c# – Encrypt and decrypt a string – Stack Overflow

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Modern Examples of Symmetric Authenticated Encryption of a string.

The general best practice for symmetric encryption is to use Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD), however this isn't a part of the standard .net crypto libraries. So the first example uses AES256 and then HMAC256, a two step Encrypt then MAC, which requires more overhead and more keys.

The second example uses the simpler practice of AES256-GCM using the open source Bouncy Castle (via nuget).

Both examples have a main function that takes secret message string, key(s) and an optional non-secret payload and return and authenticated encrypted string optionally prepended with the non-secret data. Ideally you would use these with 256bit key(s) randomly generated see NewKey().

Both examples also have a helper methods that use a string password to generate the keys. These helper methods are provided as a convenience to match up with other examples, however they are far less secure because the strength of the password is going to be far weaker than a 256 bit key.

Update: Added byte[] overloads, and only the Gist has the full formatting with 4 spaces indent and api docs due to StackOverflow answer limits.

.NET Built-in Encrypt(AES)-Then-MAC(HMAC) [Gist]

Bouncy Castle AES-GCM [Gist]

Edward Snowden Responds to Critics – The Brian Lehrer Show – WNYC

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

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Edward Snowden (RADiUS-TWC )

This interviewwas recorded as part of RadioLoveFest, produced by WNYC and BAM. It's an excerpt from a long, live discussionheld at BAM in Brooklyn on March 11, 2016, where Brian interviewed Edward Snowden and journalist/filmmaker Laura Poitras.Click here to listen to the full 90 minutes.

Edward Snowden has said that he would come back to the United States if he could face a fair trial, but so far the prospect seems unlikely.

"They said you cannot use a public interest defense. You cannot say the word whistle-blower," And as Snowden sees it this is the definition of unfair: "This of course is the fundamental basis of an unfair trial. If you can't present a defense it's not a trial. It's an extended booking process."

But he did get one morsel of consolation:"When I asked I the government to guarantee that a public interest argument would be available, they responded with a letter that said I would not be tortured."

On March 11th, Brian interviewed filmmakerLaura Poitrasand former intelligence officerEdward Snowden(via Google Hangouts) on the BAM stage for RadioLoveFest. In this excerpt Snowden responds to critics whoclaim he does not deserve clemency(or the title of whistle-blower) because he leaked not just domestic metadata programs, but instances of spying onon foreign governments and foreign individuals.

Snowden shook off thecriticismwith a stance of his own:

"It's important that we elevate and primarily focus on the rights of American citizens, but it's also important that we don't forget, 95 percent of the world's population lives beyond our own borders. And they do have rights, too. And even though we may focus first on the rights of our own country, that does not mean that we should disregard the rights of everyone else."

And Edward Snowden looks toward the future:

"I never chose to be in Russia and I would prefer to be in my own country, but if I can't make it homeI will continue to work very much in the same way that I have [...] What happens to me is not as important,I simply serve as the mechanism of disclosure."

Host Brian Lehrer leads the conversation about what matters most now in local and national politics, our own communities and our lives. Produced by WNYC.

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Edward Snowden Responds to Critics - The Brian Lehrer Show - WNYC

WikiLeaks – The New York Times

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

A Government Error Just Revealed Snowden Was the Target in …

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Slide: 1 / of 2 .

Caption: Christian Charisius/AP

Slide: 2 / of 2 .

Caption: Document from the Lavabit case mistakenly made public by the government showing Edward Snowden's email address was the target of the 2013 investigation.

Its been one of the worst-kept secrets for years: the identity of the person the government was investigating in 2013 when it served the secure email firm Lavabit with a court order demanding help spying on a particular customer.

Ladar Levison, owner of the now defunct email service, has been forbidden since then, under threat of contempt and possibly jail time, from identifying who the government was investigating. In court documents from the case unsealed in late 2013, all information that could identify the customer was redacted.

But federal authorities recently screwed up and revealed the secret themselves when they published a cache of case documents but failed to redact one identifying piece of information about the target: his email address, Ed_Snowden@lavabit.com. With that, the very authorities holding the threat of jail time over Levisons head if he said anything have confirmed what everyone had long ago presumed: that the target account was Snowdens.

The documents were posted on March 4 to the federal court system known as Pacer as part of Levisons long battle for transparency in the case that ruined his business. They were spotted this week by the transparency site Cryptome and published online.

Heres a quick recap of that case: On June 28, 2013, shortly after newspapers published the first NSA leaks from Snowden, FBI agents showed up at Levisons door in Texas and served him with a pen register order requiring him to give the government metadata for the email activity of one customers account.

