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In an angry exchange with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel has compared the snooping practices of the US with those of the Stasi, the ubiquitous and all-powerful secret police of the communist dictatorship in East Germany, where she grew up.The German chancellor also told the US president that America's National Security Agency cannot be trusted because of the volume of material it had allowed to leak to the whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to the New York Times.Livid after learning from Der Spiegel magazine that the Americans were listening in to her personal mobile phone, Merkel confronted Obama with the accusation: "This is like the Stasi."The newspaper also reported that Merkel was particularly angry that, based on the disclosures, "the NSA clearly couldn't be trusted with private information, because they let Snowden clean them out."

Snowden is to testify on the NSA scandal to a European parliament inquiry next month, to the anger of Washington which is pressuring the EU to stop the testimony.

A draft report by a European parliament inquiry into the affair, being presented on Wednesday and obtained by the Guardian, says there has to be a discussion about the legality of the NSA's operations and also of the activities of European intelligence agencies.The report drafted by Claude Moraes, the British Labour MEP heading the inquiry, says "we have received substantial evidence that the operations by intelligence services in the US, UK, France and Germany are in breach of international law and European law".

The drive to end the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency is gaining strength, as Senate Democrats said Sunday that Congress will change the law to ban the practice if President Obama does not do it first. “It’s time to have real reform, not a veneer of reform,” said Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), a longtime critic of the NSA. “We have got to rebuild the American people’s trust in our intelligence community so we can be safe,” he said on ABC’s "This Week." “But we don’t do that by bulk data collection that violates the privacy of Americans. That’s unconstitutional, and has shown to not be effective.” Last week, a federal judge said the routine collection of the dialing records is probably unconstitutional, and a panel appointed by President Obama recommended a major change. “We believe the government shouldn’t hold this data any longer,” Michael Morrell, a former acting director of the CIA and a panel member, said on CBS’ "Face the Nation." He said the phone records could be held by the phone companies or by another private group. Then, the government would “need a court order every time they wanted to query that data,” he said. Despite the need for reforms, Morrell said the original purpose of the program still makes sense. He said it is crucial the NSA and the FBI can move quickly if there is reason to believe that a “terrorist overseas is talking to someone in the United States.”

But the government does not need to collect and store all of these dialing records, he said, so long as they are held in private hands. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said he will press ahead in January to pass a bill that forbids the NSA from collecting phone records. He is sponsoring the USA Freedom Act with former House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) to close what they now see as a loophole in the law.

Public Citizen Defends Merchant From Unconstitutional Interference by NSA, Department of Homeland Security In Lawsuit Filed Against Agencies, Public Citizen Argues That Attempts to Stop Production of Parody Merchandise Are Inconsistent With First Amendment BALTIMORE, Md. – A Minnesota activist who uses images and names of government agencies on satirical merchandise is entitled to do so under the First Amendment, Public Citizen argued in a lawsuit filed today against the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on behalf of the merchant. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, targets cease-and-desist letters sent to the merchant’s producer by the NSA and DHS. On his website LibertyManiacs.com, Sauk Rapids, Minn., resident Dan McCall sells T-shirts, hats, bumper stickers and other items with his designs, printed by Zazzle.com – for example, a mug with the NSA seal above the words “Spying On You Since 1952” and a parodied NSA seal that says “Peeping While You’re Sleeping” above the words “The NSA: The only part of government that actually listens.”

