“Ukraine’s Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and other regions are witnessing the ruthless suppression of civil liberties on a daily basis. Journalists are being threatened with their lives if they continue to report from Ukraine,” the letter reads, signed by the heads of All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), NTV, REN TV, Channel 5, RT and News Media.

Die nachfolgende Übersicht weist für den Betrachtungszeitraum 2013 die von staatlichen Stellen gegenüber der Telekom angeordneten Anschlussüberwachungen sowie die beauskunfteten Verkehrsdatensätze, Teilnehmerbestandsdaten und IP-Adressen aus:

Anschlussüberwachungen: 49.796
Verkehrsdatensätze: 436.331
Teilnehmerbestandsdaten: 28.162
IP-Adressinhaberdaten: 946.641

An idea the government has been kicking around since 2011 is finally making its debut. Calling this move ill-timed would be the most gracious way of putting it.

Meanwhile, the technology for more secure next-gen authentication exists, developed by various tech firms in the public sector, but security groups have had a hell of a time implementing any of them on a broad scale. Enter the government, which proposed the national ID strategy to help standardize the process using a plan called the „identity ecosystem.“

Once you‘ve ceded the high ground, it‘s very difficult to reclaim it. At this time last year, the Secretary of State could have gotten away with the following remarks, but just barely. The NSA documents had not yet been revealed, but the US government had been giving up chunks of free speech high ground for quite some time.

Now, with the NSA‘s programs exposed, along with this administration‘s quest to punish whistleblowers and maintain the opacity left behind by the Bush administration, there‘s no approaching the high ground. But that didn‘t stop John Kerry — in his remarks to the Freedom Online Coalition Conference — from planting a flag halfway up and declaring it the summit. (h/t to Dan Froomkin of the Intercept)

A 94-year-old grandmother in Rome is one of six elderly people living with a robotic ‚caretaker‘ as part of an European Commission (EC) project, the EC said Monday in a statement.

”I followed that up a month later with a short post noting how the two “princelings” of the neoconservative movement and co-founders of both the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and its successor organization, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), Bob Kagan and Bill Kristol, had themselves split on the issue, with Kristol (citing Israel’s position) expressing doubt about the wisdom of cutting military aid, and Kagan demanding that it be cut.

These are not the first reports of US involvement in the Ukraine interim government, and rumors began circulating almost immediately after the takeover of Blackwater troops on the ground in Ukraine, while CIA head John Brennan’s high profile visit only added to the speculation.

Last week, the White House released its report on big data and its privacy implications, the result of a 90-day study commissioned by President Obama during his January 17 speech on NSA surveillance reforms. Now that we’ve had a chance to read the report we’d like to share our thoughts on what we liked, what we didn’t, and what we thought was missing.

„Der Untersuchungsausschuss arbeitet im Auftrag des gesamten Parlaments. Deshalb vertraue ich darauf, dass der Ausschuss seine Rechte auch gegenüber der Bundesregierung wirkungsvoll durchsetzen wird“, sagte SPD-Fraktionschef Thomas Oppermann SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Oppermann nahm Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel (CDU) und die zuständigen Minister in die Pflicht.

Die Bundesregierung will im Fall NSA dem Untersuchungsausschuss Akten vorenthalten – das Staatswohl sei gefährdet. Doch das Wohl des Staates ist Regierung und Parlament gleichermaßen anvertraut.