Saudi Arabia, a staunch opponent of President Bashar Assad since early in Syria' conflict, began supplying anti-aircraft missiles to rebels "on a small scale" about two months ago, a Gulf source said on Monday.
ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland - US President Barack Obama faces what could be a frosty G8 meeting with Vladimir Putin on Monday after the Russian leader clashed with the West over plans to arm Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar Assad.
A huge blast has been reported in the western Mezzeh suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus.
Syrian state TV said the blast was caused by "a terrorist attempt to target Mezzeh military airport".
Unconfirmed reports said around 20 soldiers were killed or wounded in the explosion.
Mezzeh military airport is an important strategic installation and plays a significant role in distributing the government's military supplies.
Activists said a big fire was raging inside the airport and that ambulances were heading to the scene.
The UK-based activist group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said that a car bomb had been detonated targeting a military checkpoint near the airport.
While the existence of the National Security Agency (NSA) has been known by the masses for years, the last two weeks have revealed on onslaught of potential violations that even the most paranoid protectors of privacy likely didn't predict. The Guardian and The Washington Post blew the story of the NSA' PRISM program wide open earlier this month, inferring most major tech companies granted "unfettered" access to their servers. Now that the bulk of the hype-filled reactions have settled, we have access to more of the facts.
Here' the lowdown on what we know to be true thus far.
What is PRISM?
It' important to understand the distinction between the NSA' general missions and their specific PRISM program, which is a system inside the NSA that was birthed to gain access to the private communications of the nine most popular Internet services. PRISM' access is governed by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enacted in 2008. PRISM has in fact been verified by the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. In a recent blog post, Clapper admitted to the existence of the program, emphasizing that the program was developed to survey foreigners only. Does this mean US citizens have nothing to worry about? Alas, it' not that simple.
A Long Line of Whistleblowers
Employees of the NSA have been raising red flags for some time now about the potential attack on the US' privacy, but until recently, there were no documents or evidence to back up these accusations. Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA employee that has at last substantiated these allegations, produced a detailed Power Point presentation that fully outlines the goals of PRISM. And they definitely do not only involve foreign surveillance.
The key slide in Snowden' evidence states that PRISM enables "collection directly from the servers" of some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook. Each of these organizations, however, has vehemently denied participation in the program. So who do we believe?
It' clear that some, if not all, of these organizations are not simply handing over their servers to the government. Out of all the rebuttals, Google holds the most clout, as they dared to respond outside the normal legalistic language and truly showed their hand on how they feel. Google chief architect Yonatan Zunger wrote that, "the only way in which Google reveals information about users are when we receive lawful, specific orders about individuals." He went on to say that, "it would have been challenging - not impossible, but definitely a major surprise - if something like this could have been done without my ever hearing of it. We didn't fight the Cold War just so we could rebuild the Stasi ourselves."
What does this tell us, exactly? Not much, but we can assume that the executives at places like Google and Apple are likely not lying about their involvement (or lack thereof) with PRISM. The government is asking, and information is supplied whenever it feels urgent and lawful to do so. There' a gray area here, as we don't know the volume of information shared, but it' safe to say there' not a full-scale server hand-off happening.
What Data, and How Much, is Really Being Shared
The New York Times has revealed that systems at major tech companies "involve access to data under individual FISA requests. And in some cases, the data is transmitted to the government electronically, using a company' servers." Herein lies the panic - the NSA does in fact gain access to servers at places like Microsoft under these "certain circumstances." The article states that data is "shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk." Without a clear definition of what these involve, and how often they are granted, we don't know exactly how much data is really shared. It' not nothing, and it' not a free-for-all . the rest is still a mystery.
"There have been leaks from Western media regarding the serious consideration to create a no-fly zone over Syria through the deployment of Patriot anti-aircraft missiles and F-16 jets in Jordan," said Mr Lavrov, speaking at a joint news conference in Moscow with his Italian counterpart.
"You don't have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate international law," he said.
Mr Lavrov also said evidence presented by the US of chemical weapons use in Syria apparently did not meet reliability criteria set out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22919322
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