Recently in NSA - September 30

Inspired by the extremely awesome www.thisdayinwikileaks.org/ (run by the also awesome @m_cetera) I'm now quietly introducing a similar (but not nearly as ambitious) feature here - focusing on the NSA-revelations by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

If you've been living under a rock for the past few months, you can watch him explain his actions, here:


Here goes:

• Today (September 30th) is an all-day conference in Lausanne (Switzerland) on privacy and surveillance in the light of the Snowden disclosures. Taking part is - amongst others:
  
  • ex-Microsoft Casper Bowden (@CasperBowden) who wrote this report [link (.pdf)] for the EU-parlament
  • Well-known journalist, researcher & activist Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror)
  • Security "guru" Bruce Scheier (@Scheierblog)
  • Ex-NSA whistleblower William Binney (watch him here - video)
  Here is Guardian Live-blog to follow through-out the day.
  
• Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) - who broke the Snowden-story in the Guardian & Jeremy Scahill (@jeremyscahill)- independent journalist of Blackwater + Dirty Wars fame announced that they are teaming up to disclose NSA involvement in the US Assassination program.
  

  "The connections between war and surveillance are clear. I don't want to give too much away but Glenn and I are working on a project right now that has at its center how the National Security Agency plays a significant, central role in the U.S. assassination program," said Scahill, speaking to moviegoers in Rio de Janeiro, where the documentary based on his book made its Latin American debut at the Rio Film Festival.

  "There are so many stories that are yet to be published that we hope will produce `actionable intelligence,' or information that ordinary citizens across the world can use to try to fight for change, to try to confront those in power," said Scahill.(Full AP article) 

• US journalists James Risen (who's being persecuted by the Obama-administration) and Laura Poitras (who's being persecuted by the Obama administration) broke the latest giant Snowden revelation in the New York Times:
  

  WASHINGTON — 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.
  [..]
  The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners. (Full NYT article)