Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on Business Insider.

Edward Snowden won't see any of the proceeds from his new memoir instead, the US government is entitled to seize the profits, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

Snowden's memoir, "Permanent Record," describes his work as a contractor for the National Security Administration and his 2013 decision to leak government secrets, including the fact that the NSA was secretly collecting citizens' phone records. Snowden has lived in Moscow since 2013, where he has been granted asylum.

The U.S. sued Snowden on the day his memoir was published in September, alleging that he violated contracts with the NSA by writing about his work there without pre-clearance.

Judge Liam O'Grady made a summary judgement in favor of the US government on Tuesday, rejecting requests from Snowden's lawyers to move the case forward into the discovery stage. O'Grady ruled that Snowden violated his contracts, both with the publication of the memoir and through other public speaking engagements in which he discussed his work for the NSA.

"Snowden admits that the speeches themselves purport to discuss intelligence-related activities," O'Grady wrote in his decision, adding that Snowden "breached the CIA and NSA Secrecy agreements."

In recent years, Snowden has maintained his criticisms of US surveillance while also turning his attention to big tech companies. In November, he decried the practice of aggregating personal data, arguing that Facebook, Google, and Amazon "are engaged in abuse."

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Federal judge rules that the US government can seize all the profits from Edward Snowden's book - Task & Purpose

Edward Snowden is not entitled to the profits from his memoir Permanent Record, and any money made must go to the US government, a judge has ruled.

Permanent Record, in which Snowden recounts how he came to the decision to leak the top secret documents revealing government plans for mass surveillance, was published in September. Shortly afterwards, the US government filed a civil lawsuit contending that publication was in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), and that the release of the book without pre-publication review by the agencies was in violation of his express obligations. Snowdens lawyers had argued that if the author had believed that the government would review his book in good faith, he would have submitted it for review.

Earlier this week, district judge Liam OGrady ruled that the government is entitled to Snowdens proceeds from the book.

In response, Snowden wrote on Twitter: The government may steal a dollar, but it cannot erase the idea that earned it I wrote this book for you, and I hope the governments ruthless desperation to prevent its publication only inspires you read it and then gift it to another.

Asked by one fan if it was possible to buy the book and donate the same amount to Snowden, as an easy way to stick it to the US government, Snowden recommended that readers donate money to the families who had helped shelter him in Hong Kong after the story broke in 2013, providing a link to the charity that supports them.

Snowden said the book would continue to be sold. The courts ruling is a hack intended to circumvent first amendment limits on what the government can censor, he told his followers. They cant (yet) ban the book, so they ban profit to try and prevent such books from being written in the first place.

Snowdens lawyer, Brett Max Kaufman, told the New York Times that it was far-fetched to believe that the government would have reviewed Mr Snowdens book or anything else he submitted in good faith, and for that reason, Mr Snowden preferred to risk his future royalties than to subject his experiences to improper government censorship.

We disagree with the courts opinion and will review our options, he added.

Continued here:
Edward Snowdens profits from memoir must go to US government, judge rules - The Guardian

DECEMBER 15, 2019

I GENERALLY CARE relatively little for the personal lives of people of note, but something that always nagged me just slightly about Edward Snowdens 2013 revelations that the NSA was spying on pretty much everyone was how angry was his girlfriend?

After all, we all knew Snowden had a girlfriend, since it didnt take long for the media to uncover that her name was Lindsay Mills, that (much to their infinite delight) she had photos of herself in lingerie, and that her significant other had suddenly turned up in Hong Kong halfway through a business trip and started to fill the world in on US mass surveillance without running it by her first.

It must have been quite the shock.

I therefore found it uncharacteristically satisfying that Permanent Record included a chapter composed of extracts from Lindsay Millss diary. It was genuinely interesting to get an insight into how someone might cope with this very unusual situation being thrust upon them in a more candid tone than we generally get from the guarded Snowden throughout the rest of the book. These excerpts were all the more necessary, as this really is a book about the personal no further details of public significance are released in this title, which is a work primarily of analysis and reflection.

The general schema of the book is precisely what one might expect: Snowdens childhood in North Carolina and the DC Beltway; his decision to enlist in the US Army following 9/11; his roles as a defense contractor in the United States, Switzerland, and Japan; his ultimate decision to blow the whistle on mass surveillance and subsequent temporary asylum in Russia. Prior reviews have been accompanied by a few snarky remarks: The New Yorker, for example, claimed that Snowden saw the early internet as a techno-utopia where boys and men could roam free, although I cannot recall Snowden making such exclusionary gendered distinctions. Presumably it complements Malcolm Gladwells earlier piece on why Snowden is not comparable to Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg (since he is a hacker not a leaker) in flat contradiction to Ellsbergs own defense of Snowden published in the Washington Post:

Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I dont agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago. [] Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly.

So eager has everyone been to snipe and show their moral fiber as good little citizens, that they have rarely found the time to dig into Permanent Records main themes. Rather than spilling more facts, Snowdens aim seems to have been to contextualize his previous disclosures and explain their significance. Thus, while many parts of the book are truly gripping a goodly portion of it details how Snowden removed information detailing surveillance from his workplace under a pineapple field in Hawaii and arranged to share it with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong it is the authors underlying themes and motivations that truly deserve our attention.

