The United States’ National Security Agency has secretly broken into
the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers
worldwide. That’s according to documents released by former NSA
contractor, Edward Snowden, The Washington Post reports.
Video: NSA intercepts Google, Yahoo traffic overseas report | The Nationalhttp://www.thenational.ae/article/2013110
http://shar.es/IxZIJ
According to the documents, the agency and its British
counterpart GCHQ, through a project called MUSCULAR, collected data
stored on Google and Yahoo servers. That allowed both governments access
to hundreds of millions of user accounts from individuals worldwide.
“From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and GCHQ are
copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry
information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants,” RT
cites the Post’s Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani.
A January 9th document says that in the preceding 30 days,
collectors had processed over 181 million pieces of information,
including both metadata and the actual contents of communications.
The government can already request information from phone
or data through the FISA Amendments Act but this data collection would
ostensibly take place without Google and Yahoo even being aware of it.
When you send email or store files with an internet
company, that data is regularly shared among servers around the world,
in order to ensure quick access to your information from wherever you
happen to be. Google and Yahoo run customized private networks to
shuttle that information around, passing between and within countries,
as the Post indicates in a graphic. To move that information, the
companies use fiber optic connections, light-speed networks running over
thin glass cables. According to the Post, it’s those connections that
the NSA is able to monitor. None of Yahoo’s inter-server traffic is
encrypted. Not all of Google’s is either.
The MUSCULAR program, according to Wednesday’s leak,
involves a process in which the NSA and GCHQ intercept communications
overseas, where lax restrictions and oversight allow the agencies access
to intelligence with ease.
“NSA documents about the effort refer directly to ‘full
take,’ ‘bulk access’ and ‘high volume’ operations on Yahoo and Google
networks,” the Post reported. “Such large-scale collection of Internet
content would be illegal in the United States, but the operations take
place overseas, where the NSA is allowed to presume that anyone using a
foreign data link is a foreigner”.
The Post points out that company staffers were surprised
and angry to hear that their their networks had been compromised. Google
said that it was “troubled by allegations of the government
intercepting traffic between our data centers”.
The report comes amid a storm of protest about NSA surveillance both at home and overseas of phone and Internet communications.
On Tuesday, US officials said reports that American spy agencies snooped on millions of Europeans were false.
Alexander told lawmakers that in many cases European spy
agencies had turned over phone records and shared them with US
intelligence.
Related posts:
1. USA Spying, the Super-Snooper !
2. Abusing intelligence is stupid
3. Upset over US cyber spying!
4.US Spy Snowden Says US Hacking China Since 2009
5.US building new spy wing to focus on Asia
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Showing posts with label Yahoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yahoo. Show all posts
Saturday 2 November 2013
Monday 12 November 2012
Google hit with $AUD200k defamation damages
Ad giant's own witness confessed removing dodgy search results is easy
An Australian man defamed by links on Google that associated his name with images of and articles about a criminal has been awarded $AUD200,000 damages.
Melbourne man Michael Trkulja argued that searches on his name, which brought up references to criminal Tony Mokbel, constituted defamation.
Trkulja asked for those references to be altered. Part of Google's
defence suggested he had not properly completed forms that would have
seen the ad giant alter its search results, but the end result was that
Trkulja's name continued to appear alongside references to a nasty
gangster called Tony Mokbel. A jury agreed that those results equated to
defamation, and Supreme Court Justice David Beach today decided it was
$AUD200,000 worth of defamation.
The judgment
paints a fascinating picture of Google's response to the complaint,
noting that a Google US employee, a 'Mr Madden-Woods', appeared on the
stand but that the ad giant did not call anyone to the witness stand
involved in handling the original complaint from Mr. Trkulja.
That became important because one piece of evidence offered by Mr. Trkulja was an email from help@google.com stating:
Making matters worse, Justice Beach writes that Madden-Woods “ … conceded the obvious (perhaps somewhat begrudgingly) that it would not take very much effort to work out, from the page of photographs supplied to Google Inc, the identity of the website that linked the plaintiff’s name to Mr Mokbel and Mr Tanner. All one had to do was click on one of the images (the text beneath each image showing that the one web page was involved). At that point it would have been open to Google Inc to block the URL of that page from Google Inc’s searches, in compliance with the plaintiff’s former solicitors’ request.”
The amount of damages awarded seems to have been calculated in two ways.
Trkulja had already succesfully sued Yahoo! over the same matter and been awarded $AUD225,000, but that search engine had published nasty links for longer and that those links stated he was “so involved with crime in Melbourne that his rivals had hired a hit man to murder him”. Google's results stated only that Trkulja “was such a significant figure in the Melbourne criminal underworld that events involving him were recorded on a website that chronicled crime in Melbourne”.
Justice Beach declares that a lesser imputation, but then tried to weigh the number of times each statement would have been read given the respective user bases of the two search engines.
His argument makes for interesting reading:
By Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor
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An Australian man defamed by links on Google that associated his name with images of and articles about a criminal has been awarded $AUD200,000 damages.
Melbourne man Michael Trkulja argued that searches on his name, which brought up references to criminal Tony Mokbel, constituted defamation.
That became important because one piece of evidence offered by Mr. Trkulja was an email from help@google.com stating:
“At this time, Google has decided not to take action based on our policies concerning content removal. Please contact the webmaster of the page in question to have your client’s name removed from the page.”But the existence of the mail from help@google.com, Justice Beach writes, means the jury could easily “... infer that … Google Inc was well aware of what was being requested of it” and that a more nuanced response was almost certainly a sensible option.
Making matters worse, Justice Beach writes that Madden-Woods “ … conceded the obvious (perhaps somewhat begrudgingly) that it would not take very much effort to work out, from the page of photographs supplied to Google Inc, the identity of the website that linked the plaintiff’s name to Mr Mokbel and Mr Tanner. All one had to do was click on one of the images (the text beneath each image showing that the one web page was involved). At that point it would have been open to Google Inc to block the URL of that page from Google Inc’s searches, in compliance with the plaintiff’s former solicitors’ request.”
The amount of damages awarded seems to have been calculated in two ways.
Trkulja had already succesfully sued Yahoo! over the same matter and been awarded $AUD225,000, but that search engine had published nasty links for longer and that those links stated he was “so involved with crime in Melbourne that his rivals had hired a hit man to murder him”. Google's results stated only that Trkulja “was such a significant figure in the Melbourne criminal underworld that events involving him were recorded on a website that chronicled crime in Melbourne”.
Justice Beach declares that a lesser imputation, but then tried to weigh the number of times each statement would have been read given the respective user bases of the two search engines.
His argument makes for interesting reading:
"While there was debate before me as to the relative popularity of Google and Yahoo search engines, neither side made any attempt to lead evidence of the precise number of publications brought about by a Yahoo search engine as compared to a Google search engine. That said, as was noted by counsel for the plaintiff, in support of a submission that I should find that there were more Google publications than Yahoo publications, while the word 'Googling' has entered the vernacular, there is no corresponding word in respect of Yahoo’s products.”
By Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor
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Related stories
- Google defamed Australian man with links to gangster (2 November 2012)
- Don't get sued or cuffed on Twitter: Read these top 10 pitfalls (13 August 2012)
- Australia on path to social media regulation (10 August 2012)
- Bill Gates, Harry Evans and the smearing of a computer legend (7 August 2012)
- Google in dock again over defamatory auto-complete (19 June 2012)
- NZ erupts over Dotcom corruption accusations (2 May 2012)
- Force Google to black out searches in new privacy law - MPs (27 March 2012)
- Google asked to bin autocomplete results for Japanese man's name (26 March 2012)
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