Earlier this week it was revealed (through documents from Edward Snowden's cache of NSA internal documents) that the National Security Agency planned to infect millions of computer systems using sophisticated malware. This would allow it to pose as Facebook and other sites in order to intercept data. Today the agency is denying the information in those documents. The agency said today that it does not pose as any U.S. companies and that "what it does is legal."

In a statement to NBC News former NSA contractor (currently in exile in Russia after leaking classified NSA documents about domestic and international spying programs) called Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA.) hypocritical for complaining about the CIA allegedly spying on the Senate while strongly supporting the NSA's spying programs and bills like CISPA.

Did the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spy on Senate staffers in an effort to stymie an investigation into illegal torture tactics being used by the agency during the Bush Administration? CIA Director John Brennan said that the agency does not spy on Congress and that such an allegation is beyond the scope of reason and simply not true.

Speaking at the Cebit tech fair in Hanover, Germany recently, European Commission vice-president Neelie Kroes said that the future of the internet has to be based on trust. Kroes is responsible for the European Commission's Digital Agenda, and was giving the speech to an audience which included such state leaders as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

New documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden cited in a new Guardian report indicate that UK spy agency GCHQ evaluated the potential of using the Xbox 360 (and now Xbox One) Kinect peripheral as a means to spy on people. The report also indicates that the agency also considered the usefulness of the PlayStation Eye as well.

According to a report in the New York Times, the National Security Agency knew in 2013 that the Australian spy agency, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), was conducting surveillance on a U.S.-based law firm representing the Indonesian government in a trade dispute with the U.S. government. The dispute was over the United States banning the import of clove cigarettes into the U.S. from Indonesia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during her weekly podcast that she is proposing to other European nations - most notably France - to build their own communications network to help improve data protection. Chancellor Merkel described a network that would not have to automatically pass through the United States.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has been talking about a class action lawsuit against the NSA and the Obama administration over the spy agency's collection of phone metadata and other collection activities.

The lawsuit was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, with Rand Paul and conservative group Freedom Works named as lead plaintiffs. The lawsuit is aimed at President Barack Obama, Director of National Security James Clapper, Director of the NSA Keith Alexander, and Director of the FBI James Comey Jr.

Today is the day that advocacy groups and businesses have designated as a day of protest online against the NSA's unfettered surveillance and data collection practices. Led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the collective are calling on websites and internet users to show their support by displaying special banners online and to contact their elected official in D.C. to let them know that the mass surveillance being conducted by the NSA needs to come to an end.

The head of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) has lashed out at one of the key journalists publishing stories about the documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. While not mentioning him by name, Rogers basically calls The Guardian's Glen Greenwald a thief, implying that he is committing some sort of crime and is selling the documents leaked by Edward Snowden. You may recall that Greenwald was one of the first journalists to break the story about Edward Snowden and his cache of NSA-related documents and materials..

This week Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and LinkedIn were finally able to release some data on requests by law enforcement agencies and federal authorities from January to June of 2013. Getting to this point was quite the fight, but something the aforementioned companies decided was important to pursue because the NSA files leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden said that some corporations were actively cooperating with government agencies. All flatly denied those allegations.

Rep. Peter King (R-New York) this week laid into the Republican National Committee (RNC) for its resolution stating that the National Security Agency's spying was unconstitutional, that various surveillance programs should be halted immediately, and that a "full public accounting" of those activities should take place. Rep. King described the resolution as a “hysterical” measure that could be a “death warrant” for the GOP. The RNC announced the resolution on Friday.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made headlines again this week when he intimated that certain unnamed journalists were accomplices in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Following its report yesterday that the NSA and other spy agencies were exploiting "leaky apps" such as Rovio's Angry Birds to gather information on users around the world, ProPublica has released this handy FAQ to better explain exactly how the whole process works and what consumers can do to moderately protect their privacy.

Angry Birds maker Rovio issued a statement today (which they passed along to GamePolitics this morning following a request for comment yesterday) in response to a report from ProPublica that spy agencies were gathering information on users of its popular game. The company said in a statement that it does not share data about its users with government agencies such as the NSA or the UK's GCHQ.

