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Its incredibly important that the public be aware of what our governments doing, and all of us standing up against it, former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson said in a telephone interview Thursday evening.

Former National Security Agency (NSA) senior executive and whistleblower Thomas Drake revealed himself this past week as the source for a lawsuit alleging the NSA conducted blanket, indiscriminate surveillance of Salt Lake City during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

In a declaration filed in discovery in the case in U.S. district court in Utah, Drake asserted the NSA, in coordination with the FBI, scooped up and stored the content of emails and text messages sent and received by anyone in the city and Olympic venues including American citizens.

The mantra was just take it all, Drake, 60, said in a Thursday evening phone interview.

Drakes assertions contradict declarations filed in the case in March by former NSA director Michael Hayden and current NSA operations manager Wayne Murphy.

The NSA has never ... at any time conducted mass or blanket surveillance, interception, or analysis ... of e-mail, text message, telephone, or other telecommunications in Salt Lake City or the vicinity of the 2002 Winter Olympic venues, whether during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games or otherwise, Murphy stated.

Drake accused Murphy and Hayden of making statements that are if not literally false, substantially misleading. His declaration was first reported Friday by the Salt Lake Tribune.

The NSA and the Department of Justice declined to comment Friday on the case, which was filed in 2015 by former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson on behalf of six American citizens who alleged their private communications were monitored and likely stored by the NSA during the Winter Games, held in Salt Lake City in February 2002.

Its incredibly important that the public be aware of what our governments doing, and all of us standing up against it, Anderson said in a telephone interview Thursday evening. We need to let our elected officials know that we will resist in any way possible this rather sudden transformation of our country, not only to a surveillance state, but to a nation where the rule of law seems to mean very little.

Drake is a former Air Force and Navy veteran who worked at the NSA from 1989 until 2008, when his career ended amid a leak investigation. Drake had grown uncomfortable with the expansion of the NSAs surveillance operations, authorized by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and leaked unclassified information to a reporter about waste and fraud in the agency.

In 2007, Drakes home was raided by the FBI, and, in 2010, federal prosecutors charged him with 10 felonies under the Espionage Act. The case against him ultimately collapsed Drake pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 2011 and his ordeal is seen by civil liberty advocates as emblematic of over-aggressive targeting of whistleblowers by the federal government.

Golden opportunity

In early 2002, according to Drake, he started hearing rumors from alarmed colleagues at the NSA about the Salt Lake Olympics Field Op. Then he started seeing manifest documents, showing shipments of surveillance equipment headed to Utah.

The Winter Games that year were held on American soil just five months after the Sept. 11 attacks, and according to Drakes declaration, the NSA saw the event which would bring thousands of people, including foreign leaders and international media, to a relatively confined geographic area as a golden opportunity to fine-tune a new scale of mass surveillance.

The allegation of a mass surveillance program during the 2002 Olympics was first raised in a 2013 Wall Street Journal article that alleged, based on anonymous officials, the FBI and NSA made an arrangement with Qwest Communications International Inc. to monitor the content of all email and text communications in the Salt Lake City region during the Winter Games.

Qwest, a Denver-based telecommunications company, was acquired in 2011 by CenturyLink. Former Qwest chief executive Joseph Nacchio has said he knew nothing about his company cooperating with the NSA during the 2002 Olympics, but that federal authorities could have worked with other executives without his knowledge.

In 2013, one of the secret documents former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked to journalists describes NSA discussions about an operation during the Olympics, but not to the extent of what Drake has alleged.

In early 2002, NSA personnel met with senior vice president of government systems and other employees from Company E, the document stated. Under authority of the Presidents Surveillance Program (PSP), NSA asked Company E to provide call records in support of security for the Olympics in Salt Lake City. ... On 19 February 2002, Company E submitted a written proposal that discussed methods it could use to regularly replicate call record information stored in a Company E facility and potentially forward the same information to NSA.

The Snowden document makes no mention of capturing content, though, but rather seems to align with previous revelations of NSA operations capturing metadata: information about a phone call or text message, such as the phone numbers, geographical locations of the devices used, and the duration of a call or size of a message.

But Drake said the Salt Lake City operation captured far more than just metadata. Before the Olympics, he said, the NSA set up geofencing virtual geographic boundaries around Salt Lake City and nearby Olympic venues.

Virtually all electronic communication signals that went into or out of one of those designated areas were captured and stored by the NSA, including the contents of emails and text messages, according to Drakes declaration.

The NSA stored the metadata, as well as text in emails and text messages. Only large, attached images or video files to texts and emails would have been spared, Drake said, because of their size.

Court case

Anderson, the former Salt Lake City mayor, was in private practice as an attorney when he read the 2013 Wall Street Journal article. He connected with Drake through a mutual friend, and when Drake described the scope of the operation he believed had been conducted, Anderson decided to pursue litigation.

