03.01.14

Another Day of High-Level Abuses: Microsoft Kinect a Target of Spooks, Apple-PRISM Allegations, Ukraine Interventions…

Posted in News Roundup at 5:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: News from the past 24 hours about British and US surveillance, assassination, and outside intervention in East Europe

NSA/GCHQ

• Nothing To Hide: An anti-stealth game in which you are your own watchdog

  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.

• Let’s point a satellite at GCHQ and the NSA, and see how they feel

  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.

• How to foil the NSA and GCHQ with strong encryption

  THE MOST INTERESTING DEVICE shown at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week was the secure Blackphone developed by Silent Circle and Geeksphone.

• This lecture is the one primer you need on NSA surveillance technology

• Wiliest Ways to Keep the NSA at Bay

  “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.

• Lavabit’s Ladar Levison on Snowden, Why He Shut Down, and How to Beat the NSA

  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.

• Coviello ducks big questions and sticks to his script

  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

• Sens. Vow ‘Close Scrutiny’ Of NSA Role In Webcam Spying

• Yahoo In Trouble Thanks To The NSA

• Senators to investigate NSA role in GCHQ ‘Optic Nerve’ webcam spying

  Three senators condemn UK spy agency’s ‘breathtaking lack of respect’ over interception of Yahoo users’ webcam images

Microsoft

• Are the N.S.A. and G.C.H.Q. Trading Webcam Pictures?

  G.C.H.Q. was apparently also interested in tapping into Microsoft’s Kinect.

• Xbox 360′s Kinect Evaluated as Surveillance Tool by British Intelligence Agency

  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

• Tor developing anonymous instant messenger

  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 is building an anonymous instant messenger

  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.

• Goosestep Foot Forward

  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

• Hope in Federations

  Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp gains them almost half a billion users worth of telephone data

• Facebook’s Global Telco Dream

  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!

• Surveillance Impact Not Just Personal

  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

• ICO Survey on the Code of Practice on Anonymisation

  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.]

• Backdoors are the real cybersecurity story this year

  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.

• On the Timing of iOS’s SSL Vulnerability and Apple’s ‘Addition’ to the NSA’s PRISM Program

  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.

• Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable to attacks

  Twice now that Apple’s bypassed Snow Leopard when it patched newer editions

• Collective SSL FAIL a symptom of software’s cultural malaise

• Was the iOS SSL Flaw Deliberate?

  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

• Limit surveillance to ‘terrorist communication,’ says outgoing NSA boss

  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

• Vicky Nuland Gets Her New Government in Ukraine

  “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.

• Ukraine was a Playbook CIA Coup d’état

  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.

• Armed Men Seize Control of Airports in Crimea, Ukraine

  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.

• Former pilot for Air America talks about work in Laos during Vietnam War

  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.

• What Does a Soviet Submarine Have to Do With U.S. Government Secrecy?

  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

• Jerusalem Police Interrogates Palestinian Journalist Over Facebook Post

  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”.

• Texas Police Officers Competed To Steal Signs From Homeless People

  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.

• The Moazzam Begg Arrest: Part of the Effort to Criminalize Muslim Political Dissent

  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.

• How a British Citizen Was Stripped of His Citizenship, Then Sent to a Manhattan Prison

  Britain’s citizenship deprivation processes may help obscure the Obama Administration’s willingness to kill and kidnap Britons.

• Keeping tabs on Obama’s promises

  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.

• From Guantanamo to Limitless War, Obama’s Failure to Live Up to His Own Five Commandments

• BREAKING: Idaho Governor Signs Ag-Gag Law Making It Illegal to Expose Animal Cruelty

  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 Whistler — the international launch

  The Whist­ler, the new whis­tleblower sup­port net­work in the UK, recently held an inter­na­tional pre-launch in London.

  The Whist­ler has been set up by Gavin Mac­Fa­dyen, Dir­ector of the Centre for Invest­ig­at­ive Journ­al­ism and Eileen Chubb of Com­pas­sion in Care.

  Both, through their work, real­ise the heavy price that all whis­tleblowers from every sec­tor have to pay, not just pro­fes­sion­ally, but also socially, psy­cho­lo­gic­ally and also poten­tially leg­ally. And they want to help.

Drones

• The Clear and Convincing Standard and Citizen Drone Strikes

• I Was Beaten, Tortured: Pakistani Anti-Drone Activist Karim Khan on Being Abducted by Masked Men

  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.”

Permalink  Send this to a friend