Internet privacy bulletin, 2015

Investigation by the Associated Press reveals that the clintonemail.com server lacked basic protections

Clinton's server, which handled her personal and State Department correspondence, appeared to allow users to connect openly over the Internet to control it remotely, according to detailed records compiled in 2012.

Experts said the Microsoft remote desktop service wasn't intended for such use without additional protective measures, and was the subject of U.S. government and industry warnings at the time over attacks from even low-skilled intruders.

Records show that Clinton additionally operated two more devices on her home network in Chappaqua, New York, that also were directly accessible from the Internet.

" That's total amateur hour. Real enterprise-class security, with teams dedicated to these things, would not do this" -- Marc Maiffret, cyber security expert

'That's total amateur hour,' said Marc Maiffret, who has founded two cyber security companies. He said permitting remote-access connections directly over the Internet would be the result of someone choosing convenience over security or failing to understand the risks. 'Real enterprise-class security, with teams dedicated to these things, would not do this,' he said.

The government and security firms have published warnings about allowing this kind of remote access to Clinton's server. The same software was targeted by an infectious Internet worm, known as Morta, which exploited weak passwords to break into servers. The software also was known to be vulnerable to brute-force attacks that tried password combinations until hackers broke in, and in some cases it could be tricked into revealing sensitive details about a server to help hackers formulate attacks.

'An attacker with a low skill level would be able to exploit this vulnerability,' said the Homeland Security Department's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team in 2012, the same year Clinton's server was scanned.

Also in 2012, the State Department had outlawed use of remote-access software for its technology officials to maintain unclassified servers without a waiver. It had banned all instances of remotely connecting to classified servers or servers located overseas.

The findings suggest Clinton's server 'violates the most basic network-perimeter security tenets: Don't expose insecure services to the Internet,' said Justin Harvey, the chief security officer for Fidelis Cybersecurity.

Clinton's email server at one point also was operating software necessary to publish websites, although it was not believed to have been used for this purpose.

Traditional security practices dictate shutting off all a server's unnecessary functions to prevent hackers from exploiting design flaws in them.

In Clinton's case, Internet addresses the AP traced to her home in Chappaqua revealed open ports on three devices, including her email system.

Each numbered port is commonly, but not always uniquely, associated with specific features or functions. The AP in March was first to discover Clinton's use of a private email server and trace it to her home.

Mikko Hypponen, the chief research officer at F-Secure, a top global computer security firm, said it was unclear how Clinton's server was configured, but an out-of-the-box installation of remote desktop would have been vulnerable.

Those risks - such as giving hackers a chance to run malicious software on her machine - were 'clearly serious' and could have allowed snoops to deploy so-called 'back doors.'

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal government's guiding agency on computer technology, warned in 2008 that exposed server ports were security risks.

It said remote-control programs should only be used in conjunction with encryption tunnels, such as secure VPN connections.

[Oct 10, 2015] Forums and bulleting board users are watched by GCHQ

[Oct 03, 2015] The Athens Affair shows why we need encryption without backdoors

"... after the 2004 Olympics, the Greek government discovered that an unknown attacker had hacked into Vodafone's "lawful intercept" system, the phone company's mechanism of wiretapping phone calls. The attacker spied on phone calls of the president, other Greek politicians and journalists before it was discovered. ..."

"... all this happened after the US spy agency cooperated with Greek law enforcement to keep an eye on potential terrorist attacks for the Olympics. Instead of packing up their surveillance gear, they covertly pointed it towards the Greek government and its people. But that's not all: according to Snowden documents that Bamford cited, this is a common tactic of the NSA. They often attack the "lawful intercept" systems in other countries to spy on government and citizens without their knowledge: ..."

"... It's the exact nightmare scenario security experts have warned about when it comes to backdoors: they are not only available to those that operate them "legally", but also to those who can hack into them to spy without anyone's knowledge. If the NSA can do it, so can China, Russia and a host of other malicious actors. ..."

[Sep 27, 2015] Since st least 2009 GCHQ has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale

BBC used by GCHQ to spy on Internet users https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-users-online-identities/

"... I do wonder though, with all those stories about those thousands of Kremlin controlled Russian trolls on British news websites, whether some of this comes from carefully massaged data from GCHQ through third parties to the Pork Pie News Networks via 'unnamed sources', i.e. the usual bollox. ..."

"... …The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as: …and INFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums… ..."

"... Once you understand the relationship and the goals that they have, you can work backwards and make fairly good conclusions about what tools would be required and used to get to those conclusions and try not think whether they are legal or not. ..."

"... The most disturbing thing about it all is that it puts us one step away from a totalitarian system. All that is required is a political decision. ..."

"... Forget about 'checks and balances' – they're the first thing to be thrown out of the window in an emergency. Arbeit macht frei! ..."

"... GCHQ and the CIA are in bed with one another, and have been for years. This might be a timely occasion to mention once again that both are capable of hacking into smartphones by all leading manufacturers; in the case of the IPhone the CIA uses a program application called Dropout Jeep. ..."

"... the CIA also diverted laptops ordered online so that government spyware could be installed on them. ..."

"... You can't believe anyone any more. ..."

[Sep 26, 2015] Intelligent System Hunts Out Malware Hidden In Shortened URLs

[Sep 26, 2015] Phone Passwords Protected By 5th Amendment, Says Federal Court

[Sep 26, 2015] NSA Director Admits that Sharing Encryption Keys With the Government Leaves Us Vulnerable to Bad Guys

"... Writing your own encryption is a recipe for disaster. Only peer-reviewed algorithms and implementations should ever be used. They must also use reliable random number generators. ..."

[Sep 26, 2015] US and China back off internet arms race but Obama leaves sanctions on the table

"... How can the U.S. say cyber hacking must stop when we know very well that they have been cyber spying and hacking for years, Snowden spilt the beans on that issue, big brother raising his head again. ..."

"...
..."

"... I see a contradiction here that you critcize for not warring with Xi/China and then bemoaning the obviously damaging costs of what looks like perpetual wars. ..."

"... In the main, Obama has not slipped out of his arrogant school master's tone and role, but we keep hearing he does it to please the American electorate. If the NSA in Germany (Bad Aibling) is allowed to sniff out commercial secrets on German computers (an issue for over 10 years, it's only the spinlessness of the elites that keep allowing that) then surely it's all 'open platform'. I only read German and English well enough to ascertain what's what in the spying game, so I can only refer to Germany. Maybe we get some Spanish, Italian, French etc reading people to tell us if sniffing out Germany's company secrets is unique, probably not. ..."

"... Nice little bit of spin here. It gives the impression that the US is telling the PRC what to do when the reality is this is part of the previous and current five year plan. ..."

"... This looks a bit odd to me. Is he saying that Snowden forged the ten thousand records detailing US cyber spying on fifty countries or is he asking for Chinas assurance that the CCP are not sponsoring the attacks. In any case...I Obamas full of shit. ..."

"... the US has offered no proof that China hacked American records, while the world knows that the worse hacker on the planet is the US as shown via the Snowden documents - we even hack our allies. You know, there is a saying about glass houses and throwing stones. ..."

"... Its a fallacy that you can separate business spying and state secrets spying. If there is going to be war, it will be all out, no sacred cows. Don't expect an agreement to leave space satellites out for example. People are still living in this utopia that a war can happen somewhere else and life will go on as normal. For China, the war will be for its own existence and there will be no holds barred. Look at the Vietnam war for example and you will see how much the Vietnamese sacrificed for that ultimate victory. So I believe that a more comprehensive framework is required for the assured future for both nations. ..."

"... Every year the same blame the Chinese happens. US agencies will always fabricate foreign threat so annual budgets can be increased $$$. The fiscal year ends in Sept. "My dept. needs more taxpayer funding, the Chinese and Russians are attacking!" ..."

"... In the name of "National Security" anything goes (except sabotage in peace time), so long as it is not used for "competitive advantage". Nice to have a mutually approved set of labels to continue doing what both sides have always been doing. ..."

[Sep 20, 2015] The History of Witchhunts and Their Relevance to the Present Day

[Aug 27, 2015] Digital surveillance 'worse than Orwell', says new UN privacy chief

"...He added that he doesn't use Facebook or Twitter, and said it was regrettable that vast numbers of people sign away their digital rights without thinking about it."

[Aug 16, 2015] The Real News - 9/11 The Man Who Knew Too Much

[Aug 08, 2015] The people who demand unrestricted access to Internet regardless its source implicitly belief that those who pitch them information are telling them the truth

I think people just believe that they can determine whether the information is valid or is propaganda themselves, although they probably overestimating their abilities...

[Aug 02, 2015] How to stop Windows 10's prying eyes Polygon

Most of the aforementioned toggles can be found under Privacy. That section also contains a host of other privacy settings, like options for which apps are allowed to access your PC's location, camera, microphone, contacts, calendar and more. To get to the Wi-Fi Sense options, click Network & Internet in the system settings, then hit "Manage Wi-Fi settings" below the list of available networks.

[Jul 11, 2015]Merkel and the NSA - Analysis

[Jun 29, 2015] NSA intercepted French corporate contracts worth $200 million over decade

[Jun 28, 2015] Inquiry needed into GCHQ's operations

[Jun 16, 2015]US Navy Solicits Zero Days

[Jun 14, 2015] Snowden files read by Russia and China: five questions for UK government

[Jun 14, 2015] UK Said To Withdraw Spies After Russia, China Hack Snowden Encryption, Sunday Times Reports

[Jun 12, 2015] Germany drops inquiry into claims NSA tapped Angela Merkel's phone by Ewen MacAskill

I guess it is clear who is the boss: "...When the row was its height, the chancellor said: "The charges are grave and have to be cleared up.""

"..."Merkel wants to be a good ally again after all the embarrassing things that have happened," he said."

[May 30, 2015] Rand Paul declares surveillance war and hints at filibuster for NSA reform

"By collecting all of your records, we're wasting so much money, so much time, and the haystack's so large we can't find the terrorists," Paul said. "I'm for looking at all of the terrorists' records – I just want their name on the warrant and I just want it to be signed by a judge just like the constitution says."

