Showing posts with label World News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World News. Show all posts

U.S. intelligence program secretly probes Internet servers

June 07, 2013

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper confirmed that the secret program exists but said media reports contained ¿numerous inaccuracies.

(Source) Government agencies search the central servers of nine leading Internet companies for emails and other data potentially linked to terrorism or espionage cases, the U.S. intelligence chief says.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. director of national intelligence late Thursday confirmed the existence of a secret program in which the government has tapped into the central servers of nine leading Internet companies to search for data potentially linked to terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation, but he called two newspapers' disclosure of it "reprehensible."

Under the 6-year-old program, code-named PRISM, the FBI and National Security Agency have searched for emails, videos, photographs and other documents. The effort involves Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple, the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian reported, quoting from classified documents. Among major Internet companies, only Twitter has so far been a holdout, the Post said.

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper confirmed the program but said the Post and Guardian articles contained "numerous inaccuracies."

Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo all denied participating. The others did not respond to requests for comment Thursday night.

Clapper said the program was intended to target foreigners and "cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person or anyone located within the United States." Court-approved procedures "minimize the acquisition" of information about U.S. persons, he said in a statement.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the executive branch and Congress oversee the program, which "was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive hearings and debate," he said.

"Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats," Clapper said.

The latest disclosures, coming as officials separately confirmed a long-running NSA program to secretly collect records on nearly all domestic and international phone calls made by Americans, underscores how U.S. intelligence and law enforcement now secretly glean vast amounts of information from communications technology.

Legally, much of the data is considered property of the companies, not of individual users. That limits users' ability to challenge the government's data-mining operations in court.

The Post said it had obtained information about PRISM from a career intelligence officer who provided PowerPoint slides "to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy."

According to the Post, a presentation for senior NSA analysts described PRISM "as the most prolific contributor to the president's daily brief, which cited PRISM data in 1,477 articles last year." The daily brief contains the nation's most valuable intelligence secrets and goes only to the president and a few top aides each morning.

According to the briefing slides, "NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM" as its leading source of raw material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports, the Post reported.

PRISM analysts can use search terms to delve into computer systems to pull out selected information. The terms are designed to look for data that is foreign in origin, but, according to the briefing materials, the NSA concedes that it inevitably picks up considerable data on Americans.

In most cases, Internet companies have voluntarily cooperated with PRISM in return for immunity from lawsuits, the Post said.

But in 2008, Congress gave the Justice Department the authority to seek a secret court order to force a reluctant company to comply. The Post said that Microsoft became the first corporate partner in PRISM in 2007 and that Apple held out until 2012.

Apple disputed that it had signed on to any such program.

"We have never heard of PRISM," Apple said in a statement Thursday night. "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."

Yahoo issued a similar denial.

"Yahoo! takes users' privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network," the company said in a statement.

Google said it "does not have a 'back door' for the government to access private user data."

And Joe Sullivan, chief security officer at Facebook, said protecting users' privacy and data is a top priority.

"We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers," he said. "When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law."

Clapper, the intelligence director, declassified a few details about the separate program that collects telephone records, also disclosed by the Guardian. Clapper said he wanted to reassure Americans that "the intelligence community is committed to respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all American citizens."

He noted that the special court reviews the program every three months. He confirmed that the government is barred from searching telephone records "indiscriminately" and can only search the data for specific information after proving to a court that it has reasonable suspicion of association with a foreign terrorist organization.
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AEG executive accuses Jordan Jackson's mother, kids connected with extortion.

June 04, 2013

(source) Los Angeles (CNN) -- Claims of extortion and laughter-inducing testimony stemming from legal advice on e-mails highlighted Tuesday's proceedings in the Michael Jackson wrongful death trial.
Randy Phillips, the chief executive officer of AEG Live, disclosed that his lawyers advised company executives not to review old e-mails before testifying.

Jordan Jackson's mother,

READ MORE - AEG executive accuses Jordan Jackson's mother, kids connected with extortion.

Khan ‘married before losing looks’

Fighter Amir Khan has revealed he wanted to marry before he lost his looks as he swapped the boxing ring for a wedding ring.

The 26-year-old tied the knot with US student Faryal Makhdoom in a lengthy ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in New York at the weekend.


khan married

READ MORE - Khan ‘married before losing looks’

Above 65 places indication Forearms Buy and sell Treaty

(source) More than 65 countries have signed the landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade and the United States announced it will sign soon, giving a strong kickoff to the first major international campaign to stem the illicit trade in weapons that fuel conflicts and extremists.

The announcement on Monday by US Secretary of State John Kerry that the US - the world's largest arms dealer - will sign is critical, but the treaty's ultimate strength rests on support by all major arms exporters and importers.

 Forearms Buy and sell Treaty


READ MORE - Above 65 places indication Forearms Buy and sell Treaty

The apple company loses US industry screen lording it over inside Samsung dispute

Apple has lost a ruling by a US trade panel in a patent dispute with its rival Samsung.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Apple infringed on a Samsung patent, which could mean some older models of the iPad and iPhone are banned from sale in the US.

The patent relates to 3G wireless technology and the ability to transmit multiple services correctly and at the same time.

READ MORE - The apple company loses US industry screen lording it over inside Samsung dispute

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