● 06.30.13

● Links 30/6/2013: Fedora 19 Days Away, Fedora 20 Feature Previews

Posted in News Roundup at 6:57 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Kernel Space

• Linux 3.10 will be able to use the video acceleration features offered by Radeon graphics cores. Systems with Intel graphics will wake from standby faster. Linux now has an input device driver for Apple’s infrared receiver.

• Beyond the exciting Radeon DRM driver changes that includes the long-awaited dynamic power management support and also initial support for the HD 8000 “Sea Islands” hardware, there will also be a new DRM driver to premiere with the Linux 3.11 kernel.

• Earlier this month AMD unveiled their Richland desktop APUs as an upgraded version of Trinity. While still based upon Piledriver CPU cores, the AMD A10-6800K APU under Linux is a modest upgrade until the arrival of the Jaguar-based APUs. For starting off our Linux testing of the A10-6800K are Ubuntu Linux benchmarks of this high-end Richland APU compared against the A10-5800K Trinity APU.

• While the innovative LLVM compiler infrastructure is mentioned extremely often on Phoronix along with its Clang C/C++ compiler, receiving less coverage is LLDB. However, with LLVM 3.3, the LLVM Debugger has grown in functionality and is growing in usefulness.

• Samsung has added S3C64XX SoC support to their Exynos DRM graphics driver, updated their DeviceTree support, and has begun utilizing the Common Clock Framework.

Graphics Stack

• The pull request for the Radeon DRM graphics driver changes for the Linux 3.11 kernel has been submitted. The open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver changes in this next kernel development cycle include dynamic power management (including ASPM) and support for Radeon HD 8000 “Sea Islands” graphics processors as the most prominent changes.

• Patches published this week allow for H.264 and MPEG2 video decoding on certain NVIDIA GeForce GPUs via the VP2 PureVideo HD hardware engine.

• On the NV84 (GeForce 8600) through NV96 (GeForce 9400~9600~9700) GPUs and NVA0 (GT 200) graphics processors is a V2 engine that is now supported by the reverse-engineered open-source NVIDIA graphics driver. The NVIDIA VP2 engine is a bit-stream processor for decoding H.264 and a video processor to take care of certain video operations on MPEG/H.264/VC-1 streams.

• With Fedora 19 presenting a nice “out of the box” experience for AMD Radeon HD 7000 series graphics using the open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D driver, benchmarks of the open-source driver were done and compared to previous generations of AMD hardware. Sadly, there’s still much work ahead for the Radeon HD 7000 series driver in being able to catch up with the hardware supported under the mature R600 Gallium3D driver.

• Two days after AMD’s massive Radeon DRM driver patch-set that provided initial dynamic power management support as well as initial Radeon HD 8000 “Sea Islands” graphics processor support, the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver has been updated on the user-space side.

• Yesterday I posted benchmarks of the AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D driver looking at the open-source driver performance for the Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards. The performance is comparatively very poor right now compared to earlier generations of AMD Radeon hardware that is better supported. But how does the open-source performance compare between the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series and the NVIDIA GeForce 400/500/6000 “Fermi” and “Kepler” on Nouveau? Here’s benchmarks.

• If you buy a new laptop with Intel processors and AMD graphics cards, you by default run into this long running dual, hybrid graphics problem under Linux. This post is targeted towards new Linux users, who haven’t dealt with such kinds of problems before.

• While there’s been many Linux-related projects using the “Fastboot” coin, the Intel Linux graphics team have been working on Fastboot support in terms of a faster start process by eliminating some useless mode-sets.

• After having already prepared a number of changes for the Intel graphics driver in the upcoming Linux 3.11 kernel, Intel OTC has now published their last batch of changes they hope to see merged into this next kernel merge window.

• Earlier this month we found out NVIDIA was bringing their driver to ARM — following an announcement that NVIDIA would begin licensing Kepler graphics to SoC vendors — and now they have done their first public release of the ARMv7 binary NVIDIA Linux graphics driver.

• Intel released version 1.2.0 of libva and libva-intel-driver over the night. The updated Video Acceleration API (VA-API) now has support for MPEG-2 encoding along with new H.264 profile encoding API support.

Benchmarks

• With Thursday’s announcement that Mir will ship by default in Ubuntu 13.10 on the desktop, many Ubuntu users were caught by surprise that this experimental display server will be ready by October. Up to now, Ubuntu 13.10 was expected to continue using an X.Org Server by default on the desktop (with only an experimental option for Mir) while the new Ubuntu Touch project would be using Mir on mobile devices, until next year. With the pressed timeline for the migration to Mir, at Phoronix we have already carried out our first Mir benchmarks. In this article are the first benchmarks of Intel graphics when running on Ubuntu 13.10 with a native X.Org Server (as done now on current Ubuntu Linux releases) and then when deploying the same Unity desktop environment atop XMir with the Mir unity-system-compositor.

• Earlier today I delivered the first benchmarks of Ubuntu’s Unity 7 running over XMir to run the current X11 desktop atop the Mir Display Server via this compatibility layer. These benchmarks documented the performance impact of running OpenGL games when having to deal with XMir rather than just a clean X.Org Server running on the hardware. The extra step in the rendering process did result in a measurable performance impact, especially when the performance of the open-source Linux graphics drivers is already lower than their proprietary brethren. The benchmarks to now show illustrate that the 2D rendering performance also takes a hit when running Unity on XMir.

• While LLVM 3.3 was released last week, there are already some performance changes for the latest LLVM 3.4 and Clang 3.4 SVN development code for this C/C++ compiler stack.

• I’ve already delivered GCC vs. LLVM Clang compiler benchmarks on Intel’s Core i7 4770K “Haswell” platform and tested the “core-avx2″ optimizations offered by the latest compilers. That previous testing was done from the stable releases of LLVM Clang 3.1/3.2 and GCC 4.7/4.8 releases, but looking ahead, here’s some benchmarks of the latest GCC 4.9 development snapshot.

Applications

• The latest update of darktable, version 1.2.2, builds on the improvements of darktable 1.2 to add more camera support. Specifically the raw file decoder Rawspeed r553, the Canon EOS 700D and Nikon Coolpix P330 are now supported by the photographic workflow management application.

• Transmission, the multi-platform open-source BitTorrent client shipped by a number of Linux distributions, has been updated to version 2.80 and it brings with it a wide variety of changes.

Proprietary

• In two contrasting news developments, on one hand Avira has discontinued its entire range of Linux security solutions and on another Half-Life 2 is now officially available on Steam for Linux. Avira, a known brand among anti-virus software makers, has had its entire range of products for the Linux platform since a long time. Come June 30th, Avira will drop the axe on its Linux offerings by stopping sale of new licences and renewal of existing ones.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine or Emulation

Games

• Since Valve’s Linux gaming announcements last year, many game modders have been looking for Source SDK to be supported under Linux. Valve today released Source SDK 2013 and it now supports Linux as well as OS X.

