NSA

A former White House security advisor has suggested that you, dear reader, are naive if you think hosting data outside of the US will protect a business from the NSA.

"NSA and any other world-class intelligence agency can hack into databases even if they not in the US," said former White House security advisor Richard Clarke in a speech at the Cloud Security Alliance summit in San Francisco on Monday. "Non-US companies are using NSA revelations as a marketing tool."

A civilian NSA employee recently resigned after being stripped of his security clearance for allowing former agency contractor Edward Snowden to use his personal log-in credentials to access classified information, according to an agency memo obtained by NBC News.

In addition, an active duty member of the U.S. military and a contractor have been barred from accessing National Security Agency facilities after they were “implicated” in actions that may have aided Snowden, the memo states. Their status is now being reviewed by their employers, the memo says.

It was a walk down memory lane for Mark Klein on Tuesday night, when a crowd gathered to hear him speak out, yet again, about the secret sharing of data between a top communications company and the US government.

Klein, a retired AT&T technician, leaked several internal AT&T documents in 2006 that showed that the NSA was collecting data from AT&T through a restricted room, 641A.

Love him or loathe him, Edward Snowden has made a huge impact on the country, and the world, with the revelations that were leaked out about the National Security Agency and its tendency to spy on citizens both home and abroad.

To make that kind of impact, and to gain access to the documents in question, there must have been some pretty high level hacking going. Like, it must have been hard work, right?

Four tech giants embroiled in the government’s secret PRISM collection program reported today that they had received classified national security demands for the contents of at least 59,000 user accounts during the first half of 2013.

After the NSA leaks began last summer, tech companies asked for permission to reveal more information about what kind of user data they provide in response to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders.

A group of hackers and a human rights organization are suing the German government for allegedly conducting illegal spying activities and aiding the National Security Agency and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Professor Jean-Jacques Quisquater, a Belgian cryptographer whose work is said to have informed card payment systems worldwide, has reportedly become the victim of a spear-phishing attack by the NSA and/or GCHQ.

Belgium's De Standaaard reports that Professor Quisquater clicked on a fake LinkedIn invitation that infected his computer with something even nastier than the endless claims of industry leadership spouted by those most active on that network. The malware is said to have allowed tracking of the Professor's work, including consultancy for various firms.

 Here's comes another challenge to the constitutionality of the NSA's programs. The ACLU has joined defendant Jamshid Muhtorov in filing a motion that claims his Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the NSA's surveillance efforts and seeks to suppress the admission of that evidence.

The National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program received a highly charged constitutional challenge on Wednesday. This first-of-its-kind challenge comes via a motion filed by attorneys for Jamshid Muhtorov, an Uzbek refugee, Colorado resident, and accused terrorist, whose e-mail and possibly other communications were secretly gathered by the US government.

Muhtorov's motion not only sets up a likely court test of the constitutionality of government eavesdropping, but it could also be a signal of many more cases to come.