German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger German justice minister says the European Union needs tougher data protection laws, with sanctions against US firms that violate them. German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said Monday that Germany’s strong privacy rules serve as the ideal standard for the 28-member EU, amid revelations of intruding US surveillance... 

Amid escalating denunciations and threats against both Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA) contractor-turned whistle-blower, and Russia, which granted Snowden temporary asylum on Thursday, the Obama administration on Friday issued a “global travel alert,” closing US embassies in Tripoli, Cairo, Tel Aviv, Baghdad, Riyadh and Doha based on supposed threats of Al Qaeda attacks. In... 

A grassroots movement of Fourth Amendment activists is rallying across at least 20 US cities to protest illegal surveillance techniques by the American government. The protests “1984 Day,” named for George Orwell’s classic novel about an ultramodern surveillance state, have taken place across the nations, most notably in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington DC. The rallies have... 

The Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) is reporting today that Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) is proposing that the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA) issue an immediate “Situation: Grave, Do Not Travel” warning for the United States upgrading that North American nation from its current status as “Stable” and on par with a similar warning issued for the... 

Major telecom companies have been assisting the UK intelligence agency GCHQ by granting access to all the traffic passing through their fiber-optic cables – and by developing Trojan software, leaked papers obtained by German media reveal. The classified slides obtained by German news agencies Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and NDR list global telecommunication operators among the collaborators of the... 

The July 8, 2013 photo shows the former monitoring base of the U.S. intelligence organization National Security Agency (NSA) in Bad Aibling, near Munich. Germany says it has canceled its surveillance agreement with the US and Britain following the revelations by the former contractor to National Security Agency (NSA) Edward Snowden about Washington’s mass spying program worldwide. The agreement dated... 

The map of XKeyscore servers from a 2008 presentation New revelations about NSA surveillance systems show that it was enough to fill in a short ‘justification’ form before gaining access to any of billions of emails, online chats, or site visit histories through a vast aggregation program called XKeyscore. The structure of XKeyscore, leaked by the UK’s Guardian newspaper, is sourced from a classified... 

The National Security Agency has invited certain members of Congress to a top secret, invitation only meeting to discuss a proposed amendment that could end the NSA’s ability to conduct dragnet surveillance on millions of Americans. A letter circulated only to select lawmakers early Tuesday announced that NSA Director General Keith B. Alexander would host a question and answer session with members... 

A truly grim Federal Security Services (FSB) report circulating in the Kremlin today is confirming that the 13 July snap military drills ordered by President Putin involving nearly 200,000 Russia troops was in “direct response” to information obtained from US fugitive Edward Snowden; information that further caused the historic meeting of three American Presidents in Africa during the past few... 

NSA director General Keith B. Alexander met with lawmakers on Tuesday. The Obama administration tried on Tuesday to slow Congressional lawmakers’ opposition to the National Security Agency’s spying operations in the United States. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have proposed amendment to a military appropriations bill that would stop the financing for NSA phone data collection program... 

On July 16, the American whistleblower applied for temporary asylum in Russia, but his application could take up to three months to process. Russian officials have slammed US ‘double standards’ over routinely disregarding Moscow’s extradition requests of suspected terrorists and criminals. Representatives from Russia’s Ministry of Interior and the prosecutor general’s office issued separate... 

The Department of Justice told a federal court this week that the NSA’s spying “cannot be challenged in a court of law”. (This is especially dramatic given that numerous federal judges and legal scholars – including a former FISA judge – say that the FISA spying “court” is nothing but a kangaroo court.) Also this week, the Department of Justice told a federal court that the courts cannot... 

Anatoly Kucherena NSA leaker Edward Snowden plans to settle in Russia and is ready to begin a court battle if the country’s migration service denies his asylum plea, Anatoly Kucherena, a Russian lawyer who assists the whistleblower, told RT. “It’s hard for me to say what his actions would be in terms of a positive decision [on the asylum plea],” Kucherena said. “We must understand that security... 

Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden Former CIA director Michael Hayden said other countries will no longer have confidence in the United States after Edward Snowden’s revelations about the US government’s global surveillance programs. In an interview with CNN on Friday, Hayden said other intelligence services around the world will no longer “have confidence in the United States that we’re... 

Caracas brought talks with the US to an abrupt end over statements made by Samantha Power, the nominee for UN ambassador. Venezuela blasted Washington for backing Power’s “meddling agenda” after she criticized human rights in the country. The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry released a statement on Friday announcing an end to rapprochement negotiations between Washington and Caracas in Guatemala. “The...