• Void of Darkness is a Starship action RPG inspired by Starflight 1 & 2 by Binary Systems 1989 and Distant Worlds by CodeForce. Explore, trade, fight, upgrade!

• Battle against intelligent monster AI in this procedurally generated dungeon crawler. Featuring gorgeous art from Matthias Andre! This Kickstarter has already been fully funded and was using Flash with Air, they have now switched to Unity and will fully support Linux!

• Leisure Suit Larry –the Super Mario of filthy Sierra adventure games from the 80′s & 90′s –has returned, but not as you might expect. For his latest tour of doody, Replay Games Inc. is revisiting –and remastering –Larry’s original adventure. Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded is a return to the classic PC adventure game formula, with updated graphics. It is the result of another successful Kickstarter campaign, and another promise fulfilled for Linux games.

• Hotline Miami 2 has been confirmed by their official teaser video to be heading over to Linux, which is sure to please many of you!

• Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast have been in beta form on Linux since early May while Half-Life 2: Deathmatch has been in beta on Linux since March. After much testing by Linux gamers, Half-Life 2 is now deemed by Valve as stable on Linux.

• Havok has released Project Anarchy, a suite for developing mobile 3D games. According to the announcement, the suite includes Havok’s Vision Engine and access to a variety of animation, AI and physics tools that have already been used in games like Halo, Skyrim and Assassin’s Creed. An extensible C++ architecture, Lua debugging and customisable samples and tutorials make the package even more interesting.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Xfce 4.12 still hasn’t been released yet and it’s running months behind schedule. Xfce 4.12 will be a major update to the lightweight desktop that’s becoming an increasingly used alternative to Unity and the GNOME Shell. Here’s an update on some of the completed features.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Launched in May was the Qt for Tizen project to bring the vibrant Qt5 tool-kit to the Tizen open-source Linux platform. After its first alpha release last month, the Qt for Tizen developers have made a heck of a lot of progress and already released Qt for Tizen Alpha 2.

• For those interested in testing out KDE 4.11, the feature-rich Linux desktop environment, the second beta is out ahead of the final release in mid-August.

• I am proud to announce the first alpha release for Muon Suite 2.14. The Muon Suite is a set of package management utilities for Debian-based Linux distributions built on KDE technologies. Packages for Kubuntu 13.10 “Raring Ringtail” are available in the QApt Experimental PPA. Here’s what’s new:

• Kontact Touch was the one application that stood out when I tried Plasma Active for the first time. But not in a good way. It looked alien, the interaction was different from the other touch optimized applications and it just felt flawed. Custom buttons and other UI components, slide out context menus, widget based dialogs and a weird bar at the top show clearly that this application was not designed for Plasma Active.

• Heya, this is my second weekly report describing my work on my Google Summer of Code project to rewrite MTP (Android) support in Amarok from scratch. This week I’ve done a lot of work on MtpCollection class regarding device initialization.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• True to my word, I have spent the last twenty-eight days running GNOME 3 Classic. For the most part, I have been very happy with it. As I said in my last entry in the original series, I originally expected that I would ultimately decide to switch back to KDE when the experiment was over. Twenty days after my final entry, I have decided to stop using GNOME Classic, but not in favor of KDE.

• The magnificent Genius mathematics tool for calculation and plotting, used for research and education has just been updated bringing a lot of plot-related improvements, libraries updating and bug fixing.

Distributions

• In this article, I’ve decided to follow up on a topic I wrote about not in my column directly, but as a feature article called “PXE Magic” in the April 2008 issue. In that article, I talk about how to set up a PXE server from scratch, including how to install and configure DHCP and TFTP. Ultimately, I even provide a basic pxelinux configuration to get you started. Since then, PXE menus with pxelinux have become more sophisticated and graphical and could seem a bit intimidating if you are new to it. In this column, I explain how to piggyback off of the work the Debian and Ubuntu projects have done with their PXE configuration to make your own fancy PXE menu without much additional work. I know not everyone uses Debian or Ubuntu, so if you use a different distribution, hold off on the angry e-mail messages; you still can use the PXE configuration I’m showing here for your distro, provided it gives some basic examples of how to PXE boot its installer. Just use these steps as a launching off point and tweak the PXE config to work for you.

Screenshots

Red Hat Family

• So what kept us[1] busy while working on KDE in Red Hat this month?

Fedora

• Fedora 19 is the first tier-one Linux distribution shipping with decent “out of the box” support for the AMD Radeon HD 7000 “Southern Islands” series graphics cards with the out-of-the-box Linux graphics driver and Gallium3D-based acceleration.

• In an on-line meeting of Fedora developers today, the unanimous decision was reached to approve “Release Candidate RC3″ as the final Fedora 19 which has been dubbed “Schrödinger’s Cat”.

• Our latest Intel Core i7 4770K “Haswell” Linux benchmarks come in the form of comparing the performance of Ubuntu 13.04, an Ubuntu 13.10 development snapshot, and Fedora 19.

• With Fedora 19 being released soon, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee has begun evaluating potential changes/features for Fedora 20. One of the features that was approved today is a build change for the RPMs that can yield greater code security but at the potential cost of performance.

• The change that was approved today is a GCC flag change for now using “-fstack-protector-strong” on building Fedora RPM packages rather than just the “-fstack-protector” argument. The -fstack-protector flag has the compiler generate extra code automatically to check for buffer overflows. If a guard check fails — meaning a potential buffer overflow occurred within the application — there’s an error message and the program exits. Fedora has been using -fstack-protector but now they are looking to use -fstack-protector-strong.

Debian Family

• Debian Wheezy is a great operating system, and XFCE is a great desktop environment- especially for older computers, and for people who prefer a traditional desktop paradigm- but it does have a few quirks. I’ve just installed it on my old Presario 900 laptop, and I’m going to mention a few things I did after installing to make the computer more usable and nicer looking.

Derivatives

• A highly customised Debian designed for video and audio professionals, how exactly does it differ from other distros, and does it deliver?

• While there wasn’t a public Knoppix 7.1 release beyond their annual Linux Magazine CeBIT edition, Knoppix 7.2 was released instead to all users. Knoppix 7.2 is based on Debian “Wheezy” with newer desktop packages from Debian/testing and Debian/unstable Jessie.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical is all set to introduce its Mir display server technology in the upcoming Ubuntu 13.10. Olli Ries, engineering director for Unity and Mir at Canonical, has revealed the roadmap for Mir’s deployment.

