Now Yahoo targets NSA

The Guardian reports that Yahoo filed a suit in the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court. In its motion, Yahoo said it and other electronic communication providers have been intensely and publicly scrutinised for their alleged 'participation' in government surveillance, according to the report which quotes the Internet giant as saying: 'Yahoo has been unable to engage fully in the debate about whether the government has properly used its powers, because the government has placed a prior restraint on Yahoo's speech.' Yahoo also said media outlets were mistaken in claiming that the Prism programme allowed the US Government to tap directly into the servers to collect information, according to the report. It said that claim was 'false'. Full report in The Guardian

And Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centres around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments. The Washington Post reports that the scramble is among the most concrete signs yet that recent revelations about the NSA's sweeping surveillance efforts have provoked significant backlash within an American technology industry that US Government officials long courted as a potential partner in spying programs. According to the report, Google's encryption initiative, which was initially approved last year, was accelerated in June as the tech giant struggled to guard its reputation as a reliable steward of user information amid controversy about the NSA's PRISM program. As reported previously by the Post, PRISM obtains data from American technology companies, including Google, under various legal authorities. Company officials and independent security experts said that increasingly widespread use of encryption technology makes mass surveillance more difficult -- whether conducted by governments or other sophisticated hackers. Full report in The Washington Post

Meanwhile, the NSA can reportedly access users' data on all major smartphones. That's according to Der Spiegel which said it obtained NSA documents in which the agency states it accessed data from Apple iPhones, BlackBerry devices and phones that use Google's Android operating system. A report on the News24 site notes that this data includes contacts, call lists, SMS traffic, notes and location data. The NSA had set up working parties to ensure that each of the main operating systems had a 'back door' accessible to spies, the magazine said, according to the report. It notes critics warn that hackers may some day discover the NSA's 'back doors' and exploit them for crime. Full report on the News24 site

US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people around the world to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails. That's according to top-secret documents revealed by Snowden. The Guardian reports that through covert partnerships with tech companies, the spy agencies have inserted secret vulnerabilities into encryption software. The files show that the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that Internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments, according to the report. It says the documents reveal a battery of methods used by agencies in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic - 'the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet'. Full report in The Guardian

Leaks revealing how American spies have circumvented encryption for online communications are 'not news' because code-breaking is part of their job. However, a report on the News24 site notes that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said revelations to newspapers about how the NSA, along with British spy services, have deciphered data under encryption could help America's adversaries. 'While the specifics of how our intelligence agencies carry out this cryptanalytic mission have been kept secret, the fact that NSA's mission includes deciphering enciphered communications is not a secret, and is not news,' the ODNI said, according to the report. Full report on the News24 site

Russian President Vladimir Putin has labelled Snowden as a 'strange guy' who condemned himself to a difficult fate. 'You know, I sometimes thought about him, he is a strange guy,' ex-KGB spy Putin said in a television interview. According to a report on the IoL site, the case has strained relations between Russia and the US and prompted President Barack Obama to cancel a visit to Moscow for a bilateral summit ahead of last week's G20 summit in Saint Petersburg. The report notes that before receiving temporary asylum, Snowden spent more than a month marooned in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport where he arrived from Hong Kong on 23 June. Putin reiterated that Moscow could not extradite him because there was no extradition treaty, according to the report. Full report on the IoL site

In other developments, following Chelsea (Bradley) Manning's 35-year jail sentence for the biggest intelligence leak in US history, her lawyers have filed a request for a pardon from President Barack Obama, says a report in The Daily Telegraph. 'Private Manning's pardon request was filed by our office,' attorney David Coombs said on Twitter, the report notes. It states the lawyer had indicated his intention to seek a pardon on 21 August, when a US military judge sentenced Manning to 35 years behind bars for her massive disclosure of intelligence, including some 700 000 classified diplomatic and military documents. The report notes Amnesty International has urged Obama to take a sympathetic stance towards Manning and grant clemency, saying the soldier's sentence was a 'blight on the US human rights record'. According to the report, the rights group noted Manning's sentence 'contrasts with the leniency given those responsible for torture and other types of grave human rights violations' revealed by the soldier's disclosures. Full report in The Daily Telegraph