Spiegel said it is Expired.... And they are a NSA Fish Wrap..... http://m.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/a-1036475.html

Notable quotes:

"... With controversial provisions of the Patriot Act scheduled to run out at midnight on Sunday, Paul, the Kentucky senator and Republican presidential hopeful, fielded questions about how he intended to win privacy campaigners a long hoped-for victory. ..."

"... "I think a lot of people in America agree with me," Paul said, "that your phone records should not be collected by your government, unless they suspect you of a crime and unless they call a judge and unless a warrant has your name on it." ..."

"... Apparently the real problem is Executive Order 12333, under which almost all of the mass surveillance is "authorized". ..."

"... By the time someone is a party candidate, they've already been bought off. National write-in. ..."

"... politicians listen to corporations and shareholders. What corporations dictate, their political lapdogs obediently listens. ..."

"... Please, tell me that porn sites are involved in this. Cut off Congress's porn access and they will be putty in our hands. ..."

"... "This is a blackout," read the site to which computers from congressional IP addresses were redirected. "We are blocking your access until you end mass surveillance laws." ..."

[Apr 19, 2015] Twitter Moves Non-US Accounts To Ireland, and Away From the NSA<

[Apr 19, 2015] The Upsides of a Surveillance Society

[Apr 11, 2015] Surveillance Valley Rise of the Google-Military Complex

[Apr 11, 2015] Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Google-Military Complex

[Mar 30, 2015] IRS Scandal Deja Vu Hillary Clintons Email Server Wiped Clean

Notable quotes:

"... This appears to have taken place after the first production request had come in, which means that Clinton may well be guilty of destruction of evidence. ..."

"... it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department." ..."

"... It is time for the Committee to stop this political charade and instead make these documents public and schedule Secretary Clinton's public testimony now. ..."

[Mar 30, 2015] Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aides Secret Spy Network

Notable quotes:

"... Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State's private account starting before the Benghazi attack. ..."

"... This story was co-published with Gawker . ..."

"... Update, March 27, 6:48 p.m.: This story has been updated to include responses from the FBI and the State Department. ..."

"... Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal's account. ..."

[Mar 21, 2015] The NSA's plan: improve cybersecurity by hacking everyone else by Trevor Timm

The key problem with new NSA toys and methods is that they will be replicated, possible on a better technological level. Then what ?

[Mar 17, 2015] Top Google executive predicts end of the internet

[Mar 14, 2015] Clinton defence of personal email server fails to placate critics

[Mar 14, 2015] Silicon Valley's Web of Lies by Christine Rosen

"Instead of a win-win, the Internet is, in fact, more akin to a negative feedback loop in which we network users are its victims rather than beneficiaries,"

[Mar 14, 2015] How your phone and fitness band could end up giving evidence against you by Ben Lovejoy

Your email records are a goldmine. There's the obvious stuff – who you were in contact with when, and what was said – but there's so much more than that to be gleaned. ...Your phone does regular, automatic backups to Apple or Google servers, and with the right software, anyone can download and access them.

[Mar 08, 2015] Clinton email domain shows effort for security and obscurity, say experts

Notable quotes:

"... Doesn't the FBI, NSA, or some part of Homeland Security vet what government agencies are doing with their computer security? ..."

"... And how could Obama not know about this, unless he never exchanged e-mail with Hillary, which seems unlikely. ..."

"... I also wonder why Kerry would not question the absence of Clinton's correspondence when he took office? Doesn't he, as the successor, have to establish a historical record? Wouldn't her communications be part of that process? ..."

"... The main focus of the controversy comes because she could have deleted any emails she wanted to. ..."

"... Funny, we're back to paper as the only secure way to communicate anything (as in Roman Polanski's The Ghost). ..."

"... Despite the fact that digital record keeping continues to advance, the record keeping requirements go back to the early 50's and there is simply no reason that she should now be in possession of these records instead of either the State Department or the National Archives. ..."

"... The fact that she has criminally violated at least a dozen US Federal laws has nothing to do with the fact that she is lower than pond scum. God help us if she gets elected to POTUS! ..."

"... Her dishonesty and corruption already have been well documented for many decades, and she has proven that despite all her "image makeovers", she is the same untrustworthy person we always knew she was. ..."

"... It is not her decision to create her own web accounts to avoid public scrutiny. This is exactly what is wrong with Washington. No accountability or transparency. ..."

"... Bottom line if official State Department business was being routed through a personal email system she needs to go down for it. I work a mundane middle class job as a data analyst and my employer would be furious and fire me instantly if I routed work related emails and attachments through my personal email so why should Hillary get off the hook? ..."

"... The fact that the email traffic isn't encrypted makes this strictly amateur hour. ..."

"... The fact that the email isn't immediately controlled and discoverable by the govt is appalling enough. The fact it's apparently secured using small business standards just makes it worse. ..."

"... Was there any footnotes or exceptions noted concerning use of a private email server ? If not, then we should get our money back from auditing contractor. If they didn't discover and report it as an exception, then they should be barred from federal contracting for gross incompetence or complicity in this deception. ..."

"... "Dick Cheney in a pantsuit" is gonna live forever, or at least as long as she remains in the public arena ..."

"... Not having encryption (google smtps), which is easily determined if the mail server is still running, is a very bad sign. ..."

"... If Clinton is using Internap right now, that should be the subject of ridicule, not praise. ..."

"... People lost their jobs when Hillary was in charge over there for doing the EXACT SAME THING. ..."

"... The ruling elite plays by their own rules. ..."

"... Actually, the rules were there before. ..."

"... It is the Department's general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized AIS, which has the proper level of security control to provide nonrepudiation, authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the resident information. ..."

[Mar 07, 2015] Under the Radar, Big Media Internet Giants Get Massive Access to Everything About You By Jeffrey Chester

The Guardian

[Mar 06, 2015] Hillary Clinton is learning another hard lesson in presidential campaigning

From comments "It reflects on her character and her belief she is above the rules that the rest of us must obey." Is not those qualities the qualities of a female sociopath?

Notable quotes:

"... Two months ago, a team of Clinton people combed through a vast stack of her emails – from the period covering 2009 to 2013, when she served as America's top diplomat. Having reviewed the emails, they handed over 55,000 pages to the State Department. ..."

"... Hillary Clinton behaves very strangely on the background of Obama's statements about cybersecurity. ..."

"... Anyway she has something to conceal. I don't want Hillary to become our president. ..."

"... It reflects on her character and her belief she is above the rules that the rest of us must obey. ..."

"... Additionally, wouldn't John Kerry have needed to review the communications of his predecessor? Typically when one starts a new job,reviewing the files of one's predecessor is the way you get up to speed. ..."

"... How soon we forget...bush (aka Karl Rove) used a private account for gov bus, and somehow 100s were 'lost'. Have they been found and turned over yet? ..."

"... Was the secret server secure? ..."

"... Besides -- given Snowden's revelations -- if we were tapping Merkel's phone, NSA probably has all of Hillary's emails. ..."

"... They aren't her property. If she's that fearful, she should just stay retired and not work for an open govt such as ours. ..."

"... The muckrakers-the most famous of whom was Sinclair Lewis-were early twentieth-century American journalists who exposed corrupt politicians and robber-baron industrialists. ..."

"... It is a service provided by Optimum, which offers both website and e-mail hosting. ..."

"... Your right, she is a hypocrite… but at least she's not responsible for a few hundred thousand dead humans and 5 million refugees not to mention the countless maimed and many tortured like the Bush Officials. Yet. ..."

Mar 06, 2015 | The Guardian

Hillary Clinton has been on the defensive this week over the revelation that she exclusively used a private email account while serving as secretary of state. The presumptive 2016 presidential candidate has tried to douse the flames, but key questions about the controversy remain unaddressed.

Where are the missing emails?

Two months ago, a team of Clinton people combed through a vast stack of her emails – from the period covering 2009 to 2013, when she served as America's top diplomat. Having reviewed the emails, they handed over 55,000 pages to the State Department.

... ... ..

That begs the question: how many pages did she not hand over? More importantly, what did they contain?

... ... ...

But we still don't know who those advisers were, and whether they had any training in the art of preserving official records.

So: who vetted the Clinton emails? Why should they be trusted to preserve something as precious to the nation as its historic records?

... ... ...

Why was email vetting even permitted?

The question of who vetted Clinton's emails before their transfer to the State Department raises another question: why was this allowed in the first place?

Since 2009, US government rules have been very clear on this subject. The National Archives and Records Administration stated categorically in that year – the first of Clinton's term as secretary – that "agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system."

Alas: why did senior State Department officials allow Clinton to override clear official rules? What role did Clinton herself play in circumventing the regulations?

Was the secret server secure?
We now know that Team Clinton set up its own domain name, ClintonEmail.com, shortly before Hillary Clinton took up the job as secretary of state. It was linked to a "homebrew" server at her home in Chappaqua, New York.
Given that Clinton was dealing with highly sensitive diplomatic issues, and that President Obama has declared cybersecurity a top priority for the nation, one might have expected additional protection.

But simple tests conducted by experts suggest that the server's security shield was not particularly sophisticated – though neither was that of the State Department.

What was done to protect Clinton's private server from hacking attacks? Were any vulnerable loopholes cut off? Were state secrets at risk?

Republicans accuse Clinton of 'scheme to conceal' emails from public view
State Department officials do not expect 50,000 pages of email to be released for several months, as Clinton – a lone tweet aside – chooses to stay silent
Why did she do it?

Perhaps the most intriguing question that still hangs in the air – and one that the public may never have satisfactorily answered, much to the chagrin of Benghaziphiles – is the simplest: why would Hillary Clinton decide, in effect, to privatise her own official emails? Was it an innocent move made for the sake of convenience – one which Clinton supporters have emphasised was made by her predecessors and by leading Republican politicians?