• Just a day before Ubuntu announced that it would be making its Mir display server the default from the next release, in October, the chief Kubuntu developer, Jonathan Riddell, announced that Kubuntu would not be using Mir or XMir.

• More Mir news today besides the surprise announcement that Canonical is now planning to use the Mir Display Server by default in Ubuntu 13.10, there’s some other interesting news involving Mir benchmarking, the Mir 0.0.5 release, and Kubuntu avoiding Mir/XMir and reaffirming their commitment to X.Org and Wayland.

• While Ubuntu Linux no longer participates in alpha releases, other members of the Ubuntu family did their first 13.10 “Saucy Salamander” alpha releases today. Coming out today in 13.10 Alpha 1 form is Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, and Ubuntu Kylin.

Flavours and Variants

• Last year, CompuLabs and the developers behind the Linux Mint operating system put together a small form factor PC called the MintBox. It seems that the project was successful enough to warrant a updated offering, because specifications were recently posted online for the MintBox 2. The MintBox 2 is a router sized, passively cooled PC that will be available later this year for $600.

• Summary: Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon review takes a detailed look at the Cinnamon editions of the latest release of the popular desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop. Cinnamon is a new desktop environment developed by the Linux Mint team, and is built atop GNOME 3 technologies.

• Linux Mint 15, the latest edition of the desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop, was released at the end of last month (May 2013). It features the latest versions of the MATE and Cinnamon desktop environments. MATE is a fork of what used to be the GNOME 2 desktop environment, and it is, in a sense, based on old technology. Cinnamon is a new desktop environment built atop the latest GNOME (GNOME 3) technology, but presenting a traditional desktop interface, rather than the GNOME Shell that ships with GNOME 3.

• We’re proud to announce the official release of DreamStudio Unity 12.04.3. Now with over 100,000 downloads, our latest release makes this the best open source software suite for graphics, audio, and especially video editing. Here are some of the latest features:

Devices/Embedded

• Like the idea of using a small ARM-based device as a low-power desktop or media center computer, but don’t want to rely on the 4GB to 16GB of storage that usually comes with an Android TV box?

• The Raspberry Pi – a small, compact and versatile computer, capable of processing HDMI and MPEG-2 being the central component of any number of weekend projects from retro gaming stations and media centres to smart TVs, Internet radios and low budget space programs.

• Since its release in 2012 the Raspberry Pi has proved something of a phenomenon. We’ve featured it at length here on MakeUseOf, and even chatted with its creator, Eben Upton. Costing less than $40, the Raspberry Pi is a hugely successful computer, largely due to its low price. But is it really as low-budget as you think? Could it be that the true cost of a Raspberry Pi is in fact much more?

Phones

Ballnux

Android

• According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is actively developing an Android-based games console, which could arrive as soon as this fall. Citing anonymous sources, the report claims that the console is part of a bevy of secret projects, including a new smartwatch and a revamped version of its failed Nexus Q set-top streaming device. Additional details are sparse, but given the recent influx of Android gaming platforms, like the Ouya, Project Shield, GameStick, and others, a Google-produced gaming product isn’t outside the realm of reason.

• First came the Slate 7, HP’s Android-powered tablet computer. Now HP is about to release a 21.5 inch sibling – the Slate 21. This was what I hoped that HP will do with webOS, but that hope died when HP abandoned webOS in favor of Android.

• New screenshots reportedly show an early build of Android 4.3 taken from the Google Play Edition of the Galaxy S4, says blog site Sammobile.

• Imagination Technologies announced a MIPS “Warrior” family of 32/64-bit processors designed for everything from high-end networking equipment to Android tablets, and also announced updates to its embedded-focused MIPS Aptiv 32-bit processor line. The Warrior IP will feature multi-core hardware virtualization and multi-threading, MIPS SIMD architecture, and Imagination’s security framework.

• When rumors surfaced that Apple was developing a smart watch all of the big players jumped into the fray. WSJ reports that Google is developing a smart watch to follow to its smart glasses.

• PC OEMs seem obsessed with making complicated, high-cost, Windows 8-baed devices. Why are none of them trying to make cheap Android laptops?

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• Asustek Computer on June 27 launched MeMO Pad HD 7, a 7-inch Android 4.2 tablet equipped with a MediaTek-developed quad-core processor, 1280 by 800 IPS touch screen, and 1.2-megapixel front camera and 5-megapixel rear camera, in the Taiwan market at a retail price of NT$5,990 (US$198), according to the company. Asustek aims to ship 12 million tablets in 2013.

Free Software/Open Source

• IRS is eyeing open source projects and Tea Party groups as possible tax scams, raising a real question: Do open source foundations need nonprofit status?

Web Browsers

Chrome

• Digia has been experimenting with porting Google’s open-source Chromium web-browser in the Qt world.

Mozilla

• Should users of Mozilla’s Firefox now be worried for their privacy, now that the browser can phone home with data on startup and run times as well as the number of crashes?

• Hot on the heels of the release of Firefox 22.0 FINAL, Mozilla has released Firefox 23.0 Beta 1, a preview version of the next release that will ship in around six weeks time.

• Arriving hot on the heels of the release of Firefox 22, the beta of version 23 opens up the social API originally introduced in November 2012 for Facebook to all developers. It also includes a Share API that social networks can use to add their share buttons to a common panel. The browser itself displays the panel, which users can initiate using the share button in the toolbar or a context menu. Details and documentation on this new feature are still fairly incomplete.

• Mozilla has just released Firefox 22 stable, taking the powerful web-browser to a zone filled with Web-based functionalities.

• Firefox 22 introduces WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) by default, allowing users to exchange data between personal computers and the outside world.

• Mozilla has put Firefox 23 now in their beta channel for those wanting to test this next feature update to the open-source web-browser.

SaaS/Big Data

• Cloud systems offer low cost access to huge computational, storage, and network resources. These systems offer per-user and per-application isolation and customization via a service interface that is often implemented using high-level language technologies, well-defined Application Programming Interfaces, and web services.

• Hortonworks have announced a community preview of Hortonworks Data Platform 2.0 as a self-contained VM with a pre-installed Hadoop 2.0 cluster. HDP 2.0 uses Hadoop 2.0 technology, introduces Apache Hadoop’s YARN architecture and, Hortonworks hopes, will get more developers and partners to use the next generation of Hadoop architecture.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

Education

• We talk about “community” a lot when it comes to open source, but it’s important to remember that just like local communities within a city, town, state, and country, each community has its own culture. One community is not just like another. Each has its own ways of communication and tracking and decision-making. Processes for code submission differ—perhaps two communities both use Bugzilla, but with different flags. Others require you to also alert a mailing list. A large software project may even have smaller sub-communities within it with their own customs and quirks.

