IBM Systems Magazine Publishes ASPG Cryptography Expertise

Naples, FL (PRWEB) January 31, 2015

The latest issue of IBM Systems Magazine contains an article written by ASPG cryptography specialist and MegaCryption product manager, Gregory Thomason. The article, entitled, Encryption Is Key to Security: Align Existing Competencies with Intuitive Best Practices, offers realistic cryptography and data security advice for protecting modern data centers, stating, Attackers are browsing through your data right nowwill they find your secrets? Whether the attacker is a clever hacker in cyberspace or a nosy systems programmer in a cubicle beside you, the threat is ongoing and the costs of a data breach are layered across a spectrum of heartburn-evoking remediation tasks.

In addition to being a cryptography expert, Thomason is also the product manager for ASPGs MegaCryption solution. Whether your company chooses to secure their on-site data, cloud-stored data, data transmissions, entire files, or specific fields within the z/OS environment, MegaCryption can help. As a file-level cryptography tool, MegaCryption provides a comprehensive approach to encrypting virtually any file in your z/OS environment, while complementing any communication level encryption process you may already have in place. MegaCryption offers support of the most secure non-proprietary and well-known algorithms available today, ensuring security and compatibility with other standard implementations.

The article is also available as white paper by visiting http://www.aspg.com.

To access additional resources from ASPG, such as the white paper Big Data, Big Security: Best Practices for Enterprise Data Encryption, visit http://www.aspg.com/white-papers/.

ABOUT ADVANCED SOFTWARE PRODUCTS GROUP For nearly 30 years, ASPG, an IBM and Microsoft partner, has produced award-winning software for data centers worldwide, specializing in data security, storage administration, and systems productivity. ASPG is pleased to provide solutions for a majority of the GLOBAL 1000 data centers.

For more information about ASPG, please contact our Sales Team by phone at 800-662-6090 (Toll-Free) or 239-649-1548 (US/International), 239-649-6391 (fax) or email at aspgsales(at)aspg(dot)com. You can also visit the ASPG website at http://www.aspg.com.

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IBM Systems Magazine Publishes ASPG Cryptography Expertise

Google hands data to US Govt in WikiLeaks espionage case

Google hands data to US Government in WikiLeaks espionage case

Monday January 26, 08:00 AEST

Today, WikiLeaks' lawyers have written to Google and the US Department of Justice concerning a serious violation of the privacy and journalistic rights of WikiLeaks' staff. Investigations editor Sarah Harrison, Section Editor Joseph Farrell and senior journalist and spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson have received notice that Google had handed over all their emails and metadata to the United States government on the back of alleged 'conspiracy' and 'espionage' warrants carrying up to 45 years in prison.

Importantly, the warrants reveal for the first time a clear list of the alleged offences the US government is trying to apply in its attempts to build a prosecution against Julian Assange and other WikiLeaks staff. The offences add up to a total of 45 years of imprisonment.

The US government is claiming universal jurisdiction to apply the Espionage Act, general Conspiracy statute and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to journalists and publishers a horrifying precedent for press freedoms around the world. Once an offence is alleged in relation to a journalist or their source, the whole media organisation, by the nature of its work flow, can be targeted as alleged 'conspiracy'. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief said: 'WikiLeaks has out endured everything the Obama administration has thrown at us and we will out endure these latest "offences" too.'

The alleged offences are:

Espionage: 18 U.S.C. 793(d) - imprisonment up to 10 years

Conspiracy to commit espionage: 18 U.S.C. 793(g) - imprisonment up to 10 years

The theft or conversion of property belonging to the United States government: 18 U.S.C. 641 - imprisonment up to 10 years

Violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: 18 U.S.C. 1030 - imprisonment up to 10 years

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Google hands data to US Govt in WikiLeaks espionage case

FEDCOIN "On the desirablity of a goverment cryptocurrency" David Andolfatto P2P Finacial Systems Ffm – Video


FEDCOIN "On the desirablity of a goverment cryptocurrency" David Andolfatto P2P Finacial Systems Ffm
Make sure to thumbs up and subscribe Recorded Live at P2P Financial Systems 2015 Bundesbank Frankfurt am Main Germany 29. Jan 2015 Donate BTC: ...

By: World Crypto Network

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FEDCOIN "On the desirablity of a goverment cryptocurrency" David Andolfatto P2P Finacial Systems Ffm - Video

Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks case

Google has fought all gag orders preventing it from telling customers that their emails and other data were sought by the U.S. government in a long-running investigation of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which published leaked diplomatic cables and military documents, an attorney representing the tech firm said this week.

The tech firm's challenges date to January 2011 and include an attempt to overturn gag orders accompanying search warrants issued in March 2012 for the emails of three WikiLeaks staff members, said the attorney, Albert Gidari, in an interview.

Google's long battle to inform its customers about the warrants and court orders has been fought largely in secret because of the court-imposed gags, hampering its effort to counter the impression that it has not stood up for users' privacy, Gidari said.

In the latest instance, the three WikiLeaks staff members revealed this week that Google notified them on Dec. 23 that their emails were the subject of search warrants almost three years after the broad warrants were issued by a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia.

"We are astonished and disturbed that Google waited over two and a half years to notify its subscribers," Michael Ratner, an attorney for the staff members, wrote in a letter Monday to Google chairman Eric Schmidt.

