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A Convicted Hacker and an Internet Icon Join Forces to Thwart NSA Spying

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The internet is littered with burgeoning email encryption schemes aimed at thwarting NSA spying. Many of them are focused on solving the usability issues that have plagued complicated encryption schemes like PGP for years. But a new project called Dark Mail plans to go further: to hide your metadata.

Metadata is the pernicious transaction data involving the To, From and subject fields of email that the NSA finds so valuable for tracking communications and drawing connections between people. Generally, even when email is encrypted, metadata is not. Dark Mail ambitiously aims to revamp existing email structures to hide this data while still making the system universally compatible with existing email clients.

The project has made for an interesting pairing between Texas technologist Ladar Levison and convicted hacker Stephen Watt, whom hes hired to help develop the code. Both have had previous battles with the government in very different ways.

Levison is the owner of Lavabit, who defiantly closed his pro-privacy encrypted email business last year rather than submit to government demands to hand over the private SSL keys for his email service. The keys would have helped authorities decrypt traffic that passed between Lavabit customersincluding NSA whistleblower Edward Snowdenand the Lavabit web site.

Watt once had a lucrative Wall Street career coding software for real-time stock-trading systems until he wrote a packet-sniffing program for a long-time friend and found himself embroiled in a multi-million-dollar bank card heist that netted him a two-year prison term.

Theyll be discussing the project at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York today and in August at the Def Con hacker conference in Las Vegas.

The project is composed of several parts: an email client called Volcano; server software called Magma Classic and Magma Dark; and the Dark Mail, or Dmail, protocol, which theyre designing to replace existing protocols for sending and retrieving email that dont hide metadata.

Most email encryption services that purport to hide metadata are generally in a walled garden run by a single service provider, Levison says, so that users of that email service can communicate only with other users of the same service. Levison and Watt dont want a closed system but want Dark Mail to work with existing email programs, like Outlook.

If you trust your server, you can use Outlook and the server will handle everything for you, Levison says. The preference would be that you use the Dark Mail client, but I understand that this is not even a possibility for some organizations.

But to make their scheme universally deployable with current systems requires an aggressive overhaul of existing protocols and software infrastructure.

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A Convicted Hacker and an Internet Icon Join Forces to Thwart NSA Spying

Chaos Computer Club bolsters NSA spying complaint with Tor snooping evidence

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The German Chaos Computer Club said Wednesday that it has added to its legal complaint about U.S. spying on German citizens evidence that the NSA allegedly snooped on at least one of its Tor servers.

The CCC filed a complaint with Germanys federal prosecutor, Harald Range, in February, demanding an investigation into the German governments alleged involvement in the U.S. National Security Agencys mass surveillance of German citizens.

However, while Range started an investigation into the alleged tapping of Merkels phone by the NSA in June, he said there wasnt enough evidence to start a similar investigation into the widely reported mass surveillance of German citizens.

The CCC hopes that new publications exposing data collection explicitly targeting servers that are used to connect to The Onion Router (Tor) network, a network that encrypts data traffic through random servers in order to obscure users identities, will change Ranges mind.

An investigation by German broadcasters revealed in early July that an NSA spying tool called XKeyScore is used to snoop on Tor users. A Tor server operated by computer science student Sebastian Hahn was identified as one of the NSAs targets by the broadcasters.

Hes not the only Tor server operator who was identified though. The publication of parts of the search pattern code used in XKeyscore also provides proof that data traffic to and from a CCC-operated server of the Tor network was explicitly collected and stored, the CCC said Wednesday.

While other documents from the Snowden publications show that currently even the NSA isnt able to entirely de-anonymize Tor, the fact of the now documented surveillance of the CCC server demonstrates beyond doubt the aggressive surveillance with which the NSA targets German citizens, the CCC said. It is expanding the legal complaint filed in February to include this new evidence.

The organization called it beyond comprehension that Range started an investigation of the wiretapping of Merkels phone while not acting on the mass surveillance of large parts of the entire population.

For this reason were urging the Federal Prosecutor General to stop blocking investigations and start doing his job to avoid public ridicule, the organization said, adding that his refusal to investigate is irresponsible and enhances suspicion that Range is bowing to German as well as international intelligence services on judicial grounds.

Ranges office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Chaos Computer Club bolsters NSA spying complaint with Tor snooping evidence

Julian Assange’s Arrest Warrant Upheld by Swedish Court

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In this July 30, 2013 file photo released by Sunshine Press Productions, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sits inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Image: Sunshine Press Productions, File/Associated Press

By Brian Ries2014-07-16 17:14:10 UTC

A Swedish court has upheld the detention order on Julian Assange, reaffirming the legal basis for an international warrant that has kept the WikiLeaks founder in hiding in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

Assanges defense team plans on appealing the order to a higher court.

Assange is wanted by Swedish police for questioning over allegations of sexual misconduct. He has been holed in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since seeking asylum there in June 2012. British police on guard outside the embassy have orders to arrest him if he ever steps out.

Assange's U.S. lawyer, Michael Ratner, tells The Guardian why the WikiLeaks chief is fighting the extradition order.

The fear here was not about Sweden but that Sweden was going to be a place that would extradite him to the U.S., he said.

Until we can get an assurance from the U.S. government of non-prosecution, leaving the Ecuadorean embassy would be a very high-risk move.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Julian Assange’s Arrest Warrant Upheld by Swedish Court

Assange hits back at Brandis ‘claptrap’

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AAP George Brandis says Julian Assange should be "man enough" to face sexual assault claims against him.

Julian Assange has hit back at Attorney General George Brandis for saying the Wikileaks founder should be "man enough" to face Swedish sexual assault allegations.

A Swedish court on Wednesday upheld an arrest warrant against Assange. The warrant was issued in 2010 over allegations of rape and sexual molestation which Assange has denied.

The court's decision is another setback for the 43-year-old Australian, who has been holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for more than two years in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Assange says he fears that if he goes to Sweden he will be extradited on to the United States to face charges for publishing classified material.

But Senator Brandis says Assange should face the claims.

"I think Mr Assange should be man enough to face the allegations against him of being a sexual predator," he told ABC radio on Thursday.

Assange says Senator Brandis had merely stolen comments US Secretary of State John Kerry made about intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"AG Brandis should stop plagiarising sexist claptrap and start doing his job: defending the legal rights of all Australians," Assange said in a statement to AAP, sent by his Australian lawyer Greg Barns.

Courage is not the sole preserve of men, Assange said.

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Assange hits back at Brandis 'claptrap'

Assange detention order remains in place

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, seen here in January 2014, has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London for two years.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Stockholm, Sweden (CNN) -- A detention order against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on sexual assault allegations should remain in place, a Swedish judge ruled Wednesday.

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than two years in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning about allegations that he raped one woman and sexually molested another.

Assange calls the charges false and politically motivated, but has said he fears that Sweden will transfer him to the United States -- where he could face the death penalty for the work of WikiLeaks -- if he were charged and convicted of a crime.

He was represented at a hearing Wednesday in Stockholm by lawyers Thomas Olsson and Per Samuelsson, who argued that the detention order against their client should be revoked.

But Stockholm District Court Judge Lena Egelin ruled that Assange was still suspected, with probable cause, of sex crimes and that his detention order should remain in place.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, a lawyer representing one of the women making the allegations against Assange, called the decision "correct and expected."

Prosecutor Marianne Ny told reporters after the verdict that it was now up to the UK police to enforce the arrest warrant for Assange.

"It is in the hands of Julian Assange, who has taken refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, whether or not he decides to leave the embassy," she said.

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Assange detention order remains in place


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