Business

Semi-Open Source

• There are two strategic reasons why a company would want to sponsor its software as open source. One is good for investors, the other is not good.

BSD

• Jordan Hubbard, the open source developer that helped to co-found the FreeBSD Project back in 1993 is leaving Apple.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The GCC 4.9 compiler that’s still in early stages of development can generate binaries optimized for Intel’s forthcoming Atom “Silvermont” hardware via the new “slm” CPU type.

• FSF founder Richard Stallman, Mosaic co-author Marc Andreessen and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow are among 32 inductees to the Internet Hall of Fame this year. The Internet Hall of Fame was founded at the Internet Society’s Global INET conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 2012 and holds annual awards to publicly honour individuals “who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the global Internet.”

• The new addition to the FSF high priority project page is coming up with an open-source solution for BitTorrent Sync. “Bittorrent Sync is a peer-to-peer, two-way file synchronization utility with fine-grained access controls. We need a free software version of this client or free software that can be used for the same purpose.”

Project Releases

• Piwigo is photo gallery software for the web, built by an active community of users and developers.

• Piwigo version 2.5.2 is available, for a fresh install and for upgrade. Thanks to reporters, this version fixes many bugs, see full details on the Piwigo 2.5.2 Release Notes.

Public Services/Government

Programming

• Adobe announced yesterday it’s open-sourcing FlasCC, a C/C++ compiler they developed for bringing C/C++ more easily to the web via Flash and AIR.

• In the open source development world, the influence of the Eclipse Foundation cannot be underestimated.

• While Eclipse started off as ‘just’ an IDE over the years it has evolved with its coordinated release train effort that sees piles of project all released on the same day.

• The Eclipse Foundation’s annual release train, dubbed Eclipse Kepler this year, is now available. This year, the release train synchronised 71 different projects, 420 developers and 54 organisations to ensure that they release their projects together at the end of June in one large-scale release.

Standards/Consortia

• Google hopes that Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), recently added to Chrome Canary, will help speed up HTTP traffic on the internet. The goal here is not to compete with SPDY, the protocol introduced four years ago, but to work in tandem with it by replacing TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), the current transport method, with UDP (User Datagram Protocol).

Leftovers

• University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly thought she was doing a good thing buying some La Croix bottled water and cookie dough ice cream from the Harris Teeter Supermarket to share at a charity event. It was 10:15 p.m. and the twenty-year-old, along with her female roommate were trying get to a police sponsored “Take Back The Night” event where she thought she would be listening to stories from sexual assault victims and developing strategies to combat the scourge of most college towns. Instead, as she crossed the dark parking lot and got into her vehicle, she was set upon by six people, one of whom jumped on the hood of her SUV and another who pulled a gun.

Science

• New studies in cell research are bringing up some alarming new questions concerning GMOs, and one of them in particular makes liver failure or cancer seem like child’s play compared to the garish possibilities that arise when we start to look at how genetically modified foods likely affect our DNA.

Security

• The OpenSSL implementation bundled with Ruby has been found to be vulnerable to having its hostname check bypassed. The flaw, rooted in the lack of proper handling of alternate X509 names with null bytes in them, could allow an attacker to present a certificate for “www.ruby-lang.org\0example.com” which when read by the Ruby client library, would be interpreted as “www.ruby-lang.org”. That result would be handed over to the certificate verfication routines which would cause the certificate would be identified as coming from “www.ruby-lang.org”. If an attacker could get a certificate where the subjectAltName included such a null byte, they could use that certificate to interpose themselves between a victim and the site.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Mérida, 27th June 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government released a recording that allegedly shows that one of the leaders head of the country’s opposition coalition discussed a possible coup with U.S. State Department officials.

• On Wednesday morning the Minister of Communication and Information, Ernesto Villegas and Caracas mayor Jorge Rodriguez released an audio recording that they alleged showed opposition legislator Maria Corina Machado speaking to a Venezuelan academic, Germán Carrera Damas.

• With a new $450 million federal cloud computing contract up for bid, will we see tech giants Amazon and IBM duke it out again?

• Why is it so unlikely that Americans will take action to stop the outrageous electronic surveillance programs of the National Security Agency? The answer, to a depressing extent, is that our basic freedoms are threatened today because our political system and our very culture make it nearly impossible for us to act.

• The Obama administration’s infighting suddenly goes public.

• [...]

• Usually, the Obama administration and the Pentagon do their bureaucratic knife fighting in private. Not so in the latest investigation of a national security leak.

• The Philippine military has revived plans to build new air and naval bases at Subic Bay, a former U.S. naval base that American forces could use to counter China’s creeping presence in the disputed South China Sea, senior navy officials said.

• Former Iranian Revolutionary Guard member-turned-CIA spy Reza Kahlili, who has pulled back the curtain on some of the innermost secrets of the Islamic regime, has been honored by the Endowment for Middle East Truth at its “Rays of Light in Darkness” dinner.

• Then IBM, who had put in a competitive bid, protested the CIA award. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated and found that Amazon’s bid was a whopping $54 million higher than IBM’s. It asked the CIA to go back through the bidding process again. The CIA has 60 days to respond.

• In an article published in January of 2005, Historian William Blum sets the background of the CIA’s involvement in the arrest of Mandela. Ultimately, Mandela was convicted and jailed for a total of 28 years. By the time Mandela was released in February 1990, his stature had changed dramatically and then-President George Bush Sr. telephoned Mandela to say Americans rejoiced in his release. Blum pointed out that this was the same Bush who once headed the CIA and who was second in power during an administration that worked closely with South African intelligence services to provide information about Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC). The ANC was seen by the US as part of the “international communist conspiracy.”

• Where Bush threatened the UN with the irrelevance of the old League of Nations – without realising that the US had fatally weakened the League by refusing to join it – Rice has been condemning the UN Security Council’s inaction on Syria as “a moral and strategic disgrace”, without appreciating that it was Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt who insisted on the future UN’s veto powers during the great Allied World War II conference at Yalta.

• The CIA is expected to deliver a report to senators on Thursday that rebuffs a congressional probe into the agency’s interrogation methods.

• CIA Director John Brennan is slated to deliver the CIA’s contradictory findings to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and ranking member Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) in a private meeting on Thursday, the senators said.

• Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/308161-cia-rebuffs-congress-on-torture-findings#ixzz2XjPjhBjq Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

Cablegate

• So, who’s a journalist? I could explore the legislative and legal questions, and that may be something worth returning to in this space. (Decisions that have been made in interpreting New Jersey’s strong shield law are of particular interest, as is the language before the Senate now on the proposed federal law.)

• But for now, I’ll offer this admittedly partial definition: A real journalist is one who understands, at a cellular level, and doesn’t shy away from, the adversarial relationship between government and press – the very tension that America’s founders had in mind with the First Amendment.

