12.06.13

Links 6/12/2013: NSA News

Posted in Action at 10:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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12.05.13

A Western Assault on GNU/Linux Security and Privacy

Posted in Action at 12:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Governments (which are dominated by corporations) continue to make security hard as part of a campaign to spy on everyone under claims that it helps “national security” (control from above)

I

T OUGHTN’T BE so shocking that empires rely on a lot of spying; they require remote penetration (infiltration, informants, eavesdropping, etc.) in order to deter against possible uprise — a challenge to their often-illicit colonisation and/or domestic imposition of power. The negative influence of Western policies (Anglo-Saxon in particular) on security and privacy of Free software products is only to be expected. We need to understand it if we wish to circumvent it.

No company has helped the NSA like Microsoft has. The only ‘competition’ to Microsoft in this respect are the telecom giants. Microsoft launched a new AstroTurfing campaign, trying to convince us that Google is worse even through it’s not. Microsoft is using privacy as an advantage point, falsely believing that the public is not smart enough to realise that Microsoft has been in bed with the NSA for over a decade. As one blogger put it, Microsoft’s “Scroogled” line of anti-Google T-shirts, mugs and other novelties “was guaranteed to be an instant collector’s item when it was first designed because of what it says about Microsoft — that they’re running scared [...] When you have to resort to mudslinging instead of simply competing, it’s clear that you’re playing catch-up.”

But wait, how privacy-respecting is Linux really? Well, unlike GNU, Linux is now developed to a large degree by US corporations that also work with the NSA. Google, which has made somewhat of a joke the notion of privacy on devices running Linux, is only one of them. Red Hat too is working with the NSA and based on this news about a Red Hat partner, the relationship only gets somewhat stronger. As one site put it, a the CIA is now involved, not just Red Hat partners and former staff. Ubuntu too makes mockery out of privacy, especially because of its arrangement with the CIA’s datacentre partner, Amazon (the CIA says is strives to collect all data and never delete it). Based on Snowden’s leaks, the NSA/CIA uses spying on porn surfing in order to discredit activists it does not like, so knowing what they search for on their desktop would help too. What happens when those agents are also getting the historical locations of activists, going many years back (hence knowing where they have been, not only who they spoke to)? Here is some sobering news, confirming what we knew but could not prove. This was originally covered by the Bezos (of Amazon)-owned Washington Post last night:

• NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

  The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.

• This Is How The NSA Is Tracking You This Instant

  That little “entertaining” cell phone in your back pocket, which you are so addicted to thanks to all its apps, videos, messaging function and all other cool bells and whistles, that you can’t possibly live without? It is simply the definitive NSA tracking beacon used to find where you are at any given moment. The following infographic explains how the NSA does just that…

Western powers don’t seem to think that anyone in the world has privacy rights. Linux is originally from Finland (now developed in the US), GNU being all along from the US (MIT). In a way, these two projects have become targets of the nation they are currently made in. Developers seem to be aware of it.

Cisco, the giant whose sales in China are collapsing because of NSA connections, is buying some Free software projects, including those which facilitated private chats (Jabber). Here is an item from the latest news: “Newly absorbed, acquired and assimilated by Cisco for its cyber security prowess, Sourcefire remains a subsidiary company under its own brand name.”

Cisco is monopolising security and insecurity; this is not good. And there are also complaints (even from Linux developers) about Intel and random number generators, arguing that work is being done to subvert security in Linux and by extension in SSL. And just consider what Intel has done with ‘secure’ boot, making it so much harder to set up GNU/Linux and possible to remotely brick PCs. As one UEFI critic out it the other day, it may lead more people to Windows. “My attempt at installing Mint 16 on a UEFI system with Ubuntu has had some – at best – mixed results,” he said.

We could go on to IBM with TPM and other companies whose agenda, which is tied to forums that the NSA is a part of, makes the world a vulnerable place. It’s about control (by the top 1% or less), not control by users. And it ought to worry everyone. Free software is supposed to be about emancipation from control by others (“masters”), so Free software is in jeopardy now. █

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12.04.13

NSA Leaks: Still Yielding New Scandals, But Fewer Than Before

Posted in Action at 5:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The NSA’s Stuxnet 2.0 is said to be under development

Summary: A roundup of news about cracking, sabotage, privacy infringement and illegal surveillance by the NSA and its allies

TRUTH be told, the NSA stories are starting to dry up. Almost 6 months after it all began there is finally some sense that we know almost everything that’s worth knowing. So what are the latest revelations? Well, not much, but there are some news items enumerated below and we’ll try to summarise them.

