do.

Read more: Why NSA Snooping Is Bigger Deal in Germany - ProPublica

EU Response To Revelations NSA Spying On EU Citizens Inadequate - Poll shows

The latest EU-Digest poll which was closed today shows that 66.87% of those polled on the question - "How do you rate the EU response to revelations by Edward Snowden of the US NSA agency spying on EU Citizen" considered the EU response weak.

Another 33.13 % even classified the response as poor.

Our new EU-Digest poll focuses on Egypt with the question: "Was the Egyptian Military Coup Legitimate"

EU-Digest

Russia: Obama cancels upcoming meeting with Putin - by Philip Rucker

President Obama will cancel a planned meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid mounting anger over Russia’s decision to allow National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden into the country, the White House said Wednesday.

Obama had intended to visit Russia’s capital and meet with Putin in advance of next month’s G-20 summit in St. Petersburg. But Obama has decided he will not meet with Putin one-on-one -- a rare diplomatic snub -- and will only attend the G-20 summit.

“Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a U.S.-Russia Summit in early September,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

Carney cited a “lack of progress” with Russia over the past 12 months on a broad range of issues including missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues and human rights and civil society. Carney added that Russia’s “disappointing decision” to grand Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor.

“We have informed the Russian Government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda,” Carney said.

Obama cancels upcoming meeting with Putin - The Washington Post

NSA Spying On Europe: Edward Snowden plans to stay in Russia, says lawyer - by Alec Luhn

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has not had his asylum status resolved and he intends to remain in Russia long-term, his lawyer has said. Previously, Snowden told local officials he planned to move on to South America as soon as possible.

Anatoly Kucherena, who was visiting Snowden at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on Wednesday, said he was staying in the transit zone "for now". According to the lawyer, migration officials had said that they are looking at his asylum request, but had not issued the expected confirmation certificate that would allow Snowden to leave the airport. The process of issuing it has been drawn out, he said.

"Unfortunately the current situation is a truly unique one for Russia, and we have to account for the bureaucracy [involved in the process], so his documents are still being looked over," Kucherena told the many journalists assembled at the airport.

Law enforcement and airport sources had earlier said Snowden had been issued documents confirming his asylum request was being considered, and state news agency Interfax reported that he had submitted them at the border control. Instead, the lawyer had only brought Snowden books and clothing, he said.

Snowden is seeking to remain in the country and "wants to find work in Russia, travel and somehow create a life for himself," Kucherena told the television station Rossiya 24. He said the whistleblower had already begun learning the Russian language.

Read more: Edward Snowden plans to stay in Russia, says lawyer | World news | guardian.co.uk

NSA SPYING SCANDAL: Edward Snowden Hopes To Leave Moscow Airport By Wednesday sways lawyer

Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden hopes to be granted papers by Wednesday allowing him to end his month-long stay in the transit area of a Moscow airport and move to the city centre, his Russian lawyer said on Monday.

Anatoly Kucherena, who helped the American file his bid for temporary asylum in Russia on July 16, said Snowden believed it would be unsafe to try to travel to Latin America soon because of U.S. efforts to return him to the United States to face espionage charges.

"He should get this certificate (allowing him to leave the airport) shortly," he said.

Snowden's bid for temporary asylum in Russia may take up to three months to process, but he can pass through customs based on the initial response to his request, Kucherena added.

Note EU-Digest: participate in the EU-Digest Poll and voice your opinion if you believe the EU Commission and the EU Parliament have been sitting on their hands when it comes to protecting EU citizens privacy rights from US "snooping activities".

Read more: Edward Snowden Hopes To Leave Moscow Airport By Wednesday: Lawyer

Personal Privacy Protection: Google hits more privacy flak in Europe - by Hayley Tsukayama

is facing increased pressure over its privacy policies, as British regulators ordered the tech giant to give users more insight into how the information it collects on them is used.

European regulators have become more critical of Google's business practices in the past year, including French and Spanish authorities who say Google's policies do not comply with their data protection rules.

Privacy advocates say that questions about how US firms protect European data will only become more pointed in the wake of revelations about a National Security Agency surveillance program, PRISM, that targets foreign data on the servers of US companies.

The surveillance program "combined with the ongoing investigation of Google's business practices, has created almost a tsunami of privacy enforcement," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Centre.

Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which has been less aggressive than other European regulators, has taken multiple steps against Google since the disclosure of PRISM, including demanding last month that the firm delete any remaining data inadvertently collected for its Google Street View mapping service.