It is apparent early on that Snowden pursued two main purposes in releasing Permanent Record: 1) to convince skeptics that he acted for the good of the country and to defend the US Constitution (indeed the books release was timed to coincide with Constitution Day on September 17), and 2) to educate readers about technology, or at least that part of it related to mass surveillance.

Early on, while still describing his 80s childhood and initial fascination with what he then termed Big Masheens, Snowden recalls imbibing lessons from his Coast Guard father Lonnie about the potential for technology to bring its own form of tyranny with it. According to Snowden:

To refuse to inform yourself about the basic operation and maintenance of the equipment you depended on was to passively accept that tyranny and agree to its terms: when your equipment works, youll work, but when your equipment breaks down youll break down, too. Your possessions would possess you.

Technological tyranny is a theme Snowden comes back to later in the book, reflecting on Mary Shelleys Frankenstein he was after all posted to Geneva, where part of the novels action is set.

That may sound a bit clich, until you learn that Snowdens sales partner during his time at Dell literally nicknamed the cloud system they developed for the CIA Frankie because its a real monster. That wasnt just a private office joke, but how he tried to convince the agency to greenlight the project during a sales pitch. Its these little pieces of not-exactly-earth-shattering, but still pleasantly informative detail that help the book keep ticking over and compensate for the often distant tone of its author. Snowden frequently describes his feelings, but rarely does he make the reader feel them.

Snowden also lavishes attention on explaining how he interacted with the internet as a child and teen. While many have interpreted these lengthy passages as either nave utopianism or pathetic addiction, his point is much more important than that. Im much of an age with Snowden and therefore remember many of the things he recalls: phreaking, personal homepages, chat rooms, and the days when you could just ask perfect strangers for advice and theyd give it to you. What I think I hadnt fully considered before reading this book is that at least some people in this rather narrow cohort absorbed some knowledge of modern technology. Despite being nowhere near as interested in computers as Snowden (and having a positive antipathy to Big Masheens), I learned how to build circuits and program from Basic to Java as part of my general education. That gave me the ability to learn more later in life and to form a better (if still far from expert) understanding of the nuts and bolts of computing infrastructure.

By contrast, many people today know how to use tech, but they dont understand it. Just like few people who use money understand economics. And just like an ability to grasp finance creates an enormous power differential, so does the ability to understand tech.

Snowden is at pains to redress this balance, methodically explaining everything from SD cards, to TOR, to smart appliances, to the difference between http and https, to the fact that when you delete a file from your computer, it doesnt actually get deleted. He bestows the same attention to detail on these subjects as he does describing the labyrinthine relationships of his various employers and the intelligence agencies, and this clarity helps turn the book into a relatable story about issues rather than a jargon-stuffed, acronym-filled nightmare.

Only by understanding how technology works on a basic level, so argues Snowden, can journalists ask the right questions of power and regulators regulate effectively. He strengthens this case by noting examples of times when major announcements (construction of enormous data storage facilities; a CIA presentation in which the speaker literally admonished the journalists present to think about their rights) were simply ignored.

They did not make waves, Snowden thinks, because journalists and regulators simply didnt realize their significance. There is, as he says repeatedly in the book, a lag between technology and regulation.

It is an issue that others in a position to know, like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have pointed out. Everything from advances in robotic warfare to artificial intelligence to total surveillance aided by facial recognition is dismissed as alarmist until well after it is happening, when its then dismissed in true Nineteen Eighty-Four style with a shoulder shrug as inevitable.

And when that doesnt happen, tech tends to be treated as an entirely new phenomenon requiring heavy-handed, and often counterproductive, regulation.

While it is entirely true that people are bullied on social media, for example, we shouldnt forget that people were bullied in real life in the past, too. And threatened. And the victims of fraud. And defamation. And child abuse. As a result, we shouldnt lose sight of the fact that we often do already have a well-developed arsenal of remedies that can be adjusted for the internet era without the need to jettison constitutional values in the name of protection and safety.

There are ways to apprehend criminals effectively without the total take of information that intelligence agencies so lazily demand. Vigilante pedophile-hunting groups have been quite successful in luring would-be predators to justice by posing as minors on social media sites. While it is beyond question that such activities should be left to properly trained and authorized police forces not righteous citizens who can do as much harm as good it does show that the individualized pursuit of crime can still be very effective in the social media age. Indeed, in regards to some crimes, like forms of child abuse, detection may well be easier than in earlier times with many culprits unable to resist the temptation to groom potential victims online.

Rather than veering between complacency and panic, we should be thinking about the various ways in which to update our legal framework for the modern digital age something Snowdens revelations about the warrantless mass surveillance programs he uncovered have given us a particular urgency to do.

The part of the law most significant to Snowden, and which he quotes in the book, is the US Constitutions Fourth Amendment, which reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

According to Snowden, the NSA sought to circumvent the Fourth Amendment by creating a huge database of all online activity the permanent record of the books title ideally stored in perpetuity and which they would only search when [the organizations] analysts, not its algorithms, actively queried what had already been automatically collected. Intelligence agencies also argued that because individuals have already given permission to third parties, particularly telecommunications companies, to host their data, that data no longer resided in the private sphere and thus constitutional privacy had been forfeited.

After all, the magic of what feels private sitting in front of your computer or scrolling through your phone at home can only happen by connecting to distant servers.