Or: were the private emails a conscious manoeuvre? As watchdogs at the Sunlight Foundation put it: "There is shock at what Secretary Clinton did because the most likely explanation of her intent seems clear – she created a system designed to avoid accountability, potentially in violation of the law."

jebhanson986

Hillary Clinton behaves very strangely on the background of Obama's statements about cybersecurity. We are used our authorities and special services are watching us through internet. FBI and other may read our e-mails, look through our accounts in social networks.

Actions of Hillary are too unpatriotic against the background of her applications for participation in presidential elections 2016. It is already known fact she was sponsored by foreign residents. It is crime.

Anyway she has something to conceal. I don't want Hillary to become our president. I know believe her as well as Obama. They have too many skeletons in the closet.

TheMediaSux

"Perhaps the most intriguing question that still hangs in the air" - "why would Hillary Clinton decide, in effect, to privatise her own official emails?"
That's also the easiest question to answer. And my five year old nephew figured it out: so people won't find out what was in the emails.

Theodore Svedberg -> osprey1957

It is not just the right that is alarmed over Hillary's actions but also many progressive Democrats. This is definitely not a manufactured scandal created by the Republicans but one created by Hillary herself. It reflects on her character and her belief she is above the rules that the rest of us must obey.

macktan894

These are the basic questions I have. Should all elected and appointed govt officials have the right to privatize govt business, in effect removing it from the sunlight that democracy requires? I really don't understand why she would do something like this, why she thought conducting business using secure govt servers would be such a bad idea. Nor do I get how she got away with making govt records her personal property.
Additionally, wouldn't John Kerry have needed to review the communications of his predecessor? Typically when one starts a new job,reviewing the files of one's predecessor is the way you get up to speed.
Is anyone able to ask her these questions?

GrammaW -> macktan894

How soon we forget...bush (aka Karl Rove) used a private account for gov bus, and somehow 100s were 'lost'. Have they been found and turned over yet?

AistheWay -> macktan894

I agree with you about the gov't privatizing what should be public and transparent dealings. This issue is a major concern that requires immediate legislation. For example the outsourcing of prison "care". I have spoken to ex-inmates who have served time in these private correctional facilities and to my disgust found out that they (private prison company) basically denied inmates, of most if not all, of the rights mandated by federal/state statutes regarding prisoner treatment.

Under the guise of budget savings and tax cuts our politicians are once again attacking citizen's rights.

macktan894 -> AistheWay

Don't get me started on the criminal justice system. I'll just say here that what's going on in Ferguson is happening all over the country, mainly to poor people no matter the race. And it is disgusting. I suggest emergency donations to the ACLU since the govt clearly has no inclination to correct this injustice.

SteveLight

This is not analysis -- this is muck raking.

Was the secret server secure?

I'd say it was a far sight more secure than a government server. Frankly, I would not trust a government server. The more we know about cyber intrusions, the more I would argue government emails are at risk.

Besides -- the first thing Hillary detractors would do is look for quotes they could take out of context.

Besides -- given Snowden's revelations -- if we were tapping Merkel's phone, NSA probably has all of Hillary's emails. They may not want to divulge that fact but I will bet dollars to doughnuts that her emails are under government wraps right now.

terrible analysis -- is Guardian slipping? I don't see the Guardian in the same high regard as I did, say 12 month ago. Who left?

macktan894 -> SteveLight

It's not her decision to make. She may have some political fears about her job, but if her fears were that great, then she shouldn't have taken the job. She cannot privatize sensitive govt records. They aren't her property. If she's that fearful, she should just stay retired and not work for an open govt such as ours.

MaxBoson -> SteveLight

The muckrakers-the most famous of whom was Sinclair Lewis-were early twentieth-century American journalists who exposed corrupt politicians and robber-baron industrialists.

So If you want to call Ed Pilkington a muckracker, go ahead, it's a compliment I'm sure he will appreciate, even if he hasn't raked in any mud yet- the New York Times did that when it published the e-mail revelations. What the author has done is pose some very interesting questions, which, by your choice of the word "muckraking," you seem to think pose a danger to Hillary Clinton. I think they do, too.

Corinne Marasco

Incredibly lazy reporting.
The server is not in Chappaqua. It is a service provided by Optimum, which offers both website and e-mail hosting. And, you can use any e-mail domain you like. http://www.ip-tracker.org/locator/ip-lookup.php?ip=24.187.234.187
Climb off the Edward Snowden Gravy Train, Guardian. Get back to doing real reporting.

macktan894 -> Corinne Marasco

Well, that's even worse. A Secretary of State shopping for a website and email hosting service to manage the govt.'s official records. Was this company certified by the govt as secure to handle the govt.'s sensitive official records?

chiefwiley -> macktan894

If people got personal, political, State Department, and Clinton charitable e-mails all from a single non-government account, that would deliver an interesting hidden message, too. It's all intermingled and interconnected with the Clintons.

Elton Johnson -> Corinne Marasco

"The server is not in Chappaqua."
I didn't realize they searched her home to determine this. Do you have a link to the story where they did?

JJHLH1

Now it makes sense why Hillary continued to receive all those foreign contributions during her time as Secretary of State. She could make deals via e-mail and then destroy the evidence and nobody would know.
And her homebrew e-mail server was guarded by Secret Service agents using taxpayer dollars.
This story has larger implications other than severely harming her 2016 prospects. A home server is much more vulnerable to security attacks compared to one run by professionals with experience. As Sec. of State her emails would contain sensitive information. Her behavior places the U.S. at risk. Not a bright move on her part, but then again she failed the D.C. Bar exam so I guess it's not unexpected.

Elton Johnson

Those emails are not hers. They belong to all of us. Stop apologizing for her.

MillbrookNY

You couldn't be involved in this many blunders and scandals unless you were trying.

Regardless of how smart HRC may be, she is a magnet for scandals and blunders. If you are always having to explain why what you didn't isn't technically wrong, you're doing the wrong things. Stop expecting to get a pass every time, HRC.
en again she failed the D.C. Bar exam so I guess it's not unexpected.

Elton Johnson MillbrookNY

Her "intelligence" is a myth. She wants to be President yet she can't even come out and speak to the people on this matter?
She can't even manage her own mess, how can she be entrusted to manage the country?

JJHLH1 Elton Johnson

Hillary isn't very bright. Just look at all the gaffes she makes like saying they left the White House "dead broke".
She failed the D.C. Bar exam in 1973. Over 2/3 pass it. That's why she ended up in Arkansas.

williamdonovan

I'll bet that Obama & Kerry where recipients of email from her account. Of course there is a cover story and cover up. Here it is in Black and White. (It is a felony)

Title 18 §641. Public money, property or records

Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof; or

Whoever receives, conceals, or retains the same with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined or converted-

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; but if the value of such property in the aggregate, combining amounts from all the counts for which the defendant is convicted in a single case, does not exceed the sum of $1,000, he shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

The word "value" means face, par, or market value, or cost price, either wholesale or retail, whichever is greater.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 725; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §330016(1)(H), (L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147; Pub. L. 104–294, title VI, §606(a), Oct. 11, 1996, 110 Stat. 3511; Pub. L. 108–275, §4, July 15, 2004, 118 Stat. 833.)

Homeland security? Start by looking inside Government where a the real criminals hide.
The biggest threat to our Republic is the very people who swore to serve it.

NSubramanian 12h ago

"Why was email vetting even permitted?"

Yes. In the context of Obama's desire for Net security, this is a crucial question and it deserves an honest reply.

However, where Hillary Clinton goes, the question seems to follow: "Was the vetting permitted? "Was the vetter authorised to vet?", destined never to be answered.
During her 2008 campaign for nomination, Hillary Clinton claimed greater fitness to be Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces because as the First Lady, she had fielded those dreaded 3 ' O Clock calls on the Red Phone which always meant nothing but trouble, apparently to vet them for seriousness before passing on the call to the President.

Neither Hillary nor her team chose to answer the logical question which an incredulous America asked "Who had authorised the First Lady to answer calls which came on the Red Phone?"

Husband Bill chose wisely to stay out of it.

AmericanGrunt

She and her minions are obviously trying to hide how easy it was for she and her sisters (Rice, Power and Albright) to lie their way to an unprovoked war against Libya simply by baiting really dumb men always eager to have their military go destroy stuff and kill people. That war was initiated with nothing but a UN resolution specifying only an intent "to protect innocent life" from something that "might" happen, but was in fact intended from the very beginning to effect violent "regime change" by US military force (along with the usual British and French co-conspirators) under a phony "NATO" cover.
These women were able to circumvent the US Constitution and the US Congress based on an "emergency human rights" excuse that was entirely bogus. They did it solely to get a free ride on the naïve "Arab Spring" bandwagon and give Ms Clinton a "foreign policy accomplishment" for her planned 2016 presidential campaign. The only way to get the resolution passed by the UN Security Council - solely to establish a "humanitarian no-fly-zone" - was for those women and their minions to boldly lie to the American people, to the UN Security Council, to the Russians and to the Chinese, and then misuse the American people's military for their own self-serving domestic political agenda.
As soon as the resolution was passed, France and the UK, along with the US, went on the direct attack against Libyan forces trying to maintain some semblance of order in their own country, and killed far more people than those Libyan forces "might" have. It was indeed "clever" to attack a country only AFTER it had given up its weapons of mass destruction and was essentially defenseless against the far superior forces of "NATO" – which sent a powerful message to both Iran and North Korea about what happens AFTER you give up your nukes, what happens AFTER you play by all the rules demanded by the Americans.
And a whole range of "macho" men, even eager to send their military forth to destroy stuff and kill any suspicious people in sight, stupidly took the bait and joined the bandwagon like the predictable fools they are. All the "Four Sisters" had to do was toss some red meat over the kennel fence. And just behold the death and destruction they wrought with their bombs and the totally lawless playground for fanatical crazies they created right at Europe's underbelly. With zero adult consideration to "what comes next", it was all entirely predictable, thoroughly shameful, and completely self-defeating emotional nonsense by people trying to operate far beyond their competence levels.
How can a guy like Vladimir Putin witness the ignominious death of Gadhafi in a sewer pipe and NOT wonder if he and his own country are next? How can he not consider that it was a "defensive" anachronism still called "NATO" that relentlessly attacked another sovereign country for eight months – the same "NATO" ever eager to push its arrogantly offensive nose right up to the Kremlin gate? Why would he sit and wait for it to come, especially after being so shamefully lied to by those American women? The main thing that a single super-power status does for the women who own it is obviate the need for them to think.
There probably won't be a lot of people interested in pouring over THOSE embarrassing e-mails. Far too much potential for EVERYONE to get egg all over their own faces, the same people who for generations have reveled in righteous indignation over the unprovoked bombing of Pearl Harbor. It all makes me ashamed to be a professional American soldier.

