UNPRIVATE eCITIZENS

reposted from here

Confident In The Security Of Skype 

And Other Encrypted Services?

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, et al. get to know practically everything about us over time. But unlike humans, their servers never forget, and data mining tools only get better. Advertisers, ID thieves, insurance companies, employers, whoever, and of course law enforcement are trying to get their hands on this data. Each in its own way. But law enforcement—we use the term loosely because we’re talking about countries around the world—can simply bully its way to the data.

Now Microsoft has suddenly decided to “respect human rights and the principles of free expression and privacy” and display a “commitment to transparency,” as it wrote, under pressure from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and coalition partners (letter). And so it joined Google, Twitter, and others in disclosing not what kind of voluminous user data it collects or which companies and affiliates have access to it, but how many law enforcement requests for user data it received.

Hence its new—and all cynicism aside, laudable—2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report. But Microsoft obfuscates about how often it gives out cryptographic secrets that would open up even encrypted user content to governments around the world.

Microsoft has operations in more than 100 countries but only surrenders data in those 46 where it has “the ability to validate the lawfulness of the request.” Hmmm. So it received 70,665 law enforcement requests or court orders worldwide, potentially impacting 122,015 users of its Internet and cloud services, such as Hotmail/Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Xbox LIVE, Microsoft Account, Messenger, and Office 365. Of them 11,073 and 24,565 respectively in the US.

Its subsidiary Skype, which is headquartered in Luxembourg and operates “pursuant to Luxembourg law,” received 4,713 requests, impacting 15,409 accounts. Of them, 1,154 and 4,814 respectively in the US, processed through Luxembourg.

In 18% of the requests, Microsoft didn’t disclose any customer data. In 2.2% of the requests, it disclosed everything, texts of emails, photos, encrypted documents stored on SkyDrive, etc. In the US, that would involve a judge. And in 79.8% of the cases, Microsoft only disclosed “non-content” data, that is, e-mail address, name, gender, age, IP, and so on. Innocuous stuff. These requests don’t involve a judge. But....

Microsoft dove into its encrypted services, including Skype, with a warning, “no communication method is 100% secure,” followed by a list of ways in which the encryption of Skype and other services could be compromised. But Microsoft was skillfully vague about a crucial issue: what else was included in that innocuous category of “non-content” data? Crypto keys?

They would allow a government that obtained them to open the encryption and get whatever data was there or listen to the conversation on Skype, for example. Were they considered “content” and thus part of the 2.2% that would require a judge? Or were they considered “non-content,” like gender, and thus part of the 79.8% that would not require a judge?

Experts weighed int. As the EFF pointed out, Christopher Soghoian, Principal Technologist and a Senior Policy Analyst with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the ACLU, is worried. “Microsoft’s response on Skype is very carefully worded,” he wrote. “Leakage of crypto keys would, as phrased, not be considered release of content.”

Hence, it would fall into the “non-content” category. Like gender. Yet whoever gets the crypto keys gets everything. So those among the 600 million Skype users who still have the illusory confidence that their conversations and messages are secure have another reason to doubt it ... in the 46 countries where Microsoft might routinely disclose crypto keys to “law enforcement.”

The transparency report also included information on the number of National Security Letters Microsoft received since 2009. These NSLs are the nasty product of a provision in the notorious and bi-partisan Patriot Act that President Obama signed instead of vetoing it. With an NSL, the FBI can force a company in secret and without any prior judicial review to disclose private communications, data, and Internet activity of regular Americans. At the same time, an NSL gags the company and prevents it from even mentioning the existence of the NSL.

Last week, a federal judge in San Francisco found them unconstitutional and ordered the FBI to stop issuing them—an Order now on hold, pending appeal.

These NSLs are so tricky that Microsoft had to tiptoe into disclosing how many it had issued: “Pursuant to approval from the government,” it was only allowed to say that it had received between 1,000 and 1,999 NSLs affecting 3,000 to 3,999 accounts in 2011, and 0 to 999 NSLs affecting 1,000 to 1,999 accounts in 2012. That’s how secretive they are.

Every company we interact with accumulates information on us and stores it to be used and abused, sold, traded, or stolen. We accept it because alternatives, if we want to lead a modern life, are limited. Yet, we get the willies knowing that governments, ours or a foreign one, can get access to some of this information as well. Of course there are differences. For example, a company is less likely to rain missiles down on us from the latest and greatest drone while we’re surfing some non-mainstream-media macro site.