Those who support a living document interpretation of the Constitution may see this as an eventual opportunity to expand the scope of the terms papers, and effects for the modern era, something Snowden himself suggests; originalists might argue that only a constitutional change itself can suffice to fully address privacy rights in a digital age.

Some of the actions that Snowden describes monitoring people through their webcams in their homes via XKEYSCORE would certainly seem like unproblematic violations if committed against US citizens or persons on US soil under present wording and interpretations. Others like hunting through the vast reams of information we sign over to private companies may prove more difficult. Justice Scalia, the nations most well-known originalist prior to his death in 2016, is alleged to have refused to be drawn on whether or not computer data was an effect in the sense of the Fourth Amendment at a public lecture in 2014.

In more practical terms, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided in 2015 (ACLU v. Clapper) that bulk collection was not covered by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, stating in part, Congress cannot reasonably be said to have ratified a program of which many members of Congress and all members of the public were not aware, a decision followed shortly by the passing of the USA Freedom Act, under which telecoms companies keep records that law enforcement may then request.

However, it is somewhat doubtful whether legal remedies alone will effectively stop the political-intelligence agency complex that Snowden describes so adroitly in his book. He recalls the panic he witnessed at Fort Meade and outside the Pentagon during 9/11, and later the blame as politicians emphasized the prevention of terror attacks as the standard for measuring their own competence. Intelligence agencies felt both the horror of having to develop some way to guarantee safety and the power of being able to extort huge budgets from Congress in the interests of doing so. Once an agency has the capability to engage in mass surveillance and is under significant pressure to maintain security, its difficult to imagine it failing to indulge regardless of legalities.

Snowden mentions encryption, SecureDrop, and the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as potential ways for citizens to uphold their own privacy, but Im less than convinced. Encryption is not readily available to the average person working on an average budget; few people will ever have any reason to use SecureDrop, and I doubt many of the alleged positive effects of the GDPR, which has mainly led to Europeans agreeing to any and every pop-up in order to get to their content ASAP while introducing barriers to sharing and advertisement for small businesses (precisely not the threat).

In this context, perhaps the right to be forgotten (in fairness, now enshrined in Article 17 of the GDPR, although the principle derives from an earlier 2014 court case) is more relevant. After all, Snowdens main fear is the creation of the unforgiving permanent record, where every mistake, minor trespass, and ill-considered comment remains preserved for all time and just waiting to be used against one. Indeed, he contrasts this with the early days of the web, where one could develop opinions freely and cast aside identities that one had outgrown. Snowden regards this freedom as pivotal to development and maturation, as we all tend to curate our lives over the years, forming the identity we want to have at the expense of conflicting past actions.

Despite the fact that he never made it to his intended destination Ecuador Snowden remains, much like Ellsberg, a powerful example of a person who blew the whistle on state abuses and not only lived to tell about it, but is living an apparently well-adjusted life. As he lets us know at the end of the book, Lindsay eventually joined him in Moscow, refrained from slapping him silly (as Snowden admits he deserved), and agreed to marry him. Its a fitting low-key end for a book, and a story, that is more about substance than style.

Roslyn Fuller is author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose and In Defence of Democracy and is the director of the Solonian Democracy Institute.

Read more here:
Snowden: A Whistle-Blower Who Lived to Tell About It - lareviewofbooks

A major breach of patient data in Canada; Snowdens book hits the courtroom; and the best hacker films to watch over the holidays

A major data breach took over social media feeds this week after news broke that a Canadian medical testing lab had fallen victim to a cyber-attack.

LifeLabs, the impacted healthcare company, said on Tuesday that approximately 15 million of its customers were potentially affected by the incident, which occurred when an unknown actor gained unwarranted access to one of its systems.

Customer information including names, addresses, emails, logins, passwords, dates of birth, health card numbers, and lab test results are potentially implicated, the company said, adding that it done its due diligence by informing both the authorities and Canadas privacy commissioners.

Any customer who is concerned about this incident can receive one free year of protection that includes dark web monitoring and identity theft insurance, Charles Brown, president and CEO of LifeLabs, said in the statement.

While the investigation still appears to be underway, rumours have circulated that LifeLabs may have been subject to a ransomware attack, its CEO additionally stating that protection measures included retrieving data by making a payment.

Infosec marketing through fear, uncertainity, and doubt (FUD) is at least as old as the web itself, if not older.

One example of FUD is to suggest software vulnerabilities might enable cyber-terrorism, a best a poorly defined term and one is arguably distateful because it compares the victims of bombings and knifing rampages against those suffering from hacked PCs or smartphones.

Journalist Joseph Cox politely called Check Point out in equating a recently discovered WhatsApp vulnerability to cyber-terrorism.

Rather than beat a tactical retreat a PR rep for the firm doubled down on the analogy.

Cox reports that multiple researchers and other non marketing staff from Check Point quickly got in touch with him to distance themselves from the PR hyperbole.

And in other news, a judge has ruled that Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor turned whistleblower, will have to give the proceeds of his recently published memoir, Permanent Record, to the US government.

The ruling on Tuesday stated that Snowden, who was charged under the Espionage Act in 2013 for leaking confidential files to the worlds press, had violated his agreement with US intelligence agencies, requiring a review of any material prior to publication.