On March 15, 2011, Zazzle received a warning letter from the NSA, and on Aug 11, 2011, it received one from DHS. The NSA said that Zazzle, by selling the merchandise, was in violation of a provision of the National Security Agency Act of 1959 that prohibits the “use [of] the words ‘National Security Agency,’ the initials, ‘NSA,’ the seal of the National Security Agency, or any colorable imitation of such words … in connection with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency” without the permission of the NSA. DHS said that Zazzle, by selling McCall’s DHS parody items, was in violation of a law making it a crime to “mutilate or alter the seal of any department or agency of the United States,” among other provisions. In the lawsuit filed in defense of McCall, Public Citizen points out that the graphics did not create any likelihood of confusion about source or sponsorship, and no reasonable person would believe that the agencies themselves produced merchandise with those messages. The complaint also asserts that the First Amendment protects McCall and Zazzle’s right to use the seals to accurately identify the agencies he is criticizing. “The agencies’ attempts to forbid McCall from displaying and selling his merchandise are inconsistent with the First Amendment,” said Paul Alan Levy, the Public Citizen attorney handling the case. “It’s bad enough that these agencies have us under constant surveillance; forbidding citizens from criticizing them is beyond the pale.”

Public Citizen is asking the court to declare that several provisions of the National Security Agency Act cannot be enforced to forbid McCall from displaying his merchandise, and that two other laws are unconstitutionally overbroad because they violate the First Amendment by saying no one can “mutilate or alter the seal of any department or agency of the United States.” McCall is now selling his merchandise at CafePress.com. See the full complaint for declaratory relief here.

Privacy may not be the only casualty of the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program. Major sectors of the US economy are reporting financial damage as the recent revelations shake consumer confidence and US trade partners distance themselves from companies that may have been compromised by the NSA or, worse, are secretly collaborating with the spy agency. Member of Congress, especially those who champion America’s competitiveness in the global marketplace, should take note and rein in the NSA now if they want to stem the damage.

The fallout may worsen. One study released shortly after the first Edward Snowden leaks said the economy would lose $22 to $35 billion in the next three years. Another study by Forrester said the $35 billion estimate was too low and pegged the real loss figure around $180 billion for the US tech industry by 2016.

Members of Congress who care about the US economy should take note: the companies losing their competitive edge due to NSA surveillance are mainstream economic drivers. Just as their constituents are paying attention, so are the customers who vote with their dollars. As Sen. Ron Wyden remarked last month, “If a foreign enemy was doing this much damage to the economy, people would be in the streets with pitchforks.”

President Obama’s speech on Friday outlining changes to the National Security Agency’s collection of telephone and internet data did not register widely with the public. Half say they have heard nothing at all about his  proposed changes to the NSA, and another 41% say they heard only a little bit. Even among those heard about Obama’s speech, few think the changes will improve privacy protections, or make it more difficult for the government to fight terrorism.

The new national survey by the Pew Research Center and USA TODAY, conducted Jan. 15-19 among 1,504 adults, finds that overall approval of the program has declined since last summer, when the story first broke based on Edward Snowden’s leaked information. Today, 40% approve of the government’s collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts, while 53% disapprove. In July, more Americans approved (50%) than disapproved (44%) of the program. In addition, nearly half (48%) say there are not adequate limits on what telephone and internet data the government can collect; fewer (41%) say there are adequate limits on the government’s data collection. About four-in-ten Republicans (39%) and independents (38%) – and about half of Democrats (48%) – think there are adequate limits on the information that the government can collect.

Reflecting the limited impact of Obama’s address, overall approval of the program and opinions about whether adequate safeguards are in place were no different in three nights of interviewing conducted after the speech (Jan. 17-19) than during the two nights of interviewing conducted prior to the address (Jan. 15-16). Overall, the public is divided about whether Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information, which brought the program to light, has served or harmed the public interest: 45% say it has served the public interest while 43% say it harmed it. Nonetheless, a 56% majority wants to see the government pursue a criminal case against Snowden, while 32% oppose this. This is little changed from June, shortly after Snowden’s first leaks of information about the program.

A bipartisan team of California state senators introduced legislation Monday that would prohibit the state and its localities from providing "material support" to the National Security Agency. If the bill becomes law, it would deny NSA facilities access to water and electricity from public utilities, impose sanctions on companies trying to fill the resulting void and outlaw NSA research partnerships with state universities. Companies with state contracts also would be banned from working with the NSA.

