LANCE TAPLEY, lance.tapley at gmail.com Investigative reporter for Common Dreams, Tapley just wrote an extensive piece entitled: “The Double Identity of an ‘Anti-Semitic’ Commenter: Smearing a Progressive Website to Support Israel,” which states: “Like many other news websites, Common Dreams has been plagued by inflammatory anti-Semitic comments following its stories. [...]

Russia and China plan to increase technology cooperation, with Moscow set to increase exports of software in exchange for data storage, Russia's Communications Minister said. Nikolay Nikiforov, head of Russia's Ministry of Communications, announced via Twitter that Russia and China have agreed to increase the supply of Chinese servers and storage systems and production in Russia, and to boost t [...]

Julian Assange plans to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in the near future, he told a press conference at the embassy's London compound, where he's been holed up for two years. The WikiLeaks founder gave no further details. "I am leaving the embassy soon, but perhaps not for the reasons [reported]," he told journalists, refusing to clarify what his reasons are. [...]

Intelligence agencies like the NSA and GCHQ seek to scoop up literally every single form of digital and non-digital communication and data in the world all the time, political cartoonist and author Ted Rall told RT. It is very clear that the general mood in Europe as well as in the UK and in the USA is in favor of more privacy in the wake of Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations. [...]

Google's hired eyes in the sky will soon be able to make out “manholes and mailboxes.- What else? Google will soon have an unprecedented ability to spy on you from space. Theoretically, at least. How? Two months ago, after much lobbying by the biggest satellite company in North America, DigitalGlobe, the US government relaxed restrictions to allow for commercially available satellit [...]

The Ukraine crisis has shown that Russia has been strong in getting its message across to international audiences, a meeting of US international media chiefs concluded, outlining the need for Washington to create a Russian-language TV news channel. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan agency that supervises government-sponsored media, targeting international audiences, met We [...]

Spending your time chatting online and dawdling with your smartphone is futile, Pope Francis has reminded, urging thousands of young Germans to spend life on more fruitful activities. “Maybe many young people waste too many hours on futile things,” the pope said in a short speech in Rome on Tuesday, as quoted by Reuters. [...]

The White House is tracking visitors to its website, despite proudly promising that WhiteHouse.gov complies with federal privacy laws and does not use cookies. The AddThis tracker is present on every page on the site, according to EFF. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) studied the White House site for the new type of online tracking system after a new report by ProPublica found that the [...]

Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, talks exclusively to Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, and reporter Ewen MacAskill in Moscow. The 31-year-old former intelligence analyst discusses whether he is a Russian spy, his likely fate if he returns to the US and the relevance of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in the age of Google. [...]

The UK's spy agency has developed a number of crafty tools to monitor and comb the web, planting false information when necessary, Glenn Greenwald said while disclosing a fresh batch of Snowden's files. The tools were created by the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) within the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), according to the leaked documents. [...]

NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has denounced the UK'€™s emergency surveillance bill, criticizing the distinct lack of public debate it encompassed and its heightened powers of intrusion. During an exclusive interview in Moscow with the Guardian, the whistleblower suggested it was highly unusual for a state to process legislation so hastily other than at a time of acutely endangered national [...]

Civil liberties groups are making a legal challenge against the alleged use of mass surveillance by UK intelligence services. The tribunal follows revelations about UK and US surveillance practices by former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden. The groups involved intend to challenge the legality of alleged “interception, collection and use of communications” by GCHQ. [...]

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff symbolically handed over the World Cup to her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday, as Russia is set to host the 2018 tournament. The two were joined by FIFA president Sepp Blatter. The ceremony took place inside Maracana Stadium before the Germany-Argentina final in Rio de Janeiro. [...]

Germany has claimed a fourth World Cup crown in a 1-0 win against Argentina after extra time in the final in Rio de Janeiro. Substitute Mario Goetze was the hero, as he scored the only goal with seven minutes to go. With that triumph Germany has become the first European nation to win the trophy outside of their home continent, which led to jubilant scenes both on the pitch and back home, with mil [...]

At least 80 percent of all audio calls are gathered and stored by the NSA, whistleblower William Binney has revealed. The former code-breaker says the spy agency's ultimate aim is no less than total population control. [...]

Germany may scrap its decades-old policy of not spying on key NATO allies in response to the latest spy scandal, which exposed a German intelligence officer as a double-agent leaking secret documents to the US. After the defeat of Nazis in World War II, the new authorities of West Germany adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to the intelligence activities of some of the victors, [...]

The journal that has published the Facebook mood swings study regrets the way the study was conducted. Facebook issued a sorry statement for accessing the content of 700,000 people's pages, but the company's second-in-command said she has no regrets. It was concluded by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal that the move to manipulate the content appearing on the Facebook pag [...]

Facebook's experiment on over half-a-million unsuspecting users has taken a new twist with the revelation that a researcher connected to a Department of Defense-funded program to use the military to quell civil unrest also participated in the study. Social media sites exploded over the weekend after it was revealed that Facebook, no stranger to controversy of late, secretly manipulated posts be [...]

Citing concerns over the NSA's wiretapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel and other top officials' phones, the German Interior Ministry announced Thursday that it will not renew its contract with Verizon to provide service for government ministries. As part of an effort to revamp its secure communications networks, the country will instead rely on Germany's Deutsche Telekom, Reuters reported. [...]

Comedian Russell Brand condemned Fox News as a "fanatical terrorist propaganda organization" during a heated, 10-minute tirade recorded on video and uploaded to the web this week. The 39-year-old British stand-up comic-turned-actor is now making headlines for the video footage, which was uploaded to his personal YouTube channel on Tuesday this week under the title: Is Fox News More Dangerous than [...]

Cooperation between Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, and America's NSA is deeper than previously believed. German agents appear to have crossed into constitutionally questionable territory. Three months before Edward Snowden shocked the world with his revelations, members of NSA's "Special Source Operations department" [...]

An analysis of secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden demonstrates that the NSA is more active in Germany than anywhere else in Europe -- and that data collected here may have helped kill suspected terrorists. Just before Christmas 2005, an unexpected event disrupted the work of American spies in the south-central German city of Wiesbaden. [...]