The terms of the CIA Secrecy Agreements further provide that Snowden forfeits any proceeds from disclosures that breach the Agreements, AP reports US District Judge Liam OGrady as saying.

These terms continue to apply to Snowden.

Defense lawyers argued that the book would not have received a fair review, and are currently looking at ways to appeal.

Permanent Record, an autobiography depicting Snowdens time within the military industrial complex, was published in September. The ruling this week has not impacted the books distribution.

As the winter nights close in, what better way to deter diversion for infosec folk than to enjoy a hacking-themed movie?

For your edification and entertainment,The Daily Swig has put together a feature offering a rundown of The Best Hacking Films of All Time.

Our list includes some left-field suggestions, including a TV show and a documentary, as well as old school and more recent favorites.

Rather than attempting to rank these films ourselves, we ran an online Twitter poll. Naturally, the resulting selections and ranking did not please everyone

Additional reporting by John Leyden.

See original here:
#SocialSec Hot takes on this week's biggest cybersecurity news (Dec 20) - The Daily Swig

The tech landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade, both in the United States and around the world. There have been notable increases in the use of social media and online platforms (including YouTube and Facebook) and technologies (like the internet, cellphones and smartphones), in some cases leading to near-saturation levels of use among major segments of the population. But digital tech also faced significant backlash in the 2010s.

Here are 10 of the top tech-related changes that Pew Research Center has studied over the past decade:

1 Social media sites have emerged as a go-to platform for connecting with others, finding news and engaging politically. When the Center first asked U.S. adults if they ever use a social media site in 2005, just 5% said they did. Today, the share is 72%, according to a survey in early 2019.

Social media has also taken hold around the world. The Centers spring 2017 global survey conducted in 17 advanced and 19 emerging economies found that a median of 53% of adults across emerging and developing countries use social media.

In the U.S. and around the world, younger adults are the most likely age group to use social media. For example, nine-in-ten Americans ages 18 to 29 report ever using a social media site, compared with 40% of those ages 65 and older.

In terms of specific platforms, YouTube and Facebook are the most widely used online platforms among U.S. adults, with roughly seven-in-ten Americans saying they use each site. The shares of adults who use Instagram and Snapchat are much smaller, but these platforms are especially popular with younger Americans.

2 Around the world and in the U.S., social media has become a key tool for activists, as well as those aligned against them. The decade began with the Arab Spring and ended with protesters in Hong Kong and elsewhere using social media to promote and organize their causes. In some cases, governments fought back by shutting down the internet, while opponents of some activists mounted social media campaigns of their own.

In the U.S., social media played a role in major social movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. For example, a Pew Research Center analysis of publicly available English language tweets found that the #MeToo hashtag had been used more than 19 million times on Twitter from Oct. 15, 2017 (when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted urging victims of sexual harassment to reply me too) through Sept. 30, 2018.

Still, Americans have expressed mixed views about the impact social media has on the broader political environment. Roughly two-thirds of Americans (64%) say the statement social media helps give a voice to underrepresented groups describes these sites very or somewhat well, a 2018 survey found. At the same time, 77% believe these platforms distract people from issues that are truly important, and 71% agree with the statement social media makes people think theyre making a difference when they really arent.

3 Smartphones have altered the way many Americans go online. One of the biggest digital trends of the decade has been the steady rise of mobile connectivity. Smartphone adoption has more than doubled since the Center began surveying on this topic in 2011. Then, 35% of U.S. adults reported owning a smartphone of some kind, a share that has risen to 81% today.

Teens have also become much more likely to use smartphones: More than nine-in-ten (95%) teens ages 13 to 17 report owning or having access to a smartphone, according to a 2018 survey.

Adults are increasingly likely to name their smartphone as the primary way of going online. Today, 37% of U.S. adults say they mostly use a smartphone to access the internet, up from 19% in 2013.

The 2010s, meanwhile, were also the decade that saw the advent of tablet computers, which are now used by around half (52%) of U.S. adults.

4 Growth in mobile and social media use has sparked debates about the impact of screen time on Americas youth and others. More than half of teens (54%) believe they spend too much time on their cellphone, while 41% say they spend too much time on social media and about one-quarter say the same about video games, a 2018 survey found. At the same time, about half or more of teens say they have cut back on the amount of time they spend on their cellphones (52%), and similar shares say they have tried to limit their use of social media (57%) and video games (58%).

Still, teens are not the only group who struggle with balancing their use of digital technology with other aspects of their lives. Some 36% of parents of teens say they themselves spend too much time on their cellphone, while a similar share (39%) say they at least sometimes lose focus at work because theyre checking their cellphone.

5 Data privacy and surveillance have become major concerns in the post-Snowden era. In June 2013, then-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked information showing that the NSA had conducted widespread surveillance of Americans online and phone communications. In the aftermath of the revelations, about half of Americans (49%) said the release of the classified information served the public interest, while 44% said it harmed the public interest, according to a 2013 survey.

In the years following the leaks, there have been high-profile commercial and government data breaches, as well as revelations about how firms and governments exploit social media profiles and other data sources to target users. Surveys have consistently shown that these issues have prompted significant public concern about peoples personal data, as well as the publics lack of confidence that companies can and will keep their data safe. For instance, the majority of Americans now say that they feel they have very little or no control over the data collected about them by the government (84%), while roughly two-thirds (64%) report that they feel at least somewhat concerned about how the government is using the data it collects about them.