The bill's intent is largely symbolic. Universities might be affected, but the NSA does not currently operate a large data facility in the state. A similar bill was introduced in Arizona by state Sen. Kelli Ward, a Republican, in December. Ward described her bill as a preventive strike and a way "to back our neighbors [in Utah] up." The OffNow coalition of advocacy groups is urging Utah lawmakers to pass their own version of the legislation to override the city of Bluffdale's water contract with the NSA's $1.5 billion Utah Data Center. No legislator has publicly announced they will sponsor the bill.

The Arizona and California bills are based on model legislation drafted by the Tenth Amendment Center, which organized the OffNow coalition with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

Brazil plans to divorce itself from the U.S.-centric Internet over Washington’s widespread online spying, a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments. President Dilma Rousseff ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted her communications, hacked into the state-owned Petrobras oil company’s network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to U.S. tech companies such as Facebook and Google. The leader is so angered by the espionage that on Tuesday she postponed next month’s scheduled trip to Washington, where she was to be honored with a state dinner. Internet security and policy experts say the Brazilian government’s reaction to information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is understandable, but warn it could set the Internet on a course of Balkanization.

“The global backlash is only beginning and will get far more severe in coming months,” said Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute at the Washington-based New America Foundation think tank. “This notion of national privacy sovereignty is going to be an increasingly salient issue around the globe.” While Brazil isn’t proposing to bar its citizens from U.S.-based Web services, it wants their data to be stored locally as the nation assumes greater control over Brazilians’ Internet use to protect them from NSA snooping. The danger of mandating that kind of geographic isolation, Meinrath said, is that it could render inoperable popular software applications and services and endanger the Internet’s open, interconnected structure.

The effort by Latin America’s biggest economy to digitally isolate itself from U.S. spying not only could be costly and difficult, it could encourage repressive governments to seek greater technical control over the Internet to crush free expression at home, experts say. In December, countries advocating greater “cyber-sovereignty” pushed for such control at an International Telecommunications Union meeting in Dubai, with Western democracies led by the United States and the European Union in opposition.

In only a handful of days, the usual leak-and-denial progression of the Snowden leaks has completely disintegrated. The pattern was comforting in its own way, but the battle lines are now in a state of flux.

The NSA is now fully engaged in its own defense. Losing support it assumed was guaranteed has forced it to start playing dirty. With the administration swiftly extracting itself from this codependent relationship and an angered (but for all the wrong reasons) Sen. Feinstein targeting any number of surveillance programs, the NSA can no longer rely on rehashing talking points and staying above the fray. This will get nastier as it goes on, and that's wonderful. Any opponent of the NSA's programs has to be thrilled to see the agency left to fend for itself. Anyone who enjoys watching government entities forced to confront their own bad decisions has to be thrilled as well. It looks like the NSA is beginning to feel that if it can't have any secrets, neither can anyone else it "answers" to.

The European Parliament on Thursday adopted a joint, cross-party resolution to begin investigations into widespread surveillance of Europeans by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Read this EU to vote to suspend U.S. data sharing agreements, passenger records amid NSA spying scandal Read more In the vote, 483 voted for the resolution, 98 against, and 65 abstained on a vote that called on the U.S. to suspend and review any laws and surveillance programs that "violate the fundamental right of EU citizens to privacy and data protection," as well as Europe's "sovereignty and jurisdiction." The vote also gave backing to the suspension of data sharing deals between the two continents, should the European Commission take action against its U.S. ally.

The U.S. government faces continued criticism and pressure from its international allies following news that its intelligence agencies spied on foreign nationals under its so-called PRISM program. The U.K. government was also embroiled in the NSA spying saga, after its signals intelligence intercepting station GCHQ tapped submarine fiber optic cables under its own secret program, code named Tempora. Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Commission is examining whether the U.K. broke EU law, which could lead to fines imposed by the highest court in Europe.

