The father of a Chechen man shot and killed by FBI agents investigating the Boston Marathon bombing has hired two prominent Florida civil rights attorneys in his attempt to uncover the truth about his son‘s death.

We‘ve been trying to make the case over the past few months that the tech industry should be furious about what the NSA is doing, while also pointing out that it‘s likely to be very costly for a variety of American companies. Unfortunately, many still don‘t seem to be getting the message. Even with Lavabit shutting down rather than succumbing to order to do much greater surveillance, it still seems like many in the tech industry either seem to think this isn‘t a huge problem or that it will sort of blow over.

See “Project QUANTUM LEAP: After Action Report,” 12 September 2012. (..)

“We are currently in a ‘window’ of opportunity for exploitation of social media sources for application to CTF [counter threat finance] or other SOCOM NCR missions. This window could be as narrow as 18-24 months before the social media phenomenon transforms.

Zum einen wird nur nochmals deutlich, wie eng mit privaten Unternehmen zusammengearbeitet wird, die Expertise auf dem jeweiligen Sektor haben (Banken, Finanzen, Netzwerk-Analyse, Verkehr, etc.). Zum anderen ist man sich bewusst, dass man auch ohne Geheimdienst-Daten extrem aufschlussreiche Analysen erstellen kann, wenn man nur weiß, wo man suchen muss und wie man Daten aus unterschiedlichen Sektoren geschickt verknüpft.

Spain’s Foreign Ministry on Monday demanded “clarification and information” from the US Embassy concerning a report published in Der Spiegel that Spain was a target of secret surveillance by the Nation Security Agency.

Maybe he will start a restaurant or bar in or around Dallas, he surmised, “where I won’t have to deal with the F.B.I.”

He quickly added: “Hypothetically speaking.”

Asked whether he has had to deal with the F.B.I. during these last six weeks, he said he could not comment.

Phil Zimmermanns Unternehmen Silent Circle stellte daraufhin seinen verschlüsselten E-Mail-Dienst ein und vernichtete alle Daten. Lavabit hätte die Daten weiter auf den Servern gespeichert, sagte Levison. Er erklärte, ihm sei verboten worden, Gründe zu nennen oder zu sagen, ob es Gerichtsbeschlüsse dazu gebe.

spätestens mit den verschleiernden Äußerungen von Ronald Pofalla ist am Montag, den 12. August 2013 aus der NSA-Spähaffäre eine Vertuschungsaffäre der Regierung Merkel geworden.

Just last week we heard how Russia has extended its „think of the children“ law to include copyright infringement. That was a classic case of function creep, but here‘s a more direct invocation of „the children“ in order to attack unauthorized downloads of files, this time in the UK:

Egypt‘s interim president named at least 18 new provincial governors on Tuesday, half of them retired generals, in a shake-up that restored the influence of men from army and police backgrounds and flushed out Muslim Brotherhood members.

Last week, we wrote about how Vietnam had passed an incredibly broad new censorship law, which says that blogs and social media cannot „quote, gather or summarize“ information from the media or government websites.

Last week, we noted the ridiculousness of the DOJ‘s attempted defense of the government‘s use of Section 215 of the Patriot Act to scoop up all phone records on every call, claiming a very twisted definition of „relevant“ among other things. A variety of folks have been picking apart some of the claims in that analysis, and Orin Kerr has detailed some specific problems with the case law that the DOJ uses to back up its definition of „relevance.“

Innerhalb der USA soll nun ebenfalls in Sachen NSA Aufklärung betrieben werden. Hierzu hat die Regierung einen unabhängigen Spezialisten gewonnen, der sich mit geheimdienstlichen Belügen von Parlament und Öffentlichkeit perfekt auskennt: James Robert Clapper, seit 2010 oberster Geheimdienstchef der USA und ehemaliger Angestellter der outgesourcten Schlapphut-Firma Booz Allen Hamilton, wo auch Edward Snowden seinen Dienst schob.

„Die Bundesregierung hat den Bundesnachrichtendienst beauftragt, einen entsprechenden Vorschlag zu erarbeiten. Hierzu hat der Bundesnachrichtendienst inzwischen Vertreter der EU-Partnerdienste zu einer ersten Besprechung eingeladen“, heißt es dort.

According to his dad, while Justin was playing a video game „[S]omeone had said something to the effect of ‚Oh you‘re insane, you‘re crazy, you‘re messed up in the head. To which [Justin] replied ‚Oh yeah, I‘m real messed up in the head, I‘m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were ‚lol and jk‘ [all sic].“

Even though it was a clear joke — underscored by the shorthand for „laugh out loud“ and „just kidding“ — a woman who saw the post reported Justin to the police. Now he‘s in jail for making „terroristic threats“ and faces $500,000 for bail and up to 8 years in prison!

Join EFF in calling on the CEOs of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, YouTube, Apple, and the President of Skype to demand a full Congressional investigation into NSA spying.

To try to give the talks a chance, however, Washington and other world powers should hold off imposing new sanctions on Iran, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report.

Die Partei „Alternative für Deutschland“ ist der breiten Öffentlichkeit nur durch eine einzige Person bekannt: Prof. Bernd Lucke. In Talkshows ist der Parteivorsitzende ein gern gesehener Gast. Seine Argumente in Eurofragen wirken überaus kompetent und zeugen keinesfalls von einer Alternativlosigkeit. Und trotzdem hat er ein Problem: Die Wähler nehmen Bernd Lucke nicht an.

The Muslim Brotherhood is ready to take part in talks on Egypt‘s political crisis mediated by the country‘s leading Islamic authority, as long as they are on the right terms, its spokesman said on Tuesday.