6 Tech platforms have given rise to a gig economy. Mobile technology has helped create new businesses and jobs, while at the same time sparking debate about regulating companies that provide services that can be ordered by apps. Ride-hailing is one of the most well-documented examples of growth in the gig economy, and more Americans are using this kind of service: As of fall 2018, 36% of U.S. adults said they had ever used a ride-hailing service such as Uber or Lyft, up from 15% in 2015. In addition to car services, the gig economy has spawned businesses ranging from home sharing to online marketplaces for homemade goods.

7 Online harassment has become a fairly common feature of online life, both for teens and adults. Roughly six-in-ten U.S. teens (59%) say they have been bullied or harassed online, with offensive name-calling being the most common type of harassment they have encountered, according to a 2018 survey of those ages 13 to 17. A similar share of teens (63%) view online harassment as a major problem for people their age.

Many adults also report being the target of some form of abusive behavior online. Some 41% of adults have experienced some form of online harassment, as measured in a 2017 survey.

8 Made-up news and misinformation has sparked growing concern. The lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election brought to the surface concerns around misinformation and its ability to affect the democratic process. Half of Americans believe made-up news and misinformation is a very big problem for the country today, making it a pressing problem for more Americans than said so of terrorism, illegal immigration, sexism and racism, according to a 2019 survey. Some 68% of U.S. adults say made-up news greatly impacts Americans confidence in government institutions.

The challenge of navigating the new information environment was reflected in a 2018 survey that measured the publics ability to identify five factual statements and five opinion statements. A small share of Americans were able to correctly classify all 10 statements. About a third (35%) were able to correctly identify all five opinion statements, while around a quarter (26%) were able to correctly identify all five factual statements. Americans with high political awareness, those who are very digitally savvy and those who have high levels of trust in the news media were able to more accurately identify news-related statements as factual or opinion.

9 A majority of Americans see gender discrimination as a problem in the tech industry. Tech companies have faced criticism for their hiring practices and work cultures, including reports of discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity and gender. A majority of Americans (73%) say discrimination against women is a problem in the tech industry, with 37% citing it as a major problem, according to a summer 2017 survey. When it comes to discrimination against black and Hispanic Americans in tech two groups that are underrepresented in the industry roughly two-thirds of Americans (68%) say this is a problem (31% say its a major problem), according to the same survey.

10 Americans views about tech companies have turned far less positive in recent years. Controversies related to digital privacy, made-up news, harassment and other issues may have taken their toll on public attitudes about tech companies. The share of Americans who say these companies are having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country has declined sharply since 2015, according to a July 2019 survey. Four years ago, the majority of U.S. adults (71%) said these companies had a positive impact on the country, compared with 50% today.

In a survey in summer 2018, roughly seven-in-ten Americans (72%) said it is likely that social media platforms actively censor political views that those companies find objectionable. Around half (51%) of the public said major tech companies should be regulated more than they are now.

See more here:
10 tech trends that shaped the 2010s - Pew Research Center

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden poses for a photo during an interview in an undisclosed location in December 2013 in Moscow, Russia.

Barton Gellman | Getty Images

Newly released "Permanent Record" by Edward Snowden is displayed on a shelf at Books Inc. on September 17, 2019 in San Francisco, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

O'Grady's ruling noted that all three agreements Snowden signed required him to protect information and material of which he had knowledge from unauthorized disclosure.

They also required him to submit for review any writings or other presentations he prepared which related to intelligence data or protected information.

Snowden's book, which was published in September in the United States by Macmillan Publishing Group, details CIA and NSA intelligence-gathering activities, including classified programs.

Snowden did not get clearance from either agency for the book. Nor did he get clearance for intelligence-related materials he displayed during talks he gave for various public events, which included at least one slide "marked classified at the Top Secret level," the ruling said.

In his defense of the lawsuit, Snowden argued that the government had breached the secrecy agreements "by indicating it would refuse to review Snowden's materials in good faith and within a reasonable time," O'Grady noted in his ruling.

Snowden also argued that the suit "is based on animus toward his viewpoint," and that the government only selectively enforced secrecy agreements, the judge said. And finally, Snowden maintained that the agreements did not support the government's claim against him.

But in his ruling, O'Grady said "the contracts at issue here" the secrecy agreements "are unambiguous and clear."

And the judge said there is "no genuine dispute" that Snowden breached the agreements.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment by CNBC about O'Grady's ruling.

Brett Max Kaufman, a lawyer on Snowden's legal team, said, "It's farfetched to believe that the government would have reviewed Mr. Snowden's book or anything else he submitted in good faith."

"For that reason, Mr. Snowden preferred to risk his future royalties than to subject his experiences to improper government censorship," said Kaufman, who is an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Center for Democracy.

"We disagree with the court's decision and will review our options, but it's more clear than ever that the unfair and opaque prepublication review system affecting millions of former government employees needs major reforms."

In April, the ACLU and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a lawsuit on behalf of five former public servants challenging the prepublication review system that affects former intelligence-agency employees such as Snowden and military personnel.

The suit argues that the system violates the Constitution's First and Fifth Amendments.

