Tip of the Week: Force Yourself to Stop Wasting Time

If you find yourself wasting too much time puttering around on the Web instead of getting actual work done, services like RescueTime and Facebook Limiter temporarily lock you out of the sites you procrastinate on the most. Browser add-ons are another quick way to keep focused. For example, LeechBlock for Mozilla Firefox and Productivity Owl for Google Chrome let you add the URLs of the sites where you waste the most time, and will deny you access to those places when you try to sneak a peek instead of working. Both add-ons are free, but their creators gladly accept donations.

Tip of the Week: Force Yourself to Stop Wasting Time

If you find yourself wasting too much time puttering around on the Web instead of getting actual work done, services like RescueTime and Facebook Limiter temporarily lock you out of the sites you procrastinate on the most. Browser add-ons are another quick way to keep focused. For example, LeechBlock for Mozilla Firefox and Productivity Owl for Google Chrome let you add the URLs of the sites where you waste the most time, and will deny you access to those places when you try to sneak a peek instead of working. Both add-ons are free, but their creators gladly accept donations.

Cheney Defends Surveillance and Calls Leaks Traitorous

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday defended the newly disclosed electronic surveillance programs operated by the government and called the former National Security Agency contract worker who disclosed them a criminal and a traitor.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Cheney, a forceful advocate for the classified programs when he was in office, said that Edward J. Snowden, a Booz Allen Hamilton employee who was assigned to a N.S.A. facility in Hawaii, had severely undermined United States intelligence capabilities. Mr. Snowden, who flew to Hong Kong from Hawaii last month with a trove of documents about top-secret telephone and Internet surveillance programs, has since revealed that the United States had penetrated the computer systems of China and numerous other countries.

“I think it’s one of the worst occasions in my memory of somebody with access to classified information doing enormous damage to the national security interests of the United States,” Mr. Cheney said.

Mr. Cheney said that Mr. Snowden had violated United States law and might be a Chinese spy.

“I’m suspicious because he went to China,” said Mr. Cheney, who flew to Washington from his home in Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Saturday to appear on the Fox program. “That’s not a place where you would ordinarily want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth. It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this.”

Mr. Snowden had written in earlier Internet postings that he was interested in Chinese language and culture and suggested that a posting in the country could be a good career move. He said he chose Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous region of China, because of its history of free speech.

President Obama has defended the electronic eavesdropping programs, saying they were closely monitored and were a useful tool in fighting terrorism. But Mr. Cheney said that Mr. Obama could not mount an effective defense because of investigations into the Internal Revenue Service treatment of Tea Party groups and continuing questions about the terrorist attacks on an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

“He’s got no credibility,” Mr. Cheney said.

The White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, appearing on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” said that he did not know where Mr. Snowden was now hiding but said that he had exaggerated his access to sensitive materials. Mr. Snowden, in interviews from Hong Kong, has said that he had the ability to tap into virtually anyone’s telephone conversations or to monitor the president’s private e-mail, if he had the address.

Mr. McDonough called such claims “incorrect.”

Mr. McDonough, a close confident of the president’s who was promoted to chief of staff this year from his previous position as deputy national security adviser, said that it was too early to measure the damage from Mr. Snowden’s disclosures. But he said that leaking information about American surveillance capabilities “in effect gives the playbook to those who would like to get around our techniques and our practices and obviously that’s not in our interest in the long haul.”

Mr. Cheney said he is concerned that Mr. Snowden has additional damaging information. He said he thought the Chinese authorities might welcome the opportunity to provide him sanctuary from American law enforcement officials who are likely to seek his extradition to face charges in the United States.

Representative Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, also defended the surveillance programs on Sunday, saying they were tightly monitored by Congress, the courts and the executive branch. He appeared on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

“They have used it sparingly,” Mr. Rogers said of the capacity to collect records of telephone calls and Internet traffic. He said that much of the reporting on the programs has been exaggerated and that most Americans would support the data collection if they understood its narrow scope. He said most of the information is a kept in a “lockbox” and not scrutinized unless it correlated with activity of known or suspected foreign terrorists.

He also referred to a letter delivered to Congress on Saturday from the office of James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, in which he claimed the surveillance programs had helped thwart “dozens” of terrorist plots in the United States and more than 20 other countries.

The letter said that fewer than 300 American phone records were reviewed in 2012.