Another Day of High-Level Abuses: Microsoft Kinect a Target of Spooks, Apple-PRISM Allegations, Ukraine Interventions...
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-01 10:39:31 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-01 10:39:31 UTC
Summary: News from the past 24 hours about British and US surveillance, assassination, and outside intervention in East Europe
NSA/GCHQ
-
Nothing To Hide is an "anti-stealth game," in which you must carry cameras and spy gear to live in a world of self-surveillance and self-censorship. A world where you're made to be your own watchdog. Released for The Day We Fight Back, the game is now seeking crowdfunding to complete the open source game—10% of what's raised will first go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Demand Progress, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
-
Psssst! Wanna come in on a private satellite with me? They're available, and they cost about $2m a year to run, so it would need an awful lot of us to club together via Kickstarter or some such.George Clooney's got one. He trains it between Sudan and South Sudan, keeping a particular eye on the Hague-wanted president Omar al-Bashir, and uses the footage to draw attention to human rights violations. But in the wake of news that the Optic Nerve programme targeted and retained the webcam images of 1.8m UK internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, I'd like you to consider pointing ours somewhere pointed, such as the NSA or GCHQ. Just their car parks would do.
-
THE MOST INTERESTING DEVICE shown at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week was the secure Blackphone developed by Silent Circle and Geeksphone.
-
"Whatever the level of cryptography you're using, the NSA can probably break into your home network, install keyloggers and grab whatever they want -- passwords, private PGP keys, screenshots, etc.," said Cyril Soler, a developer on the RetroShare project. "This is always easier than breaking the encryption." Their ability to do that is probably facilitated by backdoors.
-
Levison was prohibited from discussing any details of the case until last October, when the court unsealed a portion of the documents. The unsealed records reveal that the FBI was demanding access to Lavabit's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) keys, which would essentially allow the agency access to all messages on Lavabit's server. While the FBI was ostensibly targeting only a single user, Levison was unwilling to sacrifice the privacy of his other 400,000+ users.
-
This year's RSA Conference began with controversy. Even before Chairman Art Coviello took the stage to deliver his opening keynote, protesters unfurled banners on the Moscone Center reminding the world of RSA's alleged complicity in enabling the NSA to access data that was believed to be secure.
However, after an interview with Coviello, we are no closer to any meaningful information as he does a skilful job of obfuscating and avoiding questions regarding the NSA.
Webcams
-
Three senators condemn UK spy agency’s ‘breathtaking lack of respect’ over interception of Yahoo users’ webcam images
Microsoft
-
G.C.H.Q. was apparently also interested in tapping into Microsoft’s Kinect.
-
The Kinect for Xbox 360 was once considered for its potential use as a mass surveillance tool by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), according to documents published by The Guardian.
The GCHQ is the British equivalent to the United States' NSA.
The information comes from documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. They document a program entitled "Optic Nerve" that collected images of users through their webcams, including users of Yahoo chats between 2008 and 2010.
Messaging
-
The instant messenger is still in the early planning stages, but Tor's developers seem to be preparing to turn it around quickly. The messenger will be built on Instantbird, an existing open-source messenger, and development will largely involve adding in Off-the-Record Messaging encryption, making it send its messages over Tor, and stripping it of some automated logging and reporting features. Tor hopes to have its first step of work on the messaging app completed by the end of March, but it doesn't draw a timeline for the project out from there.
-
Tor, the team behind the world’s leading online anonymity service, is developing a new anonymous instant messenger client, according to documents produced at the Tor 2014 Winter Developers Meeting in Reykjavík, Iceland.
The Tor Instant Messaging Bundle (TIMB) is set to work with the open-source InstantBird messenger client in experimental builds released to the public by March 31, 2014. The developers aim to build in encrypted off-the-record chatting and then bundle the client with the general Tor Launcher in the following months.
-
Sutton displays precisely the mind-set of the security state, that led GCHQ to intercept the webcam chats of 1.4 million completely random British people, in the hope of finding Islamic terrorists. (They didn’t find any terrorists, but they did look at over 100,000 people masturbating). Sutton states that Begg must be a terrorist because ”a convicted Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) supporter identified as ‘D’ ” had used Begg’s bookshop. And he calls me “conspiratorial”! The poor man must see terrorists everywhere. The fact that Moazzam Begg is now detained again, had been detained for years, has had everything belonging to him searched microscopically, and nothing has ever been found to justify a criminal charge of any kind, means nothing to witchfinder Sutton. That anti-Muslim bigot is plainly convinced of Moazzam Begg’s guilt, though as he has not been charged, of what is unsure.