Desperate to halt its stock’s dismal slide since going public, Facebook has increasingly sought new ways to make more money and prove its worth. And so, as the builder of the largest “Big Data” treasure trove in history, Facebook is selling marketers and shady characters veiled access to its users’ deepest secrets. Read.... Outed By Facebook For Profit

EXPERIENCES 4 RIYADH : REASSESSMENT OF PAST KNOWLEDGE A MUST

Riyadh. The capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Arab metropolis virtually in the middle of the burning Arabian desert, is undergoing a massive transformation with hundreds of huge construction-public and private-projects underway. 

A striking example is the new financial city, a vast complex of futuristic skyscrapers being build out of steel, concrete and glass that makes you forget that you are in the middle of the desert, but the desert and the associated complex weather elements are still out there. The hectic expansion of the city's perimeter towards all sides deep into the desert, always an alien and harsh environment for human life, requires a better awareness, reassessment, and utilization of the local traditional architectural solutions that worked for thousands of years tweaked to modern realities, and  the integration of the collective global experience of others facing similar daunting tasks...

SCARY STUFF....ORWELL'S BANK

This is your wallet.
It tells a story.
 (Actually more than A story. A lot of stories).
What you buy.
Who you love.
What you keep close.
Oooooooh boy....

ORWELL'S TOY LAND...

full article and reposted from here /αναδημοσίευση απο εδώ

Emptywheel notes in a post entitled “The OTHER Assault on the Fourth Amendment in the NDAA? Drones at Your Airport?”:

***

As the map above makes clear–taken from this 2010 report–DOD [the Department of Defense] plans to have drones all over the country by 2015.

Many police departments are also using drones to spy on us. As the Hill reported:

At least 13 state and local police agencies around the country have used drones in the field or in training, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group. The Federal Aviation Administration has predicted that by the end of the decade, 30,000 commercial and government drones could be flying over U.S. skies.

***

“Drones should only be used if subject to a powerful framework that regulates their use in order to avoid abuse and invasions of privacy,” Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said during a congressional forum in Texas last month.

He argued police should only fly drones over private property if they have a warrant, information collected with drones should be promptly destroyed when it’s no longer needed and domestic drones should not carry any weapons.

He argued that drones pose a more serious threat to privacy than helicopters because they are cheaper to use and can hover in the sky for longer periods of time.

A congressional report earlier this year predicted that drones could soon be equipped with technologies to identify faces or track people based on their height, age, gender and skin color.

Even without drones, Americans are the most spied on people in world history:

The American government is collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email,  text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information,  employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American. [And see this.]

Some also claim that the government is also using facial recognition software and surveillance cameras to track where everyone is going.  Moreover, cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And – given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google – it would be child’s play for the government to track your location that way.)    Your iPhone, or other brand of smartphone is spying onvirtually everything you do  (ProPublica notes: “That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker“).

As the top spy chief at the U.S. National Security Agency explained this week, the American government is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and 20 trillion communications of all types per year.

He says that the government has collected all of the communications of congressional leaders, generals and everyone else in the U.S. for the last 10 years.

He further explains that he set up the NSA’s system so that all of the information would automatically be encrypted, so that the government had to obtain a search warrant based upon probably cause before a particular suspect’s communications could be decrypted.  [He specifically did this to comply with the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.] But the NSA now collects all data in an unencrypted form, so that no probable cause is needed to view any citizen’s information.  He says that it is actually cheaper and easier to store the data in an encrypted format: so the government’s current system is being done for political – not practical – purposes.

He says that if anyone gets on the government’s “enemies list”, then the stored information will be used to target them. Specifically, he notes that if the government decides it doesn’t like someone, it analyzes all of the data it has collected on that person and his or her associates over the last 10 years to build a case against him.

Wired reports:

Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations….

The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases ….

The IP audio-video systems can be accessed remotely via a built-in web server (.pdf), and can be combined with GPS data to track the movement of buses and passengers throughout the city.

***

The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time, but are also stored onboard in blackbox-like devices, generally for 30 days, for later retrieval. Four to six cameras with mics are generally installed throughout a bus, including one near the driver and one on the exterior of the bus.

