Internet turned into ‘giant surveillance platform’ by NSA

Bruce Schneier, who has written extensively on digital security and privacy, told an audience in Dublin tonight that the revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden of large-scale surveillance by the NSA showed that we were living in a “golden age of surveillance.”

In a lecture for the human rights group Front Line Defenders, Mr Schneier said the NSA’s role changed completely after the 9/11 attacks, when US intelligence agencies were given “an impossible mission: never again.” “The only way to ensure something doesn’t happen is to know everything that is happening,” he said.

NATO can put troops wherever it wants, new secretary-general says

WARSAW – New NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday that the Western alliance could deploy its forces wherever it wants, apparently calling into question post-Cold War agreements that have been shaken by Russia’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine.

Stoltenberg was visiting NATO member Poland to reassure it that NATO would provide the protection it sought against its former communist master, Russia, which in recent months has annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, and been accused by the West of sending troops and equipment to back pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.