Privacy Watch: Latest on NSA et al.
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-02 15:43:43 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-02 15:44:59 UTC
Micorsoft
-
Scary. Insane. Ridiculous. Invasive. Wrong. The Washington Post reports that the FBI has had the ability to secretly activate a computer's camera "without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording" for years now. What in the hell is going on? What kind of world do we live in?
Marcus Thomas, the former assistant director of the FBI's Operational Technology Division, told the Post that that sort of creepy spy laptop recording is "mainly" used in terrorism cases or the "most serious" of criminal investigations. That doesn't really make it less crazy (or any better) since the very idea of the FBI being able to watch you through your computer is absolutely disturbing.
-
The FBI team works much like other hackers, using security weaknesses in computer programs to gain control of users’ machines. The most common delivery mechanism, say people familiar with the technology, is a simple phishing attack — a link slipped into an e-mail, typically labeled in a misleading way.
Snowden
-
Along with journalist colleagues Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, I spent six days with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong. He had spent almost all of his short adult life working in America's spy agencies, but at the end of those six days, the unknown 29-year-old became one of the most famous faces on the planet. He went public in a Guardian video, revealing himself as the source of one of the biggest leaks in western intelligence history.
-
Only three months after the Snowden leaks on NSA snooping began, we learn from Ars Technica that the developers at FreeBSD have decided to rethink the way they access random numbers to generate cryptographic keys. Starting with version 10.0, users of the operating system will no longer be relying solely on random numbers generated by Intel and Via Technologies processors. This comes as a response to reports that government spooks can successfully open some encryption schemes.
-
Agency Implementing 2-Person Rule, Increasing Encryption Use
Greenwald
Machon
-
While British politics and media display a strong reluctance to confront the harsh realities of UK spying, we should be worried about further revelations of a dystopian, Orwellian surveillance system gone global, former MI5 agent Annie Machon told RT.
-
Here’s an RT inter€view I did about the media response to Edward Snowden, the media response, pri€vacy and what we can do.
Obama
-
The facts that we know so far – from Fisa court documents to LOVEINT – show that the NSA has overstepped its powers
-
Before he left for Hawaii, the president was sending signals that government surveillance programs need an overhaul to restore the public’s faith on issues of national security.
Judgement
-
The September 11th terrorist attacks revealed, in the starkest terms, just how dangerous and interconnected the world is. While Americans depended on technology for the conveniences of modernity, al-Qaeda plotted in a seventh-century milieu to use that technology against us. It was a bold jujitsu. And it succeeded because conventional intelligence gathering could not detect diffuse filaments connecting al-Qaeda.
Prior to the September 11th attacks, the National Security Agency (“NSA”) intercepted seven calls made by hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who was living in San Diego, California, to an al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen. The NSA intercepted those calls using overseas signals intelligence capabilities that could not capture al-Mihdhar’s telephone number identifier. Without that identifier, NSA analysts concluded mistakenly that al-Mihdhar was overseas and not in the United States. Telephony metadata would have furnished the missing information and might have permitted the NSA to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) of the fact that al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safe house from inside the United States.
1984
-
A Scottish sci-fi writer has cancelled the last instalment in a trilogy about high-tech government spying after discovering that the NSA has been doing exactly what he described in his books.
-
Snowden in 2013 revealed what George Orwell in 1949 had already revealed in 1984: that Big Brothers who spy on their citizens will go on to do very bad things. He then asked for asylum in a country with a long history of its own citizens seeking asylum from his country.
Sci-FI Made Real
Many Americans might never notice or care. I remember when telephone calls were considered to be private. In the 1940s and 1950s the telephone company could not always provide private lines. There were “party lines” in which two or more customers shared the same telephone line. It was considered extremely rude and inappropriate to listen in on someone’s calls and to monopolize the line with long duration conversations.
-
A leaked NSA cyber-arms catalog has shed light on the technologies US and UK spies use to infiltrate and remotely control PCs, routers, firewalls, phones and software from some of the biggest names in IT.
The exploits, often delivered via the web, provide clandestine backdoor access across networks, allowing the intelligence services to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks that conventional security software has no chance of stopping.
Corporate and Other
-
Kelly hired David Cohen, the former head of the C.I.A.’s spy division, to run the force’s intelligence outfit. Cohen, a trained economist known to be intensely loyal to his superiors (and profane with everyone else), created the Demographics Unit, which imbedded special recruits in eighteen Muslim neighborhoods to monitor every aspect of daily life. At the same time, Kelly created the International Liaison Program, which posted detectives in eleven hot spots overseas, including London, Paris, Madrid, Abu Dhabi, and Tel Aviv. “We’ve reorganized the department to accommodate this world view,” Kelly said. “You might say that the N.Y.P.D. has aspired to become a Council on Foreign Relations with guns.”
-
We have all heard by now of the massive surveillance being conducted by the NSA and other governments across the world. China is a well-known anti-privacy country and others have decided to also spy on their citizens’ social network activities amongst other things. The Internet censorship trends are getting pretty bad.
-
Older teenagers have turned their backs on Facebook, an EU-funded study has found. Young people are opting for alternative social networks like Twitter and WhatsApp, while the "worst people of all, their parents, continue to use the service."
Recent Techrights' Posts
- When People Call a Best/Close Friend of Bill Gates a "Serial Rapist"
- Good thing that the Linux Foundation keeps the "Linux" trademark ("Linux Mark") clean
- Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia, Shutdown in Pakistan, What Next?