The case was filed for former employees of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a former CIA employee, a former Marine, and an ex-employee of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Original post:
Edward Snowden must give government money from book because ex-intelligence contractor didn't get approval first, judge says - CNBC

It was the head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre who finally admitted before an Australian Parliament committee that she had unilaterally directed and pressured CyberCon to drop myself and anacademic research professor (an Australian citizen) from the University of Melbourne as speakers.

I viewed the extraordinary pressure exerted by the Australian Cyber Security Centre to block me as an already-accepted speaker a week before the start of a high visibility public interest conference oncybersecurity as a most alarming and Orwellian development and a distinct form of brazen censorship for the express purpose of outright silencing me.

The head of the ACSC misled the committee when she said the reason she wanted my talk canned was because of a proposal for me to participate on a panel with Edward Snowden that never wentforward.

It appears she dissembled and used the apparent floating of the idea of a proposed Edward Snowden panel (for which I had NO prior knowledge whatsoever) as a convenient foil and cover to justify andexcuse the barring of me as a speaker from CyberCon with the very heavy hand of her higher authority as the head of the ACSC over the conference organizers (Australian Information SecurityAssociation).

In addition, the reason she gave before the committee is not the reason given to me when I formally followed up with the AISA organizers.

On 29 September (4 days before I departed the United States), I received an e-mail message to contact the Board Director for AISA as a matter of urgency.

In a subsequent phone call from the same AISA Board Director, I was told that I was no longer a speaker on the conference agenda, but I could still attend the conference as a delegate and that they (AISA)would honor the flight and accommodations arranged for me many months early.

I followed up formally and asked for the specific reason I was dropped as a speaker from CyberCon. I was informed on 7 October, in an e-mail from the Board Director of AISA, that AISA works with aconference partner in respect of CyberCon. Our conference partner has determined your presentation is incongruent with the conference.

Furthermore, this egregious canning of me as a speaker fed right into the current debate in Australia about press freedom and whistleblowing laws because their public interest disclosure process (theirlegal way for public servants to blow the whistle) has been described as impenetrable by their Federal Court.

The current debate in Australia regarding press freedom and whistleblowing laws strikes at the heart of any country claiming it is a democracy.

The recent raids by the Australian government against major media outlets and whistleblowers have broken open the tension between openness and transparency versus secrecy and closed-doorgovernment too often hiding itself (and its actions) away from accountability and the public interest.

Something has to give. The debate centers on the public interest knowing what the government is doing behind closed doors and often in secret in the name of and under the veil and banner of nationalsecurity.

The dramatic 21 October Right to Know campaign with the redacted front pages on all major newspapers in Australia as I woke up in Melbourne before returning to the United States that very day demonstrates beyond the shadows of secrecy, censorship and press suppression that sunshine is the best antidote for a healthy and robust democracy increasingly held hostage by the national security state.

Efforts from on high seek to justify the actions of that national security state under the color of public safety for more and more autocratic powers while stoking fear and hyping the danger to society yet going after whistleblowers who disclose actions that clearly rise to the level of wrongdoing, violations of law, coverup and endangering public safety, health and the general welfare.

What is happening in Australia is most concerning to me as fundamental democratic values and principles are increasingly under direct attack around the world from the rise of increasing autocratictendencies and raw executive authorities bypassing, ignoring and even undermining the rule of law under the exception of national security and government fiat.

Australian public interest disclosure laws are also a mixed bag a conflicted patchwork with huge carve-outs for national security and immigration. Nor do they adequately protect a whistleblower fromreprisal, retaliation or retribution.

It is quite clear that not all disclosures (even when done in the public interest) are protected by law in Australia, and the whistleblower is in danger of exposure as a result.

At the federal level, whistleblowers face career suicide for public interest disclosures. And if deemed by the government to be unauthorized disclosures, those disclosures are even considered criminal.

As it happened, my removal as a speaker from CyberCon is the first time I was ever censored anywhere.

The trend lines of increased secrecy around the world by governments does not bode well for societies at large. History is not kind.

What I do see improving is public-interest concern regarding just how far government can or should go. People are discussing what society sacrifices in the name of secrecy and national security when toooften the mantra is the ends justifies the means and government says to just trust us, while secret power is too often unaccountable, even to itself.

The price I paid as a whistleblower was very high. I just about lost it all and came close to losing my liberty and freedom. I was declared indigent by the court, am still in severe debt, have no pension asmy career and personal life were turned inside-out and upside-down because the government treated me as a traitor for my whistleblowing on the mass domestic surveillance program that violated the U.S.Constitution. I also exposed 9/11 intelligence failures and subsequent coverup plus massive multibillion-dollar fraud, waste and abuse. The government then turned me into an insider threat and Enemy ofthe State and prosecuted me as a criminal for allegedly violating the U.S. Espionage Act.

If it is left up to the government to determine what are state secrets, then the government is perversely incentivized to declare as state secrets any disclosures made in the press it does not like. This thinkingcan only lead to more prosecutions of publishers to protect the State. In the absence of meaningful oversight of the secret side of government, how does the public trust its own government to operate andfunction in the public interest and not for special or private interests?

But then again, if the press is not doing its job holding government and the public sector to account, why should they be surprised when the public holds even the media in lower regard?