Theodore Svedberg AmericanGrunt

Very good set of reasons why Hillary should never be President.

harryboy

In 2007 as a Senator she thought differently - Hillary Clinton Bashes Bush Officials for Secret Email Accounts
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/03/flashback-hillary-attacks-bush-officials-for-secret-email-accounts-video/

WeThePeople harryboy

Maybe she's also been secretly trying to start another war for arms profiteering, oil grabbing and Empire like the Bush Officials did...

harryboy -> WeThePeople

Or maybe shes just a hypocrite

WeThePeople -> harryboy

Your right, she is a hypocrite… but at least she's not responsible for a few hundred thousand dead humans and 5 million refugees not to mention the countless maimed and many tortured like the Bush Officials. Yet.

[Feb 19, 2015] Gadgets That Spy On Us: Way More Than TVs

Welcome to the world of Stasi Tech.

Presto Vivace writes with a reminder that it's not just Samsung TVs — lots of other gadgets are spying on you "But Samsung's televisions are far from the only seeing-and-listening devices coming into our lives. If we're going to freak out about a Samsung TV that listens in on our living rooms, we should also be panicking about a number of other emergent gadgets that capture voice and visual data in many of the same ways. ....
Samsung's competitor, the LG Smart TV, has basically the same phrase about voice capture in its privacy policy: "Please be aware that if your spoken word includes personal or other sensitive information, such information will be among the Voice Information captured through your use of voice recognition features."

It isn't just TVs, Microsoft's xBox Kinect, Amazon Echo, GM's Onstar, Chevrolet's MyLink and PDRs, Google's Waze, and Hello's Sense all have snooping capabilities. Welcome to the world of Stasi Tech.

alen (225700) on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:47PM (#49089377)

it started with smartphones (Score:3)

people wanted voice control and they got it

Anonymous Coward writes: on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:49PM (#49089393)
Slashdot, stop deleting the NSA hard drive news Come on slashdot, stop deleting the NSA hard drive backdoor news submissions, it's already all over the net, even non geek sites are all over it.
You call this a geek site? Stuff that matters my ass.

HUGE SPY PROGRAM EXPOSED: NSA has hidden software in hard drives around the world
Is the NSA Hiding in Your Hard Drive? [bloomberg.com]
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers [huffingtonpost.com]
Is Your Hard Drive Hiding NSA Spyware? [ign.com]
The NSA hides surveillance software in hard drives [engadget.com]
'Breakthrough' NSA spyware shows deep grasp of makers' hard drives [www.cbc.ca]
NSA planted surveillance software on hard drives, report says [cnet.com]
NSA secret spying software discovered by Russian researchers [itproportal.com]
NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives With Impossible-To-Remove Spyware [inquisitr.com]
NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001: Kaspersky [ibtimes.com]
NSA program is embedding secret spying software in hard drives in Russia, China, Middle East, allowing agency to eavesdrop on most of world's computers: report [nydailynews.com]
Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware [pcworld.com]
Hard drives beware, the NSA is coming for you [digitaltrends.com]
Kaspersky fingers NSA-style Equation Group for hard drive backdoor epidemic [theinquirer.net]
There's no way of knowing if the NSA's spyware is on your hard drive [computerworld.com]
The NSA's Undetectable Hard Drive Hack Was First Demonstrated a Year Ago [vice.com]

Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19, 2015 @02:05PM (#49089557)

Re:Just because others do it doesn't make it okay (Score:4, Insightful)

But other people may not be so vigilant or aware. You go visit someone at there house and talk politics never noticing th IOT devices that are streaming your conversation from the living room.

rogoshen1 (2922505) on Thursday February 19, 2015 @02:48PM (#49090023)

Re:Just because others do it doesn't make it okay (Score:5, Insightful)
Because someone like McCarthy will never, ever EVER exist in the US at some point in the future.
What people like you are missing is that the consequence of private enterprise collecting and selling mass personal data is that the government could either get by coercion or buying; data it could not otherwise acquire without a warrant.
The FBI may need a warrant to wiretap you, but would they need a warrant to 'acquire' the exact same data-set from apple or google?
That doesn't worry you, at all -- really?

Virtucon (127420) on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:52PM (#49089433)

Stasi Tech? (Score:4, Insightful)

I think that's a pretty harsh term. When used by a repressive regime this technology could be used for doing bad things but if people want voice commands in their lives they have to realize that some of this "snooping" is necessary. Why? Because voice processing and searching on the scale of some of the applications such as SIRI require centralized processing. Therefore your voice commands have to be sent someplace else and processed.

Also this kind of technology isn't exactly new and things like Web Cams on laptops aren't immune from even local school districts snooping on students. [wikipedia.org] The point is that the technology is introducing new possible attack vectors on your privacy and allowing not only corporations but even governments to potentially abuse your trust in the devices you use. I'm sure it's happened but I'll bet Apple has been subpoenaed for the SIRI requests from a suspected murderer or drug kingpin much like they'll ask Google for search queries from a suspect. That's why laws must be updated and the public made aware that there's a price to pay for all this ease of use. Oh in respect to LG, LG also says that any media you connect to their device will be potentially scanned including things like file names so start getting rid of those unused sex vids because the Chinese are watching your porn.

gstoddart (321705) on Thursday February 19, 2015 @02:47PM (#49090019) Homepage

Stasi Tech? (Score:5, Insightful)

I think that's a pretty harsh term. When used by a repressive regime this technology could be used for doing bad things
The problem is that governments have given themselves permission to go in and get any of this data.
Which means it is pretty much inevitable that these shiny toys really are going to be Stasi Tech .. only people have signed up willingly for it, using terms which can be changed at the whim of the company ... and the governments will just demand the data.
Sorry, but you really can't sound paranoid enough about just how these technologies are likely to be abused.
Either from greedy corporations looking to make a buck off you, or governments who demand that same data to spy on you when it would be illegal for them to do it.

rhysweatherley (193588) on Thursday February 19, 2015 @02:49PM (#49090035)

Re:Stasi Tech? (Score:4, Insightful)

Why? Because voice processing and searching on the scale of some of the applications such as SIRI require centralized processing. Therefore your voice commands have to be sent someplace else and processed.
At the moment. As the technology improves more and more will be done client side because round-tripping audio is stupid if you could do it locally. If SIRI or something like it was completely local, then there would be no issue. Unfortunately there has been little or no work on practical on-the-spot voice recognition lately because the money is all in spying - be it for surveillance or ads.
It's not like appliance controls are complicated - there's only a handful of "TV: Change channel to ESPN" or "Kettle: Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" phrases that need to be trained in. But since the business models of operators like Nuance are predicated on licensing access to their huge server farms, no other option is even considered except the one that destroys privacy.
We need regulation - no server-side processing of client-side controls. If you could do it locally, then you MUST.

CastrTroy (595695) on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:54PM (#49089447) Homepage

LG TV (Score:5, Interesting)

I have an LG TV and it has a stupid voice recognition feature. You have to press a button on the remote for it to start listening to you. The feature is pretty much completely useless. I tried it a few times when I first got the TV, but quickly found that it's pretty much worthless. The rest of the TV works really well though, and I have no complaints. I don't see the purpose of even building this feature into the TV. Nobody will use it, and nobody is going to make a TV buying decision based on rather or not it has voice recognition. Except maybe some people who will specifically be looking for a TV that doesn't have the feature.

EMG at MU (1194965) on Thursday February 19, 2015 @02:04PM (#49089547)

Problem of a tech illiterate population (Score:5, Insightful)

I feel that most technically literate people at least knew that this kind of "spying" was technically trivial and obviously monetizable. Any device with some kind of a network connection and a microphone / camera can easily record everything you do and say and send it anywhere it wants. This little company called Google figured out that by collecting more and more information about you they can make huge sums of money by mining and selling that data and now everyone wants in on that game.
I feel like most comments here will be along the lines of "yeah duh what did you think they were doing with that data", however on less tech focused sites the comments will have the tone of "OMG evil corporations spying on us how is this even legal, hold on let me ask Siri!"
But that is the problem. The general population has no idea how every time they use a thing like Siri or Kinect, or OnStar they are allowing the respective companies that created those services nearly unlimited access to their microphone or camera. Just like people really don't understand how Facebook monetizes their profile and activities.
I think until there is general knowledge of the fact that we have entered the era of generating revenue from users through mining and analyzing their activities, preferences, and other data, we can't even have a productive discussion about the limits of these new ways to collect information. Right now it is just fear mongering and attention grabbing headlines.
Lets get to the point where we can have a rational discourse about the benefits and potential risks of ever present microphones and cameras and develop both moral and legal guidelines to govern their use.

[Feb 19, 2015] How NSA Spies Stole the Keys To the Encryption Castle

Feb 19, 2015 | slashdot.org
Advocatus Diaboli writes with this excerpt from The Intercept's explanation of just how it is the NSA weaseled its way into one important part of our communications: AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world's cellular communications, including both voice and data.

aberglas (991072)

Re:A big surprise (Score:3)

Actually it is surprising. Many if not most large government IT projects are appallingly run. Vast amounts of money wasted on useless consultants that end up producing very little if anything at all.
As the NSA's budget grows and grows, I suspect this will happen to them. Lots of MBAs that can only organize their own careers, while the crypto-nerds are pushed into the background.

tekrat (242117) on Thursday February 19, 2015 @05:39PM (#49091493)

NSA... (Score:5, Insightful)

Can we all just agree that the NSA is the most nefarious hacking group, the most dangerous and out of control? That they make all the other so called "black hats" look like innocent little babies?
I think we all need to work together to get rid of this terrible, nasty, unpredictable hacker group -- for the sake of national and international security. They represent a clear and present danger to the future of this country.

Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19, 2015 @06:12PM (#49091593)

We are the global village bully (Score:1, Interesting)
Veterans Today on February 11, 2015
Why the United States Always Loses Its Wars [veteranstoday.com]
We are the global village bully that's hated by much of the world.
America loses all its wars because it seems we've always been on the wrong side of history. Morally nor legally should any nation have the right to invade and occupy another sovereign nation, much less believe it can achieve victory in long, protracted wars.
Yet in violation of all ethical precepts and all international laws, the sole global superpower citing its impunity through exceptionalism hypocritically insists it can maintain its moral high ground in its relentless pursuit of regime changes anywhere it so chooses on earth. We are the global village bully that's hated by much of the world.
And it's pure self-aggrandizing bullshit to perpetrate the myth that America is hated because of our "freedom," another rhetorical brainwashing lie. We now live in a fascist totalitarian police state run by a globalized crime syndicate of the central banking cabal. As of last April per a Princeton-Northwestern study the US has officially been designated an oligarchy.
Last year after a group of ethnic Russians living in Crimea voted to become part of Russia, the Russian military claimed control over its own naval base there that the US-NATO had been lusting to steal after the unlawful overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected sovereign government.
Ever since it's been nonstop lies and propaganda propagated to demonize Putin as the aggressor when in fact all along it's the American Empire that's been recklessly pushing what could end up World War III against nuclear powered Russia. With US-NATO missiles installed on Russia's doorstep in virtually every former Soviet eastern bloc nation, hemming Russia in, who's really the aggressor here?
The WMD lie that was the repeated mantra used as prewar drum beating propaganda to launch a war against humanity in Iraq a dozen years earlier is now being replayed as deja vu all over again to amnesic, dumbed down Americans. Despite defeats in both Iraq and Afghanistan still being dragged out as America's longest running wars in its history, the US-NATO war machine is once again prepping for yet more war raging now in Eastern Ukraine.
The US government's rush to war hit a minor snag the other day when various European nations like France and Germany announced their opposition and refusal to send arms to the Ukraine government, wanting to give peace talks with Russia a chance. Today's headlines state that Obama has been forced to pause in his arms rush, not unlike the world turning against his rush a year and a half ago for air strikes in Syria after the false flag chemical weapons attack that was actually launched by US backed rebels.
So it may not be full speed ahead for US Empire to ship its heavy weaponry to the eastern warfront after all. It is being reported that mercenaries speaking American English, Polish, French and Flemish are fighting for the Kiev government in Eastern Ukraine against ethnic Russians who are fighting for their independence, their home and their very survival. And with their backs up against the wall, recently the eastern Ukrainians have beaten back the Ukrainian government forces. Again, the US has a knack for being on the wrong side of history.
No true victor can emerge from any war on either side. The incessant US aggressor boasting superior firepower as the most deadly, expensive military force on the planet (spending more than the next ten nations combined), America has little to show for itself as it has not won a single war in seventy years!
Neo-colonialism cloaked in imperialism, balkanization, economic exploitation, debtors' theft, indentured servitude and enslavement can never be justified as the spoils of war. It's a losing proposition in every imaginable way, not only for the aggressive American Empire that keeps starting and losing war after war, but especially for the ravaged nations it devastates and turns into demolished failed states with the King Midas in reverse touch.
There is only one winner in all this evil business of war making – the oligarchs that own and control both the US and the failed state nations. As Marine Corps General Smedley Butler wisely pointed out way back in 1933:
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it isabout. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
Fortune 500 companies win bigger profits sucking up the last precious, nearly tapped oil reserves and other diminishing natural resources off the face of the earth. This nonstop predatory practice of using, abusing and plundering smaller Third World countries is good for no one but the thieving transnational war profiteers and the oligarchs who own and control them.
This month's Atlantic has a well written, thought provoking feature article called "The Tragedy of the American Military" authored by James Fallows. Though on the cover the question is asked, "Why Do The Best Soldiers in the World Keep Losing?" the article never quite delivers the answer.
Instead it laments how the US fighting machine consisting of just two million (both active and reserved) out of more than 316 million Americans has created a cultural chasm of "out of sight, out of mind" convenience for a civilian population that disingenuously pays only lip service to "support our troops" while repeated Empire wars (and defeats) fought half a world away never cease.
Meanwhile, despite costing US taxpayers up to six trillion dollars and counting in Iraq alone and another trillion so far in Afghanistan in this age of increasing austerity, the albeit detached reverence for the US military and its abysmal losing war record fail to draw much notice or reflection, much less any real criticism or troubleshooting that might correct the same pattern of mistakes being repeated indefinitely.
Another article in the same issue calls for resurrecting the draft as the feeble answer, something my ex-West Point roommate-former Afghan Ambassador-retired general and current Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member Karl Eikenberry has also publicly advocated. They are all missing the point, unwilling or unable to address the pink elephant in the global room.
Respected author-activist David Swanson wrote an incisive rebuttal also confronting the Atlantic article for not answering the obvious question of why America loses at war. He makes the excellent point:
The U.S. has killed huge numbers of men, women, and children, made itself hated, made the world more dangerous, destroyed the environment, discarded civil liberties, and wasted trillions of dollars that could have done a world of good spent otherwise. A draft would do nothing to make people aware of that situation.
But Swanson merely glides over as a passing fact that the ruling elite is the only entity that stands to gain from war. He fails to emphasize that it is the elite's power, money and influence that both initiates, but then by calculated design, willfully sabotages the chance of any US military victory after World War II. The reason is simple. If the US triumphed in war it would only delay the totalitarian New World Order from materialization. Only a weakened United States would expeditiously promote a one world government.
Some analysts with a micro-filter would blame inept planning and decision making by civilian commanders-in-chief and their equally inept civilian counsel. Both the Bush and Obama regimes come readily to mind, and before them the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War.
Historically the chickenhawk elite as behind the scene war proponents have been represented by members of the Counsil on Foreign Relations in advisory roles that in effect have shaped and controlled every single US president's foreign and war policy along with key Congressional warmongers always promoting the self-interests of the military industrial complex that outgoing President Eisenhower warned us about over and above the interests and well-being of the American people.
Other critics like Thomas E. Ricks in recent years have been quick to point the finger at the poor military leadership. As a West Point graduate who went to school in the same regiment with surge man himself former CIA Director and General David Petraeus, NSA Big Brother architect Keith Alexander and current Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, I can attest to the inferior brand of leadership cranked out of the academy brass factory over the last half century.
West Point trains and teaches robotic followers in the form of sycophantic, self-serving bureaucrat-politicians, not dynamic, caring, humanitarian leaders. Entrepreneurial, innovative, creative instincts are drummed out of cadet and officer corps by a failed, punch-your-ticket to seniority system that breeds a range of incompetence from run-of-the-mill mediocrity to highly toxic leadership.
The unprecedented soaring rates at which the most gifted, strongest leaders have been leaving the military services in droves the first chance they get upon completion of their 5-year post academy commitment calls into question the dubious worth of a half million dollar taxpayer-funded price tag of an elitist academy education.
With the bland bureaucrat-politicians left in charge as generals leading the US Empire forces in war, then throw in the sobering reality that the military system fails to hold its own poor leadership accountable, it's really no wonder the United States keeps losing every time out.
But all this plausible rationalization and blame-game excuses to explain away why the US persists in its streak of disastrous war defeats fails to address the fundamental reason why.
Bottom line, no war is justified when humans and all life forms on this planet always stand to lose, especially when the only winners are the war profiteers who in my opinion are not human. Without a conscience and totally devoid of their humanity and compassion, they're simply greed-driven, psychopathic predators feeding off the lifeblood of other humans and nations that must suffer immeasurable and unspeakable harm at their singular gain.
During this last century alone it's been this same line of globalists working overtime, primarily through the CFR (since 1921), the Pentagon and other elitist "think tanks" that have been pulling the puppet strings of all US presidents, busily creating one false flag after another to start every single war America ever fights.
Nearly every president has been a card carrying CFR member, and those few who haven't were surrounded by CFR in key cabinet roles. Since the 1947 National Security Act established the cabinet office of the Secretary of Defense, every man who has held that key position in the US government has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Since 1940 every Secretary of State has been a CFR plant.
For the last 80 years virtually every National Security Advisor been a CFR insider as have been all the top generals like my West Point ex-roommies Eikenberry and the longest running Afghanistan and Iraq War commander General Abizaid as well as the aforementioned Class of 1974 grads Petraeus and Dempsey.
Let's examine how key insiders with their one world government vision have made war at will through false flag lies blaming their designated enemies contributing to America's long history of nonstop war for over 91% of its years in existence (218 out of 239 years).
As a brief historical review tracing events from the dawn of the twentieth century, media mogul Randolph Hearst used the false flag of the Spanish American War to "remember the USS Maine" sinking in the 1898 Havana harbor as its deceitful justification to ruthlessly, violently colonize Cuba and the Philippines, committing ethnic cleansing with estimates as high as near a half million dead Filipinos in that bloodbath.
Then it was the "great" English statesman Winston Churchill who plotted the sinking of the Lusitania killing nearly 1200 of his own British citizens (along with 128 Americans) as the baited sacrifice secretly carrying arms to ignite the First World War that was supposed to end all wars.
This in turn led to the first NWO effort toward globalized government in the League of Nations that several decades later materialized into the United Nations, a huge globalist milestone on its march toward one world government. As is custom, globalist money busily finances both sides in every war, in this case militarizing German Kaiser Wilhelm and Lenin's revolutionary rise to red power during World War I and then a few years later Hitler's ascendancy to initiate World War II. HW Bush's father was actually arrested for funding the Nazi enemy.
Pearl Harbor was the sinister false flag machination that carried the deadly sacrifice of over 2500 slaughtered Americans as Roosevelt's chickenhawk "excuse" to enter WWII. The real purpose of the so called last "justified war" was to eclipse the British Empire and usher in the imperialistic reign of the emerging American Empire and its subsequent cold war that's still raging dangerously stronger than ever to this day.
Then several years later the US encouraged South Korean incursions into Communist North Korea in order to manipulate North Korea into responding in kind. Guaranteeing South Korea full UN support, when the baited North Koreans retaliated by moving two miles inside the South Korean border, that June 1950 "transgression" immediately became the false pretense used to initiate the Korean War.
After that conflict ended in a stalemate, a mere decade later as the imperialistic cauldrons of cold war grew hotter, in August 1964 President Johnson lied to the American people with the bogus claim that a US Navy ship was attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin to launch America's longest running war in history (that is until this century's everlasting war of terror). That false flag cost near 60,000 American lives and over 3 million dead Southeast Asians, in addition to being the first US humiliating war defeat in its history, marking the first of many consecutive losses.
The smaller, less intensive military campaigns of Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the First Gulf War, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo were all jingoistic saber rattling manipulations of imperialistic Empire overpowering far weaker opponents to take down former US allied dictators (or in the case of Saddam Hussein a preliminary step to the father-son neocon tag team), balkanizing a divide and conquer strategy for global hegemony and imperial war profiteering from the always lucrative drug trafficking trade.
The actual reason America has been losing all its wars for seven decades now is simply because the oligarchs want it that way. The fact is we were never meant to win any war after WWII. Over and over again the most powerful army in the world has been defeated by much smaller ill equipped forces that are far less armed, modern and funded. Yet fighting on their turf against the imperialistic occupying Goliath-like oppressor, they always win.
Like everything major that goes down on this earth, it's all part of the ruling elite's diabolical plan – by design, the US as the constantly warring nation should keep losing war after war. American soldiers and their families always suffer the heaviest losses, only surpassed by the millions of people whose homelands become targeted US Empire battlefields.
The shrinking US middle class at home bearing the brunt of the burden financing exorbitant costly wars also loses big time. But then of course this grave calamity and human tragedy is all by sinister design. Because the ruling class no longer has a need for America's middle class, it's become the latest war of terror casualty.
Meanwhile, the only true winners of all wars is the oligarch owned and controlled central banking cabal and its Wall Street 500. Once American Empire wreaks military havoc to achieve another ravaged failed state, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, a second invasion that becomes the permanent occupation arrives in the form of IMF and World Bank loans.
When the war destroyed nation cannot pay the bankster cabal's loan shark extortion, privatization through transnational corporations rapidly descends as economic hit men-vultures move in for the final kill. The game's been rigged, set up so no one but the filthy, gluttonous, bloodthirsty, psychopathic vampires comprising the ruling elite can possibly win from all this rigged warring death and destruction.
The Zionist neocon creation with a little help from their Saudi-Israeli evil axis friends pulled off the coup of the century on 9/11, massacring 3,000 Americans as their sacrificial lambs, setting into motion the fabricated war on terror masking their actual war on Islam to ensure that a constant fresh supply of made-by-the-USA enemy materializes to justify permanent global violence.
During the near ten years that Americans fought in Iraq near a half million Iraqis lost their life, mostly innocent civilians. That toll has only since risen with war still raging. The Islamic State jihadists that the US-Saudi-Israeli unholy alliance secretly created, trained, armed and has funded (just as it did al Qaeda for decades) invaded Iraq last June and is currently in control of more area in Iraq than the weak US puppet government in Baghdad with no end of sectarian violence in sight.
Afghanistan looks no better with the puppet Kabul government holding less territory than the surging Taliban that has been waiting for the US military exodus by December 2014 leaving 10,800 US military advisors still remaining behind. A million Afghan citizens died during the decade long war with the Soviet Union in the 1980's, then hundreds of thousands more during the ensuing civil war afterwards.
With the death toll doubling in 2014 from the previous year, upwards of 30,000 civilians have died during America's longest war in history in the graveyard of empires. The human costs for Americans killed on these two warfronts for both the US soldiers and civilian contractors are about 6,800 each as of April 2014. Three quarters of the American casualties in Afghanistan died on Obama's watch.
The proxy wars leaving Libya as a corrupt and lawlessly violent failed state and Syria a stalemated quagmire with Islamic State mercenaries our not-so-secret friendly boots on the ground still unable to topple and remove Assad from power. Meanwhile, near a quarter of a million people have died in the war in Syria and an astounding 6.5 million have been displaced in that colossal human tragedy supported and caused by the United States. Syria at no time was a threat to US national security.
Yet for years now the US has been determined to bring down Syria on its way to the ultimate regime change prize of Iran, the last of the seven sovereign nations to be taken down in the Middle East and North Africa within the designated five years on that notorious neocon list that retired General Wesley Clark learned in 2001 had already been in existence even prior to 9/11.
Ever since Korea and Vietnam the ruling elite in its New World Order agenda will not allow the most lethal fighting force in the world to win another war. And as shown, the King Midas touch in reverse that has every nation the US intervenes plummeting into flames as failed states, totally vulnerable as easy pickings for the predatory oligarch sharks to feast on whatever precious natural resources are left, boots on the ground or not.
While the entire planet loses, this endless, spilled blood for oil end game remains a win-win proposition only for the pedophiliac, incest-infested, demonically ruled ruling class that's been systematically creating and profiting from war for countless centuries.