Simon Phipps on Spying
-
Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp gains them almost half a billion users worth of telephone data
-
Maybe there’s more to the Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp than just the centralised consolidation of users and user information that Simon denounced in his previous InfoWorld article . Perhaps this particular addition to their portfolio is Facebook’s move towards becoming the first truly global telco!
-
Knowing we could be watched, as Jeremy Bentham observed, changes our behaviour; specifically, it chills our creativity. This in turn affects innovation and hence the economy. More directly, businesses (like RSA) are harmed by the disclosure of their for-profit collusion.
ORG
-
Asking for comments and feedback on the code is a positive move, but the survey is not balanced to capture a variety of opinions. For example it asks whether the code explains the benefits of anonymisation, but not whether it explains the risks. And it doesn't.
Apple
[First, watch AOL
promoting the fiction that iMessage is secure. It's
not alone.]
-
If you are an iPhone owner, you may have noticed that a minor security update to the iOS software that runs you device was “pushed” to all users by Apple last Friday. The original explanation from Apple was that an attacker “with a privileged network position” could capture or modify data.
-
According to slide 6 in the leaked PowerPoint deck on NSA’s PRISM program, Apple was “added” in October 2012.
These three facts prove nothing; it’s purely circumstantial. But the shoe fits.
Sure would be interesting to know who added that spurious line of code to the file. Conspiratorially, one could suppose the NSA planted the bug, through an employee mole, perhaps. Innocuously, the Occam’s Razor explanation would be that this was an inadvertent error on the part of an Apple engineer. It looks like the sort of bug that could result from a merge gone bad, duplicating the goto fail; line.
-
Twice now that Apple's bypassed Snow Leopard when it patched newer editions
-
The critical iOS vulnerability that Apple patched last week is an excellent example. Look at the code. What caused the vulnerability is a single line of code: a second "goto fail;" statement. Since that statement isn't a conditional, it causes the whole procedure to terminate.
Alexander
-
General Keith Alexander, the soon-to-be departed chief of the NSA, admitted Thursday in front of a congressional committee that the massive intelligence agency may be open to extracting less, or more targeted metadata from communication companies.
Classified documents leaked last summer by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the intelligence agency currently compels at least three major telephone providers – Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T – to turn over call information on millions of Americans. Among that information, known as metadata, is the duration of the call, the time the call was made, who the phone call was to, and where it originated.
Ukraine and Intervention
-
"Yats is the guy," said Obama's potty-mouthed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, in a recorded and widely disseminated discussion with the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine earlier this year. She was referring to Arseni Yatsenyuk, the former foreign and economics minister who was confirmed as the interim Prime Minister of Ukraine today.
-
The very first act of the western-backed insurrectionists which represent a small percentage of the population and have managed to overthrow the government was to attempt rob Russian speakers in Ukraine of their language.
-
Yanukovych is now in Russia and is expected to hold a news conference today. Meanwhile, the United States is rejecting claims that the change in power in Ukraine constitutes a coup. On Thursday, White House spokesperson Jay Carney said Yanukovych had "abdicated his responsibilities" and "undermined his legitimacy" by fleeing Kiev. Carney outlined U.S. plans to work with the new government.
-
But the secretive agency is no newcomer to American combat zones. In Vietnam, a war without battle lines, it played a behind-the-scenes role in advancing American interests.
-
Soon, intrepid journalists get wind of the operation and file Freedom of Information Act requests for more information. A CIA lawyer — operating under the cover name Walt Logan — thinks up a novel way to keep the mission secret without telling an all-out lie: refuse to confirm or deny whether records about the Glomar Explorer's mission exist. One journalist sues over this confusing non-response, and a battle over government secrecy follows in court.
[...]
There are limited circumstances in which a Glomar response may be necessary to protect veritable government secrets, but as I've written before in The New York Times (with Jameel Jaffer) and in the NYU Law Review, it has been deployed far beyond acceptable bounds. Perhaps most disturbing is the way the government uses Glomar to facilitate selective and misleading disclosures. Government officials often "leak" information to the press that paints controversial programs in a positive light on the condition that the press withholds their names. But when asked to officially release records under FOIA, those officials clam up and hide behind the Glomar response. The result is an absurd double standard, and our democracy suffers for it.
