FBI Director Says Scientists Are Wrong, Pitches Imaginary Solution to Encryption Dilemma

BY JENNA MCLAUGHLIN                       THE INTERCEPT
Testifying before two Senate committees on Wednesday about the threat he says strong encryption presents to law enforcement, FBI Director James Comey didn’t so much propose a solution as wish for one. Comey said he needs some way to read and listen to any communication for which he’s gotten a court order. Modern end-to-end encryption — increasingly common following the revelations of mass surveillance by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden — doesn’t allow for that. Only the parties on either end can do the decoding. Comey’s problem is the nearly universal agreement among cryptographers, technologists and security experts that there is no way to give the government access to encrypted communications without poking an exploitable hole that would put confidential data, as well as entities like banks and power grids, at risk.

SPIEGEL Targeted by US CIA

BY SPIEGEL STAFF SPIEGEL 
Walks during working hours aren’t the kind of pastime one would normally expect from a leading official in the German Chancellery. Especially not from the head of Department Six, the official inside Angela Merkel’s office responsible for coordinating Germany’s intelligence services. But in the summer of 2011, Günter Heiss found himself stretching his legs for professional reasons. The CIA’s station chief in Berlin had requested a private conversation with Heiss. And he didn’t want to meet in an office or follow standard protocol.

High court rules data retention and surveillance legislation unlawful

Emergency surveillance legislation introduced by the coalition government last year is unlawful, the high court has ruled. A judicial challenge by the Labour MP Tom Watson and the Conservative MP David Davis has been upheld by judges, who found that the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (Dripa) 2014 is “inconsistent with European Union law”. The act requires internet and phone companies to keep their communications data for a year and regulates how police and intelligence agencies gain access to it. The government will now have to pass fresh legislation that must come into effect before the end of March. The two MPs said the judgment underlined the need for prior authorisation by a judge before officers are permitted to examine the retained information from the internet, social media or phone calls.

The World Says No – Snowden

BY EDWARD J. SNOWDEN
NEW YORK TIMES

Two years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong.

Within days, the United States government responded by bringing charges against me under World War I-era espionage laws. The journalists were advised by lawyers that they risked arrest or subpoena if they returned to the United States. Politicians raced to condemn our efforts as un-American, even treasonous.

Privately, there were moments when I worried that we might have put our privileged lives at risk for nothing — that the public would react with indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations.

Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong.

‘Sensitive’ searches yield embarrassing targeted ads

BY EMILY CHUNG CBC
Have you done searches about potentially embarrassing topics like pregnancy, divorce or liposuction? Then embarrassing targeted ads could appear on your screen as you’re browsing the news. That’s one of the findings of a new study on targeted ads conducted by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada — and it shouldn’t be happening, the report says. Popular websites for things such as news, job searches or shopping may show you ads based on other websites you’ve visited that may indicate your interests — a practice called online behavioural advertising. For example, if you’ve been looking for a new digital camera, ads for digital cameras might show up as you’re reading allrecipes.com, kijiji, or the Vancouver Sun.

French Justice Minister Says Snowden and Assange Could Be Offered Asylum

BY JENNA MCLAUGHLIN INTERCEPT
French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira thinks National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange might be allowed to settle in France. If France decides to offer them asylum, she would “absolutely not be surprised,” she told French news channel BFMTV on Thursday (translated from the French). She said it would be a “symbolic gesture.”
Taubira was asked about the NSA’s sweeping surveillance of three French presidents, disclosed by WikiLeaks this week, and called it an “unspeakable practice.”
Her comments echoed those in an editorial in France’s leftist newspaper Libération Thursday morning, which said giving Snowden asylum would be a “single gesture” that would send “a clear and useful message to Washington,” in response to the “contempt” the U.S. showed by spying on France’s president. Snowden, who faces criminal espionage charges in the U.S., has found himself stranded in Moscow with temporary asylum as he awaits responses from two dozen countries where he’d like to live; and Assange is trapped inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden. (See correction below.)
Taubira, the chief of France’s Ministry of Justice, holds the equivalent position of the attorney general in the United States. She has been described in the press as a “maverick,” targeting issues such as poverty and same-sex marriage, often inspiring anger among French right-wingers.

NSA mass phone surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden ruled illegal

BY DAN ROBERTS AND SPENCER ACKERMAN THE GUARDIAN
The US court of appeals has ruled that the bulk collection of telephone metadata is unlawful, in a landmark decision that clears the way for a full legal challenge against the National Security Agency. A panel of three federal judges for the second circuit overturned an earlier ruling that the controversial surveillance practice first revealed to the US public by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 could not be subject to judicial review. The judges opted not to end the domestic bulk collection while Congress decides its fate, calling judicial inaction “a lesser intrusion” on privacy than at the time the case was initially argued. “In light of the asserted national security interests at stake, we deem it prudent to pause to allow an opportunity for debate in Congress that may (or may not) profoundly alter the legal landscape,” the judges ruled. But they also sent a tacit warning to Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate who is pushing to re-authorize the provision, known as Section 215, without modification: “There will be time then to address appellants’ constitutional issues.”
“We hold that the text of section 215 cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program,” concluded their judgment.

Looking up symptoms online? These companies are tracking you.

BY BRIAN MERCHANT MOTHERBOARD
It’s 2015—when we feel sick, fear disease, or have questions about our health, we turn first to the internet. According to the Pew Internet Project, 72 percent of US internet users look up health-related information online. But an astonishing number of the pages we visit to learn about private health concerns—confidentially, we assume—are tracking our queries, sending the sensitive data to third party corporations, even shipping the information directly to the same brokers who monitor our credit scores. It’s happening for profit, for an “improved user experience,” and because developers have flocked to “free” plugins and tools provided by data-vacuuming companies. In April 2014, Tim Libert, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, custom-built software called webXray to analyze the top 50 search results for nearly 2,000 common diseases (over 80,000 pages total).

Netherlands court strikes down data retention law as breach of privacy

THE HAGUE STAFFTHE GUARDIAN
A judge has scrapped the Netherlands’ data retention law, saying that while it helps solve crime it also breaches the privacy of telephone and Internet users. The ruling by a judge in The Hague followed a similar decision in April by the European Union’s top court that wiped out EU data collection legislation it deemed too broad and offering too few privacy safeguards. The Dutch security and justice ministry said it was considering an appeal. Under the Dutch law telephone companies were required to store information about all fixed and mobile phone calls for a year. Internet providers had to store information on their clients’ internet use for six months.

UN creates new Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy

ACCESS NOW
The Human Rights Council in Geneva passed a unanimous resolution on March 26, 2015, to appoint a new independent expert, or Special Rapporteur, with the mandate of promoting and protecting the right to privacy worldwide. Responding to calls from civil society, and the leadership of Brazil and Germany, the UN Human Rights Council made a decisive step toward long-term protection of the right to privacy, online and offline. “Nearly two years after revelations of mass surveillance online, world leaders have recognized the need for a long-lasting, singular authority to guide governments and companies on how to protect and respect our privacy rights,” said Peter Micek, Senior Policy Counsel at Access. “We champion this move, and pledge to join with all stakeholders to ensure this new office exercises its fullest potential in the name of users at risk around the world.” The vote follows extensive work on privacy in the digital age at the UN.