Snowdon is a dummy

All he has to do is command, 'STOP IT!'

Obama is a liar who can't be trusted;

At some point you have to learn that the word is "and"...not "an."

Anyway...

but his personal views on cultural/political issues.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=226678


Have A Nice Death, Intel


This is not a good thing for Intel, and while it is not -- yet -- trashing them in the marketplace, it might down the road.

In yet another washup from the Snowden revelations, the developers of FreeBSD have decided to take several steps backwards in their crypto work, to stop using hardware random number generators (RNGs).

The two hardware RNGs singled out by the FreeBSD developers in this post are Intel's RDRAND (in Ivy Bridge processors), and VIA's Padlock.

If you recall one of the revelations on the NSA and its spying crapware is that it sought to infiltrate the generation of random seeds in cryptography. This move is a severe problem for Intel should it spread, and unless something is done to prove that no tampering has taken place and more to the point, that tampered chips are not in wide use, it is likely to spread.

Random number generation is utterly critical to good cryptography. Without it you can have the best algorithm in the world but it will be trivial to break it. Since it is very, very difficult (effectively impossible) to break modern cryptography by brute computing force the usual approach nowdays is to cheat.

Anything you can do that reduces the solution set helps.

Random numbers are used to initialize the cryptographic algorithm. It's necessary that they actually be random, because if you can predict the next "random" number then you can also break the code without actually having to break the cryptography itself.

The problem with such tampering is that it is not targeted at all. That is, if you've managed to tamper with the random number generator in a given chipset then everyone who uses that chipset has their cryptography rendered useless.

If the NSA in fact did this they are likely to be ultimately responsible for the destruction of the firms that incorporated the tampered RNGs, as the chips involved are embedded in communications and computing devices worldwide. The harm will reach into the trillions of dollars, and all of it due to government spookworks hubris.

Intel, and the other players in these spaces, need to take a cold, hard look at this and figure out how to prove that their chips are indeed ok -- if they are.

Until they do the unfortunate reality is that one must assume that the tampering has, in fact, taken place.

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Study: NSA Spying May Cost U.S. Companies $35 Billion
Network spying could discourage $35 billion in cloud-computing sales through 2016

By TOM RISEN

Chicken feed ci.

By The Washington Post

Published: Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2013, 8:48 p.m.
Updated 8 minutes ago

Leaders of the nation's biggest technology firms warned President Obama during a meeting at the White House Tuesday that National Security Agency spying programs are damaging their businesses and could harm the broader economy.
Cisco has said it is already seeing customers, especially those overseas, back away from American-branded technology after documents revealed the NSA enlisted technology companies and also secretly tapped into their data hubs around the world as the agency pursued terrorism suspects. Other firms, such as IBM and AT&T are facing angry shareholders, some of whom have filed lawsuits demanding that the companies disclose their participation in NSA programs.
Silicon Valley has been a critical driver of the economic recovery and has long represented the face of American ingenuity around the world. Many of these companies say they are still trying to assess the damage caused by documentation of their work with intelligence officials.




Read more: http://triblive.com/usworld/nation/5272894-74/companies-nsa-technology#ixzz2nmydwf6a
Follow us: @triblive on Twitter | triblive on Facebook

The White House has released the report of a surveillance review board that has recommended modifying the National Security Agency counter-terrorism programme that collects virtually all Americans’ phone records.

The recommendation that the NSA no longer keep the phone database – estimated by some former officials to contain more than 1 trillion records – is among a set of sweeping technical reforms aimed at restoring public confidence in the spying apparatus, said individuals briefed on its contents.

President Obama met with the five-member Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies this morning.

Rather than the NSA, the phone companies or a third party would hold the phone records, said US officials briefed on the contents.