Ralph Wiggam (22354)

Re:How is this even remotely legal? (Score:2)

Gemalto is in the Netherlands. It's entirely legal for the NSA and GCHQ to do anything they want outside of their home countries. They were both chartered 60+ years ago to spy on foreign communications. You can certainly argue that this attack was unethical, or a bad idea, and it was definitely illegal under Dutch law- but it was legal under British and American law.

retroworks (652802) on Thursday February 19, 2015 @06:42PM (#49091677)

Counting Alarmist Sheep (Score:2)
Here's how I see this. For the average person, if an actual NSA person was paid to follow them or look at them, the NSA would get tied up and bored to death. There are far too many people using Sim cards than there are government employees.
So second, could this private information be used by a rogue NSA employee, say an old college boyfriend to stalk or "peep" into private correspondence? Snowden has absolutely demonstrated that risk, that any of us could be somewhat randomly spied on. But the odds of any single one of us being examined is still as low as previously stated. Annoying but low actual risk.
Could a dictator use this access to information to cow us into subservience? Seems a stretch. In the USA example, if a Democratic/Republican president let slip they were using this info collected by the NSA for political means, the opposing party would hang them with it.
So the most likely use is, as NSA claims, to catch bad guys. Saw John Doe used porn, saw Jane Doe was in AA, but no time or interest in that, they are looking for Bin Laden.
The second most likely use would be a politically active person trying to change the status quo. Like Martin Luther King. If FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover had his hands on this kind of access, the USA would have been screwed. But then again, they assassinated King, and today it would be much harder to cover that up. The FBI directors now have to worry about a Snowden in their midsts, which should keep them more honest.
Mathematically, I'm extremely unlikely to be affected by Bin Laden... the mathematical of terrorist threats is smaller than getting hit by a car (for now). And the likelihood I'd be targeted by a college stalker or NSA agent is also very small. So is the risk that my social security number will be picked off of dropbox. The risk here is that a true intellectual agent of change will be targeted, or that Al Quaeda or ISIS will screw the international banking system so bad that the entire world economy is screwed up and people panic and break into stores and start killing each other. So I sleep at night hoping NSA is as concerned about the latter as much as I am, and hope to God they also fear and realize the precedent set by J. Edgar Hoover.
In the final analysis, I hope people with liberal arts degrees choose to go work for the NSA. The one former employee of NSA that I know personally had a liberal arts degree, and I hope she's not alone. I hope people who care about and worry about the things I worry about are working there, and sometimes I fear the reaction to the NSA is similar to the reaction of hippies in the 60s to business and capitalism... all the agents of conscience were afraid to get their consciences dirty, refused to go into business management, and we had 2-3 decades of business management dominated by assholes.

We want more Snowdens in the NSA, and hyperbolizing the agency's "evil" is perhaps the greatest risk.

[Jan 29, 2015] 'Anonymized' Credit Card Data Not So Anonymous, MIT Study Shows

Jan 29, 2015 | slashdot.org
timothy January 29, 2015 @05:12PM

schwit1 writes Scientists showed they can identify you with more than 90 percent accuracy by looking at just four purchases, three if the price is included - and this is after companies "anonymized" the transaction records, saying they wiped away names and other personal details. The study out of MIT, published Thursday in the journal Science, examined three months of credit card records for 1.1 million people.
"We are showing that the privacy we are told that we have isn't real," study co-author Alex "Sandy" Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an email.

[Jan 29, 2015] Snowden Documents CSE Tracks Millions of Downloads Daily

January 28, 2015 Slashdot

Advocatus Diaboli writes

Canada's electronic spy agency sifts through millions of videos and documents downloaded online every day by people around the world, as part of a sweeping bid to find extremist plots and suspects, CBC News has learned. Details of the Communications Security Establishment project dubbed 'Levitation' are revealed in a document obtained by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and recently released to CBC News.

Under Levitation, analysts with the electronic eavesdropping service can access information on about 10 to 15 million uploads and downloads of files from free websites each day, the document says.

