Information Technology

“Damage Accumulating”€™ after US Loses Trust Over Spying Activities
The White House is at a loss as it not only depended on espionage in formulating its policies, but also nobody can trust its word anymore, former US Senate foreign policy analyst James Petras told RT. The latest news on monitoring of phone calls in France, and probably German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own cellphone, brought anger from the French and German governments this week. [...]
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“Time to reform surveillance state”: Stop Watching Us rally challenges NSA spying
Twelve years after Americans were stripped of their rights in the name of fighting terrorism, thousands have gathered in Washington DC to protest unconstitutional NSA spying programs revealed by Edward Snowden, and call for repeal of the Patriot Act. [...]
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Monsanto buys big data weather company to boost yields and profit
Agriculture giant Monsanto has announced acquisition of the Climate Corporation, a climate data research company, expecting that its info will help farmers maximize crop yields with fewer resources. The $930 million cash purchase is set to give the company an upper hand in the quickly expanding field of scientific weather data, something that would put vast amounts of climate information at farmer [...]
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NSA uses metadata “to create sophisticated graphs” of US citizens’€™ social connections
The US National Security Agency has been exploiting US citizens' personal information drawn from its large collection of metadata to create complex graphs of social connections for foreign intelligence purposes, the latest Snowden leaks have revealed. Documents obtained by the New York Times from the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden say that the practice has been going on since November 2010, [...]
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Intelligence agencies want ‘all the phone records,’ defend surveillance programs
Leading members of the United States intelligence community continued to defend the government's vast surveillance programs in Washington on Thursday and suggested that those agency's capabilities exceed what's been previously reported. During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon, lawmakers asked representatives from the National Security Agency, [...]
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Obama’s “independent” NSA review board staffed with administration insiders
President Barack Obama said in August that an independent panel will review the United States€™ surveillance capabilities in the wake of damaging NSA leaks. One month later, though, that group'€™s game plan is being called into question. A steady stream of disclosures credited to former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have revealed since June previously unreported details about the Nati [...]
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