Civil Rights
-
The interrogators told him he was under interrogation for publishing a picture of Jerusalem City Council Head, Nir Barkat, describing him as the “mayor of occupied Jerusalem”.
-
Months after their conduct was discovered, two police officers were disciplined for making a game of stealing signs from homeless people in Midland, Texas — and many believe the cops’ punishment was not harsh enough to fit the offense.
-
Moazzam Begg, a native-born British citizen of Pakistani descent, spent three years incarcerated in the most notorious detention camps created in the post-9/11 “War on Terror”: all without ever being charged with any crime.
-
Britain’s citizenship deprivation processes may help obscure the Obama Administration’s willingness to kill and kidnap Britons.
-
Five years into his presidency, it’s clear Obama failed to keep promises he claimed were at the heart of his approach to governance. We expected better.
-
Idaho’s governor has signed a bill into law that makes it illegal for undercover investigators and whistleblowers to expose animal cruelty on factory farms and slaughterhouses.
-
The Whist€ler, the new whis€tleblower sup€port net€work in the UK, recently held an inter€na€tional pre-launch in London.
The Whist€ler has been set up by Gavin Mac€Fa€dyen, Dir€ector of the Centre for Invest€ig€at€ive Journ€al€ism and Eileen Chubb of Com€pas€sion in Care.
Both, through their work, real€ise the heavy price that all whis€tleblowers from every sec€tor have to pay, not just pro€fes€sion€ally, but also socially, psy€cho€lo€gic€ally and also poten€tially leg€ally. And they want to help.
Drones
-
Pakistani anti-drone activist Karim Khan was abducted February 5, just before he was due to travel to Europe to speak out about U.S. drone strikes. He joins us to describe how he was held for nine days. During that time he says he was repeatedly tortured and beaten. In 2009, a U.S. drone killed Khan’s brother and son. He joins us from London, where he traveled to to meet with British lawmakers to raise concerns about the U.S. drone program. "They attacked our mosques, they attacked our schools, they attacked our schoolchildren, they attacked our teachers," Khan says. "So everything is completely destroyed by these drone strikes." We also speak with Khan’s lawyer, Shahzad Akbar. "This is what the human face of the victim is, and it is important that the American people are told about who these people are," Akbar says. "They are being targeted in the name of national security, [but] what we see on the ground is that it is not really serving the national security interests of anyone."
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Investigative Journalism Protects Society From Corruption, Crimes Against Women, Assaults on Civil Society
- "what is the point of men doing military practice to defend a system that is so rotten?"
- Swiss pimp usurping reputation of legendary Tissot boss Francois Thiébaud from France (BaselWorld, SWATCH Group SA)
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Paris 'Love Nest' & Debian Outreachy: from Lycée Lakanal to ENS Cachan, Cr@ns, nepotism
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Richard Stallman to Give Public Talk in 3 Hours, Then in the Technical University of Munich (Germany) Next Week
- Richard Stallman at TUM on 21.10.2025 18:00, MW2001
- Leaks and Whistleblowers: Our Plan for Today
- Society simply cannot advance when too many people self-censor
- The Same People Who Attacked Richard Stallman (RMS) Are Attacking Daniel Pocock to Discourage People From Listening to His Information
- Pocock is being demonised for the same reasons and by the same people who attack RMS
- We Are Safe in a Modern "Tech" Society, Right?
- People are safer if they control their own computing
- The Way Things Are Going, They May Soon Stop Saying "Web Address" and Instead Say "Chrome Address"
- The Web isn't built or based around open Web standards anymore. It's centered around user-agent.
- Microsoft as a Golden Cage
- "I was laid off by Microsoft and can't find a job. I'm weeks away from giving up my apartment and moving across the country to live with family."
-
- IBM Layoffs Due to a Lack of Money and Company Debt Rising by Almost 10 Billion Dollars in 6 Months
- IBM didn't buy Red Hat for any ideological reasons; it was a fast "cash grab" for revenue
- Forbes Already Stopped Being a News Sites. Now It's a Spam and Propaganda Platform for "Paying Partners" (Companies).