The report’s 40-plus recommendations also include barring the NSA from asking companies to build “back doors” into their software so that the government may gain access to encrypted communications. The NSA will thus be barred from undermining global encryption standards and prohibited from stockpiling “zero day” hacking tools that can be used to penetrate computer systems, and in some cases damage or destroy them, according to the individuals, who were not authorised to speak on the record.

The panel also suggested moving the NSA’s information assurance directorate, which is in charge of protecting classified government computer systems, under a separate entity.

... ... ...
© The Washington Post

Have perjury charges been filed against Clapper, JPB?

If they have...I enthusiastically support his right to a fair trial.

Okay?

Seven House Judiciary Members Demand DOJ Investigate James Clapper For Lying To Congress
from the now-we're-getting-somewhere dept
Since the Snowden revelations first started coming out, forcing James Clapper to admit that he flat-out lied to Congress, we've been somewhat perplexed as to how Clapper could come out of the whole thing "unscathed." Congress seemed willing to look the other way, and the President didn't appear to have any interest in firing Clapper or Keith Alexander, so as not to "let Snowden win." But, it's never made much sense. Lying to Congress is a pretty serious crime -- and considering the lying was to cover up a program that just this week was found to be unconstitutional, it seems even more serious. The fact that anyone in Congress thinks that Clapper can even be remotely trusted to tell the truth going forward when he got away with lying, seems bizarre.

Hopefully that will be changing now.

Back in October, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the author of the PATRIOT Act, argued that Clapper should be fired and prosecuted, but hadn't done anything to move that forward. However, with Monday's ruling now making it pretty clear that the program that Clapper lied about (in response to a question from Senator Ron Wyden), Sensenbrenner, along with six of his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee have sent a letter to Eric Holder, demanding an investigation into Clapper's lying to Congress. The letter is quite a read. They're pretty direct about calling out Clapper for lying, how this is against the law, how others in government have been prosecuted for the same thing, and even how allowing this to go unpunished contributes to "cynicism" about the government. More

Frank Apisa wrote:

Have perjury charges been filed against Clapper, JPB?

If they have...I enthusiastically support his right to a fair trial.

Okay?

You may get to do just that, Frank.

Quote:

Seven House Judiciary Members Demand DOJ Investigate James Clapper For Lying To Congress
from the now-we're-getting-somewhere dept
Since the Snowden revelations first started coming out, forcing James Clapper to admit that he flat-out lied to Congress, we've been somewhat perplexed as to how Clapper could come out of the whole thing "unscathed." Congress seemed willing to look the other way, and the President didn't appear to have any interest in firing Clapper or Keith Alexander, so as not to "let Snowden win." But, it's never made much sense. Lying to Congress is a pretty serious crime -- and considering the lying was to cover up a program that just this week was found to be unconstitutional, it seems even more serious. The fact that anyone in Congress thinks that Clapper can even be remotely trusted to tell the truth going forward when he got away with lying, seems bizarre.

Hopefully that will be changing now.

Back in October, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the author of the PATRIOT Act, argued that Clapper should be fired and prosecuted, but hadn't done anything to move that forward. However, with Monday's ruling now making it pretty clear that the program that Clapper lied about (in response to a question from Senator Ron Wyden), Sensenbrenner, along with six of his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee have sent a letter to Eric Holder, demanding an investigation into Clapper's lying to Congress. The letter is quite a read. They're pretty direct about calling out Clapper for lying, how this is against the law, how others in government have been prosecuted for the same thing, and even how allowing this to go unpunished contributes to "cynicism" about the government. More

Also, you didn't provide an opinion on whether Snowden should be remanded to prison pending trial or be allowed bail.

Also, you didn't provide an opinion on whether Snowden should be remanded to prison pending trial or be allowed bail.

we need to ask him where he thinks Snowden should be held and under what conditions.

I still find it very straight that you are such a support of the 2 amendment but do not care about the other constitutional rights that the bill of right give us.

Snowden is a hero

any drone strikes would be aim far better at the NSA headquarters or the Utah new super computer center.