The Chinese press says that German companies/authorities no longer trust smartphones that are tied to the US [1]; espionage is a concern. China itself is pulling away from dependence on US technology giants [2,3]. They should really pull out of Windows/Microsoft dependence, not try to extend this dependence [4]. Apple is just as bad [5] and Facebook is a “monstrous surveillance engine” (to quote Richard Stallman) which now targets students [6]. GNU/Linux is a much safer option.

The corporate media in the US continues to cover these issues, but sometimes it’s done in the context of comedy [7] even though these are very serious issues that extend beyond the digital world [8] and merit investigations. The political debate in the UK [9] and US [10] sure is changing and in the rest of Europe there are threats of cutting data-sharing ties [11,12].

Jimmy Wales has harsh words for the NSA [13], which may be going much further and deeper than we even realise [14,15]. Even immigration may be a matter of “national security” (as in “terrorism” etc.) now [16]. Read the shocking details about infiltration into medical records for immigration purposes.

Good people are trying to explain to the world why it is a big deal [17-19], with even the BBC covering these issues by giving a platform to the ‘British Snowden’ [20]. The British government is meanwhile embarrassing itself by taking its assault on the press public [21-24]. International relationships are affected by the revelations [25-30] and Linux-based solutions for privacy-seeking users gradually appear [31]. Domestic surveillance, as it turns out [32], has become just as bad if not worse than foreign surveillance [33]. The United Nations recently got involved [34-37] and “Switzerland Launches Criminal Probe Into NSA Surveillance,” says one article [38] (the only English article of this kind). A lot of what we know about security is being reassessed [39,40] while corporate media like Murdoch’s WSJ continues to distort the facts [41,42,43], along with the NSA itself [44-46]. WSJ did the same thing to smear and malign Wikileaks back in the days.

There are some new attacks on the messenger, Glenn Greenwald [47-49], and The Guardian says that even the MI5 is now being pulled into interrogations [50]. The Japanese press reprints The Guardian [51] while observing with glee how Britain burned and dumped ‘embarrassing’ colonial documents in Singapore [52] (where Japan committed huge atrocities).

Readers may recall the many calls for the assassination of Julian Assange. Well, right now the corporate press is using similar arguments against Edward Snowden [53]. They really have no shame.

It is possible that in 2014 there will hardly be any major revelations about the NSA, but the important thing is that we now know a lot more about our world and we have documents to prove previously-doubted claims. Dan Gillmor, writing back in July, worried about our privacy on the Web [54] and back then (also July) people wondered what could be done about it [55,56]. Well, now that we know all that stuff which Snowden helped reveal we ought to understand that Free/libre software is essential and encryption on the Web (even at DNS level) is imperative. Whether people, companies and governments will change their existing habits next year is another matter altogether. They can’t use ignorance as an excuse anymore. Snowden’s greatest fear was that his leaks would not have an impact.

The NSA’s crimes are not just about privacy by the way. They are about physical sabotage too, as [57] helps remind us. Stop the vandals, defund the shut down the NSA. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Deutsche Telekom offers secure smartphones after NSA snooping

   Telecoms firm has big hopes for secure-smartphone business after the news of US snooping on German leader’s calls, but device isn’t cheap

2. NSA spying scandal accelerating China’s push to favor local tech vendors

   The NSA spying scandal has put a strain on the China business of Cisco and Qualcomm, the companies said recently

3. Cisco Says NSA Costing Them Major Business Abroad

   Cisco Systems, one of the largest networking equipment sellers in the world, has been losing major business in the wake of the NSA spying scandal. The company has publicly blamed the NSA for sowing distrust between American technology companies and the rest of the world – potentially costing them billions.

4. Beijing leans on Microsoft to maintain Windows XP support

5. Apple free to spy on its users – as are all!

   This possibly applies all mobile device makers and app writers. In fact it was not Apple but apps such as Dictionary.com, Pandora, the Weather Channel and Backflip – creator of the Paper Toss app, that collected and passed on to third party ad networks “Confidential data including users’ geographic location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political affiliations.”

6. Zuckerberg Wants Your Kid’s Student Data

   Code.org—a tech non-profit backed by Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and other top brass—wants to improve computer science education for young women and minorities. And hey, that’s great. But it wouldn’t be a Zuck joint without something insidious: the group will hold private data about kids for years.

   The initiative is trying to sign up entire school districts to test the curriculum: Code.org will provide schools with course materials, teacher stipends, and general support. What a deal!

7. Review: Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart take on NSA spying

   In “The Word” segment of Colbert’s show Rogers sets out an astounding defense of NSA surveillance.

