That NSA Prism PowerPoint deck: A better-designed version, and what's in the missing slides?

Xeni Jardin 9:20 am Tue Jun 11, 2013

"Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides," writes Emiland, in a redesigned version of the Prism leak. "Do whatever with my data. But not with my eyes. Those slides are hideous."

Related: What's in the missing slides? Hacker and journalist Kevin Poulsen at Wired News explores what's missing from Snowden's PowerPoint deck. There are 41 slides, but the Guardian and the Washington Post would only publish 5 of them.

Even Greenwald, who urged me rather strongly in 2010 to publish Bradley Manning’s personal chats, is taking a more conservative view of the NSA’s PowerPoint. “I’m not going to discuss our legal advice with you,” Greenwald wrote on Twitter, “but we’re not publishing NSA tech methods.” To us geeks, the tech methods, of course, are the most interesting part. Snowden evidently wanted the entire presentation published, at least at one point in his discussions with the Post’s Gellman. On May 24, “Snowden asked for a guarantee that the Washington Post would publish — within 72 hours — the full text of [the] PowerPoint presentation,” Gellman wrote Sunday, in a fascinating account of his interactions with the whistleblower. “I told him we would not make any guarantee about what we published or when.”

What you need to know about police drone surveillance at protests against police brutality

Technology writer Faine Greenwood has a great piece in Slate about the expansion of police drone surveillance fleets. While there are still many, many reasons to worry about abuses of drone technology… READ THE REST
IRS says it bought in to location database for millions of US cellphones to track tax crime suspects

The United States Internal Revenue Service says it purchased access to a marketing database that offers location data for millions of US cellphones, so the IRS can identify and track… READ THE REST
IBM to exit facial recognition business, opposes use of AI technology for mass surveillance

In a letter to members of Congress, IBM says it will abandon the general-purpose facial recognition business, and that the company opposes the use of facial recognition for mass surveillance. READ THE REST
Short Post, just one paragraph

Dessert cheesecake wafer bear claw fruitcake. Fruitcake chupa chups donut candy canes marzipan. Apple pie sweet roll tart chocolate cake macaroon marshmallow carrot cake gummi bears sweet. Pastry sugar plum… READ THE REST
Save 50% on a 1-year subscription to Dashlane's premium password manager

We all know vital information about ourselves and our private digital accounts can be compromised by cybercriminals. However, many would be frightened to know just how compromised they and their… READ THE REST
The Bite Helper removes the itch of a mosquito bite in seconds

While mosquitoes have certainly earned their title as the deadliest animal on earth, their impact on most of our lives is usually a lot less consequential. But even though they… READ THE REST