Category Archives: NSA Spying

NSA spying revelations have tired out China’s Huawei

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Revelations about U.S. secret surveillance programs have left Chinas Huawei Technologies exhausted on the public relations front, a top company executive said Wednesday.

It hasnt had much affect on our companys growth, but its definitely increased our work load, said Huaweis acting CEO Eric Xu.

Huawei, a supplier of networking gear, has for years fended off allegations from the U.S. that it secretly spies for the Chinese government. But last year the dispute appeared turned on its head when leaks alleged the U.S. had been secretly spying on China.

Not only had the U.S. National Security Agency hacked into Chinese telecommunication companies, but also spied on the communications of Huawei executives, according to documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

During Huaweis global analyst summit on Wednesday, Huaweis Xu said the leaks from Snowden have had both a good and bad impact on the companys business, without elaborating. But later added Huawei wants to avoid government disputes, and conduct its own business quietly.

Huawei, however, is still facing difficulties in the U.S. market. In 2012, a U.S. congressional panel declared the company a security threat, and asked U.S. companies to buy their telecommunication equipment elsewhere.

It prompted Huawei to shift its carrier business away from the U.S., citing geopolitical reasons.

Despite the change, Huaweis annual revenue is still growing. In 2013, the company generated 239 billion yuan (US$38.7 billion) in sales, up 8.5 percent from the previous year. But in North America, Huawei saw a business slowdown, according to the companys annual report. This led to a 1.3 percent year-over-year decline in sales for the Americas region.

For this year, the company plans on raising its investment in research by 14 percent, to about 35 billion yuan. One of the projects its investing in includes 5G technologies to bring mobile network download speeds to 10 gigabits-per-second.

Michael Kan covers IT, telecom and Internet in China for the IDG News Service. More by Michael Kan

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NSA spying revelations have tired out China's Huawei

Brazil Conference to Sound Off on Future of Internet, NSA Spying

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A global conference in Brazil on the future of the Internet in the wake of U.S. spying revelations might be much less anti-American than first thought after Washington said it was willing to loosen its control over the Web.

Bowing to the demands of Brazil and other nations following revelations last year of its massive electronic surveillance of Internet users, the United States has agreed to relinquish oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned of Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit group based in California that assigns Internet domain names or addresses.

"The focus has changed from a political reaction to the NSA allegations to one of more constructive criticism and talk about the future of the Internet," said William Beer, a cybersecurity expert based in Sao Paulo.

A National Security Agency data gathering facility is seen in Bluffdale, Utah, about 25 miles south of Salt Lake City.

The two-day Net Mundial conference in Sao Paulo, which will be opened on Wednesday by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, will discuss cybersecurity and how to safeguard privacy and freedom of expression on the Internet, as well as the shape of a future international body to oversee the decentralized digital network.

Officials from dozens of countries from China and Cuba to the United States and European nations will attend, but organizers say they will have no more voice at the event than Internet companies, academics, technical experts and groups representing Internet users.

"All of them should have equal participation in this multi stakeholder process," said Virgilio Almeida, Brazil's secretary for IT policy, who will chair the conference.

The event is not expected to result in any binding policy decisions, but Almeida said it will launch a high-profile debate that will "sow the seeds" for future reforms of the way the Internet is governed.

Rousseff was infuriated by revelations last year that the U.S. National Security Agency snooped on her personal emails and telephone calls with secret Internet surveillance programs. Other leaders, including Germany's Angela Merkel, were also targeted by the NSA surveillance.

The revelations by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden brought worldwide calls for the United States to reduce its control of the Internet, created 50 years ago to link the computers of American universities to the U.S. defense industry.

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Brazil Conference to Sound Off on Future of Internet, NSA Spying

Activists want net neutrality, NSA spying debated at Brazil Internet conference

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IDG News Service - A campaign on the Internet is objecting to the exclusion of issues like net neutrality, the cyberweapons arms race and surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency from the discussion paper of an Internet governance conference this week in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

A significant section of the participants are also looking for concrete measures and decisions at the conference rather than yet another statement of principles.

The proposed text "lacks any strength," does not mention NSA's mass surveillance or the active participation of Internet companies, and fails to propose any concrete action, according to the campaign called Our Net Mundial.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information about the surveillance programs of the U.S., which allegedly included real time access to content on servers of Internet companies like Facebook and Google.

The Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance, also called NETmundial, released Thursday a document to guide the discussions starting Wednesday among the representatives from more than 80 countries .

An earlier document leaked by whistle-blower site WikiLeaks proposed international agreements for restraining cyber weapons development and deployment and called for the Internet to remain neutral and free from discrimination. WikiLeaks said the document was prepared for approval by a high-level committee.

