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... 

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... 

The entrance to the headquarters of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND. Der Spiegel magazine has revealed German intelligence operated one of NSA’s spying programs. Chancellor Angela Merkel had denied any previous knowledge of NSA’s tactics, adding that she first learned about them through the media. Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, along with the domestic intelligence... 

The Obama administration has renewed the authority for the National Security Agency to regularly collect the phone records of millions of Americans as allowed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The United States government has reportedly asked the FISA court every 90 days since 2006 to renew an order that compels the nation’s telecommunication providers to hand over telephony metadata... 

Microsoft’s general counsel has written to the US Attorney General Eric Holder saying that the secrecy regarding the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance is damaging the “constitutional principles” of America. Microsoft has asked the Obama administration to allow it to share details about how it responds to requests from the US government for user account data. Microsoft’s general counsel... 

In the wake of NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s recent revelations, the Obama administration may be willing to backtrack on some of its more notorious surveillance policies, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told reporters. The long-time member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday that privacy and civil liberties advocates could be on the verge of “making a comeback” due to the blowback caused... 

The splash page for the social networking website Facebook. Venezuela’s prisons minister has called on Venezuelans to cancel their accounts on the social networking website Facebook in a move to refrain from being targeted by US spying. Maria Iris Varela said in a message posted on Twitter, “Fellow Venezuelans: cancel your Facebook accounts, since you unwittingly have worked as CIA informants!... 

US National Security Agency (NSA) fugitive leaker Edward Snowden (C) during a meeting with rights activists, with among them Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks (L), at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, on July 12, 2013 NSA leaker & former CIA employee Edward Snowden has asked for political asylum in Russia, saying he could not fly to Latin America, according to human rights activists who met the whistleblower... 

US surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden Fugitive US surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden says the United States and Israel created the Stuxnet computer virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear energy program. In an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel published on Monday, Snowden, who has been holed up in a Moscow airport since June, said the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Israel... 

As Brazil awaits Washington’s response on reports that US spy agencies also conducted surveillance on Brazilian companies and citizens, its lawmakers are urging the nation’s president to cancel her October visit to the White House. Brazilian politicians have called on President Dilma Rousseff to adopt a tough position against Washington and cancel her official meeting with US President Barack... 

Britain has blocked talks between the US and the European Union on the US spying on the EU saying the bloc has no authority to discuss Americans’ methods to safeguard their national security. The EU and the US were to form two working groups on intelligence and espionage and on data privacy and the US National Security Agency’s Prism program and sit down for talks in Washington on Monday for talks. However,... 

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden shown in photo on the paper. France has urged the European Union to postpone talks with the United States on a major free trade agreement due to the recent allegations about US spying on EU offices. The EU-US trade talks are set to begin in Washington on July 8, but the revelations of US spying on European diplomatic missions have cast them... 

Tensions between Kim Dotcom and Prime Minister John Key were raised as the pair sparred at a parliamentary committee hearing on the government’s proposed surveillance law, with Dotcom voicing his opposition to the controversial legislation. The New Zealand government has proposed a change in the law to allow the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCJB) to provide support to the New Zealand... 

The NSA has a “brand new” technology that enables one billion cell phone calls a day to be redirected into its data hoards and stored, according to the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who said that a new leak of Snowden’s documents was ‘coming soon.’ Calling it part of a “globalized system to destroy all privacy,” and the enduring creation of a climate of fear, Greenwald outlined the...