PRISM

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has claimed he taught a course in “cyber-counterintelligence” against China and has access to data on every active operation mounted against the People’s Republic by the US spy agency.

In a lengthy interview with the New York Times, Snowden revealed more about his time at the National Security Agency and addressed US government concerns that Russian or Chinese spies may have compromised the classified documents he pilfered before fleeing to Hong Kong.

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Association contractor who leaked secrets about widespread surveillance, has spoken to the press for the first time since getting asylum in Russia. New York Times reporter James Risen talked to the whistleblower through "encrypted online communications" over the course of the last week.

Snowden maintained that his leaks helped, rather than hurt, US security. “The secret continuance of these programs represents a far greater danger than their disclosure,” he told the paper.

The New Zealand government has softened its contentious network surveillance bill by removing a ban on operators selling overseas services in the country if they are deemed in breach of national security requirements.

Communications and information technology minister Amy Adams yesterday tabled a supplementary order paper (PDF) with changes to the proposed Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill (TCIS), based on feedback from from the public and the industry as well as recommendations from the parliamentary Law and Order select committee.

The leaders who run the internet’s technical global infrastructure say the time has come to end U.S. dominance over it.

In response to leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Fadi Chehadé, who heads the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and others have called for “an environment, in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on equal footing.”

As the American federal government shutdown nears the week mark, there’s been another casualty: a planned surveillance review panel.

The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which was announced by President Obama in August, was scheduled to meet last week for the first time. However, according to a recent Politico report, the group did not convene.

The U.S. National Security Agency has repeatedly tried to compromise Tor, the government-funded online anonymity tool, but has had little success, according to a new report in the U.K.'s Guardian.

The volume and level of detail of the classified documents describing government intelligence gathering leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden indicate that he might not have acted alone, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said today.

The flood of stories on government spying will not be slowing soon -- in fact the majority of the most important documents detailing how the U.S. National Security Agency collects personal data have not been published yet, journalists from U.K. newspaper The Guardian said on Tuesday.

Edward Snowden, the fugitive American former intelligence worker, has made the shortlist of three for the Sakharov prize, Europe's top human rights award.

Mr Snowden was nominated by Green politicians in the European Parliament for leaking details of US surveillance. Nominees also include Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot in the head for demanding education for girls.

Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials, an investigation by The New York Times has revealed.