Should the Commission decide it necessary to suspend the data sharing agreement of passenger details — including personal and sensitive individual data — it could ultimately lead to the grounding of flights between the EU and the U.S. Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld said in a statement after the vote: "We must consider now if the PNR and SWIFT agreements are still tenable in the circumstances." Critics say PNR data has never helped catch a suspected criminal or terrorist before. SWIFT data sharing, which provides U.S. authorities with secure banking details in a bid to crack down on terrorist financing, could also be suspended. A spokesperson for the D66 delegation in Brussels confirmed by email that the English version of the joint motion is "the right one and is leading," despite claims that there were "translation error[s]" between the different versions of the joint resolution.

Greenwald was the first but not the only journalist that Snowden reached out to. The Post’s Barton Gellman had also connected with him. Now, collaborating with documentary filmmaker and Snowden confidante Laura Poitras, he was going to extend the story to Silicon Valley. Gellman wanted to be the first to expose a top-secret NSA program called Prism. Snowden’s files indicated that some of the biggest companies on the web had granted the NSA and FBI direct access to their servers, giving the agencies the ability to grab a person’s audio, video, photos, emails, and documents. The government urged Gellman not to identify the firms involved, but Gellman thought it was important. “Naming those companies is what would make it real to Americans,” he says. Now a team of Post reporters was reaching out to those companies for comment. It would be the start of a chain reaction that threatened the foundations of the industry. The subject would dominate headlines for months and become the prime topic of conversation in tech circles. For years, the tech companies’ key policy issue had been negotiating the delicate balance between maintaining customers’ privacy and providing them benefits based on their personal data. It was new and contro­versial territory, sometimes eclipsing the substance of current law, but over time the companies had achieved a rough equilibrium that allowed them to push forward. The instant those phone calls from reporters came in, that balance was destabilized, as the tech world found itself ensnared in a fight far bigger than the ones involving oversharing on Facebook or ads on Gmail. Over the coming months, they would find themselves at war with their own government, in a fight for the very future of the Internet.

A bipartisan group of 26 US senators has written to intelligence chiefs to complain that the administration is relying on a "secret body of law" to collect massive amounts of data on US citizens.The senators accuse officials of making misleading statements and demand that the director of national intelligence James Clapper answer a series of specific questions on the scale of domestic surveillance as well as the legal justification for it.In their strongly-worded letter to Clapper, the senators said they believed the government may be misinterpreting existing legislation to justify the sweeping collection of telephone and internet data revealed by the Guardian."We are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the Patriot Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law," they say.

"This and misleading statements by intelligence officials have prevented our constituents from evaluating the decisions that their government was making, and will unfortunately undermine trust in government more broadly."This is the strongest attack yet from Congress since the disclosures began, and comes after Clapper admitted he had given "the least untruthful answer possible" when pushed on these issues by Senators at a hearing before the latest revelations by the Guardian and the Washington Post.In a press statement, the group of senators added: "The recent public disclosures of secret government surveillance programs have exposed how secret interpretations of the USA Patriot Act have allowed for the bulk collection of massive amounts of data on the communications of ordinary Americans with no connection to wrongdoing."

They said: "Reliance on secret law to conduct domestic surveillance activities raises serious civil liberty concerns and all but removes the public from an informed national security and civil liberty debate." A spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) acknowledged the letter. "The ODNI received a letter from 26 senators this morning requesting further engagement on vital intelligence programs recently disclosed in the media, which we are still evaluating. The intelligence and law enforcement communities will continue to work with all members of Congress to ensure the proper balance of privacy and protection for American citizens."The letter was organised by Oregan Democrat Ron Wyden, a member of the intelligence committee, but includes four Republican senators: Mark Kirk, Mike Lee, Lisa Murkowski and Dean Heller.

Lawmakers are renewing their calls for an end to a controversial surveillance program that collects data about virtually all American phone calls, citing the newest recommendations from a government privacy board.This newest set of recommendations “spells the final end of the government's bulk collection” of phone call data, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement.The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board — tasked with overseeing the country’s surveillance activities — released its first report on the controversial surveillance programs made public by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden last year.