***

Privacy and security expert Ashkan Soltani told the Daily that the audio could easily be coupled with facial recognition systems or audio recognition technology to identify passengers caught on the recordings.

RT notes:

Street lights that can spy installed in some American cities

America welcomes a new brand of smart street lightning systems: energy-efficient, long-lasting, complete with LED screens to show ads. They can also spy on citizens in a way George Orwell would not have imagined in his worst nightmare.

With a price tag of $3,000+ apiece, according to an ABC report, the street lights are now being rolled out in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh, and may soon mushroom all across the country.

Part of the Intellistreets systems made by the company Illuminating Concepts, they havea number of “homeland security applications” attached.

Each has a microprocessor “essentially similar to an iPhone,” capable ofwireless communication. Each can capture images and count people for the police through a digital camera, record conversations of passers-by and even give voice commands thanks to a built-in speaker.

Ron Harwood, president and founder of Illuminating Concepts, says he eyed the creation of such a system after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He is“working with Homeland Security” to deliver his dream of making people “more informed and safer.”

Fox news notes that the government is insisting that “black boxes” be installed in cars to track your location.

The TSA has moved way past airports, trains and sports stadiums, and is deploying mobile scanners to spy on people all over the place.  This means that traveling within the United States is no longer a private affair.  (And they’re probably bluffing, but the Department of Homeland Security claims they will soon be able to know your adrenaline level, what you ate for breakfast and what you’re thinking … from 164 feet away.)

And Verizon has applied for a patent that would allow your television to track what you are doing, who you are with, what objects you’re holding, and what type of mood you’re in.  Given Verizon and other major carriers responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011, such information would not be kept private.  (And some folks could be spying on you through your tv using existing technology.)

Of course, widespread spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this). So the whole “post-9/11 reality” argument falls flat.

And the spying isn’t being done to keep us safe … but to crush dissent and to smear people who uncover unflattering this about the government … and to help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses (and here).

In addition, the ACLU published a map in 2006 showing that nearly two-thirds of the American public – 197.4 million people – live within a “constitution-free zone” within 100 miles of land and coastal borders:

The ACLU explained:

• Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.

• The border, however, has always been an exception.  There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply.  For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.”

• But what is “the border”?  According to the government, it  is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States.

• As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit.

• Border Patrol has been setting up checkpoints inland — on highways in states such as California, Texas and Arizona, and at ferry terminals in Washington State. Typically, the agents ask drivers and passengers about their citizenship.  Unfortunately, our courts so far have permitted these kinds of checkpoints – legally speaking, they are “administrative” stops that are permitted only for the specific purpose of protecting the nation’s borders.  They cannot become general drug-search or other law enforcement efforts.

• However, these stops by Border Patrol agents are not remaining confined to that border security purpose.  On the roads of California and elsewhere in the nation – places far removed from the actual border – agents are stopping, interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing.

• The bottom line is that the extraordinary authorities that the government possesses at the border are spilling into regular American streets.

Computer World reports today:

Border agents don’t need probable cause and they don’t need a stinking warrant since they don’t need to prove any reasonable suspicion first. Nor, sadly, do two out of three people have First Amendment protection; it is as if DHS has voided those Constitutional amendments and protections they provide to nearly 200 million Americans.

***

Don’t be silly by thinking this means only if you are physically trying to cross the international border. As we saw when discussing the DEA using license plate readers and data-mining to track Americans movements, the U.S. “border” stretches out 100 miles beyond the true border. Godfather Politics added:

But wait, it gets even better!  If you live anywhere in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey or Rhode Island, DHS says the search zones encompass the entire state.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have a “longstanding constitutional and statutory authority permitting suspicionless and warrantless searches of merchandise at the border and its functional equivalent.” This applies to electronic devices, according to the recent CLCR “Border Searches of Electronic Devices” executive summary [PDF]:[...]

OOH BOY....

If you want to have an extramarital affair you better hurry up....

intel @ 2013

Video streaming by Ustream

SPACE X @ ELON MUSK

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The unmanned Dragon space capsule, built by the commercial spaceflight firm SpaceX, roared into space atop the company's Falcon 9 rocket from a launch pad here at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, beginning a three-day flight to the space station. Liftoff occurred at 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 Monday GMT).

