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Edward Snowden’s Libertarian Moment: We “will remove from governments the ability to interfere with [our] rights”

February 25, 2015

Edward Snowden’s Libertarian Moment: We “will remove from governments the ability to interfere with [our] rights”

Via Mark Sletten comes this thread from yesterday’s Ask Me Anything session at Reddit that featured Edward Snowden, Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras, and journalist Glenn Greenwald.

The question posed to Snowden:

What’s the best way to make NSA spying an issue in the 2016 Presidential Election? It seems like while it was a big deal in 2013, ISIS and other events have put it on the back burner for now in the media and general public. What are your ideas for how to bring it back to the forefront?

His answer is well worth reading in full (I’ve posted it after the jump), but its essence is a full-throated defense of classical liberal and libertarian theorizing not just about the consent of the governed but the right to work around the government when it focuses on social order over legitimacy. And, as important, a recognition that this is what we at Reason and others call “the Libertarian Moment,” or a technologically empowered drive toward greater and greater control over more and more aspects of our lives. While the Libertarian Moment is enabled by technological innovations and generally increasing levels of wealth and education, it’s ultimately proceeds from a mind-set as much as anything else: We have the right to live peacefully any way we choose as long as we are not infringing on other people’s rights to do the same. Our politics and our laws should reflect this emphasis on pluralism, tolerance, and persuasion (as opposed to coercion) across social, economic, and intellectual spheres of activity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Moscow-Based Security Firm Reveals What May Be The Biggest NSA “Backdoor Exploit” Ever

February 17, 2015

Moscow-Based Security Firm Reveals What May Be The Biggest NSA “Backdoor Exploit” Ever

Since 2001, a group of hackers – dubbed the “Equation Group” by researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab – have infected computers in at least 42 countries (with Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Syria most infected) with what Ars Technica calls“superhuman technical feats” indicating “extraordinary skill and unlimited resources.”

The exploits – including the ‘prized technique’ of the creation of a secret storage vault that survives military-grade disk wiping and reformatting – cover every hard-drive manufacturer and have many similar characteristics to the infamous NSA-led Stuxnet virus.

According to Kaspersky, the spies made a technological breakthrough by figuring out how to lodge malicious software in the obscure code called firmware that launches every time a computer is turned on.

Disk drive firmware is viewed by spies and cybersecurity experts as the second-most valuable real estate on a PC for a hacker, second only to the BIOS code invoked automatically as a computer boots up.

“The hardware will be able to infect the computer over and over,” lead Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu said in an interview.

…

Kaspersky’s reconstructions of the spying programs show that they could work in disk drives sold by more than a dozen companies, comprising essentially the entire market. They include Western Digital Corp, Seagate Technology Plc, Toshiba Corp, IBM, Micron Technology Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

The group used a variety of means to spread other spying programs, such as by compromising jihadist websites, infecting USB sticks and CDs, and developing a self-spreading computer worm called Fanny, Kasperky said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

IN HISTORIC RULING, UK SURVEILLANCE SECRECY DECLARED UNLAWFUL

February 7, 2015

IN HISTORIC RULING, UK SURVEILLANCE SECRECY DECLARED UNLAWFUL

The United Kingdom’s top surveillance agency has acted unlawfully by keeping details about the scope of its Internet spying operations secret, a British court ruled in an unprecedented judgment issued on Friday.

Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was found to have breached human rights laws by concealing information about how it accesses surveillance data collected by its American counterpart, the National Security Agency.

The ruling was handed down by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a special court that handles complaints related to covert surveillance operations conducted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In its 15-year history, the tribunal has never before upheld a complaint against any intelligence agencies.

The legal challenge was brought by human rights groups, including Privacy International and Liberty, following disclosures from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The groups alleged that GCHQ was unlawfully obtaining data through the NSA’s online spying program PRISM, which collects data stored by Internet giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo. The groups also focused on GCHQ’s role in obtaining private communications swept up by the NSA directly from internet cables, known as so-called “upstream” collection.

