Germans are expressing outrage as details of a US internet spy program – revealed by a former CIA employee-turned-whistleblower – are prompting comparisons with that of former communist East Germany’s Ministry for State Security. Unfortunately for Obama’s upcoming trip to Berlin, it was revealed that Germany ranks as the most-spied-on EU country by the US, a map of secret surveillance... 

Russia is willing to consider granting political asylum for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who blew the lid on the US PRISM program, Russian media reported. Snowden dropped out of sight Monday after he was last seen checking out of a Hong Kong hotel. “If we receive such a request, we will consider it,” Kommersant daily quoted President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov as... 

New documents reveal that the National Security Agency and the FBI are secretly gathering data from nine large U.S. internet companies. The Washington Post reported that the secret wiretapping program codenamed PRISM may be unprecedented. The internet companies involved include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple, the report said. The classified program allows... 

Spy program part of Orwellian plan to have children report on their mother & father. The Scottish government has ordered midwives in hospitals to spy on potentially racist parents as part of an Orwellian program that will also encourage children to report their parents to social workers by giving them a rating out of ten. “The project is part of the sinister Big Brother-style system of state... 

UK Home Secretary Theresa May said on Sunday that it is “essential” to grant intelligence agencies the capacity to access communications data, despite overwhelming opposition to the Draft Communications Data Bill, first published last year. The bill – widely known as the ‘Snooper’s Charter’– is making a comeback, alongside tighter controls on extremist groups, after a proposed stepping-up... 

FSB operation taking place in a small town of Orekhovo-Zuevo in Moscow region as Russia’s special services managed to foil a terror attack planned in the capital. Two suspected terrorists were killed and one was arrested after Russia’s FSB foiled a Muslim terror attack in Moscow. The captured militant has been hospitalized with fractures and a gunshot wound, but is reportedly able to talk to investigators. “Our... 

Brazil has added 30 US military robots to the Israeli drones and ‘Robocop-style’ glasses with face recognition cameras to its arsenal after the country allocated $900 million to make 2014 World Cup “one of the most protected sports events in history.” The 30 PackBot 510 units, which usually cost between $100,000 and $200,000 apiece, will arrive in Brazil as part of the $7.2... 

Oh just another eight hundred page “bipartisan” bill that nobody will read, mainstream media will refuse to cover, and that will merely further destroy any remnants of freedom left in these United States. Never forget the George Carlin quote on bipartisanship: “Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.” From Wired: The immigration reform measure the... 

The president of the Associated Press has sent a letter of protest to US Attorney General Eric Holder over the Department of Justice’s broad surveillance of individual reporters’ phone conversations. In a letter received by the AP on Friday, the Justice Department acknowledged but offered no explanation for the seizure of two months’ worth of telephone records of reporters and editors.... 

Privacy advocates can breathe a sigh of relief as the controversial US Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) appears to be all but dead in the water, with all signs pointing to it being shelved by the Senate. The bill, which was purportedly designed to allow the federal government to share private user information with corporations in situations of a suspected cyber threat, was the... 

Drones aren’t conducting surveillance 24/7 in the United States just yet, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about: in Dayton, Ohio, manned airplanes might soon do the spying. Officials with the Dayton City Commission recently announced that they hope to sign a $120,000 contract with a local security company in order to give law enforcement agencies an eye-in-the-sky ability unheard... 

The U.S. considers itself the most democratic country in the world. At the same time, the country is a leader when it comes to surveillance of its own citizens. If earlier more resources were required to monitor citizens, now extensive networks, high-speed computers and other modern technology significantly reduce costs. The Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg, commenting on the total implementation... 

Microsoft received 75,378 government requests in 2012 to disclose user information, a report reveals. The company joins the likes of Google, which handed over troves of user data to governments last year, raising concerns over privacy violations. The software giant claims the requests come from the FBI and as such the disclosure of the information can be justified. Microsoft revealed in its transparency... 

The Obama administration’s financial spying plan, which if enacted will grant spy agencies access to US citizens’ finance data, is a shocking attack on personal freedom, independent journalist Charlie McGrath has told RT. The planning document recently obtained by Reuters, dated March 4, showed that the legislation is primarily aimed at targeting and tracking terrorist cells, exposing money-laundering... 

The United States domestic drone surveillance program has been sharply condemned by experts who say that Washington violates American civil liberties, Press TV reports. “This kind of policy for unlimited surveillance…I think this is a dangerous precedent,” said Mounzer Sleiman, a US national security affairs analyst, adding that Americans “assume that this country is free and we have a constitution...