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By Trevor Mogg

(REUTERS/Francois Lenoir)

Representatives from some of the biggest names in tech had some harsh words to say about the US government surveillance scandal on Wednesday during a meeting examining the potential ramifications of the spying activities.

The special event in Palo Alto involved the likes of Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, and Dropbox representative Ramsey Homsany, Cnet reported.

The panelists put their views to Democratic senator for Oregon Ron Wyden , with Schmidt warning that the impact of the surveillance is not only severe and getting worse, but could even end up breaking the Internet.

Former NSA contractorEdward Snowden last year blew the lid off the governments surveillance activities, releasing official documents that showed surveillance of Web usersto be far more extensive than most people had imagined.

Global effects

During the meeting, the speakers focused on the global knock-on effects of the Snowden revelations, highlighting how some governments are seeking to make tech firms build data centers within their borders in a bid to improve security. If every country ends up following this path, the tech companies said, the costs would be astronomical and could ultimately damage the US economy.

Related:Googles Schmidt blasts NSA activities

Fallout from the NSA scandal has already hit American firms, including Verizon, which recently lost its contract with the German government over concerns linked to network security. Snowdens documents suggested that more than 120 world leaders were targeted for surveillanceby the NSA, with German leader Angela Merkel among them.

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Google's NSA fears

NSA tech spying hurts economy: Sen. Wyden

PALO ALTO (Calif.): Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and other Silicon Valley executives say controversial government spying programs are undercutting the Internet economy and want Congress to step up stalled reform.

"We're going to end up breaking the Internet," warned Google Inc.'s Schmidt during a public forum Wednesday convened by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has been an outspoken critic of electronic data-gathering by the National Security Agency. Schmidt and executives from Facebook Inc, Microsoft Corp. and other firms say revelations of extensive NSA surveillance are prompting governments in Europe and elsewhere to consider laws requiring that their citizens' online data be stored within their national borders.

Rules like that would drive up costs and create technical obstacles to the way the Internet currently operates, making it "profoundly difficult in terms of our ability to deliver services," said Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch.

Brad Smith, general counsel for Microsoft, said some European customers are worried their data will be more vulnerable to U.S. government snooping, although he declined to give specific examples.

"The reality is this is a real problem for American tech companies," said Smith. "If trust falls, then the prospects for business are hurt."

Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and chairman of the Finance Committee, convened the roundtable in the Palo Alto High School gym, where he played basketball as a student in the 1960s.

He said he will take the executives' message back to Washington, where bills to curb surveillance have stalled. Prospects for passing a reform bill this fall are shrinking, Wyden told The Associated Press.

"I'm going to my best to use this. What I'm going to do is say there's a clear and present danger to the Internet economy," Wyden said.

Wyden contends that the government's "digital dragnet" of phone calls, emails and online communications doesn't make the country safer, and only hurts the U.S. economy.

Excerpt from:
NSA tech spying hurts economy: Sen. Wyden

Sports News of Friday, 10 October 2014

Source: sportscrusader.com

Dr. Emmanuel Owusu-Ansah, former Chief Executive of the National Sports Authority (NSA) has called on the Ministry of Youth and Sports to appoint Magnus Rex Danwuah Chief Operating Officer of the Ghana 2008 Africa Cup of Nations as the Director-General of the NSA.

He said in an interview that, though Rex Danquah, has been playing a consultancy role for the Ministry of Youth and Sports, he will be the best person to manage affairs of the NSA taking into consideration his track record.

According to Dr. Owusu-Ansah, the former COO of Ghana 2008 is visionary, hardworking and aggressive when it comes to implementation of sports policies and strategies.

The former Chief Executive of the NSA, said the current leadership of NSA is weak and lacks the requisite knowledge to change the dwindling fortunes of the NSA.

Dr. Owusu-Ansah, who resigned recently as the Director of the Sports Directorate of the University of Ghana, said, Rex Danquah, will within two years change the face of the NSA and sports in Ghana.

He urged the Ministry of Youth and Sports to consider offering him the job in the near future since he has the magic wand to turn things around.

Read more from the original source:
Give NSA to Rex Danquah Former CEO

NSA looks to IT to lock down systems, protect privacy

The National Security Agency spent about $30 million and devoted 300 people to compliance efforts in 2013, according to the Oct. 7 report of the agency's Civil Liberties and Privacy Office.

The recent report covers signals intelligence collection for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence authorized under Executive Order 12333, and specifically the rights of U.S. persons whose data is caught up in the NSA dragnet. The NSA uses a mix of training, compliance procedures, and compartmentalization of activities as part of overall efforts to minimize exposure of data on U.S. persons to unauthorized use. From an IT perspective, NSA efforts address data privacy and insider threat concerns. The NSA is researching in an area called Private Information Retrieval with the goal of improving "data security and privacy protection by cryptographically preventing unauthorized users from accessing protected data," per the report. The research taps commercial technology to secure the computing environment, validate program activity, secure searches, and minimize harm when adverse activity is detected.

The CLPO was established in Jan. 2014 to "ensure that civil liberties and privacy protection considerations are integrated into NSA's mission activities."

Scott Belcher, president and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, was named CEO of the Telecommunications Industry Association. He will step into the newly created post Nov. 9.

Belcher's diverse management experience spans 25 years and covers both public- and private-sector roles -- including a seven year term with ITS America, four years as executive vice president and general counsel for the National Academy of Public Administration and five years as managing director for environmental affairs and associate general counsel for the Air Transport Association, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Customs and Border Protection has added a new automated broker's interface query capability to its automated commercial environment, which allows international shippers to request cargo, manifest and entry record status information on file in the ACE system. The query capability, said the agency, will be available on Oct. 18 for ABI filers.

According to CBP, the capabilities the new cargo query will provide include processing status for an ACE cargo release entry, cargo manifest details and other key shipping data. The agency has set Oct. 1, 2015, as the deadline for mandatory use of ACE for all electronic filings in its cargo processing system.

Social media giant Twitter sued the U.S. government on Oct. 7, alleging that restrictions on disclosures of the scope of government surveillance of Twitter users are unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, filed in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleged that "the U.S. government engages in extensive but incomplete speech about the scope of its national security surveillance activities as they pertain to U.S. communications providers, while at the same time prohibiting service providers such as Twitter from providing their own."

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NSA IT, a better interface for CBP, data worries and more

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