A conference on Internet governance is set to start in Brazil in the wake of revelations about global spying activities by the United States. Representatives from around the world will attend the two-day NETMundial summit, which begins in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo on Wednesday. They are expected to set out principles for governing the Internet. Reports also say that some of the countries taking... 

American and British intelligence hope to take advantage of social media platforms, like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, in an effort to spread disinformation and propaganda, as well as potentially foment public protests, recent Snowden leaks claim. According to Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the news on the Snowden NSA leaks, an Orwellian-style dystopia is lurking on the horizon as... 

The spoof front page of the Angry Birds website Hackers briefly vandalized the website of popular mobile game Angry Birds after revelations that its users’ data has been leaked to the NSA. But the app’s Finnish maker has hit out at accusations that it is helping spy agencies. On Wednesday night, the front page of the website of the game – which has been downloaded a record 1.7 billion times by... 

NSA headquarters US officials on Friday slammed plans to construct an EU-centric communication system, designed to prevent emails and phone calls from being swept up by the NSA, warning that such a move is a violation of trade laws. Calling Europe’s proposal to build its own integrated communication system “draconian,” the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) said American tech companies,... 

The NSA’s data base contains information obtained during the surveillance of over a hundred world leaders, new leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed. Der Spiegel has looked through a top secret presentation by NSA’s Center for Content Extraction, which is responsible for automated analysis of all types of text data. According to the document, the leaders of 122 states were among... 

US Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he takes some credit for President Obama’s decision to end the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program. In an interview after Obama announced the change on Tuesday, Paul was asked on “Fox and Friends” if it would make him happy for phone companies, not the government, to retain the metadata. “Well, you know, I don’t want to take... 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei. Beijing has demanded a clear explanation from Washington over reports of espionage by the US National Security Agency (NSA) on Chinese institutions. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said on Monday that Beijing is gravely concerned about the claims and demands that any such spying be stopped. “China has already lodged many complaints with... 

Libertarian Kentucky Senator Rand Paul warns in a speech today that he believes US spooks and shadow government agencies are ” drunk with power”, and that elected representatives are privately afraid of those operating behind the curtain. In a scheduled appearance at the University of California-Berkeley, Paul will address the continuing domestic spying controversy. In prepared comments Paul... 

Former intelligence officials say most of Snowden’s documents are related to US military capabilities. Former US intelligence officials have warned that American whistleblower Edward Snowden might disclose US war plans to China and Russia, according to a report. The Hill reported in an article on Wednesday that “US officials might not know for years whether former National Security Agency contractor... 

The EU threatens the abolition of its trade agreement with the US, and other deals, if blanket surveillance by the NSA on EU citizens doesn’t stop. MEPs announced a resolution that wraps up a six-month inquiry into America’s violation of data privacy. Edward Snowden became one of the pillars of this resolution, following an invitation from the European Parliament to provide testimony for the inquiry.... 

Yet more previously secret surveillance operations waged by the United States National Security Agency were made public Wednesday morning thanks to leaked documents supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The files — published first by The Intercept this week and dissected over the course of a 3,000-word article attributed to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher — bring to... 

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden answered questions before the European Parliament on Friday, saying that the United States spy agency pressures its allies to take steps towards further enabling widespread and indiscriminate surveillance. “One of the foremost activities of the NSA’s FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their... 

Google chairman Eric Schmidt admitted on Friday that government attacks from China and the US forced his company to enhance security protocols. Speaking at the SXSW technology conference in Austin, Texas, Schmidt said governments around the world have realized that attempts to block internet access are futile and have moved on to other methods of control. “You don’t turn off the Internet: you... 

British and American surveillance agencies teamed up to develop a system that collected millions of images from the webcams of unsuspecting and innocent internet users, new leaked documents reveal. This “Optic Nerve” program — administered by the UK’s GCHQ with the assistance of the National Security Agency — routinely intercepted and stored those webcam images in secret starting in... 

Secret units within the ‘Five Eyes” global spying network engage in covert online operations that aim to invade, deceive, and control online communities and individuals through the spread of false information and use of ingenious social-science tactics. Such teams of highly trained professionals have several main objectives, such as “to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet”...