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Chelsea Manning joins Twitter and gets over 1,000 followers before posting

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This drawing of Chelsea Manning is her profile picture on her Twitter page @xychelsea. Photograph: http://www.chelseamanning.org

Chelsea Manning, the US soldier serving 35 years in military prison for leaking state secrets to WikiLeaks, has joined the social media site Twitter.

The army private has secured the handle @xychelsea and will begin posting tweets from noon ET on Friday. Given the conditions of her custody which do not extend to internet access she will dictate comments by phone to supporters who will then post on her behalf.

The new Twitter feed had by 5.30pm ET on Thursday already attracted more than 1,000 followers, even before the soldier had uttered a word or followed any other accounts. Her page includes a drawing of her as she would like to be seen, with long hair even though the military authorities have consistently refused to allow her to grow out her hair.

Manning was arrested at the Forward Operating Base Hammer outside Baghdad in Iraq where she was working as an intelligence analyst. After a prolonged trial, she was convicted of charges arising from having passed a massive stash of US state secrets to the open-information organization WikiLeaks.

After she was convicted, Manning revealed that she wanted to transition from her male birth gender to begin living as a woman. After months of legal struggle, the US military agreed to approve her gender-reassignment hormone therapy the first such treatment ever approved for an active member of the armed forces.

Since being incarcerated, Manning has developed her voice as a perceptive and questioning observer of international affairs as a columnist for the Guardian. She has written on issues ranging from President Obamas war on whistleblowers to the CIAs torture techniques and transgender politics.

The Chelsea Manning support team are encouraging people to follow the soldier on Twitter through a #FF campaign. They promise that the tweets posted on her feed will be her own candid thoughts and comments.

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Chelsea Manning joins Twitter and gets over 1,000 followers before posting

Destroyed Snowden laptop: the curatorial view

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The remains of the PC desktop and the Mac laptop that GCHQ came to the Guardians offices in Kings Place and destroyed. Only the laptop is displayed in the exhibition. Photograph: Sarah Lee

This week the remains of the laptop used to store files leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, pointlessly but symbolically destroyed by Guardian editors under the eyes of GCHQ, have been put on display at the V&A, a museum of art and design.

It forms part of the All of this Belongs to You exhibition, open until 19 July. Through a series of interventions and installations, it aims to examine the role of public institutions in contemporary life and to ask what it means to be responsible for a national collection. It raises questions about democracy, as we run up to the election, and about institutional and curatorial practice.

V&A curator, Kieran Long, said that they gained the confidence to show the remains when it was recalled that the museum had broken objects in its own collection, which had been preserved because of the stories they told rather than the artefacts intrinsic beauty or interest. Thus it now forms part of a display on technology, secrecy and privacy.

Yet, interestingly, the decision was made to show just the laptop and not the other bits of destroyed hardware, as the images above and below show. This is presumably a reflection of the iconic power of Apple products themselves, something that goes beyond the Snowden and Guardian story. Perhaps the ubiquity of the object means that its destruction speaks to us all.

I havent yet seen the exhibition, but when I saw the photograph of the laptop on display - the shiny, desirable MacBook reduced to twisted metal and circuitry - I was keen to gauge reactions and asked some friends and colleagues, beyond the V&A itself, for theirs. All are expert in thinking about the history and display of objects, particularly ones related to science, technology and medicine. I am grateful for their comments, which provoke thought about technology, society and the role of museum collections and display.

It is difficult for museums to exhibit the public sphere of debate and openness. Its an even greater challenge when the public sphere exists inside our cellphones and laptops and in the circulation of bits over fiberoptic cables.

One way to display it is to focus on a point of attack, on the failure of the public sphere. The V&A exhibition of the shockingly defaced laptop that once contained National Security Agency secrets reveals that something has gone wrong. Why is a museum known for beautiful artefacts showing an act of violence? That the destruction was purely symbolic magnifies the impact.

I applaud the V&A curators for the display. I do wish they could have let themselves change their museum label style just a bit. Its not important where the laptop was designed or manufactured. Couldnt they have replaced that with the more relevant information: Destroyed in London, 2013.

Steven Lubar is Professor of American Studies, History, and History of Art and Architecture at Brown University and was Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage from 2004-2014 and Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, 2010-2012.

