Monthly Archives: October 2014

FBI Director: Mobile encryption could lead us to ‘very dark place’

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Summary: Apple's and Google's encryption plans have not gone down well with US law enforcement, and the agency's director says the companies are leading us down a dark path.

FBI Director James Comey believes that in a "post-Snowden" world, the pendulum has swung too far and unchecked encryption could lead us all to a "dark, dark place" where criminals walk free.

Speaking at an event at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., Comey said that public misconceptions over the data collected by the US government and technological capabilities of agencies such as the NSA have encouraged heightened encryption but the consequences could be dire.

The FBI chief, who has been in his post just over a year, said that "the law hasn't kept pace with technology, and this disconnect has created a significant public safety problem." In particular, "Going Dark" worries law enforcement the most the spectre of facing black spots in surveillance, and not being able to gather or access evidence related to suspected criminals.

"We have the legal authority to intercept and access communications and information pursuant to court order, but we often lack the technical ability to do so," Comey admitted.

Current law governing the interception of telecommunications data and records requires broadband and network providers to build interception capabilities into their networks, under the terms of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). However, this law was brought in 20 years ago and now technology has outstripped this legislation, as new communication technologies are not necessarily covered by the act.

According to the FBI Director, "if the challenges of real-time interception threaten to leave us in the dark, encryption threatens to lead all of us to a very dark place." Comey commented:

Encryption is nothing new. But the challenge to law enforcement and national security officials is markedly worse, with recent default encryption settings and encrypted devices and networks all designed to increase security and privacy.

Encryption isn't just a technical feature; it's a marketing pitch. But it will have very serious consequences for law enforcement and national security agencies at all levels.

The remarks were made in reference to Google and Apple, both of which have pledged to encrypt their mobile devices by default. Apple has recently added two-factor authentication to iCloud following celebrity photo leaks, and in iOS 8, the encryption keys are given to the customer. On the heels of Apple's announcement, Google said this level of encryption will also be enabled in the next version of Android.

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FBI Director: Mobile encryption could lead us to 'very dark place'

US government fines Intel’s Wind River over crypto exports

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Top 5 reasons to deploy VMware with Tegile

The US Government has imposed a $750,000 fine on an Intel subsidiary for exporting encryption to China, Russia, Israel and other countries

Wind River Systems was fined for exporting products that incorporated encryption to foreign governments and to organisations on the US government restricted list. The controversial move means the US Department of Commerce appears to be coming down heavily against the export of encryption even in cases where no export to sworn enemies of the US (Iran, Cuba and North Korea etc.) is involved.

The Intel subsidiary was fined for falling to get Department of Commerce licenses for a modest piece of business, valued at under $3m. As such the fine represents a slap on the wrist, but it's still a clear signal that priorities are changing.

Previously self-reported cases of crypto export used to be handled by a warning only. Multinational commercial law firm Goodwin Procter warned its clients to treat what happened to Wind River as the new normal.

We believe this to be the first penalty BIS has ever issued for the unlicensed export of encryption software that did not also involve comprehensively sanctioned countries (e.g., Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria). This suggests a fundamental change in BISs treatment of violations of the encryption regulations.

Historically, BIS has resolved voluntarily disclosed violations of the encryption regulations with a warning letter but no material consequence, and has shown itself unlikely to pursue such violations that were not disclosed. This fine dramatically increases the compliance stakes for software companies a message that BIS seemed intent upon making in its announcement.

Senior FBI and US government law officers have repeatedly complained over recent weeks about plans by Apple and Google to incorporate enhanced security into smartphones. Now, as Techdirt notes, the conflict between government regulation and the tech industry is moving onto the renal original turf of the first crypto wars of the late 90s - the export of strong encryption.

Strong cryptography was classified as a weapon and subject to export controls back in the 90s. This approach fell into disfavour for several good reasons that are even more relevant today than they were 20 years ago.

Firstly cryptography is essentially applied mathematics and the knowledge is already out there. Secondly decent cryptography is a fundamental component of any computing system that aspires to be secure.

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US government fines Intel's Wind River over crypto exports

SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar: Cryptography Methods to Guarantee Payment Anonymity – Video

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SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar: Cryptography Methods to Guarantee Payment Anonymity
Talk will be about how these concepts work in guaranteeing anonymous payments Blind signatures One-way accumulators Zero-knowledge proofs Ring signatures (They are used in...

By: Taariq Lewis

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SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar: Cryptography Methods to Guarantee Payment Anonymity - Video

Return of the Doge Car: Cryptocurrency back to sponsor No. 98 in Talladega

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Updated OCT 16, 2014 5:56p ET

The biggest upset in NASCAR this season? Well, it wasn't AJ Allmendinger winning at Watkins Glen or Aric Almirola taking the July Daytona race. No, clearly the biggest shocker this year was Josh Wise defeating Danica Patrick to win the fan vote and make it into the Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Wise scored the upset because of one of the most unlikely partnerships in NASCAR history - the low-dollar Phil Parsons Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team joining forces with online currency Dogecoin and the huge Reddit online community.

