international relations

Ars Technica reports on the leak of draft language of a proposed free trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, between the United States and several other countries, including Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, Mexico, and Canada.

The draft's proposals include:

* imposing limitations on retransmissions of television signals on the Internet without the authorization of copyright holders (Aereo and its rival FilmOn X say their streaming services don't violate copyright law because they use individual antennas for each customer to retransmit free broadcast TV on-line);

* extending copyright law in other countries to last for the life of the author plus 70 years;

* and a six-strikes regime "that could ultimately lead to customers suspected of copyright piracy being kicked off their ISP."

The Guardian has another scoop based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden: during the second term of the Bush presidential administration the National Security Agency memorialized that it tapped the phone calls of 35 world leaders after getting their numbers from a U.S. official in another department. The secret document stated no actionable intelligence arose from all that surveillance, The Guardian also reported.