- news from Forbes became very scarce
- Is the Second-Largest Institution in Europe (EPO) Gradually Becoming More Like a Sweatshop?
- Underpaid, unqualified, inexperienced and incompatible people are already recruited to replace veteran examiners
- The Register MS Has No FOSS Coverage Anymore
- The Editor in Chief is like a Microsoft plant
- Links 13/10/2025: "Toasty Subwoofer" and WiFi Speakers "Are About To Go Dumb"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/10/2025: iNaturalist and Tove Jansson’s Moominpappa at Sea
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Does Not Deny That Large Retailers Like Walmart, Costco and Target Are Giving Up on XBox (and Not Stocking It)
- No doubt XBox is in trouble and rumours suggest that more mass layoffs are imminent
- We'll Encourage Richard Stallman to Talk About Software Patents at the EPO Next Week When He Visits Munich (EPO Headquarters)
- Go listen to Richard Stahlmann
- Arnaud Parreaux lost case defending rogue employer
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Mathieu Elias Parreaux declared bankrupt in Switzerland
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Breakdown of the Rule of Law and Patent Law in the European Union (EU)
- The EPO cannot recruit suitably qualified patent examiners this way, let alone retain them
- Gemini Links 13/10/2025: Good Films, Wizard of Earthsea, Upgrading the Steam Controller's Stick
- Links for the day
- It's Not Justice When One Side Denies the Other Side the Ability to Even Speak
- At this stage, Brett Wilson LLP is in my humble opinion acting in contempt of the Court
- Links 13/10/2025: Australian Catholic University Uses Slop to Libel Students, Canada Threatens to Kill Beluga Whales
- Links for the day
- How Not to Silence Tux Machines (It'll Only Backfire, Badly)
- defending Microsoft while attacking this site
- Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT and Google News
- It seems abundantly clear that Google News and Google in general participates in the slop epidemic
- Vincent Danjean (not INTERPOL), Claire Bardel & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Christmas lynchings: Martin Krafft (madduck), Penny Leach (mjollnir) & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 13/10/2025: Birthdays and "Committee Unable to Contact Nobel Prize Winner"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, October 12, 2025
- Your Typical Anti-Richard Stallman (RMS) Cancellist
- "About the RMS cancellation"
- Richard Stallman (RMS) Has Announced His Talk in Rome Less Than 20 Hours in Advance (and on a Sunday)
- Why did he wait until the night before?
- GNU Tools Cauldron Event in Portugal: Videos Now Available via Invidious
- Go have a look
- Weekend Discussion About How IBM's Bluewashing of Red Hat Will Cause "Enshittification" for Users
- "I worked at a software company that was acquired by IBM so I knew it was game over for RedHat the day they were acquired"
- Brett Wilson LLP Getting Sued by Its Very Own Clients, a Legal Story That Has Made the Mainstream News (Law360)
- Law360 or Law.com are about as mainstream as one can get in that "sector" (litigation 'industry')
- Slopwatch: GNU/Linux Sites That Became Slopfarms and Spamfarms
- The Web is a mess and "Linux" or "Ubuntu" sites became part of the problem
- Richard Stallman's Talk 25 Hours Away, Aula Magna Palazzo del Rettorato (CU001), Sapienza Università di Roma (Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5)
- The talk is 25 hours away and we see some QR code for it
- Gemini Links 12/10/2025: Watches, the Depression of 2026, Gamboling with Odds
- Links for the day
- Links 12/10/2025: 'False' DMCA Claims and Slop Facing Perils Again (the Hype Wears Off)
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Has Just Lost Privacy Case in Austria and Its Latest Moves Make a Complete Ban Seem Imperative
- Microsoft is not a software company, it's a spying agency that uses software to collect data
- The Register MS: Microsoft is the Security Expert, Not the Prime Culprit, So Buy More Microsoft
- This front page feature is devoid of any actual substance, it's just Microsoft copypasta
- Stefano Zacchiroli (Zack) & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Lucas Nussbaum & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 12/10/2025: "Palm Computering", Further Exploration of Slide Rules, and Key Takeaways from The Well-Grounded Rubyist
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 11, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, October 11, 2025
- Tomorrow: Founder of the Free Software Foundation and of GNU/Linux, Richard Stallman, Speaks in Roma (Rome), Italy at 4PM
- GNU/Linux is more important than ever in this dystopian world
- Microsoft and Apple Are Rare Topics in Geminispace
- in Geminispace it's rather safe to assume everyone is into BSD, GNU/Linux, and sometimes retro
- Qualcomm and Manchester United Appear to Have Dumped Microsoft (Qualcomm Now Invests More in Linux, Apparently)
- It's a relief to no longer see Microsoft logos and brands on a local football club's gear (I'm not a Manchester United fan, but not a foe either)
- As Guest of Honour in Rome, Founder of the Free Software Foundation to Speak ("Distinguished Lecture") After Introduction by Leonardo Querzoni
- Happy hacking...
