June 9, 2013: This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden in Hong Kong.AP/The Guardian

Ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden said he tried more than 10 times to go through official channels to alert someone about government spying programs, but nobody listened.

According to The Washington Post, Snowden claimed in European Parliament testimony that he reported policy or legal issues about the NSA to more than 10 officials, but as a contractor he had no legal avenue to pursue the matter.

"As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the U.S. government, I was not protected by U.S. whistle-blower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in accordance with the recommended process," Snowden said in his testimony.

Snowden was at the CIA before becoming an NSA contractor. He was working for Booz Allen Hamilton at an NSA facility in Hawaii when he leaked information about the NSA spying programs to the press, The Washington Post reported.

Snowden described the reactions he received when telling his coworkers his concerns.

"The first were well-meaning but hushed warnings not to 'rock the boat,' for fear of the sort of retaliation that befell former NSA whistle-blowers like Wiebe, Binney, and Drake," he said, according to the Post, adding that the other responses were suggestions that he, "let the issue be someone else's problem."

Snowden testified, "there was a unanimous desire to avoid being associated with such a complaint in any form."

The NSA disputes his account, previously telling The Washington Post that, "after extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowdens contention that he brought these matters to anyones attention.

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Snowden says he tried to alert bosses to gov't spying

In his first public address since leaking government surveillance secrets last June, Edward Snowden talked about encryption, lack of oversight and his motives

In this photo, Edward Snowden speaks about government transparency at the October 2013 Sam Adams award presentation in Moscow. Snowden spoke at SXSW on Monday via a Google+ Hangout on Air. Image courtesy of https://www.youtube.com/user/TheWikiLeaksChannel, via Wikimedia Commons

Edward Snowdens video feed may have been a bit muddled on Monday but his message to a South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive audience was quite clear. Privacy and digital security are not dead, despite massive surveillance programs that the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor exposed last year. Snowden addressed the hip technology crowd via a Google+ Hangout on Air. The signal bounced between his undisclosed location in Russia and the conference in Austin, Texas, through a series of proxy servers designed to make it more difficult for anyone to disrupt his Web feed. A fugitive from the U.S. authorities, Snowden chose SXSW as the venue for his first live conversation with an audience because the gathering appeals to computer programmers and other technology professionals receptive to his message. The U.S. governments practice of widespread surveillance is a global issue that is setting fire to the future of the Internet, Snowden said. And you people in this room are the firefighters. End to end The good news is that there are solutions. The key is to make it more expensive and less practical for government agencies to engage in indiscriminate data collection campaigns that target anyone who goes online. Perhaps the best way to do this, he said, is to encrypt ones data whether it is in storage on a computer or being sent across the Internetso called end-to-end encryption. This would presumably force the government to spend more time determining whose data it wants to collecthopefully those actually suspected of committing or plotting a crime rather than law-abiding folks. Snowden pointed out several measures to the SXSW crowd that one could take to improve the security of their information and the privacy of their communications. The first was full disk encryption programs including Microsoft BitLocker, Apple FileVault, PGPdisk and TrueCrypt that typically create an encrypted volume on a computers hard drive or encrypt the entire hard drive using a key derived from a password that typed in as part of the start-up process. Snowden suggested that data in transit be encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a cryptographic protocol used to encode communications over TCP/IP networks such as the Internet. Another option is NoScript, a program for Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers designed to protect them from malware on the Web. Snowden also mentioned Tor, which features a browser that routes users Web surfing activity through a network of relays run by volunteers worldwide, a process that makes it difficult to pinpoint a users location. Tor Browser, which is actually a modified version of Firefox, essentially anonymizes the origin of Web traffic by encrypting communications inside the Tor network. Civil discourse The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hosted Snowdens SXSW presence. Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project and Snowden's legal advisor, moderated the discussion. He was joined onstage by Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. Rather than blinding the NSA or prohibiting the government from going after suspects, the goal of such security is to keep agencies such as the NSA from spying indiscriminately on everyone, Soghoian said. If the NSA is forced to pick and choose its surveillance targets, the agency will need a good reason to either break encryption or sneak onto ones device, he added. Starting last summer, through a series of leaks made to select media outlets, Snowden shed light on several electronic surveillance programs previously unknown to the general public, including the PRISM program for gathering Internet-based communications such as e-mail and the Section 215 Telephony Metadata Program, so named after Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. The NSA has defended its actions, saying it collects only metadata related to intercepted communications as opposed to the actual content of messages. No defense Snowdens message today remains the same. So much U.S. wealth is based on intellectual property, yet the NSA and the intelligence community in general have prioritized wholesale data collection over resources to protect citizens data, he said. Soghoian effectively agreed, saying that the government has repeatedly pointed to cybersecurity as a threat to the nation while leaving citizens to fend for themselves. A system that was designed to be surveiled is just waiting to be attacked, he said. Now that more is known about the NSAs practices, privacy advocates and security experts argue that the agencys snooping has weakened national security rather than enhancing it. Some of the leaked information exposed the agencys attempts to circumvent encryption, including the manipulation and weakening of a cryptography standard the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) had issued several years ago. NIST later publicly discouraged tech companies from using that cryptographic approach and promised to give the public an opportunity to weigh in on a revised standard. Leakers legacy Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, asked Snowden how supervision of massive data collection and storage could be improved. Snowden responded that Congress could but fails to perform its oversight role. He questioned why Congress didnt initially challenge Director of National Intelligence James Clappers testimony about NSA spying, which Snowden called a lie. He also criticized the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for getting permission to set up surveillance, a process largely out of the publics eye. We need public oversight, trusted public figures and civil rights champions to advocate for us, he said. People who can tell Congress when theyre being lied to. Pres. Barack Obama made clear in his speech January 17 that he has no plans to cut back on the intelligence communitys efforts to gather and analyze large amounts of electronic communications. Changes will instead come in how the government oversees those efforts and where that information is stored. Perhaps the most tangible change to intelligence work addressed in Obamas speech is the end of the Section 215 programwhich enables the government to collect large volumes of metadata, including phone numbers as well as the time and duration of calls. The government will continue to collect such data, but wont store it. Obama has asked the intelligence community and the U.S. attorney general to come up with alternative approaches before the program comes up for reauthorization on March 28. Soghoian attributed a number of changes rippling throughout the government and industry to Snowdens whistle blowing. News articles based on the information that Snowden extracted from the NSA have protected us from hackers at Starbucks and stalkers and identity thieves, not just bulk collection, Soghoian said. Regardless of what you think of what Ed did, we all have Ed to thank for this. Meanwhile, Snowden remains a man without a country. Russia has granted him asylum for a yearhe can return to the U.S. only if he is willing to face charges of espionage and theft of government property.