The board recommended that the government end the phone data program, questioning its efficacy and saying that it “lacks a viable legal foundation” and “raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value.”Last week, President Obama outlined changes he plans to make to the surveillance program, including requiring intelligence agencies to get court approval before accessing the phone data.Critics of the NSA and its phone data program say Obama didn’t go far enough in his speech and are now pointing to the privacy board’s report as evidence that more needs to be done.“The president's recommendations last week did not go far enough to rein in the out-of-control National Security Agency,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — who has questioned the intelligence community on whether it spies on officials — said in a statement.

“This report underscores that the collection of records on virtually every phone call made in the United States is an unconstitutional violation of the privacy rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment,” he said, calling on Congress to “pass strong legislation to protect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people.”Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), co-author of the USA Freedom Act, which would end bulk surveillance programs, said the report highlights the need for congressional action.“The report appropriately calls into question the legality and constitutionality of the program, and underscores the need to change the law to rein in the government’s overbroad interpretation” of its surveillance authority, he said in a statement.Schiff called for congressional action before next year’s sunset of a surveillance-enabling national security law.“Congress will not re-authorize bulk collection of this data when it expires next year, but Congress should not wait for the program to expire on its own,” he said. “Rather we should work to restructure the program now.”

In a letter sent to President Obama and members of Congress, former members and staff of the Church Committee on intelligence said that the revelations of the NSA activities have caused “a crisis of public confidence” and encouraged the formation of a new committee to undertake “significant and public reexamination of intelligence community practices”. Although it may seem like the NSA’s activities have only recently come under public scrutiny, the agency first was dragged into the light in 1975 when reports surfaced that for decades it had had secret agreements with telegram companies to get copies of Americans’ international communications. The Church committee, formally known as the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, was formed to investigate the NSA’s methods and produced a report that took the agency to task for overstepping its bounds and expanding programs well beyond their initial scope.

“We have seen a consistent pattern in which programs initiated with limited goals, such as preventing criminal violence or identifying foreign spies, were expanded to what witnesses characterized as ‘vacuum cleaners,’ weeping in information about lawful activities of American citizens. The tendency of intelligence activities to expand beyond their initial scope is a theme, which runs through every aspect of our investigative findings,” the committee’s final report said. In the letter sent Monday to Obama and Congress, several former advisers to and members of the Church committee, including the former chief counsel, said that the current situation involving the NSA bears striking resemblances to the one in 1975 and that the scope of what the NSA is doing today is orders of magnitude larger than what was happening nearly 40 years ago.

“The need for another thorough, independent, and public congressional investigation of intelligence activity practices that affect the rights of Americans is apparent. There is a crisis of public confidence. Misleading statements by agency officials to Congress, the courts, and the public have undermined public trust in the intelligence community and in the capacity for the branches of government to provide meaningful oversight,” the letter says. “The scale of domestic communications surveillance the NSA engages in today dwarfs the programs revealed by the Church Committee. Indeed, 30 years ago, the NSA’s surveillance practices raised similar concerns as those today.” Signed by 15 former advisers and members of the committee, including Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., the lead counsel for the committee, the letter is addressed to Obama, Congress and the American public.

Tech giants including Apple, Facebook and Google called for substantial reforms to the US government's surveillance programmes Thursday in a letter to the Senate judiciary committee.In the wake of more revelations about the lengths to which the National Security Agency has gone to intercept data, the companies have called for more transparency and "substantial enhancements to privacy protections and appropriate oversight and accountability mechanisms for those programs."The letter, also signed by AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo, follows the release of more documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that reveal the US authorities were secretly tapping in to the tech firm's main communications links.The letter "applauds" the USA Freedom Act, a bill sponsored by Democrat senator Patrick Leahy and Republican congressman James Sensenbrenner that would end the bulk collection of data from millions of Americans and set up a privacy advocate to monitor the Fisa court, which oversees the NSA's US activities.

