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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.
You might wonder why a pro-democracy country is spying on a pro-democracy campaigner. It's not because of any 'terrorist' BS, that's just the excuse. They monitored him, so that when they negotiate with Fiji in future, they can offer him up as a bargaining chip.
From the article: "Fullman reckons the timing of the raids was connected with the New Zealand foreign minister’s visit to Fiji for trade talks, just days later."
And this is why NSA and GCHQ spying on their own countrymen's communications is a bad thing (it is NOT harmless). Because the data they capture is used in political deals against the rights of the target and against the interests of the country as a whole.
New Zealand would have pulled his passport to secure a trade deal if necessary, so that they could tout a trade deal as a political win. All hidden from legal and democratic observation by the veil of 'security'.
I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for how helping protect Fiji's military government from possible plots connects with the goal of protecting the US from terrorism, right?
Was the NSA trying to protect the TSA from dehydration by ensuring that American air travelers would continue to have that Fiji bottled water to confiscate?
It's illegal for most countries to spy on their own citizens, but it's not illegal to share spy data with allies and have them give you the information on your own citizens that your own laws preclude?
This is a violation of the spirit if not the letter of the law. Acquiring such information from allies should be just as illegal as spying on your country's own citizens, full stop.
Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours:
You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.
Fig. You do a favor for me and I'll do a favor for you.; If you do something for me that I cannot do for myself, I will do something for you that you cannot do for yourself. I'll grab the box on the top shelf if you will creep under the table and pick up my pen. You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.
http://idioms.thefreedictionar...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
...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?
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.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
If one gives me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something there to hang him.
—Cardinal Richelieu
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.