omnibus PRISM/NSA/free Edward Snowden/encryption tutorial thread

Snowden memoir is out, getting some good reviews

The United States today filed a lawsuit against Edward Snowden, a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), who published a book entitled Permanent Record in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both CIA and NSA.

The lawsuit alleges that Snowden published his book without submitting it to the agencies for pre-publication review, in violation of his express obligations under the agreements he signed. Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that Snowden has given public speeches on intelligence-related matters, also in violation of his non-disclosure agreements.

The United States’ lawsuit does not seek to stop or restrict the publication or distribution of Permanent Record. Rather, under well-established Supreme Court precedent, Snepp v. United States, the government seeks to recover all proceeds earned by Snowden because of his failure to submit his publication for pre-publication review in violation of his alleged contractual and fiduciary obligations.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-files-civil-lawsuit-against-edward-snowden-publishing-book-violation-cia-and

Some of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s warrantless searches through the National Security Agency’s enormous troves of communications data violated the law and the Constitution, according to secret surveillance court rulings partially declassified on Tuesday.

The bureau’s so-called backdoor searches, long regarded by civil libertarians as a government end-run around warrant requirements, were overly broad, the court found. They appear to have affected what a judge on the court called “a large number of individuals, including U.S. persons.” On one day in December 2017 alone, the court found, the FBI conducted 6,800 queries of the NSA databases using Social Security numbers. The government, in secret, conceded that there were “fundamental misunderstandings” among some FBI personnel over the standards necessary for the searches....

As early as March 2018, the FISA Court identified to the government that the FBI was not sufficiently documenting which of its queries were tied to people inside the United States, despite a statutory obligation to do so. Nor were the searches “reasonably designed” to find evidence of crimes or foreign spying.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/secret-court-fbi-warrantless-searches-were-illegal

I'm shocked! Shocked!

anyone read his book yet?

I went control-f'ing for my name to see if I had participated in this thread much. Landed on this post and didn't know what to make of it: omnibus PRISM/NSA/free Edward Snowden/encryption tutorial thread

So I reverse image searched it and here was what Google was able to come up with.

https://i.imgur.com/LWrsVC9.png

Fun indeed, Google.

President Trump said on Saturday that he would consider pardoning Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who faced criminal charges after leaking classified documents about vast government surveillance.

“There are many, many people — it seems to be a split decision — many people think that he should be somehow be treated differently and other people think he did very bad things,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. “I’m going to take a very good look at it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/15/us/politics/trump-snowden-esper.html

I. Just. Can’t.

Congratulations GOP. This is who you are now. https://t.co/CAE98A7qjV

— Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) August 16, 2020

Who?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g8wb/hacker-got-my-texts-16-dollars-sakari-netnumber

It costs around $16 to steal anyone's SMS account, which can then be used to hijack their other accounts.

In utterly non-shocking news:

Edward Snowden swears allegiance to Russia and receives passport, lawyer says

Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked information about U.S. surveillance programs, swore an oath of allegiance to Russia and has collected his Russian passport, his lawyer told state media on Friday.

“Edward received a Russian passport yesterday and took the oath in accordance with the law,” lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency. “He is, of course, happy, thanking the Russian Federation for the fact that he received citizenship,” he continued. “And most importantly, under the Constitution of Russia, he can no longer be extradited to a foreign state.”