In a recent report the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) said the US tech firms could end up losing out on tens of billions of dollars in the cloud-based computing space in the wake of Snowden's revelations. Cloud computing is a rapidly growing area and revelations that the US authorities have been scooping up the personal data of millions of users, particularly outside the US, could cost them business."On the low end, US cloud computing providers might lose $21.5bn over the next three years," ITIF concluded. On the high end the report put the figure at $35bn.

The Irish High Court has ordered a review of the decision by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) not to investigate Facebook’s links To PRISM and the US National Security Agency (NSA), after it was contested by a group of law students from Austria. The group calling itself ‘Europe-v-Facebook’ had previously demanded a full investigation into the relationship between Internet companies and the US intelligence agency as it accuses Facebook of breaking the law in supplying NSA with personal information about its European users.

The Irish High Court has ordered a review of the decision by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) not to investigate Facebook’s links To PRISM and the US National Security Agency (NSA), after it was contested by a group of law students from Austria. The group calling itself ‘Europe-v-Facebook’ had previously demanded a full investigation into the relationship between Internet companies and the US intelligence agency as it accuses Facebook of breaking the law in supplying NSA with personal information about its European users.

The Irish High Court has ordered a review of the decision by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) not to investigate Facebook’s links To PRISM and the US National Security Agency (NSA), after it was contested by a group of law students from Austria. The group calling itself ‘Europe-v-Facebook’ had previously demanded a full investigation into the relationship between Internet companies and the US intelligence agency as it accuses Facebook of breaking the law in supplying NSA with personal information about its European users.

Government Claims EFF's Lawsuits Don't Cover Ongoing Surveillance – Raising Fears Key Documents May Have Been DestroyedUPDATE: Judge White today continued his temporary restraining order in these two cases until a more permanent order could be put in place. The question of whether the government improperly destroyed evidence so far will be briefed over the next several weeks.

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will fight disturbing new government claims in an emergency court hearing Wednesday – claims that may imply records documenting ongoing government surveillance have been destroyed despite a judge's order. Over the last several weeks, EFF has been battling to ensure that evidence of the NSA surveillance program will be preserved as part of its two cases challenging the illegal government spying: Jewel v. NSA and First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA. But in a court filing late Monday, the government made shocking new assertions, arguing that its obligation to preserve evidence was limited to aspects of the original Bush-era spying program, which the government contends ended eight years ago with a transition to FISA court orders.

Government Claims EFF's Lawsuits Don't Cover Ongoing Surveillance – Raising Fears Key Documents May Have Been DestroyedUPDATE: Judge White today continued his temporary restraining order in these two cases until a more permanent order could be put in place. The question of whether the government improperly destroyed evidence so far will be briefed over the next several weeks.

Over five hundred thousand people have signed onto the Stop Watching Us campaign, a nonpartisan, grassroots campaign opposing the dragnet surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA).  Galvanized by newly surfaced evidence confirming the NSA’s surveillance of the phone records and Internet activity of individuals in the United States and abroad, the Stop Watching Us coalition is seeking public accountability and tangible reform to rein in unconstitutional surveillance. 

Yesterday, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, also added his support to the campaign.  He was joined by internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei. Other prominent supporters include Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir, author Cory Doctorow, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and actor John Cusack.

"This campaign has been lightening-fast. Hundreds of thousands of people have now called on Congress to provide a full accounting of the National Security Agency’s powerful and frankly unsettling spying practices," said EFF Staff Attorney Mark Rumold, "Now all eyes are turned on Congress to see if they’ll do the right thing and be responsive to the will of the people." Every time a person signs onto the stopwatching.us site, emails opposing dragnet surveillance are sent to that individual’s elected officials or to the president. These emails call for a full investigation and public accounting of the National Security Agency’s spying practices, reform to the law to prevent such surveillance, and holding public officials accountable for the role they played. In addition to signing onto Stop Watching Us, individuals who oppose NSA spying can call their members of Congress using the dedicated call line 1-STOP-323-NSA (1-786-732-3672). Read more about contacting Congress, including more privacy-friendly ways of calling Congress. You can also visit stopwatching.us to add your name to the campaign.

