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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 22 declined, 18 accepted (40 total, 45.00% accepted)

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Submission + - BBC buries radio drama on torture in the GWOT (craigmurray.org.uk)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "The radio drama "Murder in Samarkand", starring David Tennant (of Dr. Who fame), just won second place in the Sony Radio Academy Awards of 2011. But you can't listen to it on the BBC website. In fact, you can't listen to it anywhere; they have buried it. However, former ambassador Craig Murray, author of the book the play is based on, has provided a link to what he calls an "illegal copy" on his website."

Submission + - Domestic surveillance: much worse than we thought (newyorker.com)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "Charges against NSA whistleblower Thomas Tamm have been dropped, but the case against Thomas Drake has not. An article in the New Yorker reveals that the Drake case is actually related to the warantless surveillance program; and it is much worse than we thought. Former NSA IT expert Bill Binney says he "believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America" and was told by others that "They’re putting pen registers on everyone in the country!’" Kathleen McClellan of the Government Accountability Project sums it up in a thread at Daily Kos as folows: "Simultaneous armed raids on the homes of four Inspector General complainants, criminal prosecution of a whistleblower exercising his first amendment right to speak to the press, evisceration of separation of powers with an executive branch official "calling" votes on the Supreme Court" — these are the hallmarks of tyranny, not Democracy. ""

Submission + - NSA CS man: My algorithm was 'twisted' by Bush (newyorker.com)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "Crypto-mathematician Bill Binney worked in the Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center at the NSA. There, he worked on NSA's ThinThread program; a way to monitor the flood of internet data from outside the US while protecting the privacy of US citizens. In a new interview with Jane Mayer, he says his program "Got twisted. . . I should apologize to the American people. It's violated everyone's rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world. . . . my people were brought in, and they told me, 'Can you believe they're doing this? They're getting billing records on U.S. citizens! They're putting pen registers on everyone in the country!'""

Submission + - Govt wants to redact unclassified info in court (fas.org)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "The government prosecutors in the case of NSA IT whistleblower Thomas Drake are attempting to use the Classified Information Procedures Act to redact evidence in court; evidence that is clearly "UNCLASSIFIED". The defense has responded, pointing out that Congress named it the Classified Information Procedures Act for a reason — it is only supposed to apply to classified information. The government's argument? It can redact anything it wants to, because the material relates to the NSA."

Submission + - First ever Pulitzer for non-print series (propublica.org)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "Last year ProPublica won the first Pulitzer for an online news site. This year, they have been awarded the first Pulitzer for a series that did not appear in print. The series was Eisinger and Bernstein's "The Wall Street Money Machine" which described how hedge funds & financiers profited from the collapse of the economy. ProPublica publishes under a Creative Commons license and hosts a Nerd Blog where they write about journalism-related hacking and publish open source tools they have developed."

Submission + - Does wiretapping require cell company cooperation? (novayagazeta.ru)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "Recently the dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, accidentally admitted to wiretapping journalist Irina Khalip. Khalip is the wife of Andrei Sannikov, one of the many opposition presidential candidates who was imprisoned after the "election" in 2010. I am wondering how Lukashenko did this? Can a government tap a modern cellphone system without the company knowing? Or would it require cooperation, like when AT&T and others helped the NSA perform warantless wiretapping on Americans? "

Submission + - The ball thing in the potato field (novayagazeta.ru)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "One story that may have slipped through the cracks comes from Novaya Gazeta; it is the story of Gagarin's landing, not from a scientific or political perspective, but from the perspective of the old woman and the girl, working in their potato field, who were surprised, and a little afraid, to see a 'ball thing' come down on the end of a silk parachute."

Submission + - China DDOS an online petition to free Ai Weiwei (change.org) 3

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "If you are reading this on April 21, 2011, then you probably won't be able to connect to the linked story. That is because: "For the past three days, the Change.org website has been repeatedly targeted by cyber attacks coming from China that aim to bring our site down, which would keep people from signing the petition.", which demands the release of artist Ai Weiwei."
Facebook

Submission + - Did Team Themis break the law to scrape facebook? (baercrossey.com)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "By looking at anonymous' dump of HB Gary emails, it becomes abundantly clear that Team Themis (HBGary, Berico, and Palantir) developed and used Facebook scraping tools. This is something that Facebook has sued at least 3 other companies for doing in the past, under the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. This is coincidentally one of the same laws that Sony accused George Hotz et al of violating when they jailbroke the PS3. One has to wonder, does Facebook only go after porn sites and competitors who break the law to access it's servers? What would the issues be when suing part of the 'national security' industry?"

Submission + - Internet poker sites 'routing around' FBI seizure? (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "Various media are reporting that three huge online poker domains, Absolute Poker, Full Tilt Poker, and Poker Stars, have been seized by the FBI, their main pages being replaced with seizure notices. However, throughout the day, the sites apparently came back up. Are they treating the FBI seizure as if it were physical damage, and simply routing around it?"
Government

Submission + - Ex-NSA officer decries government abuses (facebook.com)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "Thomas Drake, Air Force vet and former NSA IT officer, has given a speech at the Ridenhour Prize ceremony in which he decries the abuses committed by the government since 9/11, and the lengths it has gone to to cover them up. To quote: "unaccountable and unnecessary power and secrecy on the part of the government are the hallmark of tyranny and contradict the very founding principles of this Nation." Drake is facing decades in prison for allegedly having "national defense" information in his basement regarding the failed, abandoned Trailblazer project that NSA stopped working on circa 2003, after a reporter at the Baltimore Sun exposed the project in 2006 and 2007."
Government

Submission + - IT guy makes stirring speech to human rights group (facebook.com) 2

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "Thomas Drake, an IT expert and NSA official indicted under Espionage law for whistleblowing on the failed Trailblazer project, has made a stirring speech after receiving the Ridenhour Prize. A quote: "Unaccountable and unnecessary power and secrecy on the part of the government are the hallmark of tyranny and contradict the very founding principles of this Nation — and ultimately make us less safe and secure""

Submission + - Taking one for the team (facebook.com)

Submitted by decora
decora writes: What would you do if you knew your employer was breaking the law? What would you do if you knew it was costing taxpayers a billion dollars? Would you talk to a reporter? That is exactly what Thomas Drake did. But since his employer was the NSA, he is now looking at possibly spending the next several decades in prison. He has been waiting 3 years for a trial, wondering what will happen to his family. Today, though, in Washington, he is honored with the Ridenhour Prize for Truth Telling.

Submission + - Federal Prosecutors tempt the Streisand Effect (fas.org)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "As the case of NSA IT guru Thomas Andrews Drake nears trial, the fur has been flying between the defense and prosecution lawyers. Earlier this week the judge ordered the sealing of a defense motion because the government claimed it contained classified information. The problem? The document had been sitting on the Federation of American Scientists website for several days. Another problem: the document is marked "Unclassified" in big bold letters at the top of the page."

Submission + - US government attempts to classify the word BAG (politico.com)

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "The government, in it's prosecution of an NSA IT whistleblower, doesn't want a lot of information getting out into the public at the trial. It has attempted to use code words in the courtroom, to block any mention of newspaper articles about the failed NSA IT project in question, to stop the defense mentioning 'whistleblowing' or 'overclassification', and now, it has attempted to have the judge seal a defense motion that contained unclassified information that has been sitting on the Federation of American Scientists website for several days. What damaging information was in this defense motion? The names of the classified documents themselves , like "BAG" and "Note Card 1"."

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