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Snowden Speaks: NSA Whistleblower Addresses SXSW

June 9, 2013: This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden in Hong Kong.AP/The Guardian

Ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden said he tried more than 10 times to go through official channels to alert someone about government spying programs, but nobody listened.

According to The Washington Post, Snowden claimed in European Parliament testimony that he reported policy or legal issues about the NSA to more than 10 officials, but as a contractor he had no legal avenue to pursue the matter.

"As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the U.S. government, I was not protected by U.S. whistle-blower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in accordance with the recommended process," Snowden said in his testimony.

Snowden was at the CIA before becoming an NSA contractor. He was working for Booz Allen Hamilton at an NSA facility in Hawaii when he leaked information about the NSA spying programs to the press, The Washington Post reported.

Snowden described the reactions he received when telling his coworkers his concerns.

"The first were well-meaning but hushed warnings not to 'rock the boat,' for fear of the sort of retaliation that befell former NSA whistle-blowers like Wiebe, Binney, and Drake," he said, according to the Post, adding that the other responses were suggestions that he, "let the issue be someone else's problem."

Snowden testified, "there was a unanimous desire to avoid being associated with such a complaint in any form."

The NSA disputes his account, previously telling The Washington Post that, "after extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowdens contention that he brought these matters to anyones attention.

Click for more from The Washington Post.

Link:
HERO SNOWDEN?NSA leaker says he tried to alert bosses to gov't spying

NSA Online Spying And Surveillance (Spoof)
That NSA spying and surveillance thing raises its head again !

By: Joseph Morgan

Continued here:
NSA Online Spying And Surveillance (Spoof) - Video

Posted:Today Updated: 12:43 AM The Wikileaks founder tells a U.S. audience, via video feed, that NSA spying revelations have caused people to reassess governments role.