The court ruling against GCHQ found that by keeping the rules underpinning the surveillance secret, the agency had “contravened” the privacy and free expression provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. The secret policies were released for the first time in December, meaning that until then GCHQ had been operating unlawfully, likely for several years. (GCHQ has had access to PRISM since at least 2010, according to reports based on Snowden documents.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

64 Percent Of News Reporters Believe That Obama Is Spying On Them

February 7, 2015

64 Percent Of News Reporters Believe That Obama Is Spying On Them

Is it okay for Barack Obama to spy on reporters? Is it okay for government spooks to record their calls, monitor their online activity and collect their emails whenever they want? Well, according to a shocking new pollconducted by Pew Research, 64 percent of investigative journalists believe that the government is already collecting data from them right now. Sadly, very few of them are publicly voicing objections.

We are rapidly becoming the type of “Big Brother” society that George Orwell once wrote about, and most Americans are just going along for the ride. One journalist that is making waves is former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson. In her new book entitledStonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington, she claims that she has evidence that the government remotely activated her computer numerous times, monitored her keystrokes and even buried incriminating documents very deeply on her hard drive. She has filed a lawsuit, and hopefully this will result in the public shaming of those involved in this spying.

With each passing day, we are becoming a little bit more like Nazi Germany, and if we continue down this road America will eventually be completely transformed into a totalitarian hellhole.

Have we really gotten to the point where virtually everyone knows that the government is spying on them but we just accept it as a fact of life?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

WESTERN SPY AGENCIES SECRETLY RELY ON HACKERS FOR INTEL AND EXPERTISE

February 5, 2015

WESTERN SPY AGENCIES SECRETLY RELY ON HACKERS FOR INTEL AND EXPERTISE

The U.S., U.K. and Canadian governments characterize hackers as a criminal menace, warn of the threats they allegedly pose to critical infrastructure, and aggressively prosecute them, but they are also secretly exploiting their information and expertise, according to top secret documents.

In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by monitoring hackers as they breach email accounts, often without notifying the hacking victims of these breaches. “Hackers are stealing the emails of some of our targets… by collecting the hackers’ ‘take,’ we . . . get access to the emails themselves,” reads one top secret 2010 National Security Agency document.

These and other revelations about the intelligence agencies’ reliance on hackers are contained in documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents—which come from the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters agency and NSA—shed new light on the various means used by intelligence agencies to exploit hackers’ successes and learn from their skills, while also raising questions about whether governments have overstated the threat posed by some hackers.

By looking out for hacking conducted “both by state-sponsored and freelance hackers” and riding on the coattails of hackers, Western intelligence agencies have gathered what they regard as valuable content:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Did the Liberals Vote For Bill C-13 After Fiercely Opposing It?

January 25, 2015

Why Did the Liberals Vote For Bill C-13 After Fiercely Opposing It?

When I was 16, I was goofing off in math class with a friend. I was probably wearing my At the Drive In t-shirt, my most prized possession and potent signifier of my burgeoning avant-garde taste in art. Wasting time in math class seemed a great way to show off my rejection of mainstream conventions and the constant pressure from the world to “improve myself.”

At some point my friend took off somewhere, no doubt expressing his irrepressible independence, and my math teacher, Mr. Cort, took the vacant seat. Mr. Cort was younger than the other teachers and the only person familiar with the band emblazoned on my t-shirt, so I had a certain respect for him, if not his subject matter.

He asked me what was up with my perfunctory performance in his class. “I’m a bit disappointed,” he said “I know you’re much smarter than this and you could do a lot better if you’d stop fooling around.”

I won’t pretend I transformed into an A student in math overnight, or at all, but I definitely spent less time gabbing with my rebellious neighbors after that. And now that I’m in the dotage of my early thirties, I can identify with that sense of being let down by someone from whom you expected better. And I’m feeling it right now.

Liberals, we need to talk. You see, you guys have justifiably made a lot of noise about the ways that the Conservatives’ reckless online spying Bill C-13 would violate the privacy of Canadians. Like us, you were worried that the Bill, which provides legal immunity for telecoms to hand over our private data without a warrant, represents afundamental upheaval of our constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy.

For example, here’s what your spokesman Sean Casey MP said during a key House of Commons committee debate:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Security Apparatus and Politicians React to Paris Attacks

January 12, 2015

Security Apparatus and Politicians React to Paris Attacks

Memo from the Deep State: Surveillance Still not Ubiquitous Enough

No sooner had the blood in Paris dried so to speak, as representatives of Western security services and police reminded us that they have still not enough funding and power. Say what?

