Wanted former NSA contractor nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Edward Snowden, who leaked thousands of top secret documents including information about two U.S. monitoring programs, is among the nominees for this years Nobel Peace Prize.

Snowden is on the run from the U.S. authorities after he disclosed information about top secret U.S. programs that monitor phone and internet outlets.

He was granted a Russian visa which was recently extended.

Snowden was charged last year with a number of federal offenses including communicating classified intelligence.

President Obama said he is no patriot and there were other ways he could have voiced his concerns about the NSA.

No I dont think Mr. Snowden is a patriot. As I said in my opening remarks, I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks. My preference, and I think the American peoples preference, would have been for a lawful orderly examination of these laws, said President Obama.

MORE: I was trained as a spy, Snowden bolsters credentials during exclusive NBC interview

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Wanted former NSA contractor nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Edward Snowden, Pope Francis among picks for the Nobel Peace Prize

Bloomberg Oct 4, 2014, 04.22AM IST

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A Japanese group seeking to preserve pacifism in the Asian nation's constitution and Pope Francis, who has made the fight against poverty a focus of his tenure, are among the top contenders for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Other favourites include Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, Edward Snowden, the former American intelligence contractor who revealed secret surveillance programmes, Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who defied the Taliban, and Russian media outlets such as Novaya Gazeta, according to bookmakers and researchers. The winner will be announced October 10 in Oslo by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

The Peace Research Institute in Oslo, which each year guesses on potential winners, has the "Japanese People Who Conserve Article 9" as its top pick in an updated list on Friday. The group is working to keep Article 9, which prevents Japan from "belligerency," as part of the nation's constitution.

"We may have come to think of wars between states as virtually extinct after the end of the Cold War, but events in Ukraine and simmering tensions in East Asia remind us they may reappear," PRIO said. "A return to a principle often hailed in earlier periods of the Peace Prize would be well timed."

FAVOURITIES

Pope Francis is favoured to win the peace award by bookmakers William Hill and Paddy Power, with odds of 11-4 and 9-4, respectively. Since his election in March 2013, Francis, 77, has pleaded for a reduction of inequalities on a global basis, including in a message to this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Snowden, 31, who was nominated for the prize by two Norwegian lawmakers from the Socialist Left Party, could win for revealing secret surveillance programs by the US National Security Agency in 2013 even though the leaks remain controversial. Snowden, who was granted asylum by Russia as he faces prosecution in the US, has 10-1 odds to win at William Hill and 14-1 at Paddy Power.

SECOND PICK

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Edward Snowden, Pope Francis among picks for the Nobel Peace Prize

German citizens’ communication data reportedly passed to NSA

From 2004 to 2008, raw data was siphoned from an internet exchange point in Frankfurt and forwarded to the NSA, the Sddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR reported on Friday.

The reports cited secret government documents submitted to the ongoing parliamentary inquiry into NSA spying.

It was first reported in June that the BND was handing information collected in Frankfurt to the NSA, codenamed "Eikonal," but information on German citizens was said to have been filtered out.

According to the latest Bundestag documents, however, BND internal tests showed that at least 5 percent of the German citizens' communications data could not be filtered.

An "absolute and mistake-free" separation of German and foreign citizens' communications is not possible, the secret documents said.

Frankfurt's DE-CIX internet exchange point is the largest in the world. Data streams from various internet providers meet there to be passed onto their respective destinations.

dr/jm (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

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German citizens' communication data reportedly passed to NSA

How to change a Default Certificate (SecureZIP encryption and authentication tutorial) – Video


How to change a Default Certificate (SecureZIP encryption and authentication tutorial)
This video will show you how to change the default certificate used during encryption and signing with our SecureZIP data security software. SecureZIP gives users encryption and authentication...

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Microsoft takes the hassle out of Office 365 email encryption

When Microsoft announced message encryption for Office 365 in November, it came with a potentially annoying requirement: People receiving the encrypted messages had to be logged into a Microsoft account to view them.

That was all well and good if they were a Microsoft customer, but everyone else had to sign up for a Microsoft account before they could view their encrypted messages.

Perhaps realizing this was an inconvenience -- because, as it turns out, not everyone on Earth uses Microsoft's services -- the company has removed this requirement.

Now, recipients who don't have a Microsoft account -- or who have one but aren't logged into it -- can view their encrypted message using a one-time passcode that Microsoft will send to them via email. They'll then have 15 minutes to use the passcode to view their encrypted message.

"You can then choose to reply to the message or forward it. All responses you make will be encrypted," wrote Shobhit Sahay, an Office 365 technical product manager, in a blog post on Friday.

Office 365 Message Encryption, which replaced Exchange Hosted Encryption, went live in February and since then has been used to protect the content of more than 1 million emails, according to Sahay.

The service is included at no extra charge with the E3 and E4 editions of Office 365. It also comes bundled with the standalone version of Azure Rights Management, which costs US$2 per user/month.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

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Microsoft takes the hassle out of Office 365 email encryption

Editorial: Compromise needed on smartphone encryption

By Editorial Board October 3

LAW ENFORCEMENT officials deserve to be heard in their recent warnings about the impact of next-generation encryption technology on smartphones, such as Apples new iPhone. This is an important moment in which technology, privacy and the rule of law are colliding.

Apple announced Sept. 17 that its latest mobile operating system, iOS 8, includes encryption so thorough that the company will not be able to unlock it for law enforcement. The encryption is to be set by the user, and Apple will not retain the key. Googles next version of its popular Android operating system also will be unlockable by the company. Both insist they are giving consumers ironclad privacy protection. The moves are in large part a response to public worries about National Security Agency surveillance of Internet and telephone metadata revealed by former government contractor Edward Snowden.

What has the law enforcement community up in arms is the prospect of losing access to the data on these smartphones in cases where they have a valid, court-approved search warrant. The technology firms, while pledging to honor search warrants in other situations, say they simply wont possess the ability to unlock the smartphones. Only the owner of the phone, who set up the encryption, will be able to do that. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said this could imperil investigations in kidnapping and other cases; FBI Director James B. Comey said he could not understand why the tech companies would market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law.

This is not about mass surveillance. Law enforcement authorities are not asking for the ability to surveil everyones smartphone, only those relatively few cases where there is a court-approved search warrant. This seems reasonable and not excessively intrusive. After all, the government in many other situations has a right and responsibility to set standards for products so that laws are followed. Why not smartphones? Moreover, those worried about privacy can take solace from the Supreme Courts decision in June in Riley v. California, which acknowledged the large amount of private information on smartphones and said a warrant is generally required before a search.

Law enforcement will not be entirely without tools in criminal investigations. Data stored in the cloud and other locations will still be available; wiretaps, too. But smartphone users must accept that they cannot be above the law if there is a valid search warrant.

How to resolve this? A police back door for all smartphones is undesirable a back door can and will be exploited by bad guys, too. However, with all their wizardry, perhaps Apple and Google could invent a kind of secure golden key they would retain and use only when a court has approved a search warrant. Ultimately, Congress could act and force the issue, but wed rather see it resolved in law enforcement collaboration with the manufacturers and in a way that protects all three of the forces at work: technology, privacy and rule of law.

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Editorial: Compromise needed on smartphone encryption

Using Open Source Software in Business: The Changing Landscape of Open Source Licenses – Video


Using Open Source Software in Business: The Changing Landscape of Open Source Licenses
Seminar on Business Approach to Intellectual Property for IT, Electronics and Telecom Industries Using Open Source Software in Business: The Changing Landsca...

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