Dilma Rousseff, the president of host country Brazil, has been a sharp critic of surveillance by the U.S. after reports that her communications were being spied on by the NSA.

Though the Brazil discussion document does not directly mention NSA surveillance, it refers to the freedom of expression, information and privacy, including avoiding arbitrary or unlawful collection of personal data and surveillance.

The meeting's call for universal principles partly reflects a desire for interstate agreements that can prevent rights violations such as the NSA surveillance, wrote Internet governance experts Milton Mueller and Ben Wagner in a paper. The Tunis Agenda of the World Summit on the Information Society also called for globally applicable public policy principles for Internet governance.

"But there have been so many Internet principles released in recent years that it is hard to see what the Brazil conference could add," Mueller and Wagner wrote.

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Activists want net neutrality, NSA spying debated at Brazil Internet conference

Activists want net neutrality, NSA spying debated at Internet governance conference

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A campaign on the Internet is objecting to the exclusion of issues like net neutrality, the cyberweapons arms race and surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency from the discussion paper of an Internet governance conference this week in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

A significant section of the participants are also looking for concrete measures and decisions at the conference rather than yet another statement of principles.

The proposed text lacks any strength, does not mention NSAs mass surveillance or the active participation of Internet companies, and fails to propose any concrete action, according to the campaign called Our Net Mundial.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information about the surveillance programs of the U.S., which allegedly included real time access to content on servers of Internet companies like Facebook and Google.

The Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance, also called NETmundial, released Thursday a document to guide the discussions starting Wednesday among the representatives from more than 80 countries .

An earlier document leaked by whistle-blower site WikiLeaks proposed international agreements for restraining cyber weapons development and deployment and called for the Internet to remain neutral and free from discrimination. WikiLeaks said the document was prepared for approval by a high-level committee.

Dilma Rousseff, the president of host country Brazil, has been a sharp critic of surveillance by the U.S. after reports that her communications were being spied on by the NSA.

Though the Brazil discussion document does not directly mention NSA surveillance, it refers to the freedom of expression, information and privacy, including avoiding arbitrary or unlawful collection of personal data and surveillance.

The meetings call for universal principles partly reflects a desire for interstate agreements that can prevent rights violations such as the NSA surveillance, wrote Internet governance experts Milton Mueller and Ben Wagner in a paper. The Tunis Agenda of the World Summit on the Information Society also called for globally applicable public policy principles for Internet governance.

But there have been so many Internet principles released in recent years that it is hard to see what the Brazil conference could add, Mueller and Wagner wrote.

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Activists want net neutrality, NSA spying debated at Internet governance conference

Captain America and NSA spying

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What is patriotism? Is it doing what the government says, or is it doing what you believe is true to the Constitution and American values? "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" currently the No. 1 movie in the country comes down on the latter side, wrapping its message in a red, white, and blue action-packed candy shell.

Unfrozen WWII super-soldier Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America works for SHIELD, which is basically the CIA plus Navy SEAL Team Six plus the NSA times a thousand. At first, the movie seems to be only a commentary on targeted killing. And it is that, featuring a set of enormous SHIELD military drones called "helicarriers," which prompt an exchange between Cap and SHIELD boss Nick Fury.

"We're gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen."

"I thought the punishment usually came after the crime," Cap replies, recalling the Obama administration's elastic definition of the word "imminent" in its legal justification for putting people on the real-world kill list.

"SHIELD takes the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be," Fury says, echoing Dick Cheney's defense of over-the-line counterterrorism tactics.

"This isn't freedom this is fear," Cap declares.

What later becomes apparent is that the movie is also about dragnet surveillance, revealed in the way that targets are selected for death under the secret helicarrier program, Project Insight. The methodology is explained in the confession of one of the bad guys:

"The 21st century is a digital book. Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, emails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores! [The] algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future. Then the Insight helicarriers scratch people off the list a few million at a time."

It turns out that SHIELD has been infiltrated by a group called Hydra, which was founded by Nazis during World War II. "Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom," explains a Hydra leader to Captain America in the classic movie-villain move of explaining everything to the hero because the hero is doomed (but then of course the hero ends up somehow narrowly escaping certain death).

"What we did not realize is that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly."

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Captain America and NSA spying

"We Won’t Succumb to Threats": Journalists Return to U.S. For First Time Since Revealing NSA Spying – Video

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"We Won #39;t Succumb to Threats": Journalists Return to U.S. For First Time Since Revealing NSA Spying
http://www.democracynow.org - Ten months ago, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald flew from New York to Hong Kong to meet National Security Agency whistleblowe...

By: democracynow

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"We Won't Succumb to Threats": Journalists Return to U.S. For First Time Since Revealing NSA Spying - Video