The mission is the first of a dozen SpaceX cargo flights under a $1.6 billion deal with NASA for its Commercial Resupply Services program. This flight, being the first mission, is dubbed SpaceX CRS-1 and is expected to arrive at the orbiting lab on Wednesday morning, Oct. 10.

NASA space station program manager Mike Suffredini said Dragon's ability to launch supplies to the station and return cargo back to Earth is a cornerstone of boosting scientific research on the orbiting laboratory, as well as its day-to-day maintenance.

"Not to be overdramatic, but it's critical to the International Space Station," Suffredini said during the countdown to launch. [Photos: Dragon Launches on 1st Space Station Cargo Trip]

Sunday night's launch was nearly flawless. One of the Falcon 9 rocket nine engines apparently shut down unexpectedly during the ascent, but the booster's eight other engines compensated for the glitch and delivered the Dragon spacecraft into its intended orbit, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said after the flight. The rocket is designed to do exactly that in the event of an engine anomaly, she added.

An American spaceship rises

When NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011, it marked the first time in 30 years that the United States did not have an American spacecraft capable of flying missions to and from low-Earth orbit. NASA is relying on the availability of new private space taxis to deliver U.S. supplies, and ultimately astronauts, to the International Space Station.

Currently, the U.S. space agency depends on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry crews to the station, and sends cargo on various robotic spacecraft operated by space agencies in Russia, Japan and Europe. But those unmanned space freighters are not designed to return science experiments and other station gear back to Earth. Instead, the spacecraft are disposed of in Earth's atmosphere by burning up during re-entry.

That is where Dragon stands out.

The gumdrop-shaped spacecraft is designed not only to haul cargo to the International Space Station but also to return hardware and experiments back to Earth. Under its terms with NASA, SpaceX has pledged to launch at least 20 metric tons of supplies to the space station during its 12-flight deal.

Dragon in flight

In May, the Hawthorne, Calif.–based SpaceX launched a test flight to the station using a different Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule to prove that it was ready to begin making bona fide supply runs. The demonstration was a success, paving the way for Sunday night's launch.

"Every time we fly, we learn something," Shotwell said before launch. "We're a launch company; I'm excited every time we get to launch."

For the first operational Dragon cargo mission to the station, SpaceX and NASA packed the capsule with more than 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) of supplies, food and other vital gear for the station's current three-person Expedition 33 crew. Those supplies include a special delivery of ice cream for the astronauts, a late addition packed as a special treat.

The Dragon capsule will pull up to the station on Wednesday and be grappled by astronauts using the outpost's robotic arm so it can be attached to an available docking port. After nearly three weeks at the space station, Dragon will undock for a planned Oct. 28 splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California, where it will be retrieved by a SpaceX recovery crew. [6 Fun Facts About SpaceX's Dragon Spacecraft]

The space station's three-person crew watched SpaceX's smooth Dragon launch live via a video feed beamed up by flight controllers. At the time of launch, the station was sailing 225 miles above Tasmania, NASA officials said. 

"We are ready to grab Dragon!" the station's commander, U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams, radioed down to Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston along with congratulations for the SpaceX team.

NASA also confirmed today that a piece of space junk that will fly near the station Monday won't interfere with the crew's work preparing for Dragon's arrival, agency officials said.

The Dragon capsule is expected to return more than 2,000 pounds (907 kg) of science experiment results and station hardware so they can be studied or — in the case of the hardware — upgraded or repaired, station managers said.

SpaceX's Dragon capsules are 14.4 feet tall (4.4 meters) and about 12 feet wide (3.6 m). They rely on two solar panels for power, making them the first American solar-powered spacecraft to visit the International Space Station.

SpaceX has also received NASA funding to develop a manned version of Dragon as part of the agency's private space taxi efforts. Building a vehicle capable of carrying astronauts into space has long been a goal of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who founded the company in 2002.

Shotwell said SpaceX expects to be ready to fly astronauts on Dragon spacecraft by 2015.

SpaceX is one of two companies with a NASA contract to provide unmanned cargo delivery flights to the space station. The other firm is the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., which has a $1.9 billion deal for at least eight resupply flights to the station using its new Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft. Unlike Dragon, Orbital's Cygnus is not designed to return supplies to Earth.

The first Antares rocket test flight is expected later this year from a launch site in Virginia. 

more on space x here and here.
 more on Elon Musk here and here