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Paul Merrell

AT&T ups the ante in speech recognition | Signal Strength - CNET News - 2 views

  • It's developed a core technology platform, known as Watson, which is a cloud-based system of services that not only identifies words but interprets meaning and context to deliver more accurate results. The system itself is built on servers that model and compare speech to recorded voices. Watson is an evolving platform that with more data is able to adapt and learn so that it continues to improve accuracy and also cross reference data to use speech as input for getting to all kinds of communication and data. "We are really on the cusp of a technology revolution in speech and language technology," said Mazin Gilbert, executive director of speech and language technology at AT&T Labs. "It's no longer about simply trying to get the words right. It's about adding intelligence to interpret what is being said and then using that to apply to other modes of communication, such as text or video."
  • The system is designed to get more accurate over time as it learns the speech patterns of large numbers of users.
Paul Merrell

Google Says Website Encryption Will Now Influence Search Rankings - 0 views

  • Google will begin using website encryption, or HTTPS, as a ranking signal – a move which should prompt website developers who have dragged their heels on increased security measures, or who debated whether their website was “important” enough to require encryption, to make a change. Initially, HTTPS will only be a lightweight signal, affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, says Google. That means that the new signal won’t carry as much weight as other factors, including the quality of the content, the search giant noted, as Google means to give webmasters time to make the switch to HTTPS. Over time, however, encryption’s effect on search ranking make strengthen, as the company places more importance on website security. Google also promises to publish a series of best practices around TLS (HTTPS, is also known as HTTP over TLS, or Transport Layer Security) so website developers can better understand what they need to do in order to implement the technology and what mistakes they should avoid. These tips will include things like what certificate type is needed, how to use relative URLs for resources on the same secure domain, best practices around allowing for site indexing, and more.
  • In addition, website developers can test their current HTTPS-enabled website using the Qualys Lab tool, says Google, and can direct further questions to Google’s Webmaster Help Forums where the company is already in active discussions with the broader community. The announcement has drawn a lot of feedback from website developers and those in the SEO industry – for instance, Google’s own blog post on the matter, shared in the early morning hours on Thursday, is already nearing 1,000 comments. For the most part, the community seems to support the change, or at least acknowledge that they felt that something like this was in the works and are not surprised. Google itself has been making moves to better securing its own traffic in recent months, which have included encrypting traffic between its own servers. Gmail now always uses an encrypted HTTPS connection which keeps mail from being snooped on as it moves from a consumer’s machine to Google’s data centers.
  • While HTTPS and site encryption have been a best practice in the security community for years, the revelation that the NSA has been tapping the cables, so to speak, to mine user information directly has prompted many technology companies to consider increasing their own security measures, too. Yahoo, for example, also announced in November its plans to encrypt its data center traffic. Now Google is helping to push the rest of the web to do the same.
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    The Internet continues to harden in the wake of the NSA revelations. This is a nice nudge by Google.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Hard drive encryption in Linux | Linux User & Developer - the Linux and FOSS mag for a ... - 0 views

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    "by Nitish Tiwari TrueCrypt is no more, but dm-crypt and LUKS are great open source options for setting up and using data encryption Follow @LinuxUserMag"
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    "by Nitish Tiwari TrueCrypt is no more, but dm-crypt and LUKS are great open source options for setting up and using data encryption Follow @LinuxUserMag"
Paul Merrell

The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle - 0 views

  • 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. The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania. In all, Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. Its motto is “Security to be Free.”
  • With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.
  • Leading privacy advocates and security experts say that the theft of encryption keys from major wireless network providers is tantamount to a thief obtaining the master ring of a building superintendent who holds the keys to every apartment. “Once you have the keys, decrypting traffic is trivial,” says Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The news of this key theft will send a shock wave through the security community.”
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  • According to one secret GCHQ slide, the British intelligence agency penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks, planting malware on several computers, giving GCHQ secret access. We “believe we have their entire network,” the slide’s author boasted about the operation against Gemalto. Additionally, the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companies’ core networks, giving it access to “sales staff machines for customer information and network engineers machines for network maps.” GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate the billing servers of cell companies to “suppress” charges in an effort to conceal the spy agency’s secret actions against an individual’s phone. Most significantly, GCHQ also penetrated “authentication servers,” allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications between a targeted individual’s phone and his or her telecom provider’s network. A note accompanying the slide asserted that the spy agency was “very happy with the data so far and [was] working through the vast quantity of product.”
  • The U.S. and British intelligence agencies pulled off the encryption key heist in great stealth, giving them the ability to intercept and decrypt communications without alerting the wireless network provider, the foreign government or the individual user that they have been targeted. “Gaining access to a database of keys is pretty much game over for cellular encryption,” says Matthew Green, a cryptography specialist at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. The massive key theft is “bad news for phone security. Really bad news.”
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    Remember all those NSA claims that no evidence of their misbehavior has emerged? That one should never take wing again. Monitoring call content without the involvement of any court? Without a warrant? Without probable cause?  Was there even any Congressional authorization?  Wiretapping unequivocally requires a judicially-approved search warrant. It's going to be very interesting to learn the government's argument for this misconduct's legality. 
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

AT&T Is Happy To Remove Wireless Broadband Caps, But Only If You Sign Up For Its TV Ser... - 1 views

