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. [...]

As critics of Israel's policy in Gaza lose faith in governments to take action, a new app is helping them to it themselves. Buycott is one of the hottest items on the market as shoppers are using it in their droves to avoid purchasing Israeli products. The Buycott app has a number of groups, which its users can join, with one of the most successful being the “Long live Palestine, boycott Isra [...]

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 [...]

Criminal prosecution is likely to be expanded on Americans involved in recruiting and supervising activities of German officials spying for the US intelligence, Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas told Welt am Sonntag. If investigators find a body of evidence that alleged double agents in Germany’s federal intelligence service and Defense Ministry have been spying to the benefit of American in [...]

Facial recognition surveillance software being tested by British cops that allows "faster than ever" data searching and tracking of subjects is raising concerns among privacy activists. NeoFace software analyses dozens of facial features from digital CCTV images or police body cameras and matching them with the 90,000 photos stored on Leicestershire Police's database, which had become the first un [...]

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. [...]

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. [...]

The White House were given the heads up that UK authorities were to force The Guardian newspaper to destroy hard drives containing top secret NSA documents. Emails obtained by the Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) indicate that US intelligence officers including NSA chief Keith Alexander were notified about Britain’s intent to retrieve the classified papers. [...]

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 [...]

A Verkhovna Rada deputy who is also an ex-defense minister of Ukraine, said during a prime time talk-show that the country' "patriots" would be justified"to kill" Russian President Vladimir Putin if he came to Kiev. [...]

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. [...]

US federal authorities have been increasingly involved with local police departments and criminal trials in an attempt to keep details of vast domestic surveillance policies under wraps, according to a new report from the Associated Press. [...]

While the files exposing limitless global NSA spying speak for themselves, the man behind the leaks has also had much to say. One year after his first leaks were published, RT picks some of the standout quotes from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. [...]

Internet activists and rights groups have launched a massive online campaign against mass government surveillance, urging users and websites to use encryption. The campaign'€™s inspiration "“NSA whistleblower Snowden" has called to join ResetTheNet. [...]

Glenn Greenwald, who helped Edward Snowden leak sensitive documents about the National Security Agency spying on its citizens, says he’s set to publish his most dramatic piece yet, which will reveal those in the USA who were targeted by the NSA. [...]

Edward Snowden was trained as a professional spy and actually worked undercover abroad for America'€™s biggest intelligence agencies, developing their IT security architecture, the whistleblower revealed in an exclusive interview to NBC News. [...]

China is calling on banks to stop using IBM servers and replace them with local-made machines amid fears that the nation’s financial security might be compromised via the US-based company’s servers, a Bloomberg report has revealed. [...]

​China has dismissed all US accusations of industrial cyber-espionage against five of its military officials and published proof that Washington is actually stealing data from China. Beijing also summoned the US ambassador for an explanation. [...]

The United States National Security Agency is reportedly collecting the contents of effectively every phone call dialed or received within the Bahamas, putting the conversations of countless residents and tourists into the hands of the NSA. [...]