8. Like online stores, retail stores look to track you while shopping

9. NSA leaks: former DPP calls for more scrutiny of UK’s security services

   Lord Macdonald says that ISC ‘needs more power, cash and opposition chair’

10. US lawmakers promise to rein in NSA snooping

    The United States Congress is working on legislation to restrict the intelligence-gathering activities of the National Security Agency (NSA), a group of American lawmakers told the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Tuesday (26 November).

11. Without NSA spying changes, Europe will stop sharing commercial and security data with the U.S.

12. NSA surveillance: Europe threatens to freeze US data-sharing arrangements

    After Edward Snowden revelations, EU executive underlines US compliance with European law and ‘how things have gone badly’

13. Jimmy Wales: NSA Surveillance Allows Oppressive Regimes to Continue Censoring Internet

    The Wikipedia founder believes the recent revelations about spying by western governments will only give oppressive regimes more reason to censor the internet.

14. Did NSA Secretly Tap the Internet Backbone?

    Someday, the unraveling of the National Security Agency’s spying on virtually everyone might make a great spy movie. In the latest revelation, there are reports the secretive federal agency may have tapped Google and Yahoo through major Internet backbone providers.

15. Forget about the NSA for a minute: The internet of things could kill the little white lie

    We may think we’re used to the potential harms of sharing too much data on social networks, but what happens when passive data collection from sensors can be shared –sometimes without your knowledge?

16. Disabled woman denied entry to U.S. after agent cites supposedly private medical details

    Disabled woman denied entry to U.S. after agent cites supposedly private medical details

17. Researchers use NSA’s own tactics to see how invasive NSA spying is

18. ORG warns on Data Protection

    Reacting to the leaked documents detailing the proposed Data Protection Regulation, ORG Executive Director Jim Killock warned that ‘pseudonymous’ categories of data could create privacy problems for EU citizens.

19. Edward Snowden: whistleblowers in the Digital Era

20. BBC World interview re UK spy accountability

    Here’s a recent inter­view I did for BBC World about the three top Brit­ish spies deign­ing, for the first time ever, to be pub­licly ques­tioned by the Intel­li­gence and Secur­ity Com­mit­tee in par­lia­ment, which has a notional over­sight role…

21. Guardian will not be intimidated over NSA leaks, Alan Rusbridger tells MPs

    Editor tells parliamentary committee that stories revealing mass surveillance by UK and US have prompted global debate

22. Only 1% of Snowden files published – Guardian editor

23. Guardian Editor Says Paper Published Only 1% of Snowden NSA Leaks

24. Britain targets Guardian newspaper over intelligence leaks related to Edward Snowden

    Living in self-imposed exile in Russia, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden may be safely beyond the reach of Western powers. But dismayed by the continued airing of trans­atlantic intelligence, British authorities are taking full aim at a messenger shedding light on his secret files here — the small but mighty Guardian newspaper.

    The pressures coming to bear on the Guardian, observers say, are testing the limits of press freedoms in one of the world’s most open societies. Although Britain is famously home to a fierce pack of news media outlets — including the tabloid hounds of old Fleet Street — it also has no enshrined constitutional right to free speech.

25. NSA files: what’s a little spying between old friends?

    By targeting allies and enemies alike, the ‘Five Eyes’ club of English-speaking powers have eroded trust on the world stage

26. NSA spying revelations push US-German relations to the brink

    Germany’s opposition party, the Social Democrats, is gauging whether or not the European Union should approve a free-trade deal with the US CNN recently reported, “Negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership were already in a fragile state and will not be helped by claims that large French corporations such as telecom company Alcatel-Lucent have been targeted by the NSA.”

27. NSA files live – Australia offered to share information on its citizens

    • Australia’s surveillance agency offered to share information collected about ordinary Australian citizens with its major intelligence partners, according to a secret 2008 document leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

28. What now for the surveillance state?

    Even GCHQ and the NSA know their work may not be sustainable without a proper debate about their power

29. Why the NSA has landed us all in another nice mess

    The Snowden revelations may not end internet surveillance, but they will certainly cause radical changes

30. Read Snowden NSA document on G8, G20 summit surveillance

31. Safeplug offers plug-and-play anonymous Web browsing using Tor

    Safeplug is a new network device from Cloud Engines, Inc., the company behind Pogoplug.

    Using Tor, Safeplug allows you to browse the Internet anonymously from any device that you own. This is possible because it is designed to be connected to your router. And once activated, all connections that originate from any device behind your router are anonymized.

32. FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU), which is basically its own internal NSA.

    This is a long article about the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU), which is basically its own internal NSA.