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Destroyed Snowden laptop: the curatorial view

Whistleblower Edward Snowden claims Britain spied on Argentina over fears of new Falklands invasion

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Whistleblower Edward Snowden claims Britain spied on Argentina over fears of a fresh attempt to retake the Falkland Islands.

Documents released by Snowden allegedly show Britain spied on the Argentine government for a number of years, according to media reports there.

The espionage was reportedly carried out amidst concerns that Argentina could launch another attempt to reclaim the Falkland Islands.

Britain and Argentina fought a war over the Falkland Islands after an Argentine invasion in 1982.

The two nations fought a war over the islands in 1982 and Britain last month announced an upgrade in its defences there.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon announced in March that 280m would be spent over the next decade improving military security on the islands - taking into account "any future and possible threats."

Former CIA worker Snowden - who now lives in Russia - said the British spied on Argentina between 2006 and 2011, the BBC reports.

Snowden is fugitive from his native country after leaking classified information about US surveillance programmes.

There has been no official response from Britain or Argentina to the allegations, which were published by several Argentine news agencies.

The claims include allegations Britain implanted computer viruses and circulating propaganda, the BBC reports.

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Whistleblower Edward Snowden claims Britain spied on Argentina over fears of new Falklands invasion

UK spied on Argentina: Edward Snowden

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LONDON: Britain spied for several years on the Argentine government over fears of a fresh attempt to retake the Falkland Islands, documents released by American whistle-blower Edward Snowden have claimed.

Snowden said British agents were actively spying on Argentina between 2006 and 2011.

Britain was concerned that Argentina could launch another attempt to reclaim the Falkland Islands, according to reports in the Argentine media.

The two nations fought a war over the islands in 1982. The former CIA worker, who now lives in Russia, has previously leaked sensitive information about US surveillance programmes. He is now fugitive from his native country after leaking the sensitive information.

There has not been any formal response yet from either the British or Argentine government to the allegations, which have been published by a number of South American news agencies.

The claims are that Britain began a large scale operation which may have involved implanting computer viruses, circulating false propaganda and collecting intelligence with the aim of diminishing or discrediting the Argentine government, BBC reported.

The news comes around the 33rd anniversary of the start of the war, which saw more than 900 servicemen killed.

UK defence secretary Michael Fallon said last month that Britain will spend 280 million pounds over the next 10 years on renewing and beefing up its defences of the Falkland Islands, to taking into account any future and possible threats to the islands.

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UK spied on Argentina: Edward Snowden

NSA spying caused 9 percent of foreign firms to dump U.S. clouds

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In the weeks following Edward Snowdens revelations of the NSAs massive web surveillance program PRISM, speculation was raised about the negative implications it could have on U.S. cloud companies.

Now, Forrester Research has taken the time to see just what kind of impact it has had, asking a host of foreign firms whether or not PRISM has caused them to scale back their spending on U.S. cloud services, and the answer makes for some uneasy reading.

A total of 1,668 non-U.S. business technology decision makers were quizzed in Forresters survey. The exact question asked was In the past year, has your company explicitly halted or reduced your spending with US-based companies for Internet-based services (e.g., cloud, online service/outsourcing) due to these security concerns?, with 26 percent of respondents answering in the affirmative.

Forrester followed up by asking the 427 who said yes what their reasons for doing so were, and found that 34 percent cited fear of the intelligence community spying. A quick sum of the math shows that 9 percent of foreign firms have therefore ditched U.S. cloud companies due to the NSA, not an insignificant number by any means, despite The Registers insistence that Snowden didnt scare off many.

Its worth nothing that the respondents held, on average, only about a third of their company data in U.S. clouds anyway, so their decision to pull out may not be as significant as it first seems. But even so, U.S. cloud firms will still want to take notice of the survey, which indicates that most foreign companies simply dont trust them all that much anyway, irrespective of the NSA. In total, 53 percent of respondents said they would not trust any of their critical data with a U.S. cloud company, end of story.

Forrester concludes that those who do wish to use the cloud for their most critical data need to be extra careful when it comes to choosing a supplier. It recommends looking for a cloud provider that offers additional controls over their datas security, and a choice over the location in which its held. It points to Amazon Web Servicess (AWS) Key Management Service as a good example of this.

Even so, Forresters report finishes with a rather controversial warning for those who are trusting their data to the cloud.

Your business partners are accountable to their governments, and you cant expect them to put your interests above their own or those of their government, the report states.

