Privacy

Hacks May Have Been By AMERICAN Insider

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Washington’s Blog – Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said today:

It is not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC was not a false flag operation.

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If you think the Russians did this, then why did they leave fingerprints?

We would want to know who else might want to influence the election and why they would leave fingerprints that point to the Russians. That’s why I say until we know more about how the intelligence community came to this conclusion we don’t know whether it is Russian inspired or a false flag.

What’s he talking about?

The NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”) – says that Russia probably would not have used a “known” hacking method to gather and then leak DNC emails to sway the election.

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Worried Your Emails Might Be Spied On? Here’s What You Can Do

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encryptionMonique Mann – We live in a post-Edward Snowden world, in which US tech companies have been accused of complicity in mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA). One recent allegation is the claim that Yahoo scanned hundreds of millions of emails at the NSA’s request.

We don’t truly know how much or how often this is happening within the companies that host millions of people’s email accounts.

According to Reuters, Yahoo was ordered by the secret US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to scour emails for a specific string of characters. This is significant, as it required Yahoo to create a custom-built program for real-time surveillance of email traffic.

The power for this type of surveillance was expanded by the US Patriot Act, which allows for the use of secret National Security Letters (NSL) to compel service providers to hand over customer data. The letters come with gag orders, prohibiting companies like Yahoo from even admitting that they have been ordered to monitor customers.

But email scanning does not only occur at the behest of national security agencies. The past decade has seen the rise of “surveillance capitalism” and “data brokers”, who collect your information for behavioural profiling and targeted advertising.

Google has admitted to scanning emails to deliver targeted advertising and customised search results. Facebook is currently facing legal action for scanning private messages to do the same. And earlier this year Yahoo itself settled a class action lawsuit for scanning non-Yahoo customer emails without consent.

Protecting your privacy

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The CIA’s ‘Pokémon Go’ App is Doing What the Patriot Act Can’t

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gameJames Corbett – Privacy advocates (that’s establishment speak for “normal human beings”) celebrated earlier this week as the House rejected yet another attempt to expand the Patriot Act’s snooping provisions. House Resolution 5606, better known by its Orwellian name, the “Anti-terrorism Information Sharing is Strength Act,” would have allowed Big Brother to access American’s financial information based on what the government deems to be “suspicious activity.” Given that the DHS has labeled such things as using binoculars, paying with cash, or even “appearing normal” as “possible terrorist activity” in the past (thus making pretty much every human being a possible terrorist), everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that the bill failed.

But don’t breathe that sigh too deeply, because exactly as that threat to privacy was being extinguished, another one was rising to take its place. It goes by the name of “Pokémon Go” and it is a so-called “augmented reality” game that allows users to capture, train and battle virtual Pokémon by chasing them around through real world environments with your smart phone.

Full disclosure: Although I live in the land of anime and video games, I have never played any Pokémon games, watched any of the shows, read any of the comics or bought any of the toys associated with the franchise. I don’t know anything about it except for the name of that ubiquitous yellow Pikachu character. So if you are an out of touch fuddy duddy like me, you may be surprised to learn that the “Pokémon Go” app, launched just one week ago, is the hottest thing on the planet right now.

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The Problem with the Crypto Debate

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cryptography Jonathan Logan – A battle is underway about the limits of cryptography. On the one side are people who want to break into iPhones, tap into conversations and decrypt our backups. On the other side are those who want to prevent the government from mass intrusions but accept targeted attacks. And then there are those who take a so-called “extremist” position that government shouldn’t be allowed to undertake even targeted attacks on cryptographic systems.

This isn’t the first time this battle has been fought, and it won’t be the last. But it’s our turn to fight it right now. And we had better fight it well.

I will begin by admitting that I am an ‘extremist’ in this debate. If my wishes came true, no government or any other uninvited third party would be able to break cryptographic protections.

This is not the first time I’ve been involved in this battle. My job involves designing, writing and deploying cryptographic services.

I wrote my first PGP-encrypted email in 1991 or 1992, I’ve been using OTR since 2005 and all my Internet access has been routed through VPNs since 2000. (Yes…. that early.) I never access the Internet unencrypted, out of principle. I’ve been using Tor since its earliest days, have been surfing Freenet and run I2P eepsites.

If you have no idea what these terms mean, please don’t worry; I’m just mentioning them to emphasize that I am very much in favor of the daily use of good cryptography. I won’t use most of these terms again.

So, while I am a crypto extremist myself, honesty compels me to point how wrongly the “pro-cryptography” side in the current debate has made their case.

The State of the Debate

If you search the arguments made in favor of strong cryptography and against government “backdoors,” you’ll come up with a collection of statements that are uncharitable and shallow.

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Hidden Cameras Being Used to Measure and Manipulate Political Views Around the World

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dataNicholas West – It is no longer controversial to say that the world depicted in the fictional creation Minority Report is now our reality. Many mainstream outlets have admitted as much with their coverage of a range of technologies which center around tracking consumers’ biometrics for targeted marketing, predictive policing, predictive health algorithms, and interactive programs that make the real world seem more like a virtual reality simulation.

However, a new application of Minority Report-style tracking and analysis is beginning to trouble even those who are in the business of data mining. A new field has emerged out of research and advancements made in the area of neuroscience (the study of the brain and nervous system) –  it is being dubbed Neuropolitics.

Among the digital billboards that are engaged in collecting data and tailoring marketing for many consumer products, many countries are beginning to use hidden facial recognition cameras within these billboards to capture the reactions of passersby.

The New York Times reports:

In the lobby of a Mexico City office building, people scurrying to and fro gazed briefly at the digital billboard backing a candidate for Congress in June. Continue reading →