- It seems possible that in 2025 alone Microsoft will have laid off over 50,000 workers
- What Matters More Than "Market Share"
- The goal is freedom, not "market share"
- Credit Suisse collapse obfuscated Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners scandal
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- UK Media Under Threat: Cannot Report on Data Breach, Cannot Report on Microsoft Staff Strangling Women
- The story of super injunction (in the British media this week, years late)
- Under the Guise of "MIT Technology Review Insights" the Site MIT Technology Review Posts Corporate Spam as 'Articles'
- Some of the articles aren't even articles but 'hit pieces' against Free software and some are paid advertisements
- Brett Wilson LLP Has Track Record in Scam Coin Cases (e.g. Craig Wright and More), Now It Works for 'Crypto' Scam Purveyors
- But wait, it gets worse
- Will Brett Wilson LLP Handle Its Own Winding Up Petition or be Struck Off for Overt Abuse of Process?
- Today we sue not only the first Microsofter
-
- CALEA / CALEA2 is the Real Problem, Not Chinese Operatives Exploiting CALEA / CALEA2 (as Any Other Nation Can)
- CALEA / CALEA2 is more of a front door than a back door
- 99.99% Uptime in First Half of 2025
- Since January there was only one noticeable outage
- Nils Torvalds and Anna "Mikke" Torvalds (née Törnqvis) Hopefully Use GNU/Linux by Now
- "Torvalds Family Uses Windows, Not Linus’ Linux"
- Attack of the Slopfarms
- FUD-amplifying bots with slop images, slop text (LLM slop)
- Not My Problem, I Don't Care
- Context/inspiration: Martin Niemöller
- Honest Journalism About the European Patent Office Ceased to Exist After SLAPPs and Bribes to the Media
- The EPO is basically a Mafia
- Life Became Simpler When I Stopped Driving and I Don't Miss Driving When I See "Modern" Cars
- Gee, wonder why car sales have plummeted...
- Why I Believe Brett Wilson LLP and Its Microsoft Clients Are All Toast
- So far our legal strategy has worked perfectly
- EPO Jobs Are Very Toxic and Bad for One's Health
- Health first, not monopolies
- Response to Ryo Suwito Regarding the Four Freedoms
- the point of life isn't to make more money
- Microsoft's Morale Circling Down the Drain
- Or gutter, toilet etc.
- Tech Used to be Fun. To Many of Us It's Still Fun.
- You can just watch it from afar and make fun of it all
- Links 17/07/2025: "Blog Identity Crisis" and Openwashing by Nvidia
- Links for the day
- Greffiers and the US Attorney of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
- The lawsuit can help expose extensive corruption in the American court system as well
- The People Who Promoted systemd in Debian Also Promote Wayland
- This is not politics
- Victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, Wanted to Sue Him But Lacked the Funds (He Attacked Their Finances)
- Having spoken to victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
- Links 17/07/2025: Science, Hardware, and Censorship
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/07/2025: Staying in the "Small Web" and Back on ICQ
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 16, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 16, 2025
- Exclusive: corruption in Tribunals, Greffiers, from protection rackets to cat whisperers
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 16/07/2025: Chip Bans and Microsoft’s “Digital Escort” Program
- Links for the day
- Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
- You're hopeless, Canonical
- Revolving Doors: One Day You're a Judge, the Next Day You're an Attorney Paying Public Officials and Working for Violent and Dangerous Microsoft Employees
- how the US justice system works
- Sharing Code and Recipes
- It helps explain the triviality of software freedom
- Slopwatch: Noise, Plagiarism and Even Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation
- What are we meant to do to prevent a false association or misleading connotations? Game the LLMs? No. Boycott slopfarms.
- How Many Women Has Microsoft's Alex Balabhadra Graveley Already Strangled and Where Does That End?
- If you too are a victim of this man and wish to share information, contact us
- Gemini Links 16/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and Simple Web Browsing with TLS
- Links for the day
- Links 16/07/2025: Fascist Slop Takes "Intelligence" Clothing, New Criminal Case Against MElon
- Links for the day
- "We Might Save Somebody's Life"
- I follow the example of my father
- Why I am Suing the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, in the UK High Court This Week
- Out of respect to the process and to the Court, I shall not share any pertinent details about the case
- Links 16/07/2025: China’s Economy Grows Steadily, France Takes Action Regarding Harm to Children by GAFAM and Fentanylware (TikTok)
- Links for the day
- It is Not About Politics
- Beware the people who try to make this about politics
- Good Journalism Saves Lives
- a shocking number of women die or get seriously hurt every day due to violence from a partner
- Recognition of Women's Contributions to Free Software
- Being passive is not an option when bad things are happening
- Slopfarms Are Going to Perish Because Public Opinion is Changing
- Many slopfarms will simply go offline
- 19 Years of Standing Up for Justice, Equality, and Truth
- This week we shall take it up a notch
- Gemini Links 16/07/2025: Tmux and OCC25 Working TLS
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 15, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, July 15, 2025
- Links 15/07/2025: LLM Pollution and Pushback in Ukraine
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/07/2025: xkcd, New Cert, and Alhena Gemlog
- Links for the day
- Links 15/07/2025: Press Freedom at Risk and New Facebook Blunders
- Links for the day
- Reboots Should Never be Necessary
- "BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
- There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
- Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
- Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
- Links for the day
- The Danes Want GNU/Linux
- David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
- Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
- It's a very long article
- BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
- "I went on a date with a chatbot!"
- Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
- Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
- Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
- Links for the day