33. Hacker with a Cause

    But the C.F.A.A.’s broad guidelines for calculating “loss” mean that digital protests often result in much harsher penalties than their real-world analogues in the U.S. For example, most of the seven hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters who were arrested for blocking off the Brooklyn Bridge in October, 2011, received a night in jail plus a small fine. But for their D.D.O.S. disturbance, the Paypal Fourteen are each facing up to fifteen years in prison, with a plea deal possible only if thirteen members of the group comply.

34. Edward Snowden revelations prompt UN investigation into surveillance

    UN’s senior counter-terrorism official says revelations ‘are at the very apex of public interest concerns’

35. NSA Spying Challenged in the United Nations

    The National Security Agency’s global spying activities have prompted 21 countries to pursue a resolution at the United Nations against the United States. Brazil and Germany presented this resolution to the General Assembly, appealing to the right to privacy enshrined in the international Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

36. U.N. to investigate NSA, GHCQ spying

37. United Nations counterterrorism official launches investigation into NSA surveillance

38. Switzerland Launches Criminal Probe Into NSA Surveillance

    The Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office has launched a criminal investigation into mass surveillance conducted by the US intelligence agencies.

    According to the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, the National Security Agency (NSA) could have violated article 271 of the penal code, which lists “unlawful activities on behalf of a foreign state”.

39. How the Snowden leak is changing the tech landscape

    Revelations about the extent of the surveillance programmes undertaken by the NSA and GCHQ – as well as their efforts to undermine online security and encryption – have provoked fierce reaction around the world, sparking technical innovations, legal challenges, and moves towards political reform.

40. How is the NSA breaking SSL?

    If tampering isn’t your style, why not put the backdoor in plain sight? That’s the approach NSA took with the Dual_EC RNG, standardized by NIST in Special Publication 800-90. There’s compelling evidence that NSA deliberately engineered this generator with a backdoor — one that allows them to break any TLS/SSL connection made using it. Since the generator is (was) the default in RSA’s BSAFE library, you should expect every TLS connection made using that software to be potentially compromised.

    And I haven’t even mentioned Intel’s plans to replace the Linux kernel RNG with its own hardware RNG.

41. Wall Street Journal Columnist Repeatedly Gets His Facts Wrong About NSA Surveillance

    We actually have a specific example that proves Snowden’s point. As the New York Times reported in 2009, an NSA analyst “improperly accessed” former President Bill Clinton’s personal email. More recently, we’ve learned that the NSA analysts abused the agency vast surveillance powers to spying on ex-spouses or former lovers.

42. WSJ columnist L. Gordon Crovitz is dead wrong about NSA spying

43. A Tour Through The Bizarre Mind Of An NSA Defender: Discrediting Activists By Using Their Porn Surfing Is Just Like Journalism!

44. NSA employees given talking points for discussing agency with family

    Document released just before holiday season includes disputed claims about spy agency to share with ‘family and close friends’

45. The NSA’s Thanksgiving Dinner Talking Points: A Play in One Act

46. ‘NSA’s mission is of great value to the Nation’: Under fire spy agency’s guide to Thanksgiving small talk revealed in leaked memo to employees

47. Waiting for Greenwald: why India must react firmly to NSA spying

    No person in recent memory has succeeded in creating so big a misunderstanding within the global policy elite as Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who has drawn attention to US’s spying activities across the world.

48. Greenwald: Privatized Reporting Claims Are Absurd

    Glenn Greenwald responded Sunday to accusations from news personalities that he has “monopolized” and “privatized” reporting (an accusation that seems to be newly cooked up for the purpose of discrediting journalists) on documents given to him by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

49. NSA secrets journalist Glenn Greenwald defends himself against critics

50. MPs ask MI5 boss to justify claim that NSA leaks endangered national security

51. Why the NSA has landed us all in another nice mess

52. British burned, dumped ‘embarrassing’ colonial documents

53. Could Google and the NSA Make Whistleblowers Disappear?

54. Point-scoring our web freedom

    We use ratings for all kinds of services, so let’s try scoring the way we use the internet to check on our security and privacy

55. So, You Want to Hide from the NSA? Your Guide to the Nearly Impossible

    That is the worst case scenario. Yes, the NSA is definitely slurping up scads of information about your phone calls. It probably isn’t storing your Facebook chats, emails, and Skype calls. Our goal with this guide is to detail exactly what you need to do to assure that it can’t, even if it wants to. As you will see, it is a cumbersome process.

56. Disgruntled Google users try to live a low-Google lifestyle

57. Governments preparing Stuxnet 2.0 malware for nuclear strike

    It is currently unclear if the Farsnews report is accurate, though director of security strategy at FireEye Jason Steer said it is certainly plausible.

    “Given that this has already happened with Stuxnet, it is certainly more than plausible to believe that Stuxnet 2.0 is also possible. One would be naive to assume it wouldn’t happen again. With the change in relationship between Iran and the US, it is highly likely that Israel and Saudi Arabia united to try and negate the threat of nuclear bombs on their front door,” he said.