Google says it challenged the secrecy from the beginning and was able to alert the customers only after the gag orders on those warrants were partly lifted, said Gidari, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm.

"From January 2011 to the present, Google has continued to fight to lift the gag orders on any legal process it has received on WikiLeaks," he said, adding that the company's policy is to challenge all gag orders that have indefinite time periods.

The affidavits and applications underlying the orders are still sealed. The company said it is seeking to unseal them.

Google's belated disclosure contrasts with the way in which Twitter, the microblogging platform, was able to quickly inform several of its customers in 2011 that the federal government had demanded their subscriber data in the WikiLeaks inquiry.

According to Gidari, whose firm has represented both companies, Google's delay was not the result of foot-dragging but of opposition from prosecutors who were upset by the backlash that followed the disclosure of their court orders to Twitter.

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Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks case

Snowden Reveals Canada’s Global Internet Spying Program #LEVITATION – Video


Snowden Reveals Canada #39;s Global Internet Spying Program #LEVITATION
A revelation from the Edward Snowden document leaks shows a CSE (Communications Security Establishment) program called LEVITATION has been monitoring, analyzing, and tracking millions of ...

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Snowden Reveals Canada's Global Internet Spying Program #LEVITATION - Video

How a student secured Edward Snowden for a chat at his high school

More than a thousand Toronto high school students are hanging out on Monday evening with Edward Snowden. The fugitive whistleblower will appear live for 90 minutes via video chat to speak and take students questions at Torontos Upper Canada Colleges World Affairs Conference (technical difficulties scuttled efforts to have him show up as a hologram), along with journalist Glenn Greenwald. Mr. Snowden, who exposed massive surveillance by government spy agencies, accepted an invitation from Conor Healy, an 18-year-old UCC student with a talent for singing opera and a knack for math, who chairs the conference.

How did the idea of inviting Snowden first come to you?

It was recommended to me by Upper Canada Colleges alumni relations department that I meet with a guy named Jameel Jaffer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) while I was in New York in August. Hes the head of the democracy project there. I was basically asking him if he wanted to speak, or maybe if he could connect me with someone like Glenn Greenwald. Never in my wildest dreams did I think he would be able to put me in touch with Edward Snowden. What [Jaffer] said to me is, The best I can do is pass on a letter and make sure he reads it, and if theres a way you can make it distinct from the 50 other invitations he gets that day, then try your best.

How did you make it distinct?

Well, to a certain extent I was lucky. He hasnt spoken to high school students before and I think he was looking for an opportunity. But what I think came through is how much I thought the community would be fascinated by the opportunity to listen to him. I have peers who are right-leaning and left-leaning, I have peers who think hes a traitor, and others who think hes a hero. But everybody agrees the debate on privacy is the debate were having, and he is the foremost authority on one particular side of that debate.

Whats your impression of Snowden and what hes done?

It was complicated, to be honest. My general inclination is that I think he acted responsibly. And he started a debate worth having. But given how divisive he is, its something I think a lot about. [Inviting him] didnt really come out of an admiration for him, so to speak. It was just from a desire to expose people to an incredible perspective which, undeniably, he has.

You call him divisive. Why?

Let me put it this way: If you asked my dad, he would have him drawn and quartered. I think partially its a generational thing. Often the people who dont support him and dont care too much about whats being done to our privacy are older or of a different sort of mindset than I think is espoused by a lot of youth.

How did you set this up?

Continued here:
How a student secured Edward Snowden for a chat at his high school

Snowden and the dark sophistry of CSEC

Levitation might suggest a matter of levity, but the project of the Communications Security Establishment Canada that goes by that name is another unsettling example of tradecraft disclosed by Edward Snowden.

The objective of the program is detecting terrorists, but Levitation appears to do this by broadly surveilling Canadians just what CSEC is not allowed to do.

Mr. Snowden found a deck of CSEC slides explaining how Levitation sweeps up vast quantities of files from upload sites, searching for suspicious videos or other electronic documents that, for example, provide instructions to terrorists on how to make a gas bomb.

The Levitation presentation uncovered by Mr. Snowden is businesslike, and has a relaxed and often jocular language. For example, it explains how, in searching through millions of uploaded files, Levitation is able to filter out episodes of the musical-comedy television show Glee.

If uploaded episodes of TV programs and enormous quantities of other data are being searched and accessed, it suggests that CSEC is collecting huge libraries of files and signals from millions of Canadians. Which, again, is not what CSEC is supposed to be doing.

The CSEC presentation says that it sees 10 to 15 million free file uploads (FFU) per day from around the world. The presentation says that out of all of this trawling, CSEC is finding about 350 interesting download events a month. One example of success was finding a hostage-taking strategy for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which the CIA and other agencies then shared.

The CBC asked CSEC 13 questions about Levitation. None received a clear answer. Instead, the agency replied with four paragraphs insisting on the muddy distinction between data and metadata think of the former as the words of a conversation and the latter as information about the conversation. CSEC added that it doesnt direct its activities at Canadians or anyone in Canada.

But CSEC appears to be constantly bumping into Canadian data and metadata. This countrys signals intelligence policy is using sophistries to walk a thin line between legality and illegality.

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Snowden and the dark sophistry of CSEC