By Adam Satariano Bloomberg News

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks who has disclosed classified data about U.S. military and diplomatic efforts, said the group would be releasing a new batch of secret information.

click image to enlarge

Julian Assange, shown speaking from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London previously, says he will release more classified data.

Reuters

Assange, speaking through a video feed Saturday to a crowd of more than 3,000 at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, said he wouldnt share details about the timing or contents.

I dont think its right to give the perpetrator the heads up, said Assange.

After years of celebrating startups with new social-networking tools for posting personal information, South by Southwest is taking a more critical look at the privacy consequences of sharing that data. Edward Snowden, the government contractor who leaked documents disclosing spying by the National Security Agency, speaks on Monday through a video link.

Assange, 42, said the disclosures about NSA spying are causing people to reassess the role of government in a world where more personal information is stored online. He said the U.S. agency is losing the public-relations battle since Snowdens revelations about gathering data from companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple. The disclosures show a military occupation in the Internets public space, he said.

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Assange: More U.S. secrets will be leaked

Brittany Hillen

At South by Southwest Interactive today, Google's Eric Schmidt spoke on the topic of NSA spying and security, touching on things like user privacy and how the Internet giant responded to the information contained in Snowden's leaks. Among it, Schmidt said the company's data is likely safe now.

During his speech, Schmidt spoke of his own surprise over the NSA's violation of Google's security and the data it managed to acquire on the company's users. He went on to compare the government's invasion of the company's data as akin to that of a Chinese attack that took place in 2010.

Schmidt didn't have kind things to say about the government's surveillance methods, of which he pointed out the phone records collection in particular, and eventually lead into conversation about other data breaches, including that of Wikileaks. He said large data leaks can be harmful -- potentially fatal for some individuals -- and that a celebrity culture surrounding it all could be harmful: "There's a real concern about the nature of celebrity driving bulk leaking."

The conversation, in all, was a rounded look at the issue in terms of both how it affected Google and how it affects the public at large, touching on perspectives and outlooks along both side of the fence. Speaking specifically of Google users' data, he said, "We're pretty sure that the information inside of Google is now safe from everybody, including the U.S. government."

SOURCE: Daily Dot

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Google’s Eric Schmidt talks NSA spying, security

"I don #39;t mind NSA spying, I have nothing to hide!"
If this if how you feel, creep a little deeper. Here is the evidence, in case MSNBC Fox didn #39;t cover it: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/nsa-pro...

By: Carey Wedler

Original post:
"I don't mind NSA spying, I have nothing to hide!" - Video

You may have heard that the NSA has been spying on just about everyone, everywhere without regard for whether or not they are an actual threat to national security. The allegation that RSA accepted a payment of $10 million in exchange for cooperating with the NSA led some to boycott the recent RSA Conference, or participate in the TrustyCon counter-conference that was hosted around the corner. As it turns out, though, most IT professionals dont seem all that concerned with the activities of the NSA.

AppRiver conducted a survey of the attendees at the RSA Conference.AppRivers Fred Touchette describes ina blog posthow the boycott and the apparent success of TrustyCon piqued his interest about where government hacking ranks on the overall threat landscape for IT professionals.

IT professionals are much more concerned with hackers than government spying.

We decided to do a face to face survey with conference attendees one on one to ask them a few simple questions about these issues compile the data and see what is on people's minds," Touchette explains. "These are people that deal with security every day, whose jobs depend on keeping networks secure, and who use threats as a practical problem not [as] theoretical or philosophical issues.

The AppRiver survey only includes responses from about 110 peopleout of a total attendance of about 25,000so it doesnt qualify as a scientifically relevant sampling. Nevertheless, the results are interesting.

What AppRiver discovered is that only a meager5.3 percent of respondents ranked external threats from government hacking attempts as the top threat. Government spying, like that conducted by the NSA, ranked at the bottom of the survey results, tied with malicious insidersauthorized individuals like Edward Snowden who intentionally compromise or expose data.

A third of the respondents cited the insider threat without malicious intent as the top threat. In other words, random users compromising data or putting the network at risk by circumventing security controls, ignoring security policies, or just plain human error.

The biggest concern by far, though, remains external hackers. More than 56 percent of the survey respondents cited evil bad guys on the outside of their network trying to infiltrate and infect their PCs as their number one security concern.

Interestingly, regardless of what is considered to be the top threat, nearly three fourths of those surveyed believe that people are most frequently the weak link in the security chain that leads to network or endpoint compromise. More than 20 percent claim that faulty policies are to blame, while only 7.2 percent fault technology as the point of failure.