    The original Stuxnet worm hijacked control of Siemens industrial control systems, then forced them to alter key processes to damage machinery. The malware has since managed to spread outside of Iran and has affected several other power plants, some close to Europe.

    Steer told V3 that, given how successful the original Stuxnet was at spreading, the fallout of a more advanced variant could be devastating for power plants, but will be of little concern to most regular businesses.

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12.03.13

Culture of Violence a Disservice to National Security

Posted in Action at 8:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Drones don’t just kill “targets”

Summary: How a culture of unprecedented violence leads to less security and more hostility towards the West

THE Russian press is having a day field. Violence in the United States is not just rising domestically (“A high school student suffered a brain injury and remains in a medically-induced coma after a Texas sheriff’s deputy tasered him,” according to this report) but also in other nations. Drones which are run by the CIA (targeting people the NSA staff chooses) are invading countries and blasting a lot of people, not just “targets” which the NSA selects (based on electronic communications and profiling, not a trial). Even the US corporate press is starting to provide coverage of the anti-drone movement [1]; the same goes for British corporate press [2], which is trying to give the other side of the story. In the Washington Post (close ties to the government and the CIA) yesterday there was a piece calling the drone war “immoral” (it’s actually illegal), attributing it to Obama although it’s Bush who started it.

Maybe one day it will be realised that giving children guns as toys (in a holiday that is supposed to be about birth), tasering children and killing children abroad with overpriced Hellfire missiles is just fueling the United States’ enemies and in no way serves the national interests (a.k.a. “National Security”) of this nation. That’s just what happens when paramilitaries take over a country. Feuds cannot be ended using violence; negotiation is needed and people who left the CIA say that negotiation did work. It’s just not as profitable as war. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Yemen’s New Ways of Protesting Drone Strikes: Graffiti and Poetry

   Proponents argue that drones offer an efficient way of fighting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based affiliate of the global terrorist network. The Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi has endorsed the program, praising ongoing U.S.-Yemen counterterrorism cooperation and the “high precision that’s been provided by drones.” Human rights activists in Yemen and the families of many victims are outraged by the so-called “drone war” in the country, which the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates has resulted in between 21 and 56 civilian deaths. Aside from more conventional methods of protest – such as demonstrations, media campaigns, and the production of often scathing reports – activists are increasingly employing art as a medium through which to express their anger.

2. ‘There were pieces of my family all over the road’: Afghan citizen describes seeing relative’s burning bodies after deadly U.S. drone strike

3. President Obama’s immoral drone war

   U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries may be militarily effective, but they are killing innocent civilians in a way that is obscene and immoral. I’m afraid that ignoring this ugly fact makes Americans complicit in murder.

   It is understandable why President Obama has made drone attacks his go-to weapon in the fight against terrorists and the Taliban. Armed, pilotless aircraft allow the CIA and the military to target individuals in enemy strongholds without putting U.S. lives at risk. But efficacy is not legitimacy, and I don’t see how drone strikes can be considered a wholly legitimate way to wage war.

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11.30.13

The Fiction of ‘Piracy’

Posted in Action, Intellectual Monopoly at 2:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The problem known as “piracy” is an antiquated problem from history, tales, and Somalia, not people who challenge the real thieves — those who hoard and monopolise what’s public

AN interesting new report says that propaganda words like “piracy,” “theft” and “stealing” (often used to imply guilt of serious crimes) are to be banned from a court in the context of copyrights [1]. Copyrights, after all, are about copying; the word isn’t pronounced ‘theftrights’. Might we finally see fact-based judgment as a result? Will judges not be tempted to get carried away and wrapped up in misconception spread in the corporate media by its monopolistic owners? Let’s hope so.

As the “Pirate Party” founder reminds us, the real thieves are those who take away from society at the expense of artists [2] (take, not copy), sometimes at the expense of the public sector or the public domain [3].

The so-called ‘IP’ cartel continues to be run by selfish sociopaths who think they are above the law (or simple are the law) and treat even their own employees like cattle [4. They would go as far as using terms like “Pirate Sites” [5] to describe sharing sites which businesses may use to transmit files and individuals may use to store their own (self-created) media. We need to stop the attack on sharing and one important step is abolishing the use of propaganda words. Judge Kathleen Williams is awesome. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. MPAA Banned From Using Piracy and Theft Terms in Hotfile Trial

   Leading up to the trial, Hotfile has scored several significant wins against the MPAA. The Florida federal court ruled on several motions this week, and many went in favor of the file-hosting service. Most prominently, Judge Kathleen Williams decided that the movie studios and its witnesses are not allowed to use “pejorative” terms including “piracy,” “theft” and “stealing” during the upcoming proceedings.