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NSA spying caused 9 percent of foreign firms to dump U.S. clouds

Encryption

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DEFINITION of 'Encryption'

Encryption is a means of securing data using a password (key). The encryption process is simple data is secured by translating information using an algorithm and a binary key. When the data needs to be read back, the code is decrypted using either the same key or a different key depending on the type of encryption used.

Encryption strength is based on the length of the security key. In the latter quarter of the 20th century,40 bit encryption, which is a key with 240possible permutations,and 56 bit encryption was standard. Those keys were breakable through brute force attacks by the end of the century, and the 128 bit system became standard in web browsers. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a protocol for data encryption created in 2001 by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. AES uses a 128 bit block size, but key lengths of 128, 192 and 256 bits. AES uses a symmetric-key algorithm, meaning the same key is used for both encrypting and decrypting the data.128-bit encryption is standard but most banks; militaries and governments use 256-bit encryption.

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Encryption

Firefox 37 supports easier encryption option than HTTPS

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The latest version of Firefox has a new security feature that aims to put a band-aid over unencrypted website connections. Firefox 37 rolled out earlier this week with support for opportunistic encryption, or OE. You can consider OE sort of halfway point between no encryption (known as clear text) and full HTTPS encryption that's simpler to implement.

For users, this means you get at least a modicum of protection from passive surveillance (such as NSA-style data slurping) when sites support OE. It will not, however, protect you against an active man-in-the-middle attack as HTTPS does, according to Mozilla developer Patrick McManus, who explained Firefox's OE rollout on his personal blog.

Unlike HTTPS, OE uses an unauthenticated encrypted connection. In other words, the site doesn't need a signed security certificate from a trusted issuer as you do with HTTPS. Signed security certificates are a key component of the security scheme with HTTPS and are what browsers use to trust that they are connecting to the right website.

The impact on you: Firefox support is only half of the equation for opportunistic encryption. Websites will still have to enable support on their end for the feature to work. Site owners can get up and running with OE in just two steps, according to McManus. But that will still require enabling an HTTP/2 or SPDY server, which, as Ars Technica points out, may not be so simple. So while OE support in Firefox is a good step for users it will only start to matter when site owners begin to support it.

Beyond support for OE, the latest build of Firefox also adds an improved way to protect against bad security certificates. The new feature called OneCRL lets Mozilla push lists of revoked certificates to the browser instead of depending on an online database.

The new Firefox also adds HTTPS to Bing when you use Microsoft's search engine from the browser's built-in search window.

ian@ianpaul.net, PCWorld

Ian is an independent writer based in Tel Aviv, Israel. His current focus is on all things tech including mobile devices, desktop and laptop computers, software, social networks, Web apps, tech-related legislation and corporate tech news. More by Ian Paul

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TrueCrypt doesn’t contain NSA backdoors

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A security audit of TrueCrypt has determined that the disk encryption software does not contain any backdoors that could be used by the NSA or other surveillance agencies. A report prepared by the NCC Group for Open Crypto Audit Project found that the encryption tool isnot vulnerable to being compromised.

However, the software was found to contain a few other security vulnerabilities, including one relating to the use of the Windows API to generate random numbers for master encryption key material. Despite this, TrueCrypt was given a relatively clean bill of health with none of the detected vulnerabilities considered sever enough to lead "to a complete bypass of confidentiality in common usage scenarios".

NCC's report reveals a total of four vulnerabilities in TrueCrypt, with two of them being marked as severe. The most worrying -- although it must be stressed that the report does not suggest that there is real cause for concern -- stems from the fact that random numbers are generated based on values from a Windows API. Should this API fail for any reason, TrueCrypt may continue to generate keys with the possibility of an element of predictability -- clearly not ideal for encryption software.

Moving forward, the report stresses the importance of improving error handing in the software:

Because TrueCrypt aims to be security-critical software, it is not appropriate to fail silently or attempt to continue execution in unusual program states. More than simply aborting the application, attempt to gather relevant diagnostic information and make it available for submission to developers to diagnose root-causes. This is especially important as it is difficult to fully test code on multiple operating systems and configurations.

With an increased interest in the activities of the NSA, and particularly in the suggestion that hardware and software should have backdoors built in by default, the report will comes as good news overall for TrueCrypt users.

Photo Credit: Lightspring / Shutterstock

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TrueCrypt doesn't contain NSA backdoors


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