NSA police regime scandal: Greenwald confirms Snowden's reports

Glenn Greenwald

NSA analyst Glenn Greenwald admits that the powerful spy agency can do almost anything in your computer:

Greenwald said the existence of these analyst search programs are in line with the claims of Edward Snowden, who first leaked details of the NSA's surveillance programs last month.

 

"It's an incredibly powerful and invasive tool, exactly of the type that Mr. Snowden described," Greenwald said.

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and House Intelligence leaders have previously downplayed Snowden's access to NSA data. Greenwald said the revelation of this search capability deserves a response from NSA officials.

"NSA officials are going to be testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, and I defy them to deny that these programs work exactly as I just said," Greenwald said.

Greenwald also called on lawmakers to push for more information about the NSA's surveillance programs.

"The real issue here is that what the NSA does is done in complete secrecy. Nobody really monitors who they are eavesdropping on," Greenwald said. "So the question of abuse is one that the Congress ought to be investigating much more aggressively."

Excerpted from a Yahoo! News article. 

NSA police regime: your user passwords are also being released to the cops

Internet corporations are releasing all kind of private information to the NSA or FBI cops including passwords and other secret elements such as encryption codes and encryption seeds (SALT), etc.

That way they can access your accounts and even supplant you. 

Of all companies questioned by CNET, only Google declared to have never given away such data, adding that they have an attorney team to deal with such issues. 

Microsoft neither confirmed nor denied but said that, would they do it they would not reveal passwords, SALT codes nor encryption algorithms.

All the rest (Apple, Facebook, AOL, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable y Comcast) declined to comment, what amounts to a "yes". The FBI also declined to comment. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es], citing Russia Today.

Turkey: repression continues

As mentioned yesterday, the Islamist authorities of Turkey have launched a campaign of political repression, arresting many dozens, while hundreds were arrested in the general strike of Monday. 

But the campaign of political repression is not only directed against protesters: the four TV channels which gave some half-decent coverage to which is maybe the most important episode in the history of Turkey in this century, were heavily fined, in a clear totalitarian attack against freedom of speech. 

But the most "dangerous" foe that Erdogan faces is the Internet. And he knows it. His government is therefore preparing a new law that aims to restrict access to social networks. People have also been arrested in Izmir on the grounds of "provocative tweets". 

Recently Erdogan claimed, in his usual fascist style, that "a tweet can be more dangerous than a car bomb". 

AKP speaker Ali Sahin claimed that there is "a conspiracy that attempts to depose the government using the social networks" and, shamelessly parroting his boss, that "a calumnious tweet can be more dangerous than a car bomb. The explosion of an armed vehicle may have a limited impact but a tweet loaded with lies can cause an ambient of conflict".

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Occupied Taksim emphasizes how, while government repression has killed four people and injured, often very seriously, to at least 8000 people, the only thing the government seems concerned about is that cars have been burned or that publicity billboards have been broken. 

That is the "democratic" nature of Erdogan: he is extremely ugly and brutally arrogant but he does not seem to notice.

Turkey: 13 bloggers arrested, video of the shooting of Ethem Sarısülük

13 bloggers from Adana have been arrested for allegedly spreading subversive messages through Internet, in yet another clear case of Erdogan's dictatorial style in which free speech or even thought becomes a crime and democracy is reduced to a mere routine plebiscite.

These arrests add to the ones performed against dozens of online activists from Izmir days ago.

It has also surfaced now the video in which a riot police shoots with live fire injuring in Ethem Sarısülük, a worker from Ankara, whose death has been reported in the past but who seems to be still alive, according to his attorney Kazım Bayraktar.

All the shooting takes place in the first five seconds.

Bayraktar has repeatedly requested that the agent responsible for the shooting be identified but the authorities have simply ignored the demand. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es] (link 1, link 2).

USA: NSA spying your Internet activity

Uhm, yes, we all suspected it but now it seems demonstrated. The Gestapo-like National Security Agency (NSA) has been running for years a snooping program known as Prism that effectively allows them to control all Internet communications without any kind of judicial authorization or anything. 

The first company to join the program was... guess who? Microsoft, naturally. Then followed Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple. These companies give full access to the cops to snoop in your communications without any limitation nor guarantee. 

Sources and more details: Ex-SKF, The Guardian.

Turkey: 24 citizens arrested for twitting, 14 more 'wanted'

Erdogan compared to Hitler

24 citizens of Izmir have been arrested by police on charges of inciting to rebellion via Twitter. Police is trying to arrest 14 others still at large. 

The tweets appear to merely be a show of support for the protesters at the Gezi Park of Istanbul. An attorney of the main opposition party, the Kemalist CHP, has studied the cases and has not found anything that can be considered criminal in said tweets, which merely expressed opinions "that we all share".

It seems that the arrested were previously identified by police and are now being used as scapegoat. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Turkish Revolution report (noon Jun 5)

Internet censorship (from Webguerrillero[es]):

Blockade of Twitter, Facebook is not direct but the broadband has been strangled (via TTNET, the Turkish ISP provider). That way access is not formally blocked but the flow of information has been reduced to a trickle, what is the same.

This also applies to access to the Internet overall via 3G. The main operator TurkCell denied they were choking the lines but the reality on the ground is very different. 

At least 120,000 people in the Turkish state has already downloaded an application known as HotSpot Shield that helps evade state censorship.

Also Kasama has a large photo-gallery (with a chronicle of the revolutionary uprising), as well as a report of the solidarity protests in Boston.

Searching for HKP references I found it to be a Kurdish Maoist party

Documentary: 'Naked citizens' (Orwell's dystopia today)

A quite interesting documentary (35 mins) on how police techno-surveillance in the Internet and the streets alike is destroying our right to privacy and threatening innocent people. It's not very different from Orwell's dystopic nightmare "1984", just a bit less blunt, but just a bit...

Found at Ah, Mephistophelis.