The case was initially sealed and the public didnt learn about it and the fight over Levisons customer until after he had shuttered his email service in defiance of the government. But even after he closed Lavabit and there was no hope of the government obtaining information about the account that it had been seeking, the target was never identified. When some of the documents in the case were finally unsealed in redacted form in October 2013, however, the unredacted parts left little doubt that the Lavabit case was about Snowden, who was known to be using a Lavabit account in the spring of 2013 when his first NSA leaks were published and when he was hiding in a safe house in Hong Kong. It was still an educated guess, however.

Cut to now. With the Lavabit case long ended, Levison has kept fighting to get more of the documents unsealed and unredacted. Hes been using money raised by supporters back in 2013 to fund the fight for transparency. He filed a motion in December asking an appeals court to unseal documents and vacate a non-disclosure order that has silenced him about the target. It turns out he was a little more successful in that latter request than he thought he waswith a little help from a government error. After a hearing earlier this year, a court denied his motion to unseal and vacate but ordered US attorneys in the case to re-release all previously filed pleadings, transcripts, and orders with everything unredacted except the identity of the subscriber and the subscribers email address. After some negotiation, the government got the court to agree to let it redact other information as well that might harm its investigation into the target.

Then the government messed up. When the documents were re-posted to Pacer this month, Snowdens Lavabit email address was left unredacted in plain sight in an August 2013 document.

When asked for comment, Levisons lawyer Jesse Binnall told WIRED in an email that due to the letter and spirit of the courts January 7, 2016 order, Lavabit has no further comment on the unredacted email address.

Binnall is referencing the January 2016 order in which the court denied Levisons motion to unseal records and vacate the non-disclosure order in the case.

WIRED spoke with Levison, prior to his learning that the government had made the redaction error, about his struggle to obtain transparency. Three years later, I still cannot tell you who they were after. I keep getting asked the question, and I cant answer.

Now, it appears he doesnt have to. The government has answered for him.

Read the rest here:
A Government Error Just Revealed Snowden Was the Target in ...

Edward Snowden: Privacy can’t depend on corporations standing …

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Edward Snowden addresses LibrePlanet via video conference

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By Jon Gold

Network World | Mar 19, 2016 2:07 PM PT

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden opened the Free Software Foundation's LibrePlanet 2016 conference on Saturday with a discussion of free software, privacy and security, speaking via video conference from Russia.

Snowden credited free software for his ability to help disclose the U.S. government's far-reaching surveillance projects drawing one of several enthusiastic rounds of applause from the crowd in an MIT lecture hall.

+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Pwn2Own contest highlights renewed hacker focus on kernel issues + Apple engineers could walk away from FBIs iPhone demands

"What happened in 2013 couldn't have happened without free software," he said, particularly citing projects like Tor, Tails (a highly secure Linux distribution) and Debian.

Snowden argued that free software's transparency and openness are cornerstones to preserving user privacy in the connected age. It isn't that all commercial products are bad, nor that all corporations are evil he singled out Apple's ongoing spat with the FBI as an example of a corporation trying to stand up for its users merely that citizens should not have to rely on them to uphold the right to privacy.

"I didn't use Microsoft machines when I was in my operational phase, because I couldn't trust them," Snowden stated. "Not because I knew that there was a particular back door or anything like that, but because I couldn't be sure."

Private data, these days, only stays private at the sufferance of the major tech companies that administer devices and services, he argued. Given the increasing centrality of smartphones and social networks and the myriad of other digital communication methods to modern life, simply trusting that those tech companies will protect their users' privacy is insufficient.

Relying on corporations to protect private data is bad enough in a vacuum but Snowden pointed out that many tech giants have already proven more than willing to hand over user data to a government they rely on for licensing and a favorable regulatory climate.

He particularly singled out service providers as being complicit in overreaching government surveillance.

"We can't control telecom partners," Snowden stated. "We're very vulnerable to them."

However, protecting privacy is gaining mindshare, he added. Increasingly, a digital

Sanders’ Snowden Response Proves He Doesn’t Want a "Revolution"

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Last night at the Democratic presidential debate, leftist favorite Bernie Sanders clarified his feelings about National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"I think Snowden played a very important role in educating the American public ... he did break the law, and I think there should be a penalty to that," Sanders said. He went on to say that the role Snowden played in educating the public about violations of their civil liberties should be considered before he is sentenced, and that as president he would "absolutely" end the NSA spying programs in question.

To read between the lines: Bernie thinks Edward Snowden did the right thing, but hey, laws are laws. If elected, though, it sounds like he'll make sure Snowden gets a really nice jail cell.

Bernie was quick to point out that what Snowden did was illegal, and that he should face the consequences for it. Instead of calling for stronger legal protections for whistleblowers, or offering to pardon Snowden if elected, he called for the former NSA contractor to come home and face trial in a country with a dodgy record of imprisoning and prosecuting whistleblowers, dissidents, activists and journalists.