• Those who fully meet that description deserve to be respected and protected — not marginalized.

• WikiLeaks says there are no tensions between Julian Assange and Ecuadorean government as it responded to media reports claiming Assange’s role in Edward Snowden’s case “has raised hackles” among Ecuadorean officials.

• New York Times states that FBI agents that came to Iceland in August 2011 were here for Wikileaks and Julian Assange but not for alleged computer attacks on the Government Offices.

• The FBI agents said that they were going to investigate a computer attack on the Government Offices of Iceland but then they spent five days on interrogating a former volunteer of Wikileaks, who is an Icelandic citizen.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• A consortium of gas companies headed by Pluspetrol and including Hunt Oil plans on detonating approximately 38 tons of explosives in the south-east Peruvian Amazon in one of the most biodiverse regions in the world.

• The detonations are part of 2D and 3D seismic tests planned by Pluspetrol in its search for new gas deposits in the Camisea region—plans that are currently pending approval by Peru’s Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM).

• Forty years ago, peasants in rural Peru banded together as “ronderos” – Spanish for “people who make the rounds” – to curb cattle rustling.

• Today, squads of these ronderos are working toward a different aim – thwarting an American mining company’s planned $5 billion gold mining project that they contend would spoil lakes vital to the local population high in the Andes.

Finance

• …eye-catchingly called for senior bankers to face jail

• The conversations provide an insight into the reckless, sneering cynicism of the ruling elite as they proceeded to swindle the working people to the tune of trillions of euros.

• The conversations focussed on the Anglo-Irish Bank board’s attempt to stem the massive losses it suffered following the collapse of the Irish property bubble out of which it had made billions. The board’s sting was to downplay the scale of the bank’s mounting losses and sucker the authorities into offering large sums of cash. The hope was that, once committed, the Irish government and central bank would be unable to back out of further support.

• On 13 June, two month after her illegal arrest, World Bank whistleblower Karen Hudes has to appear the Superior Court of the District of Colombia. Hudes, who reported improper accounting at the World Bank, and threats against members of the Board of Executive Directors, was arrested for trespass in the World Bank headquarters building, handcuffed, left one hour in a police cruiser outside the building, and thrown to jail but subsequently released on 13 May.

• Abusive offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). That’s $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

• Out of band authentication — communicating with a customer outside of his mobile banking app to verify his identity or a specific transaction — is a generally respected means of deflecting mobile banking fraud.

• But RSA’s Anti-Fraud Command Center on Monday found and reported on a Trojan called Bugat that has been updated to hijack out-of-band authentication codes sent to bank customers via SMS. This doesn’t mean out-of-band authentication via text messaging is useless, but it can be compromised using a dated, unsophisticated piece of malware.

• The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved a resolution Friday asserting that the woman at the center of the IRS scandal waived her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination when she came before the committee last month.

• The 22-17 vote came after a charged meeting that cut sharply along partisan lines, with Republicans saying they deserve answers out of Lois Lerner, director of tax-exempt organizations for the IRS, and Democrats arguing that the process was being rushed through.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Book by a Harvard scholar argues that US producers in the 1930s ‘collaborated’ with the Nazis with cuts to films and self-censorship

• A German court has rejected a journalist’s request to see all German secret service files on a top Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann.

• The foreign intelligence agency (BND) had given the Bild newspaper journalist documents on Eichmann with some passages blacked out.

• Gary Fooks and Anna Gilmore just published a very important paper on how the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement could undermine tobacco control policies in countries including 40% of the world’s population.

Censorship

• The US National Security Agency (NSA) is linked to the latest decision by European satellite provider Intelsat to take Iranian channels off the air, a political analyst tells Press TV.

• After the initial surge of web traffic to alternative news websites following The Guardian breaking the NSA spying story, traffic has slowed considerably despite the continued interest in the NSA story as well as other alternative headlines.

• This dramatic drop in traffic may be due to broad censorship by the Department of Defense on “millions of computers”.

• It is increasingly apparent that Facebook is not even bothering to explain itself, meting out severe punishments to users who honestly have no clue what is or is not acceptable anymore in Facebookland.

• A grand jury ordered Branzburg to reveal the names of his sources. He refused and was held in contempt.

Privacy

• With the advent of Google Apps for Education, there has been a massive uptake by the K12 schools I deal with on signing students up with their own Google powered email address under the school domain. This combined by the fact that the students’ work when using Google Apps is stored offshore and out of our control — with no explicit comeback if TOS are breached by Google — it seems to me that the school cannot with integrity maintain it has control over the data and its use.

• All bets are off. There do not appear to be any legal restrictions on what the NSA can do with the communications of non-U.S. persons. Since a substantial fraction of the world’s Internet data passes through the United States, or its allies, the U.S. has the ability to observe and record the communications of much of the world’s population. The European Union has already complained to the U.S. Attorney General.

• The U.S. is hardly the only country doing mass surveillance, though its program is very large. GCHQ, which is the British counterpart to the NSA, has a similar surveillance program and shares data with the NSA. Many countries now have some sort of mass internet surveillance now in place. Although passive surveillance is often hard to detect, more aggressive governments use intercepted information to intimidate or control their citizens, including Syria, Iran, Egypt, Bahrain and China. Much of the required equipment is sold to these governments by American companies.

• A former contractor to the US National Security Agency (NSA) has told the Privacy Surgeon that communications intelligence arrangements between the US and Europe are much more “complex, murky and far reaching” than the public has been led to believe.

• A former NSA contractor says that the US has been colluding with the UK, Germany and others

• At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data, according to a former contractor to America’s National Security Agency, who said the public should not be “kept in the dark”.

• Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US.

• Madsen said the countries had “formal second and third party status” under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.

• US vice-president Joe Biden has asked Ecuador to turn down an asylum request from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, the country’s president said Saturday.

• Rafael Correa said he had a “friendly and very cordial” conversation with Biden, and told the vice-president that Ecuador hadn’t sought to be put in the situation of deciding whether to harbor an American fugitive. Correa said Ecuador can’t consider the asylum request until Snowden is on Ecuadorean soil.

• “The moment that he arrives, if he arrives, the first thing is we’ll ask the opinion of the United States, as we did in the Assange case with England,” Correa said. “But the decision is ours to make.”

• Julian Assange, founder of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks has been given asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London.

• Discussing the implications of the last four week’s of articles, revelations and debates1

• The United States has bugged European Union offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks, according to secret documents cited in a German magazine on Saturday, the latest in a series of exposures of alleged U.S. spy programs.

• Der Spiegel quoted from a September 2010 “top secret” U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) document that it said fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden had taken with him, and the weekly’s journalists had seen in part.