Andersons case was filed in 2015 on behalf of six people who lived or worked near Olympic venues in Salt Lake City in 2002, including a lawyer, an author, and a college professor. Their lawsuit seeks damages, an order to compel the NSA to disclose what communications from the plaintiffs it still has in storage, and then the deletion of that information.

Anderson has asked the American Civil Liberties Union and several other electronic freedom and individual rights organizations to take up the case, but all have declined. The Department of Justice has tried to get the case dismissed, but a U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby allowed it to proceed with a ruling in January.

Drake expressed dismay Thursday evening that the case has been greatly overshadowed this year by the news, and tweets, coming from the White House.

If there was anything exceptional about America, it was our Constitution ... and yet, here I was, seeing it unravel, in secret, from within the government, Drake said. To me, this still really matters.

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Report: NSA used 'blanket' surveillance at 2002 Olympics - News ... - The News Herald

Atlantic magazine writer Steve Clemons said during a Saturday panel on MSNBCs The Point with Ari Melber that National Security Administration (NSA) Director Michael Rogers may have a bomb to drop on the Trump administration.

Rogers will testify Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is currently investigating whether President Donald Trumps campaign colluded with Russian officials to sway the results of the 2016 election.

We now know for certain that Vladimir Putin waged political warfare against Americas democracy with the election last year, said Mother Jones magazines David Corn. While thats going on, Donald Trump is saying, No, its not happening. Its like a guy in front of a bank robbery saying, Nothing is going on here. He was helping.

He made it easier for Putin to pull this off, Corn said. That in itself should be a big scandal.

While a lot of people have focused on James Comey and thats obviously a huge anchor in this, Clemons said at the end of the segment, watch the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on Wednesday. National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers may have a bomb to drop in this, as well as Dan Coates. I have been tipped off that Mike Rogers has a story to tell as well that goes right along the lines that our friend David Corn has shared.

Watch the video, embedded below:

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NSA Director Mike Rogers poised to 'drop a bomb' on Trump admin ... - Raw Story

NEW YORK (NBC) Megyn Kelly makes her NBC debut with the first episode of her new show, "Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly" at 6 p.m. on KY3.

In her first episode, she sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and asks him about the nature of his relationship with former U.S. National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.

Megyn Kelly: He came over here for a dinner-- a photo of which has been widely circulated in the American media. What was the nature of your relationship with him?

Vladimir Putin: You and I, you and I personally, have a much closer relationship than I had with Mr. Flynn. You and I met yesterday evening. You and I have been working together all day today. And now we're meeting again. When I came to the event for our company, Russia Today, and sat down at the table, next to me there was a gentleman sitting on one side.

I made my speech. Then we talked about some other stuff. And I got up and left. And then afterwards I was told, You know there was an American gentleman he was involved in some things. He used to be in the security services. That's it. I didn't even really talk to him. I just greeted him and sat down next to him. Later I said good bye, got up and left. That's the extent of my acquaintance with Mr. Flynn.

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Putin denies relationship with former NSA Michael Kelly - KY3

Usefulness Functionality Price

Audacity is a highly efficient, free and easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac, GNU/Linux.

Audacity is a free, open source and cross-platform audio editor and recorder. This toolallows you to record, play, import and export MP3, OGG, AIFF and WAV files. It also allows you to cut, copy and paste audio sounds. And even better, it allows you to mix tracks and apply effects (with unlimited undo functionality). The free audio softwarefeatures a frequency-analysis window for audio-analysis applications, a customizable spectrogram mode and a built-in amplitude-envelope editor.

Heres a peek at the features Audacity offers. For a step-by-step guide on how to use Audacity, click here.

This software allows you to easily record live audio through a mixer or microphone. You can also digitize recordings from other media. Even more interesting is that you can capture streaming audio on any recent version of Windows.

This tool allows you to also import, edit and even combine old recordings with new recordings and when you are done you can then export your recordings in different file formats.

Audacity gives you the ability to cut, copy, paste and delete. Even better, it gives you unlimited sequential Redo and Undo options. You can also edit and mix large numbers of tracks.

You can use the platform to alter frequencies using its Bass and Treble, Equalization, High/Low pass and Notch filter effects. And using the compressor, you can amplify, fade in/out or amplify the volume. The platform also offers support for plugins and has a built-in crash recovery.

Audacity has also recently introduced a couple of new and interesting features, including rhythm track, new distortion effect and sample data import.

Audacity is compatible with Mac OS X/macOS, Windows and GNU/Linux operating systems.

As mentioned above, this tool is absolutely free and what makes it even more attractive is the fact that it offers almost the same features and quality output as many premium paid-for applications.

It is quite difficult to take anything away from Audacity. From the look of things, it seemslike its development team works hard to make the tool the best there is with regular updates. Some of its features are, however, inconsistent in their design, but thats probably because of the diversity of its development team. And so, if you are looking to edit or record audio, this would probably be a handy tool to use.