2. Copyright Maximalists Harm Authors

   Copyright maximalists want all sorts of new laws to “help authors get paid”. Well, I’m a published author, and all their efforts to “help” cost me money. Even if we strictly limit the argument to printed books, copyright maximalists still only succeed in harming authors and publishers. This is how.

3. School system seeks copyright ownership of students’ work in Maryland

   It’s as if they lifted the plot right out of a Cory Doctorow novel. In Maryland, the Prince George’s County Board of Education is considering a proposal that would allow the school system to copyright ownership of all work created by students and teachers. The sweeping intellectual property grab could mean that anything from a drawing to an app to a lesson plan would become the property of the school system, not the creator.

4. WIPO Boss Accused Of Surreptitiously Collecting DNA Samples From WIPO Employees

   Francis Gurry, the head of the World Intellectual Property Organization, seems to be running from scandal to scandal these days. While it has shown brief moments of enlightenment, for the most part, WIPO tends to be an organization very supportive of the copyright and patent maximalist agenda. Last year, we wrote about two incredible scandals that directly involved Gurry.

5. Court Orders Google, Microsoft & Yahoo to Make Pirate Sites Disappear

   While its common for search engines to receive DMCA takedown requests for specific URLs, events in France have taken things to a whole new level. In order to protect the copyrights of film producers, the High Court of Paris has concluded a 2011 case by ordering Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to completely de-list 16 video streaming sites from their search results.

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11.28.13

Western Censorship: Are We Really Better Than Other Countries?

Posted in Action at 9:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Book burning in Chile following the 1973 CIA-backed coup that installed the Pinochet regime

Summary: Book burning (in the digital sense) is still practiced in Western nations, but those nations are adept at hiding it or justifying it

THE corporate media in the United Kingdom has been advocating online censorship for quite some time. Of course they throw all sorts of speech under the bus, labeling it all “extremist” [1]. In Facebook, a platform of censorship (some views are not permissible), the suppression of free speech continues to get worse [2], but somehow we’re led to believe that Internet censorship is only a problem in China, Russia, Iran, and so on (rivals of Western ideologies other than the money ideology).

While it is true and it is still evident that there is censorship in places like Russia [3] and Iran [4], here in the West we have similar restrictions that the newspapers don’t quite tell us about. Our ISPs are silently blocking many sites [5-6] for corporate reasons (nothing to do with “extremism”) and our governments spy on us like nowhere else, sometimes in order to facilitate blackmail against those with "extremist" (i.e. different/dissenting) views. It is a form of retribution [7].

Censorship is a global problem. Western nations are part of it. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Ministers will order ISPs to block terrorist and extremist websites

   The government is to order broadband companies to block extremist websites and empower a specialist unit to identify and report content deemed too dangerous for online publication.

   The crime and security minister, James Brokenshire, said on Wednesday that measures for censoring extremist content would be announced shortly. The initiative is likely to be controversial, with broadband companies already warning that freedom of speech could be compromised.

2. Fitness Mom Runs Afoul of Facebook … Again

   A California fitness trainer and mother of three was banned from Facebook for 48 hours after she published a post last week which was highly critical of a Curvy Girl Lingerie marketing campaign promoting body confidence in plus-sized women.

3. Netizen Report: Russian Child Porn Law Applied to Pussy Riot Image

   Index on Censorship tracked websites blocked by the Russian government under a law intended to combat child pornography. Among the materials banned: anti-Putin articles, Mein Kampf, content related to drug use, gambling, and suicide, and—of course—an icon of jailed band Pussy Riot.

4. Netizen Report: I can’t haz encripshun? Iran blocks Cryptocat

   Global Voices Advocacy’s Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world. This report begins in Iran, where Cryptocat, a user-friendly browser-based chat encryption tool envisioned as “cryptography for the masses,” was blocked last week. A blog post about the blocking reminded users that Cryptocat is “experimental software” that is “not guaranteed to protect you from excessively serious situations, such as government targeting, physical spying, or computer backdoors.” Heed that, kitty cats.

5. ISPs Condemn “Useless” Blocking Proposals From Secret Piracy Talks

   ISPs have condemned negotiations on a potential update of Swiss copyright law that is being influenced by the U.S. Government and entertainment companies. According to the ISPs the secret anti-piracy discussions, from which they were excluded, have so far yielded “useless” proposals including web blocking and file-sharer warnings. “We reject the monitoring of Internet traffic on principle,” a spokesman said.

