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First Confirmed Prism Surveillance Target Was Democracy Activist (fortune.com)
A new report by Television New Zealand in collaboration with The Intercept, based on leaks of former U.S. National Security Agency worker Edward Snowden has for the first time named a target of the NSA's controversial Prism program. The target was a middle-aged civil servant and pro-democracy activist named Tony Fullman. Fullman, who is originally from Fiji but has lived in New Zealand for decades, is an advocate for democracy in Fiji and a critic of Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama, who took power in a 2006 coup. From a Fortune report: According to The Intercept, the NSA in 2012 monitored Fullman's communications through the Prism program and passed on information to the New Zealand intelligence services. Around the same time, the New Zealand authorities raided Fullman's home and revoked his passport. The New Zealand intelligence services were not themselves allowed to spy on Fullman, who was a New Zealand citizen. However, as Snowden has repeatedly described, the agencies of many Anglophone countries spy on each other's behalf, in order to bypass their national legal restrictions. Fullman suggested in the article that people in the group may well have said violent things about Bainimarama, but this was just venting, not a plot. According to the report, they never suspected someone was listening into their communications. The NSA was said to be helping by analyzing Fullman's Facebook and Gmail activities. The 190 pages of intercepted documentation seen by The Intercept apparently didn't reveal evidence of a plot.
And this is exactly why the general public needs encryption and why various TLA outfits and buddies like to use the "think of the children" garbage to denounce it.
...in our own government.
However, as Snowden has repeatedly described, the agencies of many Anglophone countries spy on each other's behalf, in order to bypass their national legal restrictions
I am not surprised, but I am very, very disappointed. We have let the terrorists win because we have let them cow us into abandoning any sense of justice and liberty for some bullshit illusion of security. I now fear my own government far more than I fear "teh terrorists". That, or in a more cynical view, the oligarch's who control much of the "free world" are using this opportunity to consolidate their power and neutralize threats. Either way, Snowden should receive the Medal of Freedom.
Simple. He is an activist that promotes Democracy. He believes in things like freedom, liberty and in the rights of the individual.
What could be a bigger crime in the west today than promoting Democracy?
>helping protect Fiji's military government from possible plots
Rather odd that NZ would do that, considering that both NZ and Australia called Bainimarama a dictator and imposed sanctions against Fiji for years. But he got elected PM in 2014, so it's all cool now.
It can be pretty embarrassing politically for a government to have a plot to kill a foreign head of state hatched on their soil, so if they thought he was a possible threat it was in their interest to monitor him. You can also take the recent "coup" attempt in Turkey as another reason: it can help provide evidence for/against another state's claim that an expat dissident might have masterminded failed, poorly executed coup that is now being used as an excuse to purge other dissenting individuals and entities
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
if government agencies can get around laws restricting them from spying on you without consequence then what makes you think the average person can rely on easily available encryption to protect them?
Getting around math is not like getting around a law. That's the short answer to that point.
Unless people are mathematicians themselves, they are unable to personally verify the effectiveness of an encryption algorithm. When you use an encryption algorithm, you have to trust it works without a secret decryption algorithm.