• The document outlines how the NSA bugged offices and spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the United Nations, not only listening to conversations and phone calls but also gaining access to documents and emails.

• While the NSA is, perhaps unconstitutionally, intercepting your electronic data, our media is focusing on whether Snowden should be charged with treason. One of reasons Snowden was charged with espionage is so the media would follow that meme. While James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, is getting away with lying to the Senate, our media is playing Where’s Waldo with Snowden. Instead of a debate on the constitutionality of the NSA programs out media is focusing on insignificant details regarding the private lives of Snowden and Greenwald.

• While the NSA is, perhaps unconstitutionally, intercepting your electronic data, our media is focusing on whether Snowden should be charged with treason. One of reasons Snowden was charged with espionage is so the media would follow that meme. While James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, is getting away with lying to the Senate, our media is playing Where’s Waldo with Snowden. Instead of a debate on the constitutionality of the NSA programs out media is focusing on insignificant details regarding the private lives of Snowden and Greenwald.

• Earlier this week, European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding vented her fury over the US data spying program known as Prism. The far-reaching online surveillance operation, which saw the US National Security Agency spying on users across the globe, clearly demonstrates “that a clear legal framework for the protection of personal data is not a luxury, but is a fundamental right,” Reding told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Tuesday.

• EDWARD Snowden did not betray American people or commit treason by leaking details of US internet and phone surveillance, his father said today.

• The NSA has a “brand new” technology that enables one billion cell phone calls to be redirected into its data hoards, according to the Guardian’s Glen Greenwald, who told a Chicago conference that a new leak of Snowden’s documents was ‘coming soon.’

• Calling it part of a “globalized system to destroy all privacy,” and the enduring creation of a climate of fear, Greenwald outlined the capabilities of the NSA to store every single call while having “the capability to listen to them at any time,” while speaking via Skype to the Socialism Conference in Chicago, on Friday.

• Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald hasn’t published the story yet, but he gave the Socialism Conference in Chicago a big taste of his next reveal:

• The National Security Agency can store one billion phone calls each day.

• Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño has said that negotiations were underway with Russia over CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden. “There were some negotiations over recent days with the Russian authorities,” he said.

• Wanted former CIA agent Edward Snowden is still residing in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport.

• The latest flight for Cuba’s capital Havana has flown away without Snowden, informed RIA Novosti.

• The recent revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden that the NSA (National Security Agency) is engaged in mass surveillance of private online communications between individuals by obtaining data from “internet corporations” such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft as part of a covert program called PRISM have resulted in widespread outrage and shock. The outrage is understandable, because such forms of surveillance constitute a major invasion of our privacy. The shock, on the other hand, is somewhat puzzling. In the past years, the Obama administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it is willing to continue or even expand the surveillance policies of the Bush government. The PATRIOT Act was renewed in 2011 under Obama and government intrusion into our personal lives is justified under the mantle of “national security”. We chuckle at the absurdity of obediently removing our shoes at airport security checkpoints and at the irony of having to place Hobbit-size toothpaste tubes into transparent bags for a government that seems to have little respect for transparency. Non-US-citizens who reside in or travel to the United States know that they can be detained by US authorities, but even US citizens who are critical of their government, such as the MacArthur Genius grantee Laura Poitras, are hassled by American authorities. Did anyone really believe that the Obama administration with its devastating track record of murdering hundreds of civilians – including many children – in drone attacks would have moral qualms about using the NSA to spy on individual citizens?

• In the public debate thus far over the NSA’s mass surveillance programs, Americans have obsessed over our right to protect our emails, phone calls, and other communications from warrantless spying. But an issue that is just as important has been almost completely ignored: should the U.S. government be collecting the communications of foreigners without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing? Unlike spying on U.S. citizens, where the government may well be breaking the law, spying on foreigners is almost certainly legal. But is it wise? We don’t think so. Unfettered U.S. spying on foreigners will cause serious collateral damage to America’s technology companies, to our Internet-fueled economy, and to human rights and democracy the world over. Rampant surveillance harms both privacy and our long-term national security.

• Another document that I probably shouldn’t share since it’s not published but I am going to share it with you anyway—and this one’s coming soon but you’re getting a little preview—It talks about how a brand new technology enables the National Security Agency to redirect into its repositories one billion cell phone calls every single day, one billion cell phone calls every single day.

• Thomas A. Drake is a former senior executive at the National Security Agency who, in 2006, leaked information to the press about wasteful government spending and alleged snooping on the citizenry.

• The FBI has some strange ideas about how to “update” federal surveillance laws: They’re calling for legislation to penalize online services that provide users with too much security.

• In the latest revelations of the NSA leaks scandal, new slides have emerged thoroughly explaining the targeting process of the US government top-secret PRISM program deployed to spy on communication data of targets operating abroad.

• …117,675 active surveillance targets in the Prism database, as of April 5.

• As controversy continues to swirl around whistleblower Edward Snowden and his whereabouts, the Washington Post has published several more slides from the NSA presentation that the former CIA staffer leaked to both the Post and the Guardian — slides that provide further details about the surveillance program known as PRISM and how it functions.

• Among other things, the slides highlight the large discrepancies between the way the program is described and the strenuous denials from tech giants such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook about their participation in such a program.

• The newspaper specifies that, in addition, it is unknown how many people including Americans became random targets for data collection while the subjects of the program were traced.

• Another slide describes the data collection routine. A NSA analyst makes an inquiry about a new program target. The inquiry goes to a superior authority who considers the chosen candidate and determines the range of spying in each separate case.

• Bursting Brussels’ bubble, it appears the US National Security Agency has been spying on the EU institutions.

• German magazine Der Spiegel’s online edition cited a top secret document which outlines how the NSA specifically targeted EU offices in Washington, Brussels and New York, listening to phone calls and accessing internal computer networks.

• The European Union is demanding “full clarification” from the US over the latest claims that the NSA extensively spied on EU authorities, a leak that could prove damaging to US-EU relations.

• The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets — especially TV news — that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led the Iraq invasion have come to resemble state-controlled media outlets in their near-total identification with the government as it pursues the now 30-year-old whistleblower.

• While an independent journalism system would be dissecting the impacts of NSA surveillance on privacy rights, and separating fact from fiction, U.S. news networks have obsessed on questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused? How can he be brought to justice?

• So New York Times Dealbook writer Andrew Ross Sorkin has apologized to journalist Glenn Greenwald for saying he’d “almost arrest” him, for his supposed aid and comfort of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. “I veered into hyperbole,” was Sorkin’s explanation.

• I got into trouble the other day on Twitter for asking if David Gregory may have just had a “brain fart” when he asked Greenwald his infamous question, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you be charged with a crime?” I hadn’t seen the show and had only read the quote, and quite frankly, I don’t watch a lot of David Gregory. Apparently, in context, even the question I asked is absurd (more on that later). But Sorkin is different. For Sorkin to call his outburst an accident, that I know is hilarious.

