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Cyber Roundup: Snowden testifies in front of European Parliament; CIA v. Congress; Sprint sued by government for overbilling

  • The Wall Street Journal reports that the government is suing Spring Corp. for allegedly overcharging agencies such as the FBI and DEA by at least $21 million to facilitate the government’s phone surveillance programs.  Here’s a report, too, on the same lawsuit from Wired.
  • According to the New York Times, the CIA is under investigation in response to congressional complaints that “CIA employees were improperly monitoring the work of staff embers of the Senate Intelligence Committee.”  Reportedly, the searches were conducted to determine how committee staff members were able to access a draft of an internal review of the agency’s interrogation program.  Here’s a piece on the investigation by the Dish.
  • NBC News reports that it may cost billions of dollars for the Pentagon to remedy the harm caused to military security by the Edward Snowden leaks.
  • Also from the WSJ:  A poorly written contract between the U.S. Navy and computer-services provider Hewlett-Packard Co. was the cause of a major Iranian infiltration into the Navy’s network.  The contract reportedly didn’t require Hewlett-Packard to provide specific security for a set of Navy Department databases, leaving those databases without regular security.
  • Federal News Radio reports that, after reviewing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) practices of the fifteen agencies that receive 90 percent of all requests, most received failing grades.  Some of those agencies include the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of State.
  • Lawfare Blog reported that the opening statement of Edward Snowden’s remote testimony to the European Parliament was:
    “I would like to thank the European Parliament for the invitation to provide testimony for your inquiry into the Electronic Mass Surveillance of EU citizens.  The suspicionless surveillance programs of the NSA, GCHQ, and so many others that we learned about over the last year endanger a number of basic rights which, in the aggregate, constitute the foundation of liberal societies.”  In closing, Snowden said:

    Whether we like it or not, the international norms of tomorrow are being constructed today, right now, by the work of bodies like this committee.  If liberal states decide that the convenience of spies is more valuable than the rights of their citizens, the inevitable result will be states that are both less liberal and less safe.

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