Snowdon is a dummy

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/11/01/nsa-surveillance-spurs-tech-giants-to-add-encryption

Tech companies furious at the National Security Agency for reports of spying on their networks and risking the trust of their customers are adding encryption to parts of their networks that were previously unsecured, which won't prevent the agency from asking for data but could stop a hacker.

[READ: NSA Denies It Accesses Global Data Centers of Google, Yahoo]

Twitter plans to set up new types of encryption to protect its messages, the New York Times reports. Google also began encrypting data flow between its data centers in September out of fear that intelligence agencies were spying on those signals.

It turns those fears may have been accurate, as reports by the Washington Post indicate the intelligence agency uses a backdoor program called MUSCULAR to tap international cables to infiltrate overseas data centers of Yahoo and Google. Army Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, denied reports that the agency was tapping the data links.

Users will now have greater protection against hackers and people who might be able to snoop on their email through public wireless signals, but the NSA could still get a court order for a tech company to give the agency user data, says Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union.

"There are widely available tools that allow hackers to collect data on wireless networks in places like Starbucks," says Soghoian, a former technologist at the Federal Trade Commission.

The bad press about the NSA surveillance has also led Yahoo to announce it would implement those security protocols in early 2014, which Twitter had already done, Soghoian says. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D.-N.Y., wrote Yahoo and Twitter in 2011 asking the Web portals to add more secure protocols to protect consumers.

Adding encryption on areas where there was no encryption before will complicate efforts for the NSA to tap into Google address books of consumers without going throughGoogle, Soghoian says. Apple device users, for instance, who linked their GMail accounts to their address book applications, could have that information compromised since there was no encryption between the servers. The Post reported on Oct. 14 that the NSA collected contact lists from digital message accounts.

[BROWSE: Editorial Cartoons on the NSA]

"Before these changes the NSA could go to Verizon and AT&T and get all the data that went over the network," Soghoian says.

Despite these changes, tech companies will have to take extra steps to regain the trust of their consumers in foreign countries, where the NSA has a legal mandate to collect information, Soghoian says. The companies will have to go a step further and make their data encrypted even to their own employees, he adds.

"The problem is that their ad business models require them to have access to data," Soghoian says. "You cannot be an advertising company and keep your customers' data from the NSA"

Consumers in foreign countries seeking services with more privacy protections can use Spider Oak, which offers encrypted online file backups, and Silent Circle, which offers encrypted phone call services. The NSA cannot get user information from those companies because customer data is encrypted and is not available in usable form.

"They don't have the ability to wiretap their customers," Soghoian says. "Companies like that can sell services to the Europeans, South Americans and everyone else that is worried about surveillance."

More News:

http://reason.com/blog/2013/10/21/nsa-revelations-monkeywrench-police-surv

NSA Revelations Monkeywrench Police Surveillance State Schemes
J.D. Tuccille|Oct. 21, 2013 12:24 pm

As it turns out, Edward Snowden's revelations to the world about NSA surveillance of phone calls, email, text messages and any other kind of electronic communications have given more than the agency's own employees a sad. Awww. Police departments are upset, too, that the cat is out of the bag about the growing surveillance state and that people are pushing back against government scrutiny well beyond the specifics contained in the whistleblower's leaked documents.


Public disclosures about U.S. government surveillance threaten the ability of police to use powerful new technologies such as drones and mobile license plate readers, a top law enforcement official said on Sunday.

The leak of highly classified documents by National Security Agency Edward Snowden prompted tighter restrictions on key technology advances, said Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vernon Keenan, speaking at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference.

The disclosures, including about monitoring of U.S. phone records, threaten to erode existing authority to use high-tech equipment, he said.

Keenan is obviously upset that public awareness of the surveillance state threatens to hamper its advance, but other participants at the conference aren't so certain that a bad thing. Philadelphia Police Chief Charles Ramsey pointed to license plate scanning and facial recognition technology, saying "Imagine instead of driving down the street scanning license tags, driving down the street checking the faces of individuals walking down the street." He added, "We have to remind ourselves - just because we can do something doesn't mean we should do it."

While Keenan's concerns are probably more representative than Ramsey's of law enforcement reaction to public scrutiny of their scrutiny, the head Philly cop has good reason for his warning.