• Did he also “veer into” a long career as a shameless, ball-gargling prostitute for Wall Street? As Jeff Cohen eloquently pointed out on HuffPo, isn’t Sorkin the guy who’s always bragging about how close he is to top bankers and parroting their views on things? This is a man who admitted, in print, that he only went down to Zucotti Park after a bank C.E.O. asked him, “Is this Occupy thing a big deal?”

• [...]

• All journalism is advocacy journalism. No matter how it’s presented, every report by every reporter advances someone’s point of view. The advocacy can be hidden, as it is in the monotone narration of a news anchor for a big network like CBS or NBC (where the biases of advertisers and corporate backers like GE are disguised in a thousand subtle ways), or it can be out in the open, as it proudly is with Greenwald, or graspingly with Sorkin, or institutionally with a company like Fox.

• [...]

• That’s what makes this new debate about Greenwald and advocacy journalism so insidious. Journalists of all kinds have long enjoyed certain legal protections, and those protections are essential to a functioning free press. The easiest way around those protections is simply to declare some people “not journalists.” Ten years ago, I would have thought the idea is crazy, but now any journalist would be nuts not to worry about it. Who are these people to decide who’s a journalist and who isn’t? Is there anything more obnoxious than a priesthood?

• The prospects for a new trade pact between the US and the European Union worth hundreds of billions have suffered a severe setback following allegations that Washington bugged key EU offices and intercepted phonecalls and emails from top officials.

• The latest reports of NSA snooping on Europe – and on Germany in particular – went well beyond previous revelations of electronic spying said to be focused on identifying suspected terrorists, extremists and organised criminals.

• Anger is mounting in Brussels at new revelations about the extent of US spying on European Union countries – with claims that snoops installed bugs inside EU buildings.

• The damaging allegations are revealed in new top secret documents leaked by fugitive spy Edward Snowden and seen by German magazine, Spiegel.

• The most chilling claim in the secret report from 2010 is that Brussels was subjected to a cyber-attack at its offices in New York and Washington, which was later traced back to a Nato building used by US officials.

• Papers suggest US spies eavesdropped on European diplomats in EU buildings in central Washington DC. Computers were also hacked so the United States had access to computer files and emails, reports Spiegel.

• The president of the European parliament has called for full clarification from the US over claims it bugged EU offices in America and accessed computer networks.

• The United States taps half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month and has classed its biggest European ally as a target similar to China, according to secret U.S. documents quoted by a German newsmagazine.

• The president of the European parliament has called for full clarification from the US over claims it bugged EU offices in America and accessed computer networks.

• Martin Schulz said there would be a severe impact on relations between the European trade bloc and the US if revelations by German magazine Der Spiegel proved to be true.

• Maybe there is good reason for the U.S. to be paranoid, and using the NSA to invade the world’s secrecy.

• Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) both urged a strong response to Russia’s refusal to extradite National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

• “They should pay a price, either diplomatic, economic, geopolitical, for doing what they did. They’re always putting their finger in our eye,” said Schumer on “Fox News Sunday,” arguing for repercussions against Russia.

• While the National Security Agency’s (NSA) unconstitutional spying on Americans’ communications has been getting most of the press lately, another federal agency has been quietly — and illegally — vacuuming up Americans’ financial data: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

• But it seems that the bigger story is that this judge is THE judge, who, all alone, decided that it was okay for the NSA and whoever else had access, to spy on ALL Americans. Her name is Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

• The head of the European Parliament has reacted angrily at claims the American spies bugged key European Union premises.

• Reports have claimed intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency bugged offices and spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the United Nations.

• The NSA was not only listening to conversations and phone calls but also gaining access to documents and emails, German magazine Der Spiegel said.

• The NSA/Prism controversy rumbles on. Today the European Parliament President Martin Schulz said there could be a severe impact on EU-US relations if the claims that the US had bugged EU offices in America and accessed computer networks turned out to be true. He’s said he’s ‘deeply worried’ about the issue and called for clarification from the US over the stories that have appeared.

• Newly published top-secret documents detail how NSA interfaces with tech giants such as Google, Apple and Microsoft

• The European Parliament says it is “deeply worried and shocked” by reports of the United States bugging its offices.

• A report from Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine claims the National Security Agency placed bugs inside the EU offices in Washington and infiltrated its computer network.

• The National Security Agency (NSA) allegedly bugged European Union (EU) offices and hacked into EU internal computer networks, according to secret documents a German magazine claims to have obtained.

• Reports from German news weekly Der Spiegel have surfaced, stating that the NSA has been systematically spying on cell, email and network data transmissions of both the United Nations and the European Union.

• Although Der Spiegel won’t say where it received its information, one of the report’s authors is Laura Poitras, an award-winning documentarian who recently interviewed former CIA contractor Edward Snowden while he was in hiding in Hong Kong.

• The former director of the CIA and National Security Agency says the government should release more information about its secretive surveillance programs to reassure Americans that their privacy rights are being protected.

• Edward Snowden papers reveal 38 targets including EU, France and Italy

• Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives “to [ensure] the stories will inevitably be published,” Greenwald told The Beast (emphasis added).

• Transatlantic relations plunged at the weekend as Berlin, Brussels and Paris all demanded that Washington account promptly and fully for new disclosures on the scale of the US National Security Agency’s spying on its European allies.

• As further details emerged of the huge reach of US electronic snooping on Europe, Berlin accused Washington of treating it like the Soviet Union, “like a cold war enemy”.

• The European commission called on the US to clarify allegations that the NSA, operating from Nato headquarters a few miles away in Brussels, had infiltrated secure telephone and computer networks at the venue for EU summits in the Belgian capital. The fresh revelations in the Guardian and allegations in the German publication Der Spiegel triggered outrage in Germany and in the European parliament and threatened to overshadow negotiations on an ambitious transatlantic free-trade pact worth hundreds of billions due to open next week.

• Prism was a scandal waiting to happen. Ever since the Clinton government passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act in 1994, and above all since the Bush government launched the “total information awareness” programme in 2003, voices have been warning of the extent of the NSA’s surveillance (most recently James Bamford in Wired). Disappointing as it may be, Obama’s bowing to the interests of the security institutions cannot come as a surprise. (Pro Publica has published a very useful and clearly laid out timeline that shows how laws and policies have been loosening ever since the Watergate scandal.)

• The European Parliament says it is “deeply worried and shocked” by reports of the United States bugging its offices.

• A report from Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine claims the National Security Agency placed bugs inside the EU offices in Washington and infiltrated its computer network.