[Jan 27, 2015] Secret 'BADASS' Intelligence Program Spied on Smartphones By Micah Lee

Advertisement agencies with their advertizing frameworks are the Trojan horse installed on PC, smartphones and most Websites. And Google is the largest of them. Blocking Javascript and wiping cookies on daily basis is the only way to ensure some minimum level of privacy, but even this is not enough

The Intercept

British and Canadian spy agencies accumulated sensitive data on smartphone users, including location, app preferences, and unique device identifiers, by piggybacking on ubiquitous software from advertising and analytics companies, according to a document obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The document, included in a trove of Snowden material released by Der Spiegel on January 17, outlines a secret program run by the intelligence agencies called BADASS. The German newsweekly did not write about the BADASS document, attaching it to a broader article on cyberwarfare. According to The Intercept's analysis of the document, intelligence agents applied BADASS software filters to streams of intercepted internet traffic, plucking from that traffic unencrypted uploads from smartphones to servers run by advertising and analytics companies.
Programmers frequently embed code from a handful of such companies into their smartphone apps because it helps them answer a variety of questions: How often does a particular user open the app, and at what time of day? Where does the user live? Where does the user work? Where is the user right now? What's the phone's unique identifier? What version of Android or iOS is the device running? What's the user's IP address? Answers to those questions guide app upgrades and help target advertisements, benefits that help explain why tracking users is not only routine in the tech industry but also considered a best practice.
For users, however, the smartphone data routinely provided to ad and analytics companies represents a major privacy threat. When combined together, the information fragments can be used to identify specific users, and when concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies, they have proven to be irresistibly convenient targets for those engaged in mass surveillance. Although the BADASS presentation appears to be roughly four years old, at least one player in the mobile advertising and analytics space, Google, acknowledges that its servers still routinely receive unencrypted uploads from Google code embedded in apps.
For spy agencies, this smartphone monitoring data represented a new, convenient way of learning more about surveillance targets, including information about their physical movements and digital activities. It also would have made it possible to design more focused cyberattacks against those people, for example by exploiting a weakness in a particular app known to be used by a particular person. Such scenarios are strongly hinted at in a 2010 NSA presentation, provided by agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and published last year in The New York Times, Pro Publica, and The Guardian. That presentation stated that smartphone monitoring would be useful because it could lead to "additional exploitation" and the unearthing of "target knowledge/leads, location, [and] target technology."
The 2010 presentation, along with additional documents from Britain's intelligence service Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, showed that the intelligence agencies were aggressively ramping up their efforts to see into the world of mobile apps. But the specifics of how they might distill useful information from the torrent of internet packets to and from smartphones remained unclear.
Encrypting Data in Transit
The BADASS slides fill in some of these blanks. They appear to have been presented in 2011 at the highly secretive SIGDEV intelligence community conference. The presentation states that "analytics firm Flurry estimates that 250,000 Motorola Droid phones were sold in the United States during the phone's first week in stores," and asks, "how do they know that?"

The answer is that during the week in question, Flurry uploaded to its own servers analytics from Droid phones on behalf of app developers, one phone at a time, and stored the analytics in their own databases. Analytics includes any information that is available to the app and that can conceivably help improve it, including, in certain instances with Flurry, the user's age and gender, physical location, how long they left the app open, and a unique identifier for the phone, according to Flurry materials included in the BADASS document.

By searching these databases, the company was able to get a count of Droid phones running Flurry-enabled apps and, by extrapolating, estimate the total number of Droids in circulation. The company can find similar information about any smartphone that their analytics product supports.
Not only was Flurry vacuuming sensitive data up to its servers, it was doing so insecurely. When a smartphone app collects data about the device it's running on and sends it back to a tracking company, it generally uses the HTTP protocol, and Flurry-enabled apps were no exception. But HTTP is inherently insecure-eavesdroppers can easily spy on the entire digital conversation.
If the tracking data was always phoned home using the HTTPS protocol-the same as the HTTP protocol, except that the stream of traffic between the phone and the server is encrypted-then the ability for spy agencies to collect tracking data with programs like BADASS would be severely impeded.

Yahoo, which acquired the analytics firm Flurry in late 2014, says that since acquiring the company they have "implemented default encryption between Flurry-enabled applications and Flurry servers. The 2010 report in question does not apply to current versions of Flurry's analytics product." Given that Yahoo acquired Flurry so recently, it's unclear how many apps still use Flurry's older tracking code that sends unencrypted data back to Yahoo's servers. (Yahoo declined to elaborate specifically on that topic.)

The BADASS slides also use Google's advertisement network AdMob as an example of intercepted, unencrypted data. Free smartphone apps are often supported by ads, and if the app uses AdMob then it sends some identifying information to AdMob's servers while loading the ad. Google currently supports the ability for app developers to turn on HTTPS for ad requests, however it's clear that only some AdMob users actually do this.

When asked about HTTPS support for AdMob, a Google spokesperson said, "We continue our ongoing efforts to encrypt all Google products and services."

In addition to Yahoo's Flurry and Google's AdMob, the BADASS presentation also shows that British and Canadian intelligence were targeting Mobclix, Mydas, Medialets, and MSN Mobile Advertising. But it's clear that any mobile-related plaintext traffic from any company is a potential target. While the BADASS presentation focuses on traffic from analytics and ad companies, it also shows spying on Google Maps heartbeat traffic, and capturing "beacons" sent out when apps are first opened (listing Qriously, Com2Us, Fluentmobile, and Papayamobile as examples). The BADASS presentation also mentions capturing GPS coordinates that get leaked when opening BlackBerry's app store.

In a boilerplate statement, GCHQ said, "It is longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters. Furthermore, all of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight." Its Canadian counterpart, Communications Security Establishment Canada, or CSEC, responded with a statement that read, in part, "For reasons of national security, CSE cannot comment on its methods, techniques or capabilities. CSE conducts foreign intelligence and cyber defence activities in compliance with Canadian law."

Julia Angwin, who has doggedly investigated online privacy issues as a journalist and author, most recently of the book "Dragnet Nation," explains that "every type of unique identifier that passes [over the internet] unencrypted is giving away information about users to anyone who wants it," and that "the evidence is clear that it's very risky to be throwing unique identifiers out there in the clear. Anyone can grab them. This is more evidence that no one should be doing that."
Building Haystacks to Search for Needles
The BADASS program was created not merely to track advertising and analytic data but to solve a much bigger problem: There is an overwhelming amount of smartphone tracking data being collected by intelligence agencies, and it's difficult to make sense of.
First there are the major platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. On each platform, a range of hardware and platform versions are in use. Additionally, app stores are overflowing; new apps that track people get released every day. Old apps constantly get updated to track people in different ways, and people use different versions of apps for different platforms all at once. Adding to the diversity, there are several different ad and analytics companies that app developers use, and when those companies send tracking data back to their servers, they use a wide variety of formats.
With such an unwieldy haystack of data, GCHQ and CSEC, started the BADASS program, according to the presentation, to find the needles: information that can uniquely identify people and their devices, such as smartphone identifiers, tracking cookies, and other unique strings, as well as personally identifying information like GPS coordinates and email addresses.
BADASS is an an acryonym that stands for BEGAL Automated Deployment And Survey System. (It is not clear what "BEGAL" stands for, in turn.) The slideshow presentation is called "Mobile apps doubleheader: BADASS Angry Birds," and promises "protocols exploitation in a rapidly changing world."

Exploiting Protocols in a Rapidly Changing World

Analysts are able to write BADASS "rules" that look for specific types of tracking information as it travels across the internet.
For example, when someone opens an app that loads an ad, their phone normally sends an unencrypted web request (called an HTTP request) to the ad network's servers. If this request gets intercepted by spy agencies and fed into the BADASS program, it then gets filtered through each rule to see if one applies to the request. If it finds a match, BADASS can then automatically pull out the juicy information.
In the following slide, the information that is potentially available in a single HTTP request to load an ad includes which platform the ad is being loaded on (Android, iOS, etc.), the unique identifier of the device, the IMEI number which cell towers use to identify phones that try to connect to them, the name and version of the operating system that's running, the model of the device, and latitude and longitude location data.

Similar information is sent across the internet in HTTP requests in several different formats depending on what company it's being sent to, what device it's running on, and what version of the ad or analytics software is being used. Because this is constantly changing, analysts can write their own BADASS rules to capture all of the permutations they can find.

The following slide shows part of the BADASS user interface, and a partial list of rules.

The slideshow includes a section called "Abusing BADASS for Fun and Profit" which goes into detail about the methodology analysts use to write new BADASS rules.

By looking at intercepted HTTP traffic and writing rules to parse it, analysts can quickly gather as much information as possibly from leaky smartphone apps. One slide states: "Creativity, iterative testing, domain knowledge, and the right tools can help us target multiple platforms in a very short time period."
Privacy Policies That Don't Deliver
The slides also appear to mock the privacy promises of ad and analytics companies.
Companies that collect usage statistics about software often insist that the data is anonymous because they don't include identifying information such as names, phone numbers, and email addresses of the users that they're tracking. But in reality, sending unique device identifiers, IP addresses, IMEI numbers, and GPS coordinates of devices is far from anonymous.
In one slide, the phrase "anonymous usage statistics" appears in conspicuous quotation marks. The spies are well aware that despite not including specific types of information, the data they collect from leaky smartphone apps is enough for them to uniquely identify their targets.

The following slides show a chunk of Flurry's privacy policy (at this point it has been replaced by Yahoo's privacy policy), which states what information it collects from devices and how it believes this is anonymous.

The red box, which is present in the original slides, highlights this part: "None of this information can identify the individual. No names, phone numbers, email addresses, or anything else considered personally identifiable information is ever collected."

Clearly the intelligence services disagree.

"Commercial surveillance often appears very benign," Angwin says. "The reason Flurry exists is not to 'spy on people' but to help people learn who's using their apps. But what we've also seen through Snowden revelations is that spy agencies seek to use that for their own purposes."

The Web has the Exact Same Problems

While the BADASS program is specifically designed to target smartphone traffic, websites suffer from these exact same problems, and in many cases they're even worse.
Websites routinely include bits of tracking code from several different companies for ads, analytics, and other behavioral tracking. This, combined with the lack of HTTPS, turns your web browser into a surveillance device that follows you around, even if you switch networks or use proxy servers.

In other words, while the BADASS presentation may be four years old, and while it's been a year and a half since Snowden's leaks began educating technology companies and users about the massive privacy threats they face, the big privacy holes exploited by BADASS remain a huge problem.