- All Things Open is Proprietary
- The OSI has become a front group of proprietary software openwashers, led and sponsored by proprietary giants
- When Microsoft Lays Off Lots of Workers They Say It "Invests in AI" (a Lie), Now It's "Reshuffles" or "Microsoft Tightens"
- Microsoft "news" by bots
- "I saw Richard Stallman give a talk in the mid 80s, which began my fear and loathing of software patents" and "Richard Stallman was always right."
- "By betraying the legacy of our ancestors, we’ve set ourselves on a path toward self-destruction — moral, intellectual, economic, and ultimately biological."
- There Were Several Waves of Microsoft Shanghai Layoffs in 2025, Western Media Continues to Turn a Blind Eye to Chinese Layoffs of an Epic Scale
- Sometimes select Taiwanese news sites (published in English) or automated translations are all we have
- Brett Wilson LLP Spreads Trumpism to the United Kingdom, Looking to Profit From 'Legal Colonialism' (Overriding Sovereignty)
- There's growing recognition of this conundrum worldwide
- The Demise of Shopping in Person
- In a world like this, how valued is the customer?
- This Past Friday, "Nearly 700 People Came to Listen to RMS!" (Richard Stallman)
- "Nearly 700 people came to listen to RMS!"
- Distinguished Lecture by Richard Stallman This Coming Monday in Rome
- After "Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World"
- Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT Churning Out Plagiarism and the Slopfarm LinuxSecurity Turns to Pseudonyms
- Our hunch is, UbuntuPIT will sooner or later realise that this toxic approach is just harming UbuntuPIT and tainting the reputation of past articles
- The Lawsuit by Clients of Brett Wilson LLP Against Brett Wilson LLP is Officially On, It is Progressing, The 'Experts' Pick Outside Law Firms (RPC and Mills & Reeve) to Spare Them From Litigants in Person
- So it is probably quite potent
- Gemini Links 11/10/2025: Nyctography, Gerrymandering, and Lurking
- Links for the day
- The 'Culture Wars' in Free Software Have Gone Out of Control
- Social control media amplifies such utterly infantile discourse
- Teaser: To Compensate for the Fact Our Clients Are Terrible Human Beings Who Strangle Women (While on Microsoft's Payroll) and We Get Paid by Mystery Parties We Bombard You and Your Wife With Almost 10 Kilograms of Legal Papers
- If you can't win an argument, then drown the other side with papers?
- Links 11/10/2025: World Mental Health Day 2025, Another European Legal Defeat for Microsoft 360
- Links for the day
- MIT Technology Review is Part-Time SPAMfarm of Billionaires and Mega-Corporations
- Does MIT operate its own "b2b" SPAMfarm?
- Open Source Initiative Executive Director Leaves, Replacement Sought by Monopolists, Not the Community or OSI Members
- Serves to show who runs this show...
- Links 11/10/2025: China-US Tensions Grow Again, "Hey Hi" More Widely Recognised as Bubble Made of Capital That Doesn't Exist
- Links for the day
- Now Confirmed in Western Media: Microsoft Azure Layoffs This Month
- Affirmed by more sources moments ago
- Peter O'Callaghan QC represented grandparents, Westernport Hotel, at Liquor Royal Commission
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Either The Register MS Divests From FOSS Coverage or Liam Proven is on Long Holiday
- Publishers perish when their audience loses trust in them
- Microsoft Cancelling Another Datacentre is a Sign of Financial Trouble and Lack of Growth
- The debt continues to grow
- Gemini Links 11/10/2025: An Evening at the Fair and Fast Fourier Friday
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 10, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, October 10, 2025