{"id":288,"date":"2013-06-17T20:17:26","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T00:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/?p=288"},"modified":"2013-09-18T15:43:22","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T19:43:22","slug":"imweekly-june-17-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/2013\/06\/17\/imweekly-june-17-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"#imweekly: June 17, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>United States<\/strong><br \/>\nThe National Security Agency <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/06\/07\/us\/nsa-verizon-calls.html?ref=surveillanceofcitizensbygovernment&amp;_r=0\">has confirmed<\/a> that it has been operating a global electronic surveillance program, collecting information from Google, Facebook, and other tech companies under a program called PRISM, after Booz Allen employee and NSA contractor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2013\/jun\/09\/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance\">Edward Snowden<\/a> leaked inside documents. The news has triggered a <a href=\"https:\/\/action.eff.org\/o\/9042\/p\/dia\/action3\/common\/public\/?action_KEY=9260\">widespread outcry<\/a> from human rights advocates and organizations. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Saudi Arabia<\/strong><br \/>\nIn March, Saudi Arabian officials declared that the country would <a href=\"http:\/\/stream.aljazeera.com\/story\/201306062104-0022812\">block access<\/a> to three popular voice and messaging services&mdash;Viber, Skype, and WhatsApp&mdash;if the companies did not give the government access to local monitoring services.  The government has followed through on its threat, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-middle-east-22806848\">blocking Viber<\/a> on June 6.  On June 11, the block was <a href=\"http:\/\/zeenews.india.com\/business\/news\/technology\/messenger-app-viber-restored-in-saudi-says-report_77844.html\">rescinded<\/a>, though whether Viber has complied with government demands for monitoring access is unclear.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Iran<\/strong><br \/>\nIranian Gmail users were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/threatlevel\/2013\/06\/iran-hack-election\/\">reporting evidence of phishing attacks<\/a>, just days before last week&#8217;s presidential elections. The attacks, which appear to be originating from within the country, have been occurring for three weeks; in a blog post, Google Vice President of Security Engineering Eric Grosse said the attacks were likely <a href=\"http:\/\/googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.hk\/2013\/06\/iranian-phishing-on-rise-as-elections.html\">politically motivated<\/a>.  Google security staff said the phishing attacks appeared to be conducted by the same group that conducted attacks in Iran in 2011 <a href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/8301-27080_3-20098894-245\/fraudulent-google-certificate-points-to-internet-attack\/\">using a fraudulent Google certificate<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New details about PRISM, Saudi Arabia temporarily blocks access to messaging service Viber, and phishing attacks against Gmail users in Iran. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/2013\/06\/17\/imweekly-june-17-2013\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[981,497,622,2242,13363,3619,1860],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facebook","category-google","category-iran","category-saudi-arabia","category-social-media","category-surveillance","category-united-states"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4L9BV-4E","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1057,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/1057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}