The limits of the NSA

Can encryption protect you and your data? That's the question explored by Der Spiegel in its analysis of the latest release of Snowden documents.
The German publication argues that there are easily-available and effective strategies for the average internet user who, as a matter of principle, demands privacy. Intriguingly, the myth of NSA infallibility may stop many people from using these measures.
We tell ourselves "Why bother?" and neglect to protect ourselves.
The NSA monitors internet traffic day and night. In doing so, the agency faces a variety of challenges ranging from "trivial" to "catastrophic." Listening in on your Facebook chats is trivial. Scooping up email routed through a Russian mail service -- like the one used by your humble host -- is a "moderate" challenge. (Well, at least it isn't trivial.)

Things first become troublesome at the fourth level. The presentation states that the NSA encounters "major" problems in its attempts to decrypt messages sent through heavily encrypted email service providers like Zoho or in monitoring users of the Tor network*, which was developed for surfing the web anonymously. Tor, otherwise known as The Onion Router, is free and open source software that allows users to surf the web through a network of more than 6,000 linked volunteer computers. The software automatically encrypts data in a way that ensures that no single computer in the network has all of a user's information. For surveillance experts, it becomes very difficult to trace the whereabouts of a person who visits a particular website or to attack a specific person while they are using Tor to surf the Web.
Hmmm.
Ever since the Snowden documents came out, we've heard conflicting reports about the challenge posed by Tor. In an earlier post, we discussed the anti-Tor tactics employed by the NSA -- including an app amusingly named MJOLNIR.

To your left, you will see the NSA's idea of what a terrorist looks like when he's using Tor. You can tell he's a terrorist because he has a long beard. If you grow a beard you can be a terrorist too! But you'll also need a little domino mask and a shirt that tells the world you're an expendable Star Trek crewmember.
As we noted earlier, the NSA has made Tor a prime target. But there's a huge problem here, because the NSA keeps insisting that they are focused on foreigners, not domestic targets. Tor -- by its very nature -- disguises the origin of data. The NSA cannot possibly know from the start who is saying what to whom, since bits and pieces of data are routed all over the world.
Although Tor still seems to be a good option, it is not the most effective way to foil the lads and lasses of No Such Agency.

Things become "catastrophic" for the NSA at level five - when, for example, a subject uses a combination of Tor, another anonymization service, the instant messaging system CSpace and a system for Internet telephony (voice over IP) called ZRTP. This type of combination results in a "near-total loss/lack of insight to target communications, presence," the NSA document states.
ZRTP, which is used to securely encrypt conversations and text chats on mobile phones, is used in free and open source programs like RedPhone and Signal. "It's satisfying to know that the NSA considers encrypted communication from our apps to be truly opaque," says RedPhone developer Moxie Marlinspike.
If you are a congressperson and you want to be able to talk to a lover without fear of blackmail from the conservatives (who undoubtedly work with the NSA), check out RedPhone!
This Der Spiegel article has a lot more to say; we should take a further look at it later.
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Internet privacy bulletin, 2015

Old News ;-)

[Dec 22, 2015] Orwells Nightmare Is Here - China Just Gamified Obedience To The State (And Soon Itll Be Mandatory)

That's something new and pretty Orwelian : computerized score of "political correctness" made similar for FICO score and based on data about you in social media.

Notable quotes:

"... "Imagine the social pressure against disobedience or dissent that this will create." ..."

"... "very ambitious in scope, including scrutinizing individual behavior and what books people read. It's Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist." ..."

"... "Coming soon to a New World Order near you: social credit! Earn points by behaving like the government wants you to behave! Get penalized if you don't act like a doubleplusgood citizen! What could be more fun?" ..."

"... Applying for a passport? Buy my book and learn how to boost your patriotism score by 400 points in 6 months! We can even give you a spambot to do the work for you! ..."

"... At this point, any good developer can write a program that reads Twitter/Facebook/Renren/WeChat feeds, gives the posts to IBM's Watson (or some simpler algorithm), and have the program spit out a score. And this program would take at most a month to make. I know, I write similar stuff ;) ..."

"... What scares me is how the initial assumptions that go into querying data can give you radically different results at the end, and these intelligence agencies do not exactly explain what methods they are using to determine who is a 'bad guy.' ..."

"... Patriot Points. ..."

"... Digital will end up being our worse nightmare and our undoing. It is the Perfect tool for the crazed sociopaths around us and the insane psychopaths that want to control our every breath (literally). ..."

"... The social networks are piped right into governments security complex. ..."

Dec 22, 2015 | Zero Hedge

[Dec 17, 2015] Please Don't Shut Down the Internet, Donald Trump

[Dec 16, 2015] Congress just revived the surveillance state in the name of cybersecurity

Notable quotes:

"... Whistleblower: "Every Time There Is a Terrorist Attack, What We Really Need to Do Is Demand that They CUT the Budgets of All the Intelligence Agencies" - William Binney ..."

Dec 16, 2015 | The Guardian

[Dec 09, 2015] Are Windows and OS X malware

May 26, 2015 | ITworld

[Dec 06, 2015] Smartphone Secrets [Must Watch] - YouTube

The dangers of selling you old phone. The advice of experts is never cell you old smart phone.

[Dec 06, 2015] Detecting And Removing Cell Phone Spyware

Old school phones are much safer bet...

[Dec 06, 2015] How to tell if your cell phone has spyware on it

Factory reset might help in case you have something suspicious. Attention to checking your bills is also very important.

[Dec 06, 2015] Richard Stallman Freedom In your computer and in the net - YouTube

Some thought of RMS about modern situation software spying on users.

[Nov 12, 2015] The Emperor Has No Clothes and Nobody Cares

[Nov 06, 2015] Facebook Revenue Surges 41%, as Mobile Advertising and Users Keep Growing

In after Snowden world, is this a testament that most smartphone users are idiots, or what ?

Notable quotes:

"... The company said mobile advertising in the third quarter accounted for a colossal 78 percent of its ad revenue, up from 66 percent a year ago. ..."

"... ... ... ... ..."

Nov 06, 2015 | The New York Time

[Nov 06, 2015] How Firefox's New Private Mode Trumps Chrome's Incognito

11/05/15 | Observer

[Nov 06, 2015] Wikileaks' Hacked Stratfor Emails Shed Light on Feds Using License Plate Readers

Oct 01, 2015 | observer.com

[Nov 06, 2015] An Entire City Trolled NSA Spies Using an Art Project

Notable quotes:

"... This created an open communication network, meaning that with the use of any wifi-enabled device, anyone could send anything (text messages, voice calls, photos and files) anonymously for those listening to hear. ..."

"... "If people are spying on us, it stands to reason that they have ..."

"... To no surprise, there was a ton of trolling. ..."

[Nov 05, 2015] This 19th-Century Invention Could Keep You From Being Hacked

Just typing your correspondence on disconnected from internet computer and pointing it on connected via USB printer is enough. Or better writing letter using regular pen.

[Nov 04, 2015] Surveillance Q A: what web data is affected – and how to foil the snoopers

Notable quotes:

"... The government is attempting to push into law the ability for law enforcement agencies to be able to look at 12 months of what they are calling "internet connection records", limited to the website domains that UK internet users visit. ..."

"... It does not cover specific pages: so police and spies will not be able to access that level of detail. That means they would know that a person has spent time on the Guardian website, but not what article they read. ..."

"... In using a VPN you are placing all your trust in the company that operates the VPN to both secure your data and repel third parties from intercepting your connection. A VPN based in the UK may also be required to keep a log of your browsing history in the same way an ISP would. ..."

[Nov 02, 2015] The Fatal Blindness of Unrealistic Expectations

Notable quotes:

"... Snowden revealed some outrageous practices and constitutional abuses and the Obama administration - yes the same one that has not managed to bring a single criminal charge against a single senior banker - wants to charge Snowden with espionage. ..."

"... The fact is that Mr Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the US government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them." ..."

[Oct 28, 2015] The Senate, ignorant on cybersecurity, just passed a bill about it anyway

Notable quotes:

"... a spying bill that essentially carves a giant hole in all our privacy laws and allows tech and telecom companies to hand over all sorts of private information to intelligence agencies without any court process whatsoever. ..."

"... Make no mistake: Congress has passed a surveillance bill in disguise, with no evidence it'll help our security. ..."

"... They were counting on nobody paying much attention. Didnt you hear somebody got killed on Walking Dead? Whos got time to talk about boring nonsense like a Congressional bill? ..."

"... Inverse totalitarianism. Read Sheldon Wolin. Were sliding down the slippery slope. ..."

"... On Tuesday afternoon, the Senate voted 74 to 21 to pass a version of CISA that roughly mirrors legislation passed in the House earlier this year, paving the way for some combined version of the security bill to become law. ..."

[Oct 24, 2015] Snowden NSA, GCHQ Using Your Phone to Spy on Others (and You)

Notable quotes:

"... the most part intelligence agencies are not really looking to monitor your private phone communications per se. They are actually taking over full control of the phone to take photos or record ongoing conversations within earshot. ..."

"... Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com . ..."

Oct 15, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

[Oct 21, 2015] CIA chief's emails exposed Key things we learned from WikiLeaks' Brennan dump

Notable quotes:

"... "enhanced interrogation" ..."

"... Some of the techniques Bond suggested that Congress ban included: forcing the detainee to be naked; forcing them to perform sexual acts; waterboarding; inducing hypothermia; conducting mock executions; and depriving detainees of food, water, or medical care. ..."

"... "Limitations on Interrogation Techniques Act of 2008." ..."

"... The bill prohibited the use of many of the same techniques listed in the previous document, though it was not passed. Ultimately, President Obama issued an executive order banning officials from using techniques not in the Army Field Manual. ..."

Oct 21, 2015 | RT USA

[Oct 21, 2015] The CIA director was hacked by a 13-year-old, but he still wants your data

Notable quotes:

"... With a properly run service provider, neither the helpdesk drones nor the admin staff should be able to see any user's password, which should be safely stored in an encrypted form. ..."

"... Lets be clear: it is very hard to see how blanket surveillance of American citizens is beneficial to American citizens. It tips over the power balance between government and citizen - it is undemocratic. It is unAmerican. ..."

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