6. ISPs Can Be Required to Block Access to Pirate Sites, EU Court Hears

   In legal advice to the EU Court of Justice, Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón today announced that EU law allows for Internet service providers to be ordered to block their customers from accessing known copyright infringing sites. The opinion, which relates to a dispute between a pair of movie companies and an Austrian ISP over the now-defunct site Kino.to, is not legally binding. However, the advice of the Advocate General is usually followed in such cases.

7. Kim Dotcom traces Megaupload raid to Wikileaks donation

   FILESHARING MAGNATE Kim Dotcom reckons that a donation to Wikileaks kicked off all the trouble that saw his Megaupload service shut down.

   Dotcom, who lost Megaupload but launched Mega a year to the day later, has been profiled in a book. We’ve not seen it yet, but Torrentfreak has. It reported that Dotcom said that a €20,000 tribute sent to Julian Assange’s Wikileaks could have triggered his problems.

   David Fisher’s book, “The Secret Life of Kim Dotcom – Spies, Lies and the War for the Internet”, was written with access to Dotcom and reveals new information about a colourful character who lives in the spotlight.

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Governments Complicit in NSA Cracking Crimes and Blackmail

Posted in Action at 8:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: New scandals involving the NSA, including COINTELPRO-like targeting by the NSA

RECENT bombshells from Snowden et al. revealed a high degree of criminality in the NSA, which infects computer networks [1]. Perhaps they can no longer accuse China of doing such things. But to what degree have governments other than the United States’ played in all this? Well, there’s allegation that Canada’s government is now part of the same institutional corruption [2]. Other US allies, even neighbours of China (where the majority of the nation is of Chinese descent), may be complicit [3]. The high degree of state surveillance [4] is being studied [5] and citizens in the United States (not to be confused with the government) want some answers [6,7,8] about the NSA’s facilities. Networks got compromised [9], essentially subverting any notion of security [10]. Now we have it confirmed that the NSA used information it had gathered for blackmail [11-14]. This is a huge deal as it makes complicit nations accomplices in the act. Back in the days of COINTELPRO, the FBI used surveillance in an attempt to drive Martin Luther King to suicide. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. New Snowden document reveals NSA’s international malware operation

   A presentation slide provided by Edward Snowden and published by the Dutch media outlet NRC on November 23 shows that the NSA has infected more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide with malicious software designed to steal sensitive and private information.

2. Canada let NSA spy on G8 and G20 Ontario summits during week-long operation in 2010

   The NSA used U.S. Embassy in Ottawa as command post during summits

3. Korea and Singapore Alleged to Have Assisted NSA in Eavesdropping

4. Snowden spyware revelations: we need to unmask the five-eyed monster

   With revelations of spyware planted on 50,000 networks, the “Five Eyes” states have been allowed to trample over their citizens’ privacy for far too long

5. Call-Log App Aims to Reverse-Engineer NSA Surveillance

   The MetaPhone project asks volunteers to install an Android app that sends the researchers copies of a device’s call logs and basic data from a person’s Facebook account. The researchers say that a large collection of such data will make it possible to use data-mining techniques to discover which aspects of people’s lives—as recorded in their Facebook data—can be revealed by examining just their calling and texting logs.

6. Citizens Protest NSA Data Center

7. Utah Cyber Attacks on the Rise as NSA Facility Draws International Attention

8. Utah town gave NSA a deal on water

   Bluffdale agreed to sell water to the National Security Agency at a rate below its own guidelines and the Utah average in order to secure the contract and spur economic development in the town, according to records and interviews.

9. Quoted: on how the NSA may have tapped into Internet data

   As other countries push for more control over the Internet, “you’re going to see national boundaries begin in cyberspace,” said Jason Healey, director of policy group Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, according to Bloomberg.

10. Death and the NSA: Motherboard Meets Bruce Schneier

    That’s not to say that the NSA has “broken” all cryptography: “the math works,” says Schneier, and while anonymizing tools like Tor are targeted by NSA, they seem to remain secure. Instead, the NSA appears to have manipulated encryption tools and tapped into data center links and fiber backbones—in essence, silently removing the hinges from their doors.

11. NSA ‘planned to discredit radicals over web-porn use’

    The US authorities have studied online sexual activity and suggested exposing porn site visits as a way to discredit people who spread radical views, the Huffington Post news site has reported.

12. NSA ‘tracked online sexual habits of suspected terrorists’

13. NSA attempted to shame radicals with online porn records

14. NSA’s Porn-Shaming Strategy

    The disclosures from the Snowden files keep on coming, with each revelation more disturbing than the last. The latest report reveals a plan by the National Security Agency to collected information on six people’s online activity, particularly their visits to pornographic websites, to discredit them within their community.