Dogecoin first sponsored PPR at Talladega Superspeedway in the spring and they will be back on the team's No. 98 Ford Fusion again for Sunday's GEICO 500 at the mammoth 2.66-mile central Alabama track.

The genesis of the partnership is fairly remarkable.

It began when 16-year-old reddit user Denis Pavel saw the all-black, unsponsored No. 98 in a race early this season. Impressed by the tiny teams effort, Pavel rallied the reddit community to use Dogecoin to raise sponsorship funds for Wise.And, of course, they flooded the all-star race voting, which allowed Wise to make into the big show over Patrick.

"I knew the online community was powerful, but I never expected this relationship to reach this level," said team owner Parsons. "As far as I know, this is the first online fundraising effort that has been able to fund sponsorship for a NASCAR team, and to think that we've been able to raise enough money for three races is incredible. We're hopeful that we'll be able to continue this partnership for many years to come as even more people from the Dogecoin community get involved with the program."

To that end, this week a collaborative website, TheDogeCar.com, launched "to share the story of the historical crowd funding effort that brought this sponsorship to life."

The site is selling merchandise to fund the team next year.

Available items include an "official Dogecar sponsorship coin" minted by Provident Metals, 2015 DogeCrew t-shirts, hoodies, and crew shirts. Preorders will be accepted through November 15, 2014, with the proceeds being applied to the 2015 race season.

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Return of the Doge Car: Cryptocurrency back to sponsor No. 98 in Talladega

Free Julian Assange: An Exclusive Interview with the Wikileaks Founder

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LONDONDont forget to tell them about my appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court, Julian Assange tells me in a door-knob-one-more-thing moment as Im leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has taken refuge for the last two years. The embassy is just a flat in a building stuck behind Harrods. An entire floor in the back of Harrods facing the embassy has been offered by Qatar to Englands security service MI5 and the local NSA, the Government Communications Headquarters, to spy on one little man, the WikiLeaks publisher, proof if any that national security has little to do with the Assange story.

Hans Crescentin the Knightsbridge area of London is now the cobblestone intersection of many worlds, a modern Casablanca overcrowded with shoppers, spies, bums, London police, weird guys loitering, troubadours, too many men sitting in the same parked Mercedes, a tall Russian man yelling in his cell, a suspicious earpiece spiraling around his neck, two women nursing the same coffee for hours, one of them rushing towards me for a light and staring a little too long into my eyes, and four gigantic London police vans lined up for no reason. There was, no doubt, less intelligence on the ground at Abbottabad.

We were surprised after entering the embassy to see two smiley London police officers standing right in front of the apartment door of the Ecuadorian ambassador. If Mr. Assange were to put one foot out of this door he would be jumped immediately and extradited to Sweden, perhaps then to face rendition to the U.S. The appeal to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom that Mr. Assange wants me to tell the world about is his latest attempt at challenging the constitutionality of the non-retroactive clause, dubbed the Assange clause. It was inserted last-minute in the new law voted into parliament, barring extraditions for persons without charges after a growing number of British officials started to realize that their attempt at destroying Mr. Assange by extraditing him to Sweden with no official reason, was slowly making a mockery of their authority. In sum, England is desperately trying to extradite a man who has not as of yet been charged of any crimes, while writing a whole new law to restore some respectability, affirming that from now on, the country wont be able to extradite anyone without charges in order to please the White House. Heres what brought us to this Kafkaesque point.

Julian Assange created a website in 2006 called WikiLeaks that would allow for worldwide whistleblowers to post anonymously, even to the site administrators, revelatory and incriminatory documents that could be used as checks and balances to states and corporations who until then acted as terrorists and criminals with total impunity since the fifth column was naively being viewed as the Fifth Estate.

Last weeks revelations that Ken Dilanian, a LA Times and Chicago Tribune reporter assigned to cover the C.I.A. was submitting his pieces to the agency for approval right before publication in exchange of access, Julian Assange told The New York Observer last Sunday at the small Ecuadorian Embassy under siege in London, is a typical quid pro quo that exemplifies the state of the press nowadays. Most news organizations in America who used to be family owned are now run by corporations so vast and diversified that their portfolio bottom line and quarterly shareholders dividend targets force them to change their business plans and have their journalists become government press secretaries in order to gain administrative favoritism. When Julian Assange needed an official voice to disseminate the millions of for your eyes only intel that Chelsea Manning gave him, he called Bill Keller at The New York Times, the same publication that had whitewashed Judith Millers use of the Defense Intelligence Agencys Ahmed Chalabi plant when time came to spin about the W.M.Ds.

I get things done, Mr. Assange told me.

