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Edward Snowden will be the subject of a comic book

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'Beyond: Edward Snowden,' which was written by Marvel Comics author Valerie D'Orazio, is scheduled for release on May 21.

The story of Edward Snowden's life will soon be told via comic book.

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The former NSA contractor is the subject of a comic book titled "Beyond: Edward Snowden," which Bluewater Productions will publish on May 21. The company is also behind comic book biographies of such public figures as Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Hillary Clinton.

"Beyond" is written by Marvel Comics scribe Valerie D'Orazio and illustrated by Dan Lauer.

"Working with Bluewater on this comic was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring such a fascinating public figures story to life, DOrazio said in a statement. Dans art really added another dimension to this project and provided a look at a side of Edward Snowden the public has never really seen before. As a writer, I feel really lucky to have found a publisher who was willing to work with me so closely to turn my vision into a reality."

The work will be available in both print and e-book versions.

According to the Guardian, Bluewater's work will kick off a series of "Beyond" titles, which will focus on "stories about the secret and suppressed, the stories 'They' don't want you to know," said the publisher. The next focus of the series will be the Joker of "Batman" fame.

Snowden was also the subject of another title, "No Place to Hide" by Glenn Greenwald, which was named as one of the Monitor's 10 best books of May and also made the list of the month's best books byAmazon. Sony Pictures recently obtained the film rights to "Place."

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Edward Snowden will be the subject of a comic book

Independent Scotland ‘Should Offer Edward Snowden Asylum’, Petition Says

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Edward Snowden At TED Conference Vancouver

Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver via robot.

Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver via robot.

Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver via robot.

Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver via robot.

Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver via robot.

Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver via robot.

Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver via robot.

Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver via robot.

Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver via robot.

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Independent Scotland 'Should Offer Edward Snowden Asylum', Petition Says

Brooklyn author pens Edward Snowden comic book

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Some would label Edward Snowden a hero; others would call him traitor. Thanks to a Ditmas Park-based author, the former National Security Agency contractor turned dissident, whistleblower and fugitive can now also be called a comic book star.

Ditmas Park-based Valerie DOrazio penned a graphic novel-style biography of the former U.S. spy agency contractor, tracing the tale of the young computer whiz from chatroom anonymity to life on the run as Americas most famous fugitive.

Beyond: Edward Snowden is the first in a series by Bluewater Productions that promises to tell stories They dont want you to know.

The project, illustrated by artist Dan Lauer, is a new twist for DOrazio, who has written for comic book heavyweights D.C. Comics and Marvel.

Snowden, who fled the U.S. and won asylum in Russia, worked as a contractor with the National Security Agency until he leaked a massive cache of documents to journalists in May 2013, detailing the governments classified international and domestic surveillance programs.

The book goes on sale Wednesday.

dmmurphy@nydailynews.com

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Brooklyn author pens Edward Snowden comic book

NSA spying: Rep. Justin Amash renews effort to gut controversial surveillance tactics

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WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Rep. Justin Amash's latest bid to undermine the government's domestic spying programs became apparent this week after warning to amend the annual defense authorization bill.

Amash, R-Cascade Township, filed two amendments Monday to the National Defense Authorization Act, intended to starve the National Security Agency's funding to carry out controversial domestic surveillance practices. The amendments state no amount of funding allocated for the act may be used to carry out a warrantless, secret court order involving any record.

More: Amash's amendment one and amendment two (PDF files)

The amendments stop short of halting the NSA's activities completely. Instead, if a court finds records are needed, a warrant must be issued on the suspicion of terrorist activities. Phone call details are limited to no more than 180 days, and records must be destroyed if they are not related to such threats.

Amash's latest move is "substantially the same" as the so-called Amash Amendment narrowly defeated by the House last July, spokesman Will Adams said in an email. Lawmakers voted that proposal down, 217-205, after contentious debate that was closely watched as a barometer of legislative tolerance for NSA spying.

The amendments are positioned to fire up debate on the NSA as a more comprehensive bill garners support. Titled the "USA Freedom Act," the standalone legislation aims to curb the agency's ability to conduct communication sweeps and close a "back door" to warrantless information already collected by requiring a court order.

"We are offering amendments to the defense authorization bill to shut down the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' private information," Adams said. "We prefer to move comprehensive legislation like the USA Freedom Act, but if that legislation isn't considered by the House this week, we'll be ready with alternatives to force the debate."

The Hill reported Amash's amendments, in addition to other NSA-related items, will be examined Tuesday afternoon as NDAA is discussed.

Andrew Krietz covers breaking and general police/fire news for MLive | The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at akrietz@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter.

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NSA spying: Rep. Justin Amash renews effort to gut controversial surveillance tactics

NSA Spying Is a Power Grab

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Preface: Mass Surveillance Is Completely Unnecessary

Top security experts including the highest-level government officials and the top university experts say that mass surveillance actually increases terrorism and hurts security.

They say that our government failed to stop the Boston bombing because they were too busy spying on millions of innocent Americans instead of focusing on actual bad guys.

Moreover, high-level NSA executive Bill Binney - who created the agencys mass surveillance program for digital information - made it easy for the NSA to catch bad guys without spying on innocent Americans all while strengthening America against security breaches.

