Samsung Galaxy Back Door, NSA Malware, Congressional Backlash, More Drone Strikes, and Ukraine Intervention

Android

Replicant developers find and close Samsung Galaxy back-door
While working on Replicant, a fully free/libre version of Android, we discovered that the proprietary program running on the applications processor in charge of handling the communication protocol with the modem actually implements a back-door that lets the modem perform remote file I/O operations on the file system.

Privacy

Think Deleted Text Messages Are Gone Forever? Think Again
Last month, National Football League special investigator Ted Wells delivered a shocking report about Miami Dolphins player Richie Incognito's bullying tactics aimed at teammate Jonathan Martin. At the heart of the report: More than 1,000 text messages, many of them outrageously explicit, that Incognito and Martin swapped between October 2012 and November 2013.

NSA's Latest Scandal

NSA's TURBINE robot pumps 'malware into MILLIONS of PCs'
The latest batch of top-secret intelligence documents from the hoard collected by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden detail the massive increase in the agency's use of its Tailored Access Operations (TAO) hacking unit – including a system dubbed TURBINE that can spam out millions of pieces of sophisticated malware at a time.

NSA posed as Facebook in effort to infect 'millions' of computers with malware as part of its 'Owning the Net' program, stolen documents reveal

NSA 'hijacked' criminal botnets to install spyware
While U.S. law enforcement agencies have long tried to stamp out networks of compromised computers used by cyber criminals, the National Security Agency has been hijacking the so-called botnets as a resource for spying.

The NSA has "co-opted" more than 140,000 computers since August 2007 for the purpose of injecting them with spying software, according to a slide leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept news website on Wednesday.

US Congress

Leading House Lawmaker Wants NSA Phone-Data Collection to End
Ruppersberger calls for an end to NSA's phone data collection
Key lawmaker favors ending NSA data sweeps
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said yesterday that he favors ending the National Security Agency’s widespread collection of U.S. citizens’ phone data, making him the first of the four leaders of the congressional intelligence panels to do so.

European Parliament

European Parliament wants an end to NSA PRISM data haul
THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT is miffed about data snarfing by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and has threatened the country with an end to the Safe Harbor agreement.

MEPs want co-operation with the US to be suspended
The European Parliament voted yesterday (12 March) to adopt a resolution condemning spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA) on EU citizens.

MEPs call for immediate halt to NSA surveillance
The European Parliament's consent to the EU-US trade deal "could be endangered" if blanket mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) does not stop, MEPs have warned.

Google

Drones

8 Questions the World Faces as Lethal Drones Proliferate
His report on targeted killing, discussed on Tuesday, is partly an effort to spur the United States and other countries to bring drone killing under the auspices of international law. The report sets forth key questions raised by targeted and semi-targeted killing, and encourages the international community to grapple with them.
U.N. Report on Drone Strikes Calls for Clearer Global Norms and More Accountability
What Obama Doesn't Get About Gitmo
We cannot "kill" terrorism with a drone.
The CIA Is Not a Fourth Branch of Government
John F. Kennedy once said he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds." He reached that conclusion after CIA officials, including Director Allen Dulles, had misled him on many of the planning details of the disastrous April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

With the revelations that the CIA has been aggressively obstructing the work of the Senate Intelligence Committee, even to the point of spying on Senate staff conducting a long overdo review of its "detention and interrogation" program, we see the CIA has not changed its ways.

The Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, called the committee's current battle with the CIA "a defining moment for the oversight role of our intelligence committee . . . and whether we can be thwarted by those we oversee."

US drone kills three Al Qaeda suspects in Yemen
Sana'a, March 13: A US drone strike killed three suspected Al Qaeda militants in Yemen's Al Jawf province on Wednesday, Yemeni officials said.

Fear is fear, no matter where you are from
Earlier this month, I spoke at a panel in Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond. During the talk, I showed a photo of a young Yemeni boy in the province of Mareb (which was hit by five drone strikes this month), demonstrating how he ducked in his school as soon as he heard the sound of a plane. He was not sure whether it was a drone or a fighter jet, but he has become used to ducking this way ever since his village was hit and his friend hit with a shrapnel.

Ukraine

Between the Lines
International law is suddenly very popular in Washington. President Obama responded to Russian military intervention in the Crimea by accusing Russia of a “breach of international law.” Secretary of State John Kerry followed up by declaring that Russia is “in direct, overt violation of international law.”

McCain to lead delegation to Ukraine
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and a group of senators are slated to travel to Ukraine on Thursday to show support for the new interim government there.

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