It sounds far-fetched when someone says that playing something as innocent as Angry Birds is helping spy agencies gather information about you, but that is just what happens when users launch what this Pro Publica investigation claims is a "leaky app."

An ACLU attorney serving as a legal advisor to former NSA contractor and leaker Edward Snowden says that he would only take a plea deal with the U.S. government if the terms of the deal were solidified prior to his landing on U.S. soil.

"I can tell you now he is not going to return to the country and take his chances on what the details of a plea bargain might be or what might await him at a trial," American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ben Wizner said in an interview on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports."

The Republican National Committee passed a resolution today renouncing what it is calling "unconstitutional National Security Agency surveillance programs." This is quite a shift in position for the party which defended the ramping up of these programs after the 911 attacks. The resolution was affirmed by a voice vote at the GOP’s winter meeting.

The RNC called upon Republican lawmakers "to immediately take action to halt current unconstitutional surveillance programs and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s data collection programs."

Leaked copies of the upcoming report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) have made their way to the New York Times and the Washington Post this morning, revealing that the group's review of the government's metadata collection practi

The great debate about the fate of the former NSA contractor who leaked documents detailing the agency's spying programs on the Internet, mobile phones and even in video games rages on. Some believe that Edward Snowden is a patriot and a whistleblower who deserves a full presidential pardon, while others believe that he should be get the maximum penalty under the law for treason and espionage.

On Friday President Barack Obama gave a speech laying out his plans to curtail the spying activities of the National Security Agency (NSA) on U.S. citizens and on targets abroad. The president promised to reform the agency's programs, but according to a new poll Americans aren't impressed with the president's plan or didn't pay attention to it.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that President Barack Obama's speech on reforming the National Security Agency contained a lot of lies and that the president spent a lot of time saying nothing. Assange made his comments during an interview on CNN after the speech aired.

"We heard a lot of lies in this speech by Obama," Assange said. "I think it’s embarrassing for a head of state to go on like that for 45 minutes and say almost nothing."

Today at the Justice Department President Barack Obama delivered a speech announcing that the United States will stop collecting and storing phone metadata, even as he defended the programs run by the National Security Alliance. In a rather lengthy speech covering a number of issues related to the NSA's spying programs, the president emphasized that U.S. intelligence agencies have not broken the law and have not spied on the calls or e-mails of "ordinary people."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says that the National Security Agency's claims of secrecy on information that has already been widely released due to leaks by Edward Snowden are overblown and no longer "secret." The advocacy group made its comments in an official response in its ongoing court battle with the agency over the unconstitutionality of its surveillance programs.

Outgoing National Security Agency deputy director John C. Inglis tells National Public Radio that the spy agency would welcome the creation of a public advocate position to take part in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court deliberations as a check against NSA requests. Inglis, who is retiring after being the number 2 man in the agency for seven years says that an advocate for the constitutionality of requests to be included would be fine as long as it doesn't impede the expediency of the NSA's activities.

According to a Bloomberg report, President Obama will attempt to get out in front of recommendations by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board coming in late January or early February by announcing some changes of his own to the way the National Security Agency currently collects data as part of its massive surveillance programs.

A quarter of British and Canadian technology firms surveyed say that they want their data taken out of the United States because of the NSA's unfettered spying activities. The survey was conducted by cloud provider Peer1, which has infrastructure in the U.S., Canada and Britain.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has officially appealed a recent decision by a New York District Court Judge that determined that the National Security Agency's (NSA) wide-scale surveillance of mobile phone data was legal and within the confines of the law. The filing with the Federal Appeals Court could ultimately lead to the case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Apple has responded strongly to reports that the National Security Agency claims a "100-percent success rate" in attaching spyware to iOS apps. The revelation about the NSA's targeting of Apple products comes from a recent Der Speigel report featuring leaked documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided to various journalists. The NSA program targeting Apple products is called DROPOUTJEEP, and allows the agency to intercept SMS messages, access contact lists, locate a phone using cell tower data, and even activate the device’s microphone and camera.

Cisco Systems, one of the companies mentioned in a Der Spiegel report on the NSA's catalog of backdoors into various networks and technologies, said that it is investigating if the NSA has in some way compromised the networking hardware equipment it provides to companies throughout the world.