The debate over government intelligence gathering is far from over. But, according to AppRivers unscientific survey of IT security professionals, the ethics and legality of NSA activities is simply not part of the day-to-day concern when it comes to defending against malware and cyber attacks.

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Survey: IT pros not concerned about NSA spying

PC World You may have heard that the NSA has been spying on just about everyone, everywhere without regard for whether or not they are an actual threat to national security. The allegation that RSA accepted a payment of $10 million in exchange for cooperating with the NSA led some to boycott the recent RSA Conference, or participate in the TrustyCon counter-conference that was hosted around the corner. As it turns out, though, most IT professionals don't seem all that concerned with the activities of the NSA.

[ 15 Ways to Make Sense of Calls for NSA Reform ]

[ A Look at the Fallout From the 2013 Snowden Leaks ]

AppRiver conducted a survey of the attendees at the RSA Conference.A AppRiver's Fred Touchette describes inA a blog postA A how the boycott and the apparent success of TrustyCon piqued his interest about where government hacking ranks on the overall threat landscape for IT professionals.

"We decided to do a face to face survey with conference attendees one on one to ask them a few simple questions about these issues compile the data and see what is on people's minds," Touchette explains. "These are people that deal with security every day, whose jobs depend on keeping networks secure, and who use threats as a practical problem not [as] theoretical or philosophical issues."

The AppRiver survey only includes responses from about 110 people--out of a total attendance of about 25,000--so it doesn't qualify as a scientifically relevant sampling. Nevertheless, the results are interesting.

What AppRiver discovered is that only a meagerA 5.3 percent of respondents ranked external threats from government hacking attempts as the top threat. Government spying, like that conducted by the NSA, ranked at the bottom of the survey results, tied with malicious insiders--authorized individuals like Edward Snowden who intentionally compromise or expose data.

A third of the respondents cited the insider threat without malicious intent as the top threat. In other words, random users compromising data or putting the network at risk by circumventing security controls, ignoring security policies, or just plain human error.

The biggest concern by far, though, remains external hackers. More than 56 percent of the survey respondents cited evil bad guys on the outside of their network trying to infiltrate and infect their PCs as their number one security concern.

Interestingly, regardless of what is considered to be the top threat, nearly three fourths of those surveyed believe that people are most frequently the weak link in the security chain that leads to network or endpoint compromise. More than 20 percent claim that faulty policies are to blame, while only 7.2 percent fault technology as the point of failure.

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IT Pros Not Concerned About NSA Spying

March 07, 2014

Lead counsel Ken Cuccinelli (left) confers with US Senator Rand Paul (centre) during a news conference about their class action lawsuit against US President Barack Obama over NSA spying revelations, outside the US District Court in Washington February 12, 2014 which also named James Clapper as a defendant. The proposed 2015 budget will see a five percent drop in US intelligence agencies after a year marked by controversy over far-reaching electronic spying. Reuters pic, March 7, 2014. US intelligence agencies will see a five percent drop in funding under a proposed 2015 budget, officials said yesterday, after a year marked by controversy over far-reaching electronic spying.

Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper said the requested budget for most of the country's 17 spy services came to US$45.6 billion (RM148 billion) for fiscal year 2015, which begins October 1.

The proposed budget, which must be approved by Congress, is lower than the 2014 national intelligence program budget, at US$48.2 billion.

The Pentagon is also planning for a slight drop in funding for intelligence activities that support the military, requesting US$13.3 billion for next fiscal year, officials said.

The 2014 budget had allocated US$14 billion for the military intelligence program.

In keeping with past practice, Clapper's office, or ODNI, did not divulge any further details or provide a breakdown of the budget.

"Any and all subsidiary information concerning the National Intelligence Program budget, whether the information concerns particular intelligence agencies or particular intelligence programs, will not be publicly disclosed," ODNI said in a brief statement.

Given the secrecy surrounding America's spy agencies and their funding, it remains unclear if the fallout from ex-intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden's leaks has had any impact on the National Security Agency's 2015 budget.

The trove of classified files disclosed by Snowden since June included documents leaked to The Washington Post that shed some light on the so-called "black budget" that funds for different spy operations and programs.

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james_clapper_us_spying_reuters.jpg