But notably absent from his law abiding approach was a call for criminal charges against NSA officials or his colleagues in Congress who repeatedly authorized the illegal mass surveillance programs he claims he would end as president. Programs that we would still know nothing about without Edward Snowden's "illegal" actions, which Bernie thinks he should face jail time for.

Where is Bernie's call for criminal sanctions against the web companies that betrayed their users' trust, violated their own privacy policies, and enabled the most sweeping violation of the Fourth Amendment in history?

Where is his apology to the rest of the world for the United States' decades of human rights abuses, economic espionage, and illegal torture programs?

I've learned over the years to no longer be shocked by politicians' ability to speak out of both sides of their mouths, but I can't help feeling that this quote from Sanders underscores a huge flaw in his thinking and the thinking of his supporters.

Sanders has based his campaign on the premise that the United States' political and economic systems are so flawed that we need a "revolution," but when a thorny question like Snowden comes up it becomes clear that what he's really calling for is a changing of the guard.

Civil disobedience, the idea that we have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, should not be a foreign concept to a longtime activist like Sanders. As of right now, there is no Federal law that protects me from being fired from my job or denied housing as a transgender person. Not terribly long ago child labor was perfectly legal while women were denied the right to vote.

As those who #FeelTheBern were quick to point out (and then point out again, and again, and again) after Sanders was brilliantly trolled by Black Lives Matter protesters, Bernie marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in 1963. He was even arrested for protesting school segregation.

So when did Bernie become such a stickler for law and order over justice and freedom? Probably when he decided he wanted to be president of the "Free World."

As someone who cares deeply about economic injustice and many of the other things that Sanders has made cornerstones of his campaign, I want to like him. I want to feel the same hope and inspiration that his starry-eyed supporters are spreading across social media.

But when I look at the major political progress we've made in recent years, it hasn't come from elected officials, no matter how well spoken. It's come primarily from brave, dedicated, people and movements, many of whom broke the law to achieve their goals. Wikileaks, protesters in Ferguson, the Arab Spring, and yes, whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.

I agree with Bernie Sanders that mass surveillance programs are dangerous. But what's more dangerous is the type of thinking behind them. Thinking that says that laws, rules, and following authority matter more than what's right and wrong. It's an ideology that breeds conformity and strangles democracy.

Until Bernie's revolution recognizes and embraces the real struggle we have between us and a free and just society, and honors those who have taken risks to bring us closer to that day, I think I'll be writing in Edward Snowden on election day.

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Sanders' Snowden Response Proves He Doesn't Want a "Revolution"

Badbitcoin.org – Helping you stay Safe in the World of …

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

Bitpyramid.ml "Don't trust us?" Er, no we don't actually. All ponzi's are scams. 3/19/16

Organica.fund They do like a different theme for these hyips, here's another one. 3/19/16

Bitcoinx10.yolasite.com Dirty deeds done cheap. Freehosted fraud. 3/19/16

Bitcloner.com A doubler fraud using this domain was inevitable. 3/19/16

Ultimabitcoin.com A very worn out style of hyip scam. 3/16/16

Instantgenuinepaying.com Instantgenuineloseyour.bitcoin 3/16/16

Double-btc.info What have we told you about btc multipliers? They are ALL scams and there are NO exceptions. 3/15/16

Envestrade.com Another hyip/fraud to add. 3/15/16

Bitmines.info Just another ponzi fraud. 3/15/16

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Topmine.io Yet another fake mining scheme. There are no special algorythms, just a ponzi. 3/15/16

Btcshares.org If you want btc shares, buy some btc, then you have a share. Simple. 3/15/16

Free-shares.com These may be the most expensive free shares you've ever (never) received. 3/15/16

Hyip.com But seriously, hyips are scams - pure and simple frauds, so this site takes the biscuit. 3/15/16

Mybtc.bid I'm starting to get double vision - probably the safest way to double my wealth. 3/12/16

Nelektronicy.pl Yet another attempt at a scam doubler. 3/12/16

Nexus-investments.com If these serial thieves had any sense, they'd stay away from bitcoin, then we wouldn't bother them. 3/10/16

Btcsinon.com Don't let this hyip/fraud fool you. Just lies and more lies. 3/10/16

Earntory.com What an odd site title, and that is the best part. 3/8/16

Investmega.com This scam looks like it was put together by an idiot, but we'd better list it in case a bigger idiot sees it. 3/7/16

X10multiplier.com Only in your dreams does bitcoin double. 3/7/16

Bitboom.info Boom, and your bits are gone. If Cillit did bitcoin scams.... 3/7/16