Yesterday, the Missouri house overwhelmingly approved a bill to ban the obtaining of cellphone location tracking information without a warrant. House Bill 1388 (HB1388) prohibits use of such information in civil or criminal proceedings, and even bans its use as “an affidavit of probable cause in an effort to obtain a search warrant.” Introduced by Rep. Robert Cornejo, the measure passed by a vote of 134-13. HB1388 will not only add a key protection to bolster the privacy rights of Missourians from potential local abuse, it will also end some practical effects of unconstitutional data gathering by the federal government. NSA collects, stores, and analyzes data on countless millions of people without a warrant, and without even the mere suspicion of criminal activity. The NSA tracks the physical location of people through their cellphones. In late 2013, the Washington Post reported that NSA is “gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world.” This includes location data on “tens of millions” of Americans each year – without a warrant. Through fusion centers, state and local law enforcement act as “information recipients” to various federal departments under Information Sharing Environment (ISE). ISE partners include the Office of Director of National Intelligence, which is an umbrella covering 17 federal agencies and organizations, including the NSA.

The NSA expressly shares warrantless data with state and local law enforcement through a super-secret DEA unit known as the Special Operations Division (SOD). That information is being used for criminal prosecutions. Reuters reported that most of this shared data has absolutely nothing to do with national security issues. Most of it involves routine criminal investigations. In short – banning state government entities in Missouri from obtaining phone location tracking information without a warrant will block them from receiving that kind of information from federal agencies who routinely collect it without warrant. HB1388 is part of a package of bills designed to thwart the surveillance state being considered in the Missouri legislature this year.  SB819 would deny compliance and material support from the state to the NSA as long as they continue their unconstitutional spying programs. SJR27 would amend the Missouri State Constitution to protect residents’ electronic data from warrantless searches. HB1388 now moves to the State Senate where it will first be assigned to a committee for approval before the full senate has an opportunity to send it to Gov. Nixon’s desk for a signature.

For ten years Pamela Jones has run Groklaw, a site collecting, discussing, and explaining legal developments of interest to the open-source software community. Her efforts have, justifiably, won many awards. She's done now.

That's not why she's stopping. Pamela Jones is ending Groklaw because she can't trust her government. She's ending it because, in the post-9/11 era, there's no viable and reliable way to assure that our email won't be read by the state — because she can't confidently communicate privately with her readers and tipsters and subjects and friends and family.

In making this choice, Jones echoes the words of Lavar Levison, who shut down his encrypted email service Lavabit. Levison said he was doing so rather than "become complicit in crimes against the American people": “I’m taking a break from email,” said Levison. “If you knew what I know about email, you might not use it either.” Lavabit was joined by encryption provider Silent Circle:

The US National Security Agency (NSA) secretly monitored 60 million phone calls in Spain in one month, Spanish media say. The reports say the latest allegations came from documents provided by the fugitive US analyst Edward Snowden. They say the NSA collected the numbers and locations of the callers and the recipients, but not the calls' content. This comes as an EU parliamentary delegation is due to meet officials in Washington to convey concerns.

Meanwhile, a Japanese news agency says the NSA asked the Japanese government in 2011 to help it monitor fibre-optic cables carrying personal data through Japan, to the Asia-Pacific region. The reports, carried by the Kyodo news agency, say that this was intended to allow the US to spy on China - but Japan refused, citing legal restrictions and a shortage of personnel. The White House has so far declined to comment on Monday's claims about US spying in Spain, published in the newspapers El Pais and El Mundo.

Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Friday that the NSA had monitored the phones of 35 world leaders. Again Mr Snowden was the source of the report. The head of the European Parliament's delegation, British MEP Claude Moraes, told the BBC it was the scale of the NSA's alleged surveillance that was worrying. "The headline news, that 35 leaders had their phones tapped, is not the real crux of the issue," he said. "It really is the El Mundo type story, that millions of citizens of countries... had their landlines and other communications tapped. So it's about mass surveillance. It's about scale and proportionality."