Vice might get a bit of flak for its hipster approach to journalism at times, but it's also produced some pretty hard hitting documentaries and provided real insight into some of the stranger parts of the world. Its latest target in an upcoming episode is government surveillance, so company founder …
Read More »Edward Snowden lambasts Cameron for sudden privacy u-turn
Although he might have tried to brush it aside as merely a “private matter,” British Prime Minister, David Cameron's involvement in the Panama Papers leak seems unlikely to go away quickly. Adding fuel to the fire is ostracised whistle blower, Edward Snowden, who has now started poking the PM over …
Read More »Snowden blasts British government over contradiction on encryption
Encryption might be something the Germans are big fans of, but the British government and its intelligence agencies continue to paint it as a tool of evil, used to hide criminal activity from the authorities. However as opposition to this view point grows, it's attempted to mollify concerns that it …
Read More »Problem with Times’ Snowden story? ‘Tell the government’
The Sunday Times is continuing to paint itself as a propagandist for the British government, after a response to further complaints against its recent exposé, which claimed that British and US spies' lives were put at risk thanks to Edward Snowden's released documents. In a correspondence with a reader, the newspaper's editor, …
Read More »US Senator Rand Paul goes after mass-data collection proponents
Republican presidential candidate, Rand Paul, went after fellow senators that backed mass data collection yesterday during a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee meeting, where he accused the government and federal authorities of building in an “institutional bias” by sidestepping the warrant system. Paul is also known for his filibustering, …
Read More »The NSA wants ‘front door’ access to encrypted data
You probably know by now that the biggest tech companies in the US are currently battling it out with the NSA over data encryption and what the US government should be allowed to access. Since back door access to customer data is clearly out of the question following the Snowden …
Read More »CITIZENFOUR wins an Oscar and Snowden does an AMA
CITIZENFOUR, the recently premiered documentary by Laura Poitras about the beginning of the Edward Snowden NSA revelations, has won an Oscar for “Best Documentary” at this year's Academy Awards ceremony. The film shows Snowden's efforts to expose the gross abuses of the US government's National Security Agency, along with the help of Laura Poitras …
Read More »Spies probably have the keys to your phone
Everything your phone transmits to and receives from your network providers phone tower is encrypted, so that only the network operator can receive your calls and data and route them as you request. This is all encrypted with a set of keys on the sim card inside your phone and another set …
Read More »NZ journalist raided during work on Snowden documents
Nicky Hager is an independent, New Zealand based journalist, who's perhaps most well known for going after the NZ National party before the latest election, publishing a book which showed key members of the PM's government had sent information about their political opponents to a right wing blogger. Last month, …
Read More »Snowden on those that say ‘I have nothing to hide’
Over the past year, the world has become much more aware of the way government's sniff out data on potential criminals: in short, everything is recorded. Edward Snowden's revelations about this have helped create a growing tide of disquiet with regards to overly intrusive surveillance and especially when it comes …
Read More »Internet MANA in big final push before NZ election
With the New Zealand national elections set to take place tomorrow, Kim Dotcom and Laila Harré's Internet MANA party has been firing off its last salvos to try and get people out to vote, including encouraging people to vote for someone other than the Internet MANA party if it means …
Read More »Dotcom, Snowden, Assange, Greenwald all attack NZ PM
Yesterday, some of the biggest names in the public fight for internet freedoms and personal privacy made an appearance together in Auckland, New Zealand, to talk to Internet Party members and concerned citizens, about the upcoming New Zealand general election and they spent a lot of their time criticising the”adolescent” …
Read More »Snowden discussions much more common offline than on
If you've ever lamented the fact that your friends on Facebook or some other social platform don't seem particularly interested in discussing Edward Snowden and the revelations he made last year that opened everyone's eyes to the reach of government intelligence agencies, it might just be that they prefer to …
Read More »David Cameron wants the news to stop talking about Snowden
Barack Obama might have been pretty non-committal in his response to the Edward Snowden leaks about NSA and GCHQ spying on native and international citizens, but David Cameron has shrugged them off, suggesting that they shouldn't be a surprise to everyone, since TV detective shows are always using potentially illegal spying …
Read More »Here’s what Obama is changing about ‘intelligence’ gathering
Since Edward Snowden dropped the bombshell last year that the NSA and other intelligence agencies (we're looking at you – while you look at us – GCHQ) around the world were snooping through our digital underwear drawers, there's one person we all wanted to hear from: Obama. While he's not …
Read More »Lavabit defied government request for SSL, shut down servers instead
There's been a lot of speculation over the past couple of months about why exactly Lavabit, the somewhat controversial, but always protected email service, shut down in August. There was certainly some links to Edward Snowden and there was speculation that it was to help the admins fight a US …
Read More »Tor usage trebles in mid August
Use of the anonymising Tor network has increased exponentially in the past couple of weeks, leading to not only the highest tracked user numbers since the birth of the service, but the largest growth spike too, leaving many people wondering what's been behind it. One of the suggested reasons, are …
Read More »Edward Snowden accepts temporary Russian asylum
Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked documents pertaining to the NSA's PRISM campaign and set off a worldwide revelation of how much governments are able to keep track of their citizens, has been granted asylum in Russia by President Putin, on the condition that he stops leaking U.S. secrets. …
Read More »XKeyScore: The NSA tool that can record everything you do online
We've all heard about PRISM at this point and we're all suitably terrified. Unfortunately, the scares don't stop there, as new documents released today have detailed one of the NSA's tools of the trade. Known as X-Keyscore, the metadata and content analysis tool is able to track down a person's …
Read More »NSA whistleblow outs himself
Edward Snowden, an ex-computer security admin for the US' CIA has revealed himself as the one that leaked internal government documents to the Guardian newspaper, in an effort to expose the controlling stake the US government had in the online interactions of not only its citizens, but those of foreign …
Read More »