On Friday, it followed that order with a second, broader, mandate that Google amend its privacy policy by September 20. The "updated privacy policy raises serious questions about its compliance with the UK Data Protection Act," regulators said in a statement.

The information agency said that it was particularly concerned that Google's policy, which went into effect in March and covers more than 60 Google services, does not give users enough information about the data the firm collects and how it is used. It is also concerned that the policy does not disclose enough information about how long Google keeps user data.

If Google does not amend its policy, the ICO said it will "leave the company open to the possibility of formal enforcement action."

Last month, after a year-long investigation led by French data protection authority CNIL, French and Spanish regulators said Google could face fines if it did not amend its privacy policies within three months. The agency also indicated data protection officials in the Netherlands and Italy were assessing whether Google violates data protection rules in those countries.

Officials from the European Commission have warned that the fallout from the PRISM program could discourage European businesses from using American data storage providers such as Google, Microsoft and Dropbox.

On Wednesday, members of a key European Parliament committee voted to launch an inquiry into U.S. data surveillance programs and said they were open to suspending data-sharing deals with the United States.

Data privacy is also expected to be a part of US-EU trade negotiations that are scheduled to begin Monday.

Read more: Google hits more privacy flak in Europe

"Der Shitstorm" - American espionage and Europe: Sense, sensibilities and spying

The noun “Der Shitstorm” made a timely entrance to the official German lexicon this week. France is in a similar “avalanche d’emmerdements”. So, too, are countries as far afield as Japan, India and Turkey, which are also digesting revelations about the nature and extent of America’s electronic espionage on them.

Material leaked to Germany’s Der Spiegel and Britain’s Guardian by Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency, says its programmes “can and often do target the signals” of around 30 “third-party” states, with which America has otherwise friendly ties. It spied on, among other targets, the European Union’s diplomatic headquarters in Brussels, using NATO premises to do so. The NSA exempts only a handful of close “second-party” allies, chiefly Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

The fear in Europe is that, once so many data are in American hands, who is to say that they will not be misunderstood, leaked or misused? The information may help catch terrorists and gangsters today, but become part of American power politics (or commercial advantage) tomorrow. European policymakers took a lot of persuading before they agreed to share data on financial transactions and airline passenger lists with America. Now European Parliament members are threatening to suspend the deals. Another potential casualty is a proposed transatlantic free-trade deal, on which talks are due to start on July 8th (see article). France (never enthusiastic) and left-wing politicians in other countries want them halted, pending full clarification of the espionage programs.

Read more: American espionage and Europe: Sense, sensibilities and spying | The Economist

PRISM: Snowden case: Has Obama broken pledge to protect whistleblowers?

The actions of U.S. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, and Washington's attempt to bring the fugitive back to the U.S. to face espionage charges, have prompted some observers to accuse President Barack Obama of hypocrisy on the issue of whistleblowers.

As a presidential candidate, Obama repeatedly pledged to make openness and transparency a top priority of his administration. Obama promised to "protect whistleblowers," saying that "often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out."

"Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled," he said.

Obama reinforced that point on his first day in office, saying that for too long, there had been too much secrecy in Washington.

"The old rules said if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over," Obama said. "Starting today every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side, not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known."

Read more: Snowden case: Has Obama broken pledge to protect whistleblowers? - World - CBC News

PRISM: Austrian Bolivian President plane search for leaker Snowden enrages Bolivia - by Angelika Gruber

Bolivia accused Austria of "kidnapping" its president, Evo Morales, on Wednesday after authorities searched his plane during a stop-over in Vienna on suspicion he was taking fugitive U.S. intelligence analyst Edward Snowden to Latin America.

A senior Bolivian diplomat said the Austrians had acted at the bidding of the United States, which has been trying to get its hands on Snowden since he revealed details of its secret surveillance programs last month.

"We're talking about the president on an official trip after an official summit being kidnapped," Bolivia's ambassador to the United Nations in New York, Sacha Llorenti Soliz, told reporters in Geneva.

The Bolivian plane, which was bringing Morales home from an energy conference in Moscow, was stranded at Vienna airport for several hours after Portugal and France refused to allow it to fly through their airspace.

The search found that Snowden was not onboard and the plane eventually left Vienna about noon on Wednesday.

