Privacy has never been “an absolute right”, according to the new director of GCHQ, who has used his first public intervention to accuse US technology companies of becoming “the command and control networks of choice” for terrorists.

He said a new generation of freely available technology has helped groups like Islamic State to hide from the security services and accuses major tech firms of being “in denial”, going further than his predecessor in seeking to claim that the leaks of Edward Snowden have aided terror networks. The new director says Isis differs from its predecessors in the security of its communications, presenting an even greater challenge to the security services. 

The FBI has reportedly raided the home of an "extremely principled and brave" whistleblower working for a contracting firm of the USA, thought to have been inspired by security contractor Edward Snowden to continue his work. 

The existence of a "second Snowden" was first suspected by authorities when information about the US government's master terrorist screening database surfaced online in August, months after Snowden had already fled the country. The government's frantic search for the new leaker intensified this month after scenes from Poitras' documentary on Snowden, Citizenfour, showed Greenwald appearing to confirm the existence of new whistleblower.

Nearly 7 million usernames and passwords from Dropbox, the free cloud service for storing your photos, videos, and documents across devices, were leaked onto the internet. And just days prior former NSA contractor recommended that users drop Dropbox if they wanted to protect their privacy.

Dropbox is standing firm on its position that its service is fully encrypted, and denies responsibility for the leak of emails and passwords, many of which have been expired for some time now. Dropbox instead shifts the blame to users and third parties stated that these usernames and passwords had been unfortunately stolen from other services and used in attempts to log in to Dropbox accounts.

The National Security Agency has sent spies into private companies in a bid to compromise networks from within, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

Agents sent in by the NSA targeted global communications firms under a highly classified 'core secrets' program dubbed Sentry Eagle previously known only to a handful of officials. The documents indicate operatives in the core secrets program worked in concert with companies to weaken encryption and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to break security mechanisms. The document listed facts ranging from unclassified to top secret necessitating "extraordinary protection".

According to Edward Snowden, people who care about their privacy should stay away from popular consumer Internet services like Dropbox, Facebook, and Google. Snowden conducted a remote interview today as part of the New Yorker Festival, where he was asked a couple of variants on the question of what we can do to protect our privacy.

His first answer called for a reform of government policies. Some people take the position that they “don’t have anything to hide,” but he argued that when you say that, “You’re inverting the model of responsibility for how rights work”.

The NSA has repeatedly assured the public that it definitely does not perform economic espionage. It may collect metadata and communications from around the world and intercept shipments of computer hardware in order to install its own spying devices, but it doesn't perform espionage in service of American corporate interests.

This was the small thing that set our intelligence agencies slightly above similar agencies in China. Last August, the ODNI (Jame Clapper's office) sent this categorical denial in response to leaked documents. “The department does not engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.” And then the truth came rolling in, thanks to Snowden's leaks.

Switzerland will most likely guarantee safety to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, if he comes to testify against the NSA’s spying activities, Swiss media said.

In the document, titled “What rules are to be followed if Edward Snowden is brought to Switzerland and then the United States makes an extradition request,” Switzerland’s Attorney General stated that Snowden could be guaranteed safety if he arrives in the country to testify, Sonntags Zeitung reported. In the document, the authority said that Switzerland does not extradite a US citizen, if the individual’s “actions constitute a political offense, or if the request has been politically motivated,” Swiss ATS news agency reported.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) shares vast amounts of communications data with the country’s government agencies using a search engine similar to Google.

NSA’s search tool, called ICREACH, makes “more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations and internet chats” available to nearly two dozen US government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Intercept reported on Tuesday citing classified documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. 

A major insight into human behavior from pre-internet era studies of communication is the tendency of people not to speak up about policy issues in public—or among their family, friends, and work colleagues—when they believe their own point of view is not widely shared. This tendency is called the “spiral of silence”.

Some social media creators and supporters have hoped that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter might produce different enough discussion venues that those with minority views might feel freer to express their opinions, thus broadening public discourse and adding new perspectives to everyday discussion of political issues.

NSA project called MonsterMind that would give the agency control of all internet traffic entering the US, the ability to detect and block attacks in progress, and potentially, some day, the power to autonomously launch retaliatory strikes without human intervention.

Snowden says that the program is currently in development, but he gave no information on when or even if it might be deployed. If MonsterMind does become reality, it would encompass even greater US control over the internet than that which now exists, as well as ever more trampling on Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search.