Sound Bars Photo via Shutterstock

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Audacity Audio Software Allows Voice Recording and Editing Free - Small Business Trends

Over the past two years, three New Hampshire companies have won the Microsoft BizSpark Plus Award, which includes $120,000 of free Azure Cloud services for one year.

Last year, Bedford-based ValChoice, an analytics company that lets consumers of insurance know which companies offer the best price, protection and service, received the award. ValChoice also won the New Hampshire Startup Challenge competition.

ValChoice received the award through its participation in Accelerate NH, a program organized by the Alpha Loft incubator. This year, two other Accelerate participants received the award: addapptation, a Newfield company that develops micro-apps for cloud applications; and ViewJoin, a Manchester company that developed a cloud-based application for designing and streaming interactive video broadcasts.

Addapptation also is receiving $100,000 through the local Millworks II venture fund after its showing last month at the Startup Shindig, the Alpha Lofts annual networking event.

The Microsoft award also provides access to hundreds of training courses, free software and tools such as Visual Studio and Office, startup support and networking with enterprise customers.

For founder Daniela Braga, the competing services seemed about even in terms of features. On price, Amazons tools were a bit cheaper than Microsofts. And more developers were comfortable working with Amazon Web Services, or AWS, the cloud-computing pioneer and now the markets largest player.

But Microsoft held the trump card: an offer of $500,000 in credits to spend on Microsofts Azure cloud services over three years, a benefit DefinedCrowd had earned by participating in a Microsoft startup program. That kind of sum can pay for the entire technology-infrastructure cost of getting a software companys first products off the ground.

That was kind of hard to refuse, said Aya Zook, business-development manager with DefinedCrowd, which makes tools to train software how to recognize speech or images.

The startup would build its software on Microsofts Azure.

Microsoft has staked its future on the cloud, the range of on-demand computing power and software services bundled into Azure and other products.

But Microsoft isnt banking on snazzy marketing or technical chops alone to make Azure a winner. The technology giant is also offering bargains and freebies, including discounts to large businesses, free trial offers to all comers, and grants of cash for startups and nonprofits that try the service.

The programs are part of a broader, companywide effort to gain market share. The bet is that discounts and free technical support today will make paying customers down the line, ideally bringing thousands of dollars a year to Azure and boosting awareness of Microsofts offering in a highly competitive market.

Its an old tactic for a company that has long had plenty of cash to work with. Exactly where Microsoft has deployed that money to lure software developers offers a window into the companys shifting priorities over the years.

In the midst of its unsuccessful smartphone push a few years ago, Microsoft was shelling out a reported $100,000 (and up) to application makers who built tools for Windows Phone. Before that, Microsoft made similar deals to get developers and corporate partners interested in Bing, the fledgling search engine. And to a generation of technologists years ago, Microsoft offered ample support to get businesses to plug into the new Windows Server.

Those programs have yielded mixed results, said Michael Cherry, who worked at Microsoft in the late 1990s, and today tracks the company with analysis firm Directions on Microsoft.

Grants to use products dont tend to make a big difference on their own, he said. But when you can add feet on the ground to help a developer that had a problem? Theyll be loyal to you forever. For Microsoft, the cloud is the priority today.

It was the focus of the companys recent Build developer show in Seattle, where the company kicked off the proceedings by staking out a virtual claim to the city, and the market.

A promotional video showed the Space Needle topped by a flag with the Microsoft logo on one side, and Cloud City on the other. Never mind that Amazon, with a much bigger cloud-market share than Microsoft, has its headquarters just a few blocks away from the landmark.

When choosing between Amazon and Microsoft, Braga concedes she had a soft spot for Microsoft. A linguist and speech-software expert originally from Portugal, she had spent seven years at the company. Zook, her colleague, is a fellow Microsoft alum.

Were ex-Microsoft people, she said. Its an environment that were comfortable with.

Still, she said, There are a lot of incentives, and pressure, to go on AWS.

Amazon, which pioneered the business of selling software and developer tools delivered over the internet, built its lead in that market, in part, by touting an easy-to-use product that offered room to experiment without paying. Adding to the appeal, technologists say, was the absence of complex, negotiated software-licensing deals of the sort Microsoft relies on.

A free tier of AWS services, introduced in 2010, can add up to thousands of dollars a year, a benefit available to all customers regardless of size. The company has bolstered that in recent years with credits aimed at researchers and educators, as well as standard startup grants ranging from $15,000 to $100,000.

The combination, on top of a technologically impressive set of products, has given AWS an enviable list of customers at the cutting edge of technology, including Netflix, Airbnb and Slack. To counter AWS lead, No. 2 Microsoft has brought to bear what some see as its greatest asset: a giant base of corporate customers, and a sales force of tens of thousands built to sell to them.

In contract talks with corporate customers of Windows, Office and other software, Microsoft recently has been offering discounts on those products in exchange for a commitment to buy thousands of dollars worth of Azure cloud-computing services, according to consultants who advise those companies. The company has also lent customers its own engineers.

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Microsoft faces off against Amazon - The Union Leader