Read more: Austrian plane search for leaker Snowden enrages Bolivia | Reuters

Public Support Grows for Snowden in Europe - by Dave Lindorff

Europeans are pissed off at the US, in the wake of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden's latest revelation that the US was aggressively spying on its European allies, both at their and the European Union's embassies in Washington, and in Europe itself, gleaning not information about terrorism, but inside-track knowledge about trade negotiation positions and other areas of disagreement or negotiation.

Leaders in Germany, France, Italy and other European countries are demanding that the US cease its spying on them, and give a "full accounting" of the spying that it has been engaging in. But given the steady stream of lies coming from the NSA, the Obama Administration, Secretary of State John Kerry, and other American sources, why should they believe anything they are being told?

If, as Martin Schulz, the president of the European parliament, said today, the NSA is like the Soviet-era KGB, why would anything the US says about its nefarious activities have any credibility whatsoever?
At this point, pressure is building on European governments in Germany, France, Italy and elsewhere to stand up to the US and to grant Snowden asylum in Europe.

It makes sense. The US, weakened as it is economically these days, is still able to threaten weak nations in Latin America, which are stuck with the reality that the great consumer vacuum cleaner to the north is their biggest market, and are thus seriously at risk if the US threatens, as it did in the case of Ecuador, to impose import duties on goods shipped to the US for sale here. Europe has no such concerns. The US is in no position to economically threaten Europe.

Read more: OpEdNews - Article: Public Support Grows for Snowden in Europe: Germany and France Should offer NSA Whistleblower Asylum

EU-US relations: "Hit me once; shame on you. Hit me twice; shame on me".

Even before the PRISM revelations the EU had basically already sold out its citizens privacy rights to the US when it signed the data-sharing deals on air transport passengers and banking transactions..

Whoever reads these two security agreements will quickly come to the conclusion that there is nothing bilateral about them and that the "privacy protected" information going from Europe to the US is not matched in detail by the material coming from the US to Europe.

In the meantime the security issues between the two power blocks have only been getting worse.

On Sunday, the online edition of the British newspaper The Guardian reported additional details about the surveillance program. The newspaper said that one document it had obtained listed 38 embassies and diplomatic missions in Washington and New York, describing them as “targets.” It detailed a broad range of spying methods used against one, including bugs implanted in electronic communications gear and the collection of transmissions using specialized antennas.

The list of targets included the European Union’s missions and the French, Italian and Greek Embassies, as well as those of several other American allies, including India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Turkey, The Guardian reported.

In an interview published in full last night on "Davies' blog", former NSA director General Michael Hayden said: "The changes made to Fisa in 2008 were far more dramatic – far more far-reaching than anything President Bush authorized me to do."

Davies told the Observer that confirmation of the secret agreements showed there was a need for the EU to investigate. "It's clear that the European parliament must intervene at this point through a public inquiry," Davies said.

"MEPs should put the interests of their citizens above party politics and create meaningful reforms."

Its been going on for quite awhile - this covert data-sharing relationship between leading European countries and the US was first outlined in a 2001 report by the European parliament.

In Germany, where criticism of the NSA’s surveillance programs has been particularly vocal, a senior government official accused the United States on Sunday of using Cold War methods against its allies by targeting EU offices in Washington, New York and Brussels.

German federal prosecutors said they were examining whether the reported U.S. electronic surveillance programs broke German laws. In a statement, the Federal Prosecutors’ Office said it was probing the claims so as to “achieve a reliable factual basis” before considering whether a formal investigation was warranted.

It said private citizens were likely to file criminal complaints on the matter, but didn’t comment on the possible legal merits of such complaints.

Meanwhile, it has also emerged that at least six European member states have shared personal communications data with the NSA, according to declassified US intelligence reports and EU parliamentary documents.

The documents, seen by the Observer, show that – in addition to the UK – Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy have all had formal agreements to provide communications data to the US. They state that the EU countries have had "second and third party status" under decades-old signal intelligence (Sigint) agreements that compel them to hand over data which, in later years, experts believe, has come to include mobile phone and internet data.

Under the international intelligence agreements, nations are categorized by the US according to their trust level. The US is defined as 'first party' while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy 'second party' trusted relationships. Countries such as Germany and France have 'third party', or less trusted, relationships.

Investigations on security breaches by the EU Parliament and other European agencies should, however, not only focus just on the US. 

There are lots of security issues which deserve attention  One of them concerns the Chinese, who not only have proven to be A1 cyber spies but also have shown to be able to infiltrate into a country's economic structure quite legally.