Btc-e.black The old worn out 'flaw in the blockchain' better known as the Bitatt scam. 3/7/16

Fxacc.com A hyip/scam from the usual offenders. 3/6/16

Rixosfinance.com Just another faker after your dosh. 3/6/16

Bitcoinside.com Don't risk it. You don't need to, there are plenty of legit exchanges 3/6/16

Bitcoin-ex.com Or Ex-bitcoin? 3/3/16

Mybitcoinmania.com Don't download that malware from these crooks. You will sorely regret it, Gen:Variant.Strictor.101663 3/3/16

Hourlytim.com He's a busy boy is young Tim, avoiding Jail. 3/3/16

Bitsdoubler.me.pn Seriously, does anybody still fall for these multiplier scams? 3/3/16

Fastcury.com If you want a fast curry, order one from your local takeaway. Dodgy doesn't even begin to describe this amateur fraudster. 3/3/16

Crypto-investment-experts.biz & Swiss-cryptocurrency-experts.com A free Cuckoo Clock for every sucker. 3/3/16 & 2/18/16

Slushcoin.com Your bitcoin may as well be slush if you send it to this faker. 3/1/16

Profitown.com Another hyip/fraud 3/1/16

These are just the most recent badsites. Click below for these and more Cryptocurrency badsites In alphabetical order.

** Important Announcement** The wife of our admin has just undergone a double organ transplant, and so updates and personal responses to emails will be a little erratic for a few weeks. Please bear with us during this unusual but amazing time. Thanks.

The Badbitcoin project was launched in Feb 2014. "The Badbitcoin Team" is made up of volunteers worldwide, and we welcome new contributors and sponsors.

You may read negative comments about this project, but this is the scammers only route to fight back, and a great many of these scammers are the same people who are Senior, and Gold members of forums. Forums relating to bitcoin are the best source of conflicting information ever invented, which is why we keep it plain and simple, we tell you it's a badsite, and thats all you need to know.

It's really easy to misunderstand the bitcoin environment when it's all new to you, and it will take you some time to grasp some of the rules and concepts. This leaves you vulnerable to the swathes of scams and ponzis that try to lure you into their promises of easy money, and doubling or even 100 times multiplying your new 'Magic Internet Money' It doesn't work like that. It isn't magic, it's just very efficient, very secure, and much sought after by thieves the world over. If you have bitcoin, you need to learn to look after it, or these crooks will soon take it from you.

Don't make it easy for them. Contribute by reporting suspect sites when you find them, and we'll do the rest. You can also help by donating bitcoin or litecoin to the project, and If you run a website or blog, you could add a link to this project and help spread the message. We have banners and logos to suit.

That's it - nothing to add, nada.

To report Internet Fraud to IC3 - Click Here To report Internet Fraud to the FBI anonymously - Click Here To report Internet Fraud to the UK Police - Click Here

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You can help us to help others by making a donation to this project. However modest, it will help us to continue. We spend nearly all of the donations on advertising in the same space as the scamsites, so we can reach and warn the most users. We also use some expensive investigation tools, but we all give our time for free.

A Ponzi is any scheme which pays interest to "Investors" from Bitcoin coming in from new Investors. A HYIP (high yield investment program) is just a Ponzi. All Ponzi/Hyips will fail The later Investors will lose everything when the scheme folds and leaves with the Bitcoin. Most HYIPS just steal it immediately - Due diligence is your own responsibility. There are plenty of good sites out there where your Bitcoin and your work are safe. You just need to do your homework, including checking here. If it isn't in our Badlist, email us, and we'll check it and get back to you.

Heres the psychology behind the typical ponzis & HYIP's run by the professional scammers. They know most people will do this.

You deposit a small amount, you want to be cautious, you cant quite figure out how they do this but they double it (or pay promised interest) and pay you. You think Ah thats great, so you either redeposit the entire amount, or just your profit. You get that back and think wow, it works, so you deposit a much larger amount and in the worst case, even get your friends involved in this wonderful money making scheme.

Then one day it doesnt get returned there is some issue with your account, or your withdrawal is stuck or something similar, so you keep emailing the site and gradually it dawns on you that youve been scammed.

Even if you just put your initial profit back in, the conman hasnt lost anything and the depositors who think they are playing the ponzi do try that, and most of them dont get it back either.

Some people empty their savings into these scams, and they are the ones the scammers are really after. Once they get that big depositor, they move on and create a new ponzi, just leaving the old one alive for a while to mop up any new mugs Some even return after a 3 or 6 month absence to catch a fresh load of hits, they will never run out of victims. Its what they do, and they are expert at it.