When it comes to facial recognition technology, the FBI's own standards for the software that has been applied to drivers license databases in more than half the states allows for "an incorrect candidate a maximum of 20% of the time." That's a bad match one in five times, with at least 120 million of us already conscripted into the lineup, under minimal safeguards. The databases are already routinely abused.

License plate scanners are subject to similarly weak and variable safeguards, potentially allowing authorities to track our movements and map our associations. With almost three-quarters of police agencies reporting using license plate readers as of 2011, that's a growing problem.

Cellphone tracking—treating your handy mobile device as a location beacon—is also subject to weak controls, with federal and local authorities battling to keep it that way.

But all of these technologies now receive more challenges and raise more concerns precisely because Edward Snowden made the surveillance state a headline issue.

Once again, thank you, Edward Snowden.

RELA

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/06/us-usa-security-international-idUSBRE9A502520131106


(Reuters) - Revelations about the scale of U.S. spying on the Internet have badly damaged the country's negotiating power in international talks on cyberspace regulation and law enforcement, analysts and industry leaders said at a conference on Tuesday.

Disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about the vast scale of the intelligence agency's data collection also are undermining U.S. efforts to maintain the Internet as an entity loosely governed by a mix of national, private and nonprofit forces.

"We're losing leverage internationally" to China, Russia and other countries that want to give more authority to the United Nations and governments, Hoover Institution professor Abe Sofaer said at the fourth annual meeting on international cybersecurity cooperation held by the EastWest Institute. "It's terrible."

China's Minister of the State Council Information Office, Cai Mingzhao, in a speech advocated a greater role for the UN Group of Governmental Experts and said the discussion of rules of conduct, which the United States has sought to keep general and nonbinding, should move to the United Nations as well.

"We should, step by step, create a fair and transparent mechanism for the governance of cyberspace," Cai said.

U.S. State Department Coordinator for Cyber Issues Chris Painter responded with the U.S. position that private companies and other non-government organizations who have been key to the Internet's growth would be undercut if the U.N. were given exclusive power.

The conference at Stanford University drew senior officials, academics and corporate officers from more than 40 countries who are working through the EastWest Institute on systems for improving collaboration on Internet security issues.

But on some of the biggest issues, including the appropriate role for international bodies and privacy rights, U.S. officials were on the defensive even from their European counterparts and American company representatives, who said the loss of trust by Internet users and possible Balkanization of the Internet's technological rules could erode economic growth.

Microsoft Corp Vice President Scott Charney, for one, said the software powerhouse was committed to protecting its users from privacy attacks by all countries and that when one nation attacks another through security holes in its products, he doesn't want either side to win. "I'm not on your side," Charney said. "I'm neutral."

Snowden's documents have cast a harsh light on practices at Microsoft, Google Inc, Facebook Inc and other internet companies. Spy agencies use secret court orders to force the corporations to turn over records on thousands of users overseas. In addition, former federal agents say they can find ways to break into Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Charney urged the United States to disclose far more about what information it collects and what happens to that data. "Companies and governments need to be more transparent" for trust to be restored, he said.

China's Cai cited needs for privacy and for transparency, echoing the language of those in other countries outraged by Snowden's disclosures.

He said cybercrime was a major and growing problem within China, with 8 million servers compromised from overseas through August of this year, up 14% from the same period last year.

Sofaer, a former State Department legal advisor, said that the United States should follow the same pattern as it did with biological weapons, where it abandoned resistance to international treaties when it became clear that there was no other way to deal with the problem.

He said the United States should support a consensus approach, instead of a majority vote of nations, and do more to beef up such neutral standards bodies as the Internet Engineering Task Force before the U.N. demands more control.

(Editing by Peter Henderson and Tim Dobbyn)

POLITICSUNITED NATIONS

The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge – not even in the long run. ”

— John Gray, essay "Joseph Conrad, Our Contemporary" in Heresies

We're no more ruled than you are ****-for-brains.

I think you missed the point Bill. It hinges on the word "they" in the 3rd sentence. The ones who bend every sinew and tortured muscle to save your lives.

We can cross the road without fear of be arrested, and drink beer in public, and we can bet on elections, including yours.

Something you're not allowed to do.

And nobody would dare close down our drinking holes on election day.

You're right, we don't let people like you have guns, that makes the rest of us a lot safer.

You do not allow your Olympics pistols team to have guns or at least practice with them

Try to find someone in the UK who thinks that's a bad idea.

You can't.