Government should earn the publics trust and not take it for granted or abuse that trust. The heart of democracy rests on a civil society that it is not undermined by the very government that represents it.

Once the pillars of democracy are eroded away, it is quite difficult to restore them. The misuse of the concept of national security as the primary grounds to suppress democracy, the press and the voicesof whistleblowers speaking truth to and about power increases authoritarian tendencies in even democratic governments.

The real danger to civil society in Australia is that these same tendencies give rise to extralegal autocratic behavior and state control over the institutions of democratic governance under the blanket ofnational security with the excuse of protecting the state.

As I continue with this work as chair of the Whistleblowers Public Education Campaign, Im mindful that my efforts are only possible because of support from so many concerned people.

Thomas Drake is an NSA whistleblower who chairs the Whistleblowers Public Education Campaign.

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Kafka Down Under: the Threat to Whistleblowers and Press Freedom in Australia - CounterPunch

Edward Snowden told Trevor Noah recently, during a beamed-in appearance on his show, that the United States governments announcement that he was criminally liable for breaking his nondisclosure agreement with the states security agencies helped push his book, PERMANENT RECORD (Macmillan), up the bestseller lists.

So the US government shot itself in the foot a bit there. Surely it didnt want Snowdens story to be more widely read? But it gave him that publicity spike.And, surely, breaching his nondisclosure agreement is a minor offence compared to what he did when he revealed to the world the vast surveillance and data-gathering capability he had helped the US government to construct?

For that is what Snowden did, in 2013, and today he is trapped in Moscow because any travel makes him vulnerable to being snatched by the CIA, something it has shown itself quite willing to do. Being stuck in Moscow (where he was offered at least minimal protection) is why his appearance on Noahs show was beamed in.

The descendant of American pioneers and the child of two people in government service, Snowden put a drifting youth behind him after 9/11 when he started working for the US security agencies. In the wake of 9/11, he felt he had to get involved in the USs self-defence. Officially employed by computer company Dell, he was seconded to the agencies to help bring them up to date in a rapidly digitising world, to develop new data and surveillance capacity in the age of the internet.

The agencies, he writes, were hiring tech companies to hire tech kids, and then they were giving them the keys to the kingdom, because as Congress and the press were told the agencies didnt have a choice. No one knew how the keys, or the kingdom, worked.

After 9/11, however, and the declaration of the war on terror, then-president George W Bushs Patriot Act, along with other legislation, went way beyond the matter of helping the NSA and other agencies catch up with the new tech. The Patriot Act and executive orders such as the Presidents Surveillance Program (PSP) ballooned into programmes to monitor and collect every bit of data about US citizens and their communications as it could, and to store that data (and metadata) for as long as possible. The PSP made George Orwells Big Brother look positively amateurish.

Snowden describes his growing awareness of why such programmes were wrong, and how they violated the rights of American (and other) citizens. They were in fact illegal in US law and contravened the Constitution, which led to various legal machinations such as the Protect America Act of 2007 to retroactively legalise the PSP, employing intentionally misleading language to do so.

When Snowden stumbles upon the deeply classified report of the NSAs inspector general, setting out precisely what was really going on, the movement towards his decision to reveal all this publicly begins. In a detailed but straightforward way, and often with some eloquence, Snowden tells the story of that journey, and what happened when, in 2013, he finally told the world what the US security agencies were up to.

The fallout was immense, and not just for Snowden himself. He remains in Moscow, ironically the unwilling guest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is perhaps the central figure in the information wars of the present. Putin has driven the Russian capacity for online surveillance, hacking and data theft, and its ability to infiltrate social media all over the world and thereby to influence the outcome of elections such as the 2016 poll that brought Donald Trump to power in the US. The techniques of international power plays have changed, and Snowden and his riveting story, at the centre of that change, help us understand this dangerous new world.

Likewise Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, who tells his story in MINDF*CK: INSIDE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICAS PLOT TO BREAK THE WORLD (Profile Books). Cambridge Analytica was the company, funded by right-wing US plutocrats and the odd Russian oligarch, that developed the means to manipulate voters in the US and in Britain (in the run-up to the Brexit referendum). It learned to get into their heads, as it were, and how to target them as voters and look how successful that was. And it was all thanks to the data contained in the profiles of the 87-million Facebook users that was handed over to them by the social media behemoth.

Wylie, famously a pink-haired (or, latterly, green-haired too) gay man who overcame childhood disability to become a geek running election technology in his native Canada, tells a story that in outline is similar to Snowdens: his gradual realisation that what he was doing was profoundly wrong, was undermining the democracy and personal freedom he believed in, and his progress towards blowing the whistle on the whole thing.

Read more:
Steal my data, feed me lies | Arts and Culture | Books - Mail and Guardian

Whataboutism and its near twin What if? can be instructive. What if this were a Democratic president? What if the party majorities all lined up? What if the Senate majority were Democrats and the House Republicans? What if, what if?

After all, todays hypotheticals will likely become tomorrows realities. A little foresight now could help break the ongoing revenge cycles for Nixon, for Clinton.

But the comparison of then-Vice President Joe Biden pressing for Ukraine to police itself better with President Trumps translucent shakedown for personal gain is just silly, and pretty obviously so. I cringe at the Republicans putting this one forward with straight faces. They know better now, as they did back then.