Declaration of Interests. We currently have personal and project investments in VIP and Mining shares at Miningsweden.se, and mining shares at Hashnest We would not invest in anything we considered to be a Ponzi or Scam. As a project, we are not directly funded by any organisation and depend on ad revenue, our own, and other donations, and our external investments. We also provide links including referral links to trusted 3rd party sites, not including advertisements beyond our control. Updated August 2015 PS - As a friendly tip, we probably aren't the people to generally ask about good bitcoin investments. We are pretty good at what we do, but so far, like yourselves no doubt, we aren't really that succesful when it comes to our own investments. Mintsy being our latest fail.

The high costs of running this site are helped by adverts. We also have to advertise in the same places as the scamsites. We have little control over the content, and consequently we do not directly endorse any advert. Some adverts will even appear in our Badlist. But at least the Bitcoin they spend on ads is coming back into the Bitcoin Industry.

Footnote. The evolution of society beyond the demise of the failed capitalist neo-liberal experiment, first needs the evolution of it's means of trade and exchange. The current financial system, and system of fiat currency, is not fit for present or future purpose, and for all intents and purposes is already obsolete. Bitcoin is our first financial step towards a fairer, more benefecial society for all. Bitcoin is incorruptible, decentralised, concensus led, and above the influence of conventional politics and economics. A parallel currency with which you can begin to trade, and no middleman to take their slice or to gamble with your asset. When you deposit money to a Bank, it becomes the Banks property to do with what they choose, bitcoin is different, and you are your own Bank. It is up to you to take care of your bitcoin, and also to use it, not hoard it, and to be an important part of helping to build this fair and open global society. Bitcoin is worth what somebody is prepared to exchange it for, be that USD, Yuan, PC-hardware, Webhosting or anything that 'money' might buy. You can even get a bitcoin Debit Card. However, the bitcoin Blockchain, and it's potential is a much much bigger subject.

Link:
Badbitcoin.org - Helping you stay Safe in the World of ...

The Encryption Debate – CBS News

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

The war on terror has created a privacy vs. security debate across the world including in Europe, where one thing investigators look into is a texting app favored by ISIS

The following script is from "Encryption" which aired on March 13, 2016. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Shachar Bar-On, producer.

The argument over encryption between Apple and the FBI reminds us that the world is facing a far more tech-savvy terror threat. While not that long ago al Qaeda often handled its communications by going back to the Stone Age relying on mules and couriers, the Islamic State, or ISIS, proved it can be done with just a push of a button using everyday tools of 21st century teenagers: the latest smartphones and messaging apps.

The encryption debate centers around an iPhone found in San Bernardino, where 14 men and women were killed in a terror attack last December. But before that, there was the massacre in Paris. We went there to meet the city's chief prosecutor who is confronting some of the same issues.

Paris, France

CBS News

Francois Molins: The terrorists are able to communicate with total impunity.

Francois Molins is the head prosecutor of Paris -- he's investigated all the big acts of terrorism here, including Charlie Hebdo, the kosher supermarket, and now the November 13 attacks where 130 people were killed, more than 350 wounded.

Lesley Stahl: Do you have phones in terrorist attacks that you have not been able to get into because of encryption?

Francois Molins: Oui oui. With all these encryption software programs, we can't penetrate into certain conversations and we're dealing with this gigantic black hole, a dark zone where there are just so many dangerous things going on.

Play Video

Rob Wainwright, the head of Europol, saysISIS has developed "an external command force" to carry Special Forces-style attacks on the West

It's not just phones. One of the things he's looking into is a texting app favored by ISIS called Telegram which, like the new Apple iPhone -- offers advanced encryption.

Lesley Stahl: How often have you run in, in all your investigations, into Telegram?

Francois Molins: Yes, very often. Telegram, we can't penetrate, we can't get into it.

Pavel Durov is the inventor of Telegram. He's a young man without a country. He's Russian born but wanders the world now, in exile. He created Telegram so he could communicate in complete secrecy. It has taken off, used by over 100 million people.

Lesley Stahl with Telegram inventor Pavel Durov

CBS News

Lesley Stahl: But it's also used by terrorists now. Is this a concern for you?

Pavel Durov: Oh definitely. And in our 100 million users, probably this illegal activity we're discussing are only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the potential usage. And still we're trying to, you know, prevent it.

Telegram has become a go-to site for ISIS. They use it to widely disseminate propaganda like this video of the Paris attackers training in Syria. But ISIS fighters can also use Telegram to send private messages to each other to covertly plan and coordinate attacks.

Lesley Stahl: Is there something on your site on Telegram that allows any messages, emails, to just disappear, vanish?

Pavel Durov: Yes. So in private messages we have this secret chat feature which provides you with a self-destruct timer.

Lesley Stahl: Self-destruct timer.

