/08

In U.S., News of Surveillance Effort Is Met With Some Concern but Little Surprise - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/many-americans-appear-resigned-to-surveillance.html

Résignés le plus souvent, et même rassurés parfois.

It was not that people were not upset to learn that the government might be tracking their telephone calls, Facebook posts and Yahoo accounts. It was that in this age of “Homeland,” and in a culture that encourages people to share photos and minute-by-minute activities and opinions on public Web sites, the news that the government might be looking in too was often something short of a surprise.

“It stinks,” said Steve Talley, 64, a retired state worker in Mount Airy, N.C., a small, conservative town near the border with Virginia.

“I don’t mean to be cynical, but this is nothing new,” Mr. Talley said. “If people think the government hasn’t been monitoring whatever they want to, whenever they want to they are sorely mistaken.”

At the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago, Cedric Hudson, 55, an unemployed machine technician, said he was resigned to these kinds of governmental intrusions.

“It doesn’t bother me because the government is going to do what they’re going to do regardless of what anyone thinks,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

In Atlanta, Mike Brooks, 65, a construction worker, said he lived his life assuming that he was being watched. “Anything and everything you say, they could be privy — that’s what I assume,” he said. “If you’re dumb enough to put this online, then it’s your stupidity.”

And Molly Flores, 28, a fashion designer walking in Midtown Manhattan, said she was neither surprised nor concerned by the surveillance.

“Personally, I have nothing to hide, so it’s not really affecting me,” she said. “It’s not like they’re invading my privacy. I worry about New York because it’s such a target.”

Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-bristling-concede-to-government-surveillance-efforts.html

Seul Twitter n’aurait pas, « au moins un peu », coopéré,

When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.

Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests. And in some cases, they changed their computer systems to do so.

The negotiations shed a light on how Internet companies, increasingly at the center of people’s personal lives, interact with the spy agencies that look to their vast trove of information — e-mails, videos, online chats, photos and search queries — for intelligence. They illustrate how intricately the government and tech companies work together, and the depth of their behind-the-scenes transactions.

The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL; Apple; and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence.

News of U.S. Surveillance Draws Anger Abroad - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/news-of-us-surveillance-draws-anger-abroad.html

Une des ramifications de la divulgation du PRISM : l’étendue de l’hypocrisie du régime étasunien quand il fustige la surveillance électronique des citoyens des pays tenus par des régimes ennemis.

Many were particularly angry and cynical that the Obama administration, which has promoted the free-flow of information, open government and unfettered thought, appeared, in the name of protecting Americans against terrorist attacks, to be secretly practicing the same police-state behavior it has so loudly denounced.

“This definitely undermines the administration’s credibility, especially when defending freedom of expression and communication,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an advocacy group based in New York.

Et certains (ex) conspirationnistes triomphent,

In Pakistan’s tribal areas, some said they had long assumed that Internet tools like Facebook, Google and Twitter were really Western surveillance mechanisms. “We have been saying that these forums are Zionist creations to pave the way for a new world order and to keep an eye on people around the world,” said one commander, Ihsanullah Ihsan. Another said his operatives used messengers to convey critical information, avoiding the phone or the Internet.

Et Saniora aura du mal à invoquer des raisons économiques à l’avenir,

Some groups that face American scrutiny took precautions long ago to try and shield themselves from electronic eavesdropping and dependence on Internet communications. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group that the United States and Israel regard as a terrorist organization, for example, has invested much time and money, assisted by Iran, in building its own communication networks.

Le NYT ▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-called-crucial-to-fight-terror.html citant des officiels rapporte que sans le PRISM beaucoup de vies innocentes étasuniennes auraient été perdues.

On peut lire un compte-rendu en français ici ▻http://blogues.lapresse.ca/hetu/2013/06/08/un-complot-dejoue-par-la-nsa

En février 2010, Najibullah Zazi, un ressortissant afghan accusé d’avoir préparé un attentat à la bombe dans le métro de Manhattan, a plaidé coupable devant un tribunal fédéral de Brooklyn, reconnaissant qu’il avait prévu de s’enlever la vie au cours d’une opération-martyre pour attirer l’attention sur ce que l’armée américaine fait aux civils en Afghanistan.

Selon un article publié aujourd’hui dans le New York Times, l’Agence nationale de sécurité (NSA) et son programme PRISM ont joué un rôle clé dans l’arrestation de Zazi grâce à l’interception de courriels transmis à une adresse électronique sous surveillance au Pakistan. Selon le Times, Barack Obama avait ce genre d’opération à l’esprit hier lorsqu’il a défendu le programme permettant à la NSA et au FBI d’accéder aux serveurs de plusieurs sociétés internet américaines.

...

Le Times fait état de huit autres complots qui auraient été déjoués grâce au programme de la NSA.

Une affirmation qui est disputée :
Public Documents Contradict Claim Email Spying Foiled Terror Plot
▻http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/public-documents-contradict-claim-email-spying-foiled-terror

British and American legal documents from 2010 and 2011 contradict that claim, which appears to be the latest in a long line of attempts to defend secret programs by making, at best, misleading claims that they were central to stopping terror plots. While the court documents don’t exclude the possibility that PRISM was somehow employed in the Zazi case, the documents show that old-fashioned police work, not data mining, was the tool that led counterterrorism agents to arrest Zazi. The public documents confirm doubts raised by the blogger Marcy Wheeler and the AP’s Adam Goldman, and call into question a defense of PRISM first floated by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who suggested that PRISM had stopped a key terror plot.