(Binney is a 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a legend within the agency. Binney was the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees. Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others.)

Binney's system automatically encrypted information about Americans ... but that information could be decrypted if a judge ordered that a specific American was a bad guy or was connected with a bad guy.

But after 9/11, the NSA instead switched to the current system which conducts mass surveillance on all Americans. Specifically, the system rolled out by the NSA after 9/11 used parts of Binney's system ... but stripped out all of the encryption which would have protected Americans' privacy absent a court order.

Why did the NSA switch from the privacy-protecting system which worked to catch terrorists to one that spied on all Americans in violation of their constitutional rights?

A very high-level congressional committee security staffer - Diane Roark - gave a hint on a Frontline show this month. Roark was the congressional staffer in charge of overseeing the NSA for the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.

Roark explains [ZH - I'd be grateful if someone tells me how to embed the linked video (it's Jwplayer) into an embedded video with start time and duration]:

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NSA Spying Is a Power Grab

Winter School: Advanced symmetric primitives – Thomas Ristenpart – Video

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Winter School: Advanced symmetric primitives - Thomas Ristenpart
Advanced symmetric primitives, a lecture by Thomas Ristenpart. The topic of the 4th Annual Bar-Ilan Winter School on Cryptography held in January 2014, was Symmetric Encryption in Theory and...

By: barilanuniversity

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Winter School: Advanced symmetric primitives - Thomas Ristenpart - Video

70-plus XMPP messaging services now securing chats with TLS encryption

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Many users of XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocolformerly Jabber) chat services are going to be more secure starting this week. The XMPP Standards Foundation announced that a large number of services using the public XMPP chat network began making encrypted connections mandatory on Monday.

The new encryption effort is largely focused on communication between XMPP servers. Many chat clients already use encrypted connections to communicate, so this move is largely about making the back end of XMPP services more secure, Ralph Meijer, an XMPP Standards Foundation board member, told PCWorld.

The move to making encryption a requirement across many XMPP servers is all too important after theongoing Snowden revelationsrevealed the NSA was passively monitoring data flows within the internal networks of major corporations such as Google and Yahoo.

Server-to-server TLS encryption will make this kind of monitoring of XMPP-based chats far more difficult.

The effort to encrypt connections for XMPP services has been months in the making after Peter Saint-Andre, who runs jabber.org, published a manifesto in October calling for wide adoption of encrypted connections for XMPP services.

Entitled, "A Public Statement Regarding Ubiquitous Encryption on the XMPP Network," the document calls for XMPP operators and developers to start requiring Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections as of Monday, May 19, 2014.

In XMPP circles, May 19 is dubbed Open Discussion Day, which is meant to promote open communications systems and protocols such as XMPP.

TLS is a commonly used protocol for securing web communications. Recently, the Heartbleed bug in the implementation of SSL/TLS by the OpenSSL Foundation made millions of websites vulenerable to attack. TLS itself, however, is still seen as secure.

It's not clear exactly how many services are using TLS connections since XMPP is an open standard that requires voluntary compliance with the encryption effort. Nevertheless, more than 70 XMPP service operators and software developers have signed on to support the call to require TLS.

Notable supporters include the lead developer of Adium, a popular chat client for OS X; Jeremie Miller, the creator of Jabber; and the creator of ChatSecure for Android (formerly Gibberbot).

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70-plus XMPP messaging services now securing chats with TLS encryption

70-plus messaging services and XMPP software clients begin requiring TLS encryption

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Ian Paul | May 21, 2014

The XMPP Standards Foundation on Monday marked the first day that a large number of XMPP services will require encrypted connections by default.

If you're having trouble connecting to an XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol--formerly Jabber) service this week, you may need to upgrade your chat client. The XMPP Standards Foundation announced that a large number of services using the public XMPP chat network began making encrypted connections mandatory on Monday.

The move to making encryption a requirement across many XMPP services is aimed at preventing private chats from falling into the hands of governments or other parties monitoring unencrypted connections--an issue that has become all too relevant in light of the ongoing Snowden revelations.

The new encryption effort only protects communication between chat clients and XMPP servers. It does not offer so-called end-to-end encryption, where chats are encrypted on the sender's device and can only be decrypted on the recipient's.

The effort to encrypt connections for XMPP has been months in the making after Peter Saint-Andre, who runs jabber.org, published a manifesto in October calling for wide adoption of encrypted connections for XMPP services.

Entitled, "A Public Statement Regarding Ubiquitous Encryption on the XMPP Network," the document calls for XMPP operators and developers to start requiring Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections as of Monday, May 19, 2014.

In XMPP circles, May 19 is dubbed Open Discussion Day, which is meant to promote open communications systems and protocols such as XMPP.

TLS is a commonly used protocol for securing web communications. Recently, the Heartbleed bug in the implementation of SSL/TLS by the OpenSSL Foundation made millions of websites vulenerable to attack. TLS itself, however, is still seen as secure.

It's not clear exactly how many services are using TLS connections since XMPP is an open standard that requires voluntary compliance with the encryption effort. Nevertheless, more than 70 XMPP service operators and software developers have signed on to support the call to require TLS.

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70-plus messaging services and XMPP software clients begin requiring TLS encryption


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