When you say things like I get things done, you come across as a corporate power thirsty narcissist, I said.

WikiLeaks, despite some obvious setbacks, is still fully operational, he replied.

At the peak of the COINTELPRO response, things looked gloomy. On orders from the White House, Visa and MasterCard cut the flow of contributions to WikiLeakseven PayPal joined the boycott, which is striking since it is owned by eBay, which was founded by Pierre Omidyar, who now backs Glenn Greenwald and his information disseminating website The Intercept.

But why not following your own advice from your first book Cypherpunks and do what the Weather Underground did, hit and hide? I asked. Why stay in the limelight for so long? Was it fun?

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Free Julian Assange: An Exclusive Interview with the Wikileaks Founder

Edward Snowden’s Privacy Tips: “Get Rid Of Dropbox,” Avoid Facebook And Google – Video

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Edward Snowdens Privacy Tips: Get Rid Of Dropbox, Avoid Facebook And Google
According to Edward Snowden, people who care about their privacy should stay away from popular consumer Internet services like Dropbox, Facebook, and Google....

By: WochitGeneralNews

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Edward Snowden’s Privacy Tips: “Get Rid Of Dropbox,” Avoid Facebook And Google - Video

NYFF 2014: Edward Snowden documentary ‘Citizenfour’ jolts …

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Many documentaries seek to kick-start environmental movements, reverse death row sentences or even change legislative policy.

But few come with the kind of ideological ambition of the Edward Snowden study "Citizenfour," a movie of grand scope that also tells an intimate personal story.

The long-awaited documentary from Snowden chronicler Laura Poitras arrived with a bang at its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on Friday night, receiving a rare festival standing ovation ahead of its theatrical release Oct. 24, when it could well jolt both the fall moviegoing season and the national conversation about privacy and security.

Poitras, as some may recall, shot the 12-minute video of Snowden that went viral in June 2013 and made the National Security Agency contractor, at 29, perhaps the most important and polarizing figure since Daniel Ellsberg. "Citizenfour is, in effect, that original video effort writ very large a look at how Snowden came to the decision to pull back the curtain on the NSA's massive surveillance operation and what happened to him when he did.

It is also, needless to say, a portrait of that operation itself.

Its absolutely staggering and beyond what you can ever imagine, Poitras said in an interview at the festival Saturday. Theres the scope and desire of collecting all of this data, and also the mentality that if they have all communications they have these repositories they can query later. Its shocking, really.

Poitras is already well known as a foreign-affairs investigative journalist thanks to documentaries such as her Oscar-nominated My Country, My Country. Her new film begins with her voiceover describing how she had been contacted anonymously by a man identifying himself as "Citizenfour" who claimed to have proof of illegal government surveillance.

The source turns out to be Snowden, but before Poitras gets to him, she details the extensive national security apparatus that he will soon expose. The director has activists explain how the government uses so-called metadata to track phone calls and movements of ordinary citizens, and shows clips of James Clapper, director of national intelligence for the NSA, testifying before Congress that the government does not spy on millions of Americans.

The focus then shifts to Snowden, shot by Poitras over eight days in a now-famous Hong Kong hotel room with the Guardians Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill present, ready to break stories based on the classified documents Snowden is leaking them. (Greenwald would eventually write a book on the experience called No Place To Hide.) There is a kind of unfettered, up-close detail to these scenes that would be startling for any interesting documentary subject, let alone for the worlds most famous fugitive. "Citizenfour" is an examination of a larger-than-life personality in the most handmade manner imaginable.

Snowden has made the decision to come forward, he says in the film, because he feels theres a great threat to the future of American free speech. "The elected and the electorate," Snowden says, have become "the ruler and the ruled.

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NYFF 2014: Edward Snowden documentary 'Citizenfour' jolts ...

A list of known NSA spying techniques | Police State USA

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Is the NSA listening to your phone calls? Yes.

The scope of the National Security Agencys spying abilities has increased dramatically in the last few of years. Rumors have been circulated for years about the agencies clandestine abilities. Many of those rumors have been confirmed, thanks to leaked documents and whistleblowers like Edward Snowden.

Below is a list of powers and tricks used by the NSA. Many of these abilities are shared by the NSAs spying counterpart in the United Kingdom, known as the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ). Interestingly, most of the reporting about the USAs Orwellian playbook comes from foreign publications.

Police State USA will attempt to update this list as evidence of the police state continues to unfold.

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After digesting this list, consider that these powers go beyond some of the wildest nightmares of NSA critics from a generation ago. In 1975, U.S. Senator Frank Church made some chilling statements in regards to the NSAs domestic spying abilities. Four decades later, things are exponentially more alarming.

Sen. Frank Church

If a dictator ever took over, the NSA could enable it to impose a total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.

That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesnt matter. There would be no place to hide.

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A list of known NSA spying techniques | Police State USA