    This is an example of “how ‘personal vulnerabilities’ can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target’s credibility, reputation, and authority,” activist Glenn Greenwald wrote in the Huffington Post on Tuesday evening.

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Statehood Slipping Away Through Citizens’ Fingers

Posted in Action at 8:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Why the paramilitaries need to be chased out of the state, for they only reduce national security and increase human toll

Paramilitaries are typically the tools of tyrants, but now even the United States has them, and they’re out of control [1]. They do illegal things [2] and the government has no power or even the will to stop them. Those who expose the paramilitaries [3-7] say that the leaders should be tried for murder [8] of thousands [9].

Recent developments in Iran [10] teach us that the paramilitaries have lied to us [11]. The paramilitaries are torturing innocent people in pursuit of the threat that makes paramilitaries seem necessary and the paramilitaries won’t let the public know the truth [12,13,14]. It is rather telling. The paramilitaries just want to recruit some spies [15], so they detain innocent people (with strong opinions) and make a farce of the legal system [16]. The paramilitaries’ power is derived from our fears and the phantom enemies which they create by provocation (assassinating many people without trial). Those paramilitaries have ties with Wall Street and they would rather we focued on phantom enemies rather than on those who steal trillions of dollars from us (robbing us blind).

The Western states are being taken over by paramilitaries. We need to take the state back from them. In the next post we’ll show the latest NSA scandals (aside for playing a role in thousands of assassinations without trial). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Drones Turned the CIA Into a Paramilitary Force, and There’s (Probably) No Turning Back

   For a long time, the Central Intelligence Agency was in the otherwise quiet business of doing what still lingers in popular consciousness as the stuff of, well, the CIA: Intelligence gathering. Data collection, sifting, and analysis. You know, wonky spy shit.

2. UN panel questions drones legality

   “When armed drones kill unarmed, innocent civilians, there is a clear breach of international law,” Ambassador Masood Khan said while explaining Pakistan’s position on the draft approved by the General Assembly Third Committee which deals with social, humanitarian and cultural questions.

3. Imran Khan’s party ‘outs’ CIA chief in Pakistan

4. Party claims it identified top CIA spy in Pakistan

5. Imran Khan party name CIA operative

   The Pakistan political party led by former cricketer Imran Khan has named a man it claims is the CIA’s top operative in the country and called for him and the head of the agency to face trial over a recent missile strike.

   The CIA would not confirm the Islamabad station chief’s name and declined to comment on the move by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

6. Imran Khan’s party reveals top CIA officer in Pakistan

7. Drone row: Imran’s party ‘outs’ CIA chief in Pak

8. Pak politicians say CIA station chief should be tried for murder

9. Imran Khan Leads Mass Pakistan Protest Against Drone Strikes That Kill ‘Thousands’

10. RT interview about the recent Iran nuclear deal

    Here’s a recent inter­view I did about the recent Iran nuc­lear deal, adding some con­text and his­tory and try­ing to cut through some of today’s media myths

11. Homeland: US-Iran Deal Shows CIA Thriller out of Touch

    It’s been hailed as a breakthrough agreement that could thaw Iran’s relationship with the West. Days of intensive discussions in Geneva resulted in concessions from Iran to reverse its nuclear programme in return for a reduction in economic sanctions imposed by the world’s powers. It’s a remarkable deal that a year ago no-one would have seen coming, least of all the writers of Homeland.

12. ACLU files lawsuit against CIA over torture, black sites (Iranian press)

    The ACLU filed the suit on Tuesday under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demanding the Central Intelligence Agency release two reports about its post-9/11 “program of rendition, secret detention, and torture of detainees”

    “This illegal program was devised and authorized by officials at the highest levels of government, and five years after it officially ended, the American public still doesn’t have the full story about some of the most devastating rights violations committed in its name,” the ACLU said in a statement.

13. Activists sue to pry loose government’s secret study about CIA interrogation

    This week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed the second Freedom of Information Act lawsuit intended to pry loose the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence study, as well as the CIA’s response. Judging from history, the dispute will take a long time to resolve. So far, moreover, courts often have assented when the president’s emissaries demand secrecy in the name of national security.

14. CIA Sued for Reports on Torture & Rendition

15. At Guantanamo Bay, CIA turned terrorists into spies

    When prisoners began streaming into the prison on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in January 2002, the CIA recognized it as an unprecedented opportunity to identify sources. That year, 632 detainees arrived at the island. The following year 117 arrived.

16. ‘Idiots’ cleared of threatening to blow up Manchester-bound plane

    But he later told the court that, as the severity of the diversion became apparent, he tried to reverse this decision by telling air traffic control the men were “laughing and joking”.

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