Pavel Durov: You could set a specific amount of time, like a few seconds, or a minute or a week, after which the message would disappear.

Durov's obsession with secrecy and security stems from his own personal history. Long before Telegram he was known as the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia because he built a popular equivalent of Facebook. But in 2011, when anti-Putin marchers filled Moscow's streets, the Kremlin demanded he take down the organizers' sites.

Play Video

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, tells 60 Minutes that Snowden's revelations "shattered" his view of the West

Pavel Durov: And I refused to do that publicly. And the next day I had armed policemen at my doorstep...

Lesley Stahl: Wonder why.

Pavel Durov: ...and tried to break into my apartment.

There was continual pressure on him to hand over users' personal data culminating in 2014 when, under Kremlin duress, Durov was ousted from his own company.

Lesley Stahl: How long did you stay in Russia after that?

Pavel Durov: Not a single day.

Lesley Stahl: Oh, then you fled.

Pavel Durov: I certainly feel that I am not welcome at that country anymore.

That's when he created Telegram and encrypted it, he says, so activists could be assured that no government could ever access their personal data. He managed to leave Russia with a reported $300 million which he uses to singled-handedly fund Telegram, costing him, he says, over a million dollars a month.

Lesley Stahl: This was something that you created to allow democracy to flourish, to allow dissidents in Russia and in other countries to communicate with each other. And then all of a sudden you find out that this terrorist group uses your site for completely different reasons.

Pavel Durov: Yeah, we were horrified.

Lesley Stahl: There's an irony there.

Pavel Durov: There is. But you know there's little you can do because if you allow this tool to be used for good, there will always be some people who would misuse it.

Just hours after the terrorists hit Paris on the night of November 13, ISIS used Telegram to take credit for the attacks. It was a wake-up call for European authorities.

Rob Wainwright: It's the first time ever in Europe that we had terrorists rampaging through our streets. First time we had terrorists wearing suicide belts in heavily populated, public areas.

As head of Europol, Rob Wainwright gathers and analyzes information from over 600 law enforcement agencies. He has set up a new counter terrorism center to better coordinate all the intelligence.

Lesley Stahl: How much is encryption a problem generally in these investigations?

Rob Wainwright: In most of them. I mean, across the tens of thousands of investigations that Europol is supporting every year on terrorism and serious crime, at least three quarters of them have encryption at the heart of the challenge that law enforcement face.

Lesley Stahl: Now, what about the November 13th attack specifically?

Rob Wainwright: From what we see, encryption also played a role in that part and that's something that we we're digging into much deeper at the moment.

Lesley Stahl: Why is it still a mystery?

Rob Wainwright: It's not-- not so much of a mystery. It's not that I can share all the details about a very sensitive investigation in public.

We know that the ringleader of the attack, 28-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was a wanted fugitive who goaded authorities by bragging in this online ISIS magazine how easily he eluded them shuttling between Europe and Syria. He liked taking selfies of his exploits, often posting them online. In this gruesome video, he and his friends tie bodies to the back of a truck, Abaaoud in the driver's seat:

[Abdelhamid Abaaoud (translator): We used to tow jet skis - now we tow the infidels fighting us.]

Lesley Stahl: What is astonishing is that you knew who he was. He was on everybody's radar screen.

Francois Molins (translator): You're right. Abaaoud-- he has been one of the major targets for France and Belgium counterterrorism for many months.

Before Paris, Abaaoud was suspected of guiding European jihadis in attacks in France and Belgium, but the attempts were all foiled. In one of them an iPhone belonging to one of the jihadis was confiscated but it was not useful in finding Abaaoud, because it was encrypted.

Lesley Stahl: We've been told, and I want to confirm it, that the encrypted phone may have prevented you from getting information about the Paris attacks.

Francois Molins (translator): That's a theory that really needs to be looked into, but to do so, we really need to be able to get into that phone. You know, I say, all these smart phones make justice blind because they deprive us of a lot of information that could contribute to our investigations.

Abaaoud was on site in Paris on the night of November 13, coordinating three different teams over his phone: one group, at a soccer stadium, exploded their suicide vests outside. Abaaoud and two others went on a killing spree at bars and cafes... while a third team stormed a rock-concert at the Bataclan theater and started shooting.

Francois Molins (translator): I said to myself: "The thing that we'd been fearing was coming for months, was now happening."

The prosecutor rushed to the scene - first to the cafes where Abaaoud had already sprayed the sites with an assault rifle.

Francois Molins (translator): We know that he participated in the commando attacks at the cafes. Afterwards we see him in a video in the Paris subway. And we do believe that he went maybe just in front of the Bataclan.

