Microsoft, trying to get a grip on the controversy surrounding just what its Kinect peripheral will capture, collect, and save, has released a page dedicated to explaining just what it will do when it is connected to the Xbox One launching later this month. Microsoft hopes that these disclosures related to the Kinect and its privacy policies will ease consumers who are concerned about the security of their information and activities recorded by Kinect.

Reuters is reporting that the UK government is threatening to move to stop papers in the country from publishing further leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. According to Reuters, British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday that his government was "likely" to move towards putting a stop to newspapers from publishing "damaging leaks" from Edward Snowden unless they started to "behave more responsibly."

In a rare public statement yesterday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (now exiled in Moscow) urged American citizens to take part in a protest in Washington D.C. this weekend being put on by the members of the Stop Watching Us coalition. The group includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mozilla Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, social news website Reddit, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Demand Progress, Students for Liberty and the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA).

US Rep. John Conyers Jr., “Pentagon Papers” whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and actress Maggie Gyllenhaal are taking part in a new PSA calling for an end to mass "suspicionless" surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA). The new short video released by the StopWatching.us coalition was directed by Brian Knappenberger (We Are Legion: The Story of the Hackivists) and produced by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The Southern District of New York has ruled that the U.S. government cannot use the government shutdown as an excuse to delay proceedings in a lawsuit filed against the National Security Agency (NSA) by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In a lawsuit filed in June of this year, the ACLU and its New York affiliate called the surveillance of (collection of phone and Internet data) Americans illegal and asked the court to force the NSA to halt its activities because they are unconstitutional.

A new video detailing the National Security Agency's (NSA) broad spying programs on Americans will be on display tonight at 9:00 PM ET in Manhattan, projected onto a building for everyone to see. Internet freedom groups Fight for the Future and Demand Progress have teamed up with Golden Globe nominee Evangeline Lilly (Lost, The Hobbit) to produce a 5-minute crowd funded video that explains the NSA’s surveillance programs and calls for an end to them.

While lawmakers, feeling the heat from constituents back home (or deeply disturbed by reports on spying well before the public became outraged), consider reforms to U.S. surveillance programs operated by the National Security Agency, NSA Director Keith Alexander is asking the public for help in defending them.

The head of the top spying agency in the country urges citizens to remain stalwart in their support of the program, lest something bad happen to them on the scale of what happened in Kenya earlier this week.

No matter what side of the issue you are on, the looming government shutdown over raising the debt ceiling in Washington D.C. may shut down some important services but it will never stop the Nation Security Agency's (NSA) spying programs. At least that's what this report in The Hill notes. A government shutdown is imminent on Oct.

On October 26 organizers of StopWatchingUs will hold a rally in Washington D.C. on the anniversary of the Patriot Act. StopWatchingUs is a nonpartisan coalition of organizations, individuals, and companies that oppose the unconstitutional mass surveillance being conducted by the National Security Agency. The collective seeks "a full Congressional investigation of America’s surveillance programs, reform to federal surveillance law, and accountability from public officials responsible for hiding this surveillance from lawmakers and the public."

According to newly declassified documents, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge slammed the National Security Agency in 2009 for what he called "flagrant violations" of the privacy rights of U.S. citizens over a three-year period of searches of telephone records.

When the smart phone revolution began five years ago, the National Security Agency began looking for ways to crack the myriad of devices that were hitting the market including iPhones, Android devices, and Black Berry devices. Black Berry devices were the most popular among politicians and business people at the time.

Earlier this week we reported that Patriot Act chief author Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) had come out against the NSA in ACLU v. NSA, a lawsuit that seeks an immediate injunction that would halt all spying activity on American citizens, among other things. But what we didn't report is that a former Presidential candidate (and former Senator) and a former Vice-President have also sided with the ACLU.

If you believe that you have a right as an American citizen to your privacy online and on your mobile phone, then this ProPublica story will alarm you.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against four top Obama Administration officials (ACLU v. Clapper), asking a federal judge to declare the metadata sharing program unlawful, to put an end to it, and to force the NSA to purge all the data it has collected. Today an amicus brief was filed by someone who knows all about what the Patriot Act was and wasn't designed to do when it was written and subsequently made into law in late 2001 in the wake of 911.

Update: Politico is reporting that the White House knew that David Miranda would be stopped at London's Heathrow Airport before it happened, but it also denied any involvement in the incident.

"This is a decision that they made on their own and not at the request of the United States," White House principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said.

Earlier today, we reported that the White House had appointed the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, a guy who has by his own admission lied to Congress about the NSA spying on Americans, to "establish a Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies" to assess the NSA's surveillance efforts.

On Friday President Barack Obama promised to create an outside and independent review board to look into the NSA's surveillance efforts. Today we have learned that the person who has been selected to oversee this undertaking is less than credible. In a letter obtained by TechDirt (thanks EZK), we learn that it's the same old same old in D.C.

While revelations about the NSA's domestic spying programs are alarming and scary for anyone that cares about privacy, it could be worse. The New York Times explains why the NSA's collected data could be shared across just about every other agency in the U.S. government - if it let it happen.

When it comes to the NSA's overbroad surveillance activities, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) would be perfectly within his rights to say "I told you so." Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been talking - vaguely, because all the information was classified back then - about how the Patriot Act was being used in an overbroad way to keep tabs on American citizens. It used to be that spying on American citizens was outside the NSA's purview and jurisdiction, but the Patriot Act and other laws opened the flood gates.

According to a letter sent to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee from Judge Reggie Walton of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), Verizon and other companies have not fought orders to turn over records on all of their customers. Basically Judge Walton is saying that these companies have shown little to no resistance when it comes to government orders seeking information on their customers. Details about the letter were obtained by The Hill.

What do you get when you cross endless runner gameplay (think Temple Run) elements with an Edward Snowden escapade? You get an endless runner called Snowden Run 3D. The third-person perspective runner was created by Michele Rocco Smeets, who wanted to create a game that highlighted (for the sake of comedy) Snowden's whistle-blowing activities, the NSA's PRISM and mobile phone surveillance programs and his final real-world destination in Russia.

Former Texas Rep. and 2008 Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul says that an amendment voted down on the floor of the House last week would not have made much of a difference - even if it had survived a floor vote - to stop the NSA from spying on Americans. The amendment, from Republican Michigan Rep. Justin Amash - which was attached to the defense budget - called for the NSA's spying programs to be defunded.

On Thursday the U.S. Justice Department was rebuked by a U.S. District Court Judge for seeking to delay proceedings in a case against the NSA brought forward by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Justice Department had asked the court for an extension of time in the case so that it could declassify related documents, but U.S. District Judge William Pauley rebuked the agency, telling lawyers for the DOJ that it was in a courtroom and not some sort of marketplace.

Last night in the United States House of Representatives the Amash Amendment was narrowly defeated by a vote of 217 - 205. Approximately 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats voted for the measure that would have put a stop to large scale domestic spying on Americans, while 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats voted against it. Six Republicans and 6 Democrats abstained from voting or were not present. The Amendment was a rider to the massive defense bill.

Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash is proving to be a worthy adversary against the Republican establishment and the White House when it comes to national security issues, and he seems to have no problem throwing his enthusiastic support behind causes to stop the NSA's clandestine spying programs, much to the chagrin of hawks on both sides of the aisle.