As far as we are aware, their surveillance includes practically everything, to the point that the UK’s CGHQ has probably obtained the world’s biggest collection of amateur porn, by dint of spying at millions of webcam users. Lest we forget:

“Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images ofYahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

[…]

The documents also chronicle GCHQ’s sustained struggle to keep the large store of sexually explicit imagery collected by Optic Nerve away from the eyes of its staff, though there is little discussion about the privacy implications of storing this material in the first place.”

(emphasis added)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Activist Post: How Many of These Secret Surveillance Programs Do You Know About?

January 4, 2015

Activist Post: How Many of These Secret Surveillance Programs Do You Know About?.

According to various publications in the American and foreign media, the United States has created a global system of cyber espionage that allows the interception and processing of personal data around the globe in violation of fundamental human rights.

Tapped phones, intercepted short messages, supervised discussions in social networks and stolen emails – this is the ugly reality we are living in. The NSA and other units of the United States Intelligence Community are more than capable of breaching any mobile operating system, be it iOS, Android or BlackBerry OS.

In 2011 US intelligence agencies successfully finished the development of geo-location tracking software that allows the NSA to collect and save more than five billion location records of mobile users around the world on a daily basis, and then through a special program labeled CO-TRAVELER analyze and monitor the movement of certain individuals that could be of interest for Washington. In addition, since 2010 information on social contacts of US citizens, their personal data, including telephone calls, Internet logs, bank codes, insurance data is being processed by intelligence agencies on a regular basis.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inside the NSA’s War on Internet Security – SPIEGEL ONLINE

December 29, 2014

Inside the NSA’s War on Internet Security – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

When Christmas approaches, the spies of the Five Eyes intelligence services can look forward to a break from the arduous daily work of spying. In addition to their usual job — attempting to crack encryption all around the world — they play a game called the “Kryptos Kristmas Kwiz,” which involves solving challenging numerical and alphabetical puzzles. The proud winners of the competition are awarded “Kryptos” mugs.

Encryption — the use of mathematics to protect communications from spying — is used for electronic transactions of all types, by governments, firms and private users alike. But a look into the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden shows that not all encryption technologies live up to what they promise.

One example is the encryption featured in Skype, a program used by some 300 million users to conduct Internet video chat that is touted as secure. It isn’t really. “Sustained Skype collection began in Feb 2011,” reads a National Security Agency (NSA) training document from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden. Less than half a year later, in the fall, the code crackers declared their mission accomplished. Since then, data from Skype has been accessible to the NSA’s snoops. Software giant Microsoft, which acquired Skype in 2011, said in a statement: “We will not provide governments with direct or unfettered access to customer data or encryption keys.” The NSA had been monitoring Skype even before that, but since February 2011, the service has been under order from the secret US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), to not only supply information to the NSA but also to make itself accessible as a source of data for the agency.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Merkel staffer’s laptop infected by US/UK spy malware – report — RT News

December 29, 2014

Merkel staffer’s laptop infected by US/UK spy malware – report — RT News.

An aide to the German chancellor has become the victim of a cyber-attack, according to media. The highly-sophisticated Regin virus that was found on her infected USB stick is reported to be a product of British and US spy agencies.

Having written a draft of a speech at work, one of Angela Merkel’s senior staff members decided to take it home to polish it on her private laptop in the evening. When the head of the Department of European Policy brought the USB stick with the document back to her work computer, virus scanning software revealed that it was infected, according to Monday’s report of Bild newspaper.

The USB stick was infected with the Regin spying software, but additional checks revealed no other infections on any of the 200 other high-security laptops in the Chancellery, sources from German security services said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Operation Socialist: How GCHQ Spies Hacked Belgium’s Largest Telco

December 16, 2014

Operation Socialist: How GCHQ Spies Hacked Belgium’s Largest Telco.

When the incoming emails stopped arriving, it seemed innocuous at first. But it would eventually become clear that this was no routine technical problem. Inside a row of gray office buildings in Brussels, a major hacking attack was in progress. And the perpetrators were British government spies.

It was in the summer of 2012 that the anomalies were initially detected by employees at Belgium’s largest telecommunications provider, Belgacom. But it wasn’t until a year later, in June 2013, that the company’s security experts were able to figure out what was going on. The computer systems of Belgacom had been infected with a highly sophisticated malware, and it was disguising itself as legitimate Microsoft software while quietly stealing data.

Last year, documents from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden confirmed that British surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters was behind the attack, codenamed Operation Socialist. And in November, The Intercept revealed that the malware found on Belgacom’s systems was one of the most advanced spy tools ever identified by security researchers, who named it “Regin.”

