Across the globe, fallout from reports of U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and other governmental surveillance programs continues. Politico reports on U.S. regulators urging their counterparts in the EU not to abandon the Safe Harbor Framework amidst “mounting European anger over NSA spying.” Separately “The CIA is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with overseas counterterrorism investigations by exploiting the company’s vast database of phone records, which includes Americans’ international calls,” according to a report in The New York Times. NSA General Counsel Rajesh De has attempted to explain the agency’s telephone metadata collection program by saying, “It’s effectively the same standard as stop-and-frisk”—using “reasonable and articulable suspicion” to identify phone numbers to target. Meanwhile, Google has begun encrypting its internal network in an effort to halt broad surveillance, and Kaspersky has said it is designing products “to detect all malware”—even that sponsored by the NSA. In response to allegations of U.S. agencies spying on EU officials, Spiegel examines what the White House might have known and how the NSA sets its priorities, and Indonesia has backed a UN statement indicating “anger at U.S.-led data snooping,” while Australian websites faced cyber attacks “in protest at Canberra's reported involvement in the surveillance network.”
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