That and calling out the whistleblower whose report proved to be perfectly in line with the rough transcript the president pulled from his double-secret vault and made available to the public. Um, guys, it wouldnt be less true if Edward Snowden or Julian Assange had revealed it.

Blind loyalty, like blind hatred, is just the flip side of the same coin.

But the biggest howler has to be the complaints that the people who were actually there havent testified. Well, only because they were ordered to disobey subpoenas. The president could make his closest advisers available just as he did with the transcript. I think we all know exactly why he hasnt.

Does anyone doubt what the eyewitnesses would have to say under oath? Those who couldnt duck certain questions by taking the Fifth, that is.

Still, the current GOP rhetoric seems to fly with the Fox News crowd for the moment, though history is unlikely to be so kind. Blind loyalty, like blind hatred, is just the flip side of the same coin. Such is the political psychosis, the big problem with partisanship today.

But there are better arguments, ones that persuade even me a never Trumper that impeachment is not the best remedy, at least not yet.

One is straight-up realpolitik: The Republicans are unmoved, and they have the majority in the Senate, where a trial on the removal of the president from office requires a two-thirds vote. Not going to happen.

Another ties to procedure. I think its ultimately right that both parties should agree on an impeachment before it goes further. This inquiry, like the even faster one in the case of President Clinton, has been too expedient, lets say, for such a momentous step.

More crucial for the health of the republic than a rash, rushed impeachment is working fully through the courts to compel eyewitness testimony. Let the election year play out as it will. Thats less important than doing this right, with all the checks and balances.

Instead, the Democrats have set up a bums rush to a show trial of another sort in the Republican Senate, which will end in total exoneration and such rhetoric. The proceeding should be a serious, measured affair, full of gravitas rather than kangaroos and bananas, courtesy of the House so far.

As for evidence, theres plenty of foul smoke, all right, and the Republicans labor to explain how theres no fire underneath. The Moral Majority has grown feckless with its values, eager even to trade for what, naked power?

Too bad the Democrats in their own zeal are enabling them, between rushing the proceedings and fielding such a weak, off-putting field of presidential candidates.

The presidents supporters should be well pleased. The Democrats are right on pace to help deliver what they dread most: a second term for President Trump.

Don Rogers is the publisher of The Union, Lake Wildwood Independent, and Sierra Sun. He can be reached at drogers@theunion.com or 530-477-4299.

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Don Rogers: Dems rash to impeach - The Union of Grass Valley

There is a thin line between hypocrisy and stupidity, as the US Congress ably demonstrated this week when it locked horns with Facebook and Apple over encryption.

A group of lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Encryption argued passionately that end-to-end encryption used by messaging services like WhatsApp and iMessage is brilliant if you're a goodie, but it also helps baddies. Ergo, law enforcement must be given some kind of backdoor access so they can get a warrant and gather evidence.

The Committee is chaired by Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator for South Carolina. The same Lindsey Graham who has spent a fair amount of time this year warning everyone that the Chinese government could easily force Huawei to provide backdoor access to its networks.

"I'm not about to create a safe haven for criminals where they can plan their misdeeds and have information stored in a fashion [so] that law enforcement can never be allowed to access it. That is a bridge too far for me," he said during this week's hearing, adding that the authorities equipped with the appropriate warrant must be able to access encrypted messages. "How we do this, I don't know. I hope the tech community working with law enforcement can find a way to do it."

Doing his best scary headmaster impression, he warned: "If y'all don't; we will."

Watch the video here. He really did say "y'all."

Graham would probably argue there's a difference between using backdoor access to prevent crime and using it for espionage. But it's two sides of the same coin, and Graham's track record suggests he's not that bothered about spying on innocent civilians in the name of national security. He has previously branded NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a traitor, and called on Russia to return him to the US so he could face prosecution. Last month he called for the identity of the whistleblower that kick-started the impeachment inquiry into Trump to be made public.

On this evidence, if you were to ask Facebook and Apple why they rolled out end-to-end encryption in the first place, they could just point at people like Lindsey Graham.

Instead though, they highlighted that any backdoor access into their messaging services intended to help law enforcement could also help criminals.

"We do not know of a way to deploy encryption that provides access only for the good guys without making it easier for the bad guys to break in," testified Erik Neuenschwander, director of user privacy at Apple.

"Every day, over a trillion transactions from financial transactions to the exchange of healthcare records occur safely over the Internet because of encrypted communications. Utilising 5G networks, connected devices will play an even larger role in the operation and maintenance of our critical infrastructure, running our electric grids, transportation networks, and healthcare and financial systems," he continued. "Encryption is needed to protect from malicious actors whose attacks are growing exponentially in scope, frequency, and sophistication."

Jay Sullivan, Facebook's product management director for privacy and integrity in Facebook Messenger, went a little further, putting on record that encryption also protects dissidents from authoritarian regimes. He also warned that if US-based platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage can't guarantee their services are secure, then users will flock to one that is.

"If the United States rolls back its support for privacy and encryption, foreign application providers including those who may be outside the reach of our legal system and not nearly as committed to or capable of preventing, detecting, and responding to bad behaviour will fill the vacuum and provide the private and secure communications that people expect and demand," he said.

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Encryption spat sees backdoor back-and-forth between tech firms, Congress - TelecomTV