News you may have missed #0135

• More revelations in “unprecedented” book on MI5 history. More revelations in Christopher Andrew’s In Defense of the Realm include the disclosure that Margaret Thatcher tried to get MI5 to spy on British trade union activists when she was Prime Minister (MI5 refused). Meanwhile, Professor Andrew has begun serializing selected chapters of the book in The London Times, here and here.
• Court lets Canadian spies snoop on targets overseas. A court ruling has permitted the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Communications Security Establishment to eavesdrop on Canadian nationals traveling overseas. Until now, the two agencies could spy on Canadians so long as they were within the country’s borders.
• CIA endorses cloud computing. The CIA is emerging as one of the US government’s strongest advocates of cloud computing, even though “cloud computing as a term really didn’t hit our vocabulary until a year ago”, according to Jill Tummler Singer, the CIA’s deputy Chief Intelligence Officer. This article, however, fails to mention that the NSA is also moving to cloud computing in a big way.