• It claimed the information was leaked in papers by fugitive Edward Snowden, who has requested asylum in Ecuador and is wanted by the United States on espionage charges.

• Nothing can prevent the release of more of Edward Snowden’s top-secret NSA documents, WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange said on Sunday, as he dismissed claims that he is manipulating the American fugitive and the president of Ecuador appeared to pour cold water on extradition hopes.

• Project SHAMROCK allowed the NSA to intercept telegrams sent by US citizens.

• US intelligence agencies have sprung so many leaks over the last few years—black sites, rendition, drone strikes, secret fiber taps, dragnet phone record surveillance, Internet metadata collection, PRISM, etc, etc—that it can be difficult to remember just how truly difficult operations like the NSA have been to penetrate historically. Critics today charge that the US surveillance state has become a self-perpetuating, insular leviathan that essentially makes its own rules under minimal oversight. Back in 1975, however, the situation was likely even worse. The NSA literally “never before had an oversight relationship with the Congress.” Creating that relationship fell to an unlikely man: 30 year old lawyer L. Britt Snider, who knew almost nothing about foreign intelligence.

• Senior European Union officials have angrily demanded answers from the United States after a German magazine alleged the U.S. National Security Agency bugged EU offices and gained access to its internal computer networks as part of its spying activities.

• The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, said Sunday that if the reports are true “it would have a severe impact on EU-U.S. relations.” He called for “full clarification” from U.S. authorities.

• America’s National Security Agency (NSA) bugged European Union offices in Washington and infiltrated the EU’s computer networks, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

• According to Spiegel, a “top secret” document from 2010, obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden,shows the agency installed bugs in the building housing the EU representative’s office in downtown Washington, DC.

• …One billion cell phone calls can be hoovered up every day…

• He did say that his company’s policy is to fight what they regard as overly broad requests for information.

• WikiLeaks founder says ‘there is no stopping the publishing process’ as NSA leaker remains stuck in Moscow airport

• International tensions over the NSA’s PRISM monitoring program continue to grow, with federal prosecutors in Germany revealing they are ramping up for a potential investigation into whether the US government has broken German law.

• The Obama administration faced a breakdown in confidence Sunday from key foreign allies who threatened investigations and sanctions against the U.S. over secret surveillance programs that reportedly installed covert listening devices in European Union offices.

• U.S. intelligence officials said they will directly discuss with EU officials the new allegations, reported in Sunday’s editions of the German news weekly Der Spiegel. But the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency urged the White House to make the spy programs more transparent to calm public fears about the American government’s snooping.

• It was the latest backlash in a nearly monthlong global debate over the reach of U.S. surveillance that aims to prevent terror attacks. The two programs, both run by the NSA, pick up millions of telephone and Internet records that are routed through American networks each day. They have raised sharp concerns about whether they violate public privacy rights at home and abroad.

• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Sunday that Edward Snowden made sure that the information he took about U.S. surveillance programs will continue to be published regardless of what happens to the former U.S. spy agency contractor.

• Greenwald told The Daily Beast that the people in possession of these files “cannot access them yet because they are highly encrypted and they do not have the passwords.” But Greenwald said “if anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.”

• The US National Security Agency (NSA) has shocked European officials after it was learned from an NSA report that the United States may have spied on European Union offices.

• While the report has not yet been confirmed or denied by the NSA, officials in the country warn that it would mean massive repercussions if true.

• U.S. officials including Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have issued stern warnings to the Ecuadorian government against granting asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

• According to a report in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, the US National Security Agency bugged institutions of the European Union. The magazine cited documents provided by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

• A group of concerned citizens has organized under the name “Restore The Fourth” and plans to protest what it calls “unconstitutional surveillance” at rallies across the U.S. on July 4. HuffPost Live’s Alyona Minkovski recently talked to Ben Doernberg of Restore the Fourth NYC about the group’s NSA rally in Union Square on July 4 and how the group at large is demanding an end to all government programs that violate the Fourth Amendment.

• Michael Hayden, who previously served as the heads of both the CIA and NSA, sat down with CBS’ Bob Schieffer today to weigh in on the international manhunt for Edward Snowden and how much top-secret information he has released to the public about NSA surveillance. Hayden expressed confidence that if the NSA carefully releases more details about the scope and limit of the programs, people will feel more assured, but admitted to Schieffer that “in an ideal world, I’d keep all this secret.”

• Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian recently told Reuters that tech companies should strive to uphold constitutional principles like privacy.

• He said Edward Snowden, who leaked information about the National Security Agency, showed that the government was engaged in “unacceptable” levels of digital surveillance that violated privacy rights.

• Ohanian told Reuters Opinion Editor Jim Ledbetter at the Aspen Ideas Festival that tech companies could help protect Americans’ privacy by not collecting and storing their data online.

Civil Rights

• Would you be shocked to learn that the FBI apparently knew that some organization, perhaps even a law enforcement agency or private security outfit, had contingency plans to assassinate peaceful protestors in a major American city — and did nothing to intervene?

• Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino has called on the United States to provide a thorough explanation of its controversial secret global espionage programs.

• “The United States has been accused of spying. Now it should be giving a clear and through explanation to the citizens of this world regarding this issue,” Patino made the remarks in an interview at an airport in the capital, Quito.

• And as foreigners, our collective hearts all broke a little..

• Marchers in Saint Petersburg against new anti-gay law confronted by opponents throwing eggs, flares and stones

• Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine says it has seen a secret document showing the US has bugged EU offices in Washington and at UN headquarters in New York.

• The paper says it was shown the 2010 “top secret” document by fugitive ex-security analyst Edward Snowden.

• The US National Security Agency document allegedly outlined how it spied on EU internal computer networks, referring to the bloc as a “target”.

• Take the example of Barrett Brown. He published a lot of material that was inconvenient and embarrassing to the government – which is a reporters’ job – and was put under investigation for it. At that point, he did the crucial mistake of threatening the FBI agents who were harassing him and his family in a YouTube video, which is an act that doesn’t go unpunished in the United States. He was arrested and charged with something serious enough – but over time, the charges grew to the whole Christmas tree. Particularly, Brown was charged with publishing the leaks in the first place. In other words, Brown was charged with the crime of doing his exact job as a reporter. He has currently been in detention without bail for 291 days, and pretty much nothing is seen in oldmedia about it.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• The Royal Academy of Engineering hopes that its Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, funded by several large companies, will become a kind of Nobel Prize for engineers, with a prize awarded every two years. The winners were announced in March with the actual award ceremony taking place this month. At the award ceremony, Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, warned against letting governments and corporations have too much control over the internet saying “When you make something universal…it can be used for good things or nasty things…we just have to make sure it’s not undercut by any large companies or governments trying to use it and get total control”.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.