The full story about GCHQ’s infiltration of Belgacom, however, has never been told. Key details about the attack have remained shrouded in mystery—and the scope of the attack unclear.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘You’re the bomb!’ Are you at risk from the anti-terrorism algorithms? | UK news | The Guardian

December 3, 2014

‘You’re the bomb!’ Are you at risk from the anti-terrorism algorithms? | UK news | The Guardian.

Should our future robot overlords decide to write a history of how they overcame their human masters, late 2014 will be a key date in the timeline. Last week, an official report from the parliamentary intelligence and security committee handed over responsibility for the UK’s fight against terrorism, or at least part of it, to Facebook’s algorithms – the automated scripts that (among other things) look at your posts and your networks to suggest content you will like, people you might know and things you might buy.

Assessing the intelligence failures that led to the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby at the hands of two fanatics, the committee absolved MI5 of responsibility, in part because the agency was tracking more than 2,000 possible terrorists at the time – far more than mere humans could be expected to follow. Instead, they placed a share of the blame on Facebook – which busily tracks its one billion users on a regular basis – for not passing on warnings picked up by algorithms the company uses to remove obscene and extreme content from its site. David Cameron agreed, and promised new laws, so it’s possible that soon Google, Facebook and co won’t just be scanning your messages to sell you stuff – they will be checking you are not plotting the downfall of western civilisation too.

Between the NSA’s automatic systems, social media tracking and more, everything you do is being overseen by the machines – but what might make you look suspect? Here are just a few examples.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

France Desperate to “Erase US Internet Companies From Existence” |

November 26, 2014

France Desperate to “Erase US Internet Companies From Existence” |.

If You Can’t Beat Them, Outlaw Them …

We have previously reported on the French obsession with stifling competition to the vast detriment of the consumer, so as to protect established businesses with all sorts of legal restrictions. A prime example of this nonsense is that the French have made free shipping by Amazon illegal in France (as discussed by Mish here). Mercantilism has never died in France, and today it is imposed under the guise of the so-called “cultural exception”, which ostensibly aims to “protect French culture” (see “France Threatens Trade Talks Over Cultural Exception” for details on this). There is much about French culture that is indeed admirable and admired the world over – and it obviously doesn’t require bureaucratic “protection”. That is a turn-off at best.

So we are not surprised to learn that the French government is in ever greater hysterics over the success of US based internet companies. “There ought to be a law”, and very likely there will be a law – French consumers and their preferences be damned. A recent article at Yahoo reports on “One country’s desperate battle to erase Google, Netflix and Uber from existence”:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Secret Malware in European Union Attack Linked to U.S. and British Intelligence – The Intercept

November 25, 2014

Secret Malware in European Union Attack Linked to U.S. and British Intelligence – The Intercept.

Complex malware known as Regin is the suspected technology behind sophisticated cyberattacks conducted by U.S. and British intelligence agencies on the European Union and a Belgian telecommunications company, according to security industry sources and technical analysis conducted by The Intercept.

Regin was found on infected internal computer systems and email servers at Belgacom, a partly state-owned Belgian phone and internet provider, following reports last year that the company was targeted in a top-secret surveillance operation carried out by British spy agency Government Communications Headquarters, industry sources told The Intercept.

The malware, which steals data from infected systems and disguises itself as legitimate Microsoft software, has also been identified on the same European Union computer systems that were targeted for surveillance by the National Security Agency.

The hacking operations against Belgacom and the European Union were first revealed last year through documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The specific malware used in the attacks has never been disclosed, however.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tory Bill To Boost CSIS Spying Powers Abroad Is Constitutional, Official Says

November 25, 2014

Tory Bill To Boost CSIS Spying Powers Abroad Is Constitutional, Official Says.

(Reuters) – Scuffles erupted after Hong Kong authorities cleared part of a pro-democracy protest camp in the bustling district of Mong Kok on Tuesday following a court order to reopen a road, with several demonstrators taken away in police vans.

The gritty, working-class area across the harbor from the main protest site at Admiralty has been the scene of some of the most violent clashes during two months of pro-democracy demonstrations in the Chinese-ruled city.

Hundreds of police stood guard as authorities enforced the court order to reopen Argyle Street to free up traffic. There was little resistance until the afternoon when police, some in rows with arms linked, faced off with protesters, several of whom were forcibly removed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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