The prosecutor also went from the cafes to the Bataclan. What he didn't know was that Abaaoud was outside the theater at the same time, amid throngs of police, standing there in his orange sneakers - apparently talking on the phone to the shooters inside. While police didn't spot him there, he was tracked down to an apartment in a Paris suburb five days later, and killed in a hail of gunfire and explosions.

In a stroke of luck police found a Samsung phone one of the attackers had tossed into a garbage can in front of the Bataclan, and it posed no encryption problems.

Francois Molins (translator): We were able to get information from phone communications that enabled us to retrace the terrorists movements: where they were, where they stayed, their itineraries.

Standard text messages were found on the phone including a final one saying, "Here we go. We're starting!" Also found, the app Telegram. It had been downloaded the day of the attack.

Lesley Stahl: But you personally don't know if the attackers actually communicated via Telegram to plot these coordinated attacks, or even if they used it during the attacks?

Pavel Durov: No, we have no information to prove that.

Lesley Stahl: Is there anything in your mind that says, "Gee, we have to have - to allow law enforcement to get in because what's going on is just unacceptable.

Pavel Durov: You know the interesting thing about encryption is that it cannot be secure just for some people.

Lesley Stahl: ISIS and other terrorist groups, they just push a button on an application like yours, specifically yours, an application... and it's gone around the world, like that.

Pavel Durov: Well again, this is the world of technology and it's impossible to stop them at this point. ISIS could come up with their own messaging solution within a month or so, if they wanted to because the--

Lesley Stahl: You mean create their own Telegram?

Pavel Durov: Exactly.

Since Paris, Durov has been purging ISIS propaganda from Telegram but says, if asked to unlock any private messages, he would tell the authorities that the encryption code makes it mathematically impossible, using a similar argument as Apple.

Lesley Stahl: So you're basically saying that even if you wanted to, your hands are tied.

Pavel Durov: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: You can't do it.

Pavel Durov: We cannot.

Lesley Stahl: So this is one of the great debates of our time. Which is more important? Is it more important to shut down this kind of terrorism or preserve privacy?

Pavel Durov: I'm personally for the privacy side. But one thing that should be clear is that you cannot make just one exception for law enforcement without endangering private communications of hundreds of millions of people because encryption is either secure or not.

Lesley Stahl: The founder of Telegram has told us, he thinks privacy is more important than security issues, and he wouldn't open it up even if you did ask him.

Francois Molins (translator): Fine, that's his personal choice. But I consider that there are limits in all societies. There are limits to freedom and privacy. Freedom doesn't mean you can just do anything and everything you want. And there's a duty of institutions -- police and judicial -- to ensure security. You can't have freedom without security.

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The Encryption Debate - CBS News

Chelsea Manning: government anti-leak program a ‘blank check …

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

The 31-page file obtained by Chelsea Manning lists eight traits that agents should look for when assessing government employees for telltale signs that they might reveal state secrets. Photograph: Patrick George/Alamy

Thousands of US government employees under permanent surveillance are being investigated for signs of greed, ego, money worries, disgruntlement or other flaws in the hope of intercepting the next big official leak, according to a document obtained by Chelsea Manning.

The extent of the governments internal surveillance system designed to prevent massive leaks of the sort linked to WikiLeaks and the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is revealed in the document, published here by the Guardian for the first time. The US soldier, who is serving 35 years in military prison as the source of the 2010 WikiLeaks disclosure of secret state documents, requested her own intelligence file under freedom of information laws.

The file was compiled under the Insider Threat program that was set up by President Obama in the wake of Mannings disclosures. The file shows that officials have been using Mannings story as a case study from which they have built a profile of the modern official leaker in the hope of catching future disclosures before they happen.

At the start of the 31-page file, government officials list the eight characteristics that agents should look for in employees as telltale signs that they might be tempted to reveal state secrets. The character traits are called Insider Threat motives.

Those surveillance categories are themselves extracted from an analysis of Chelsea Mannings story. In the document Manning is referred to in male gender pronouns as the file was composed on 14 April 2014 nine days before the prisoner was legally allowed to change her name as part of her transition as a transgender woman.

The Insider Threat analysis claims that Manning displayed several of those eight core motives of the prototype leaker. Before she transmitted hundreds of thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks, she showed signs of disgruntlement, the file states.

She also subscribed to the ideology that all information should be made public, which the officials suggested stemmed from her association with self-proclaimed hackers.

In an opinion article in the Guardian, Manning said that the use of subjective labels in her file such as greed, disgruntlement and ideology meant that virtually every government employee could be targeted under the Insider Threat program. The broad sweep of the program means officials have been given a blank check for surveillance.

Manning writes that the program works against innovation, creativity and the prevention of institutional corruption. Perhaps this is the real intent to instill fear and project dominance throughout the intelligence community, the military and among government employees and contractors at large.