During the past 5 years Europe has had a large influx of Chinese immigrants, many of the highly qualified University trained computer analysts, who were given "fast track" immigrant status by local EU Governments. This mainly because of their excellent educational qualifications. Today we find many of them employed in strategically and economically important companies ( some even in Government) all across Europe.

With the latest security allegations it should be quite clear to EU parliamentarians and politicians around Europe that the time to play "footsy" with the Americans, or any other nation for that matter, on issues of security is over. As the saying goes, "Hit me once; shame on you. Hit me twice; shame on me".

EU-Digest ©

PRISM SPY PROJECT: Edward Snowden Should Seek Asylum In Europe

The leader of Germany's opposition Greens suggested on Monday that Europe provide a safe haven for former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, whose revelations about the extent of US surveillance programmes have infuriated America's allies.

Juergen Trittin, parliamentary leader and candidate for chancellor of the Greens, Germany's third biggest party, told German television it was an outrage that the 30-year-old former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor should be seeking asylum in "despotic" countries.

"It's painful for democrats that someone who has served democracy and, in our view, uncovered a massive violation of basic rights, should have to seek refuge with despots who have problems with basic rights themselves," said Trittin.

"Someone like that should be protected," he said. "That counts for Mr Snowden. He should get safe haven here in Europe because he has done us a service by revealing a massive attack on European citizens and companies. Germany, as part of Europe, could do that."

Read more: Edward Snowden Should Seek Asylum In Europe - Germany's... | Stuff.co.nz

PRISM: Snooping claims add new complication to tough EU-US trade talks and could put it on ice - by Joshua Chaffin

A German newspaper report about alleged US spying on EU institutions has threatened to complicate further an already challenging effort to forge a transatlantic trade agreement.

The first round of formal negotiations for the transatlantic trade and investment partnership, known as TTIP, are to begin in Washington next week. The pact is being counted on not only to boost sluggish economies but also solidify EU-US relations for another generation.

But the report in Der Spiegel, the German weekly, could make them more difficult by further inflaming EU-US disputes over data protection rules that have proved highly troublesome in recent years.

If proven true, the report would also damage the trust necessary to undertake such a complex and ambitious negotiation – a point made by Viviane Reding, EU justice commissioner, on Sunday.

“Partners do not spy on each other,” Ms Reding said, responding to a question at a citizens’ meeting in her native Luxembourg. “We cannot negotiate over a big transatlantic market if there is the slightest doubt that our partners are carrying out spying activities on the offices of our negotiators. The American authorities should eliminate any such doubt swiftly.”

Elmar Brok, chairman of the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee – and a member of the centre-right European People’s Party – expressed similar frustration. “The spying has taken on dimensions that I would never have thought possible from a democratic state,” he told Der Spiegel. “How should we still negotiate if we must fear that our negotiating position is being listened to beforehand?”

Read more: Snooping claims add new complication to tough EU-US trade talks - FT.com

PRISM SPY PROJECT: German Press Reactions to Tempora Data Surveillance Scandal

In Germany, a country with a long, troubled history of state surveillance, the revelation that British and American intelligence agencies have been spying en masse on European data communications has not gone over easily.

Last Friday, London's Guardian newspaper published the contents of leaked documents confirming that Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the American National Security Agency (NSA) have been tapping directly into fiber-optic cables to collect vast stores of information that they can then access as needed. Among these cables was the TAT-14, which carries a large share of data communication in and out of Germany, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and public radio station NDR reported on Tuesday after viewing documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

According to media reports, neither the German government nor the country's foreign intelligence service, the BND, was apparently aware of the British surveillance operation, dubbed "Tempora," which was reportedly made possible with the cooperation of two telecommunications companies: Vodafone and British telecoms giant BT. Vodafone released a statement saying it abides by the laws of the countries in which it operates, but it declined to give further information, citing "national security." BT has refused to comment.

The ongoing surveillance controversy, which began last month following the disclosure of the NSA's Prism program, has been a heated topic in Germany, where the massive state surveillance of Communist East Germany is still present in the memories of many citizens.

Spiegel magazine has also said that a September 2010 "top secret" document of the US National Security Agency outlines how the agency bugged offices and spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the UN. The document explicitly referred to the EU as a "target", the magazine reports.

Read more: German Press Reactions to Tempora Data Surveillance Scandal - SPIEGEL ONLINE