The government has already put about 100,000 military and civilian employees and contractors under what it calls continuous evaluation, according to documents obtained by Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists. He told the Guardian that the character traits deployed in the Insider Threat file on Manning were strikingly similar to the formula used to detect traitors and spies during the cold war.

Back then they used the acronym Mice, standing for money, ideology, coercion or ego. Aftergood said that the cold war record showed that the focus on those characteristics were not all that successful in sniffing out vulnerabilities. They are not necessarily useful ways of predicting what an individual will do that remains difficult though not entirely impossible.

The expansion of the Insider Threat program has raised fears among whistleblower groups that it will spread paranoia among employees and make it increasingly difficult for workers who have concerns about corruption or other misconduct to sound the alarm. Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior executive who blew the whistle on problems and inefficiencies within the agency was prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act, said that the program was a form of mass surveillance of the governments own workers that he likened to a dystopia.

It puts employees under continuous evaluation interesting phrase for all their activities including their outside actions and financial accounts. Whistleblowers and those who speak truth to power, especially when its about national security, are going to get hammered.

In an Insider Threat presentation from last year, officials placed Drake and Snowden two whistleblowers who sounded the alarm about what they saw as government excesses for no financial gain within a gallery of those who have done us harm alongside Soviet spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hannsen and Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Hasan.

Jesselyn Radack, who heads the Whistleblower and Source Protection program at ExposeFacts and who represents both Drake and Snowden, called Insider Threat a modern-day McCarthyism that has friends and colleagues spy on and report each other. It effectively stifles workplace free speech, dissent and is openly trying to deter whistleblowers.

The Insider Threat file on Manning suggests that the soldiers gender dysphoria where her gender identity is out of sync with her gender at birth was also a character trait that could have been used to predict her desire to leak state secrets.

Chase Strangio, the ACLU lawyer who represents Manning in her legal disputes with the US military relating to her gender transition, said that the file was yet another example of the soldiers voice and identity being used against her. They are using her gender identity to suggest it fits into an offender profile.

Strangio said the implication of the document was that anyone who pushes back on injustice against LGBT people within the military should be considered an insider threat. We are seeing that argument used over and over again in Chelseas case.

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Chelsea Manning: government anti-leak program a 'blank check ...

UK seeks review of UN Julian Assange ‘arbitrary detention …

Posted on April 10, 2017 by admin

The international panel said it believed Assanges confinement was arbitrary because of the length of time in bringing his case to resolution. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The British government has formally asked a United Nations panel to review its finding that Julian Assange is arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, calling the opinion deeply flawed.

In its first formal response to the finding of the UN working group on arbitrary detention, which published its opinion in February, the Foreign Office confirmed it would contest the finding, saying: The original conclusions of the UN working group are inaccurate and should be reviewed.

In a statement, the Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire said: We want to ensure the working group is in possession of the full facts. Our request for a review of the opinion sets those facts out clearly.

Related: Britain 'sets dangerous precedent' by defying UN report on Assange

Julian Assange has never been arbitrarily detained by the UK, and is in fact voluntarily avoiding lawful arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorian embassy. The UK continues to have a legal obligation to extradite him to Sweden.

The WikiLeaks founder has been confined to the embassy in London since July 2012, when he sought asylum in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, which he denies.

The international panel said on 4 February that it believed Assanges confinement was arbitrary because of the length of time in bringing his case to resolution, citing in particular a lack of diligence by the Swedish prosecutor in its investigations.

The government argues that the panel is not a judicial body and its findings are therefore not binding. The working groups opinion is deeply flawed and Mr Assange has never been the subject of arbitrary detention, it said. His human rights have been protected throughout the process and will continue to be protected if and when he is extradited to Sweden.

Speaking shortly after the working groups findings were published, Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, described them as ridiculous and said Assange was hiding from justice.

Assange accused Hammond of insulting the UN, saying: This is the end of the road for the legal arguments that have been put forward by Sweden and the UK.

Responding to the government statement, Melinda Taylor, a legal adviser to Assange, told the Guardian: The fact that they have submitted this request for reconsideration undermines their previous assertion that they werent in any way bound to comply with its opinion.

She said that all the points made by the Foreign Office had been known to the working group before it gave its original opinion, and the UK had every opportunity to make its case and correct any factual errors before the opinion was published.

In the absence of any objective basis to seek reconsideration, this rebuttal appears to be an attempt to publicly undermine the working groups opinion, she said.

The panels decision on whether or not to review its opinion will be made during its next session, beginning 18 April, the Foreign Office said.

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UK seeks review of UN Julian Assange 'arbitrary detention ...