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    " According to a new company announcement, customers who sign up for both AT&T wireless service and AT&T U-Verse TV or DirecTV service can nab unlimited data for $100 per month, plus $40 per month for each additional device:"
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Rightscorp Threatens Every ISP in the United States - TorrentFreak [# ! Link Note...] - 1 views

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    " Andy on August 12, 2016 C: 54 Breaking Following a court win by its client BMG over Cox Communications this week, Rightscorp has issued an unprecedented warning to every ISP in the United States today. Boasting a five-year trove of infringement data against Internet users, Rightscorp warned ISPs that they can either cooperate or face the consequences."
Paul Merrell

'Manhunting Timeline' Further Suggests US Pressured Countries to Prosecute WikiLeaks Ed... - 0 views

  • An entry in something the government calls a “Manhunting Timeline” suggests that the United States pressured officials of countries around the world to prosecute WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, in 2010. The file—marked unclassified, revealed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept—is dated August 2010. Under the headline, “United States, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Iceland” – it states: The United States on 10 August urged other nations with forces in Afghanistan, including Australia, United Kingdom and Germany, to consider filing criminal charges against Julian Assange, founder of the rogue WikiLeaks Internet website and responsible for the unauthorized publication of over 70,000 classified documents covering the war in Afghanistan. The documents may have been provided to WikiLeaks by Army Private First Class Bradley Manning. The appeal exemplifies the start of an international effort to focus the legal element of national power upon non-state actor Assange and the human network that supports WikiLeaks. Another document—a top-secret page from an internal wiki—indicates there has been discussion in the NSA with the Threat Operations Center Oversight and Compliance (NOC) and Office of General Counsel (OGC) on the legality of designating WikiLeaks a “malicious foreign actor” and whether this would make it permissible to conduct surveillance on Americans accessing the website. “Can we treat a foreign server who stores or potentially disseminates leaked or stolen data on its server as a ‘malicious foreign actor’ for the purpose of targeting with no defeats?” Examples: WikiLeaks, thepiratebay.org). The NOC/OGC answered, “Let me get back to you.” (The page does not indicate if anyone ever got back to the NSA. And “defeats” essentially means protections.)
  • GCHQ, the NSA’s counterpart in the UK, had a program called “ANTICRISIS GIRL,” which could engage in “targeted website monitoring.” This means data of hundreds of users accessing a website, like WikiLeaks, could be collected. The IP addresses of readers and supporters could be monitored. The agency could even target the publisher if it had a public dropbox or submission system. NSA and GCHQ could also target the foreign “branches” of the hacktivist group, Anonymous. An answer to another question from the wiki entry involves the question, “Is it okay to query against a foreign server known to be malicious even if there is a possibility that US persons could be using it as well? Example: thepiratebay.org.” The NOC/OGC responded, “Okay to go after foreign servers which US people use also (with no defeats). But try to minimize to ‘post’ only for example to filter out non-pertinent information.” WikiLeaks is not an example in this question, however, if it was designated as a “malicious foreign actor,” then the NSA would do queries of American users.
  • Michael Ratner, a lawyer from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) who represents WikiLeaks, said on “Democracy Now!”, this shows he has every reason to fear what would happen if he set foot outside of the embassy. The files show some of the extent to which the US and UK have tried to destroy WikiLeaks. CCR added in a statement, “These NSA documents should make people understand why Julian Assange was granted diplomatic asylum, why he must be given safe passage to Ecuador, and why he must keep himself out of the hands of the United States and apparently other countries as well. These revelations only corroborate the expectation that Julian Assange is on a US target list for prosecution under the archaic “Espionage Act,” for what is nothing more than publishing evidence of government misconduct.” “These documents demonstrate that the political persecution of WikiLeaks is very much alive,”Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish former judge who now represents the group, told The Intercept. “The paradox is that Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks organization are being treated as a threat instead of what they are: a journalist and a media organization that are exercising their fundamental right to receive and impart information in its original form, free from omission and censorship, free from partisan interests, free from economic or political pressure.”
Gary Edwards

Windows XP: How end of support sparked one organisation's shift from Microsoft | ZDNet - 1 views

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    Good story of how a UK Company responded to Microsoft's announcement if XP end of life. After examining many alternatives, they settled on a ChromeBook-ChromeBox - Citrix solution. Most of the existing desktop hardware was repurposed as ChromeTops running Chrome Browser apps and Citrix XenDesktop for legacy data apps. excerpt/intro: "There are the XP diehards, and the Windows 7 and 8 migrators. But in a world facing up to the end of Windows XP support, one UK organisation belongs to another significant group - those breaking with Microsoft as their principal OS provider. Microsoft's end of routine security patching and software updates on 8 April helped push the London borough of Barking and Dagenham to a decision it might otherwise not have taken over the fate of its 3,500 Windows XP desktops and 800 laptops. "They were beginning to creak but they would have gone on for a while. It's fair to say if XP wasn't going out of life, we probably wouldn't be doing this now," Barking and Dagenham general manager IT Sheyne Lucock said. Around one-eighth of corporate Windows XP users are moving away from Microsoft, according to recent Tech Pro Research. Lucock said it had become clear that the local authority was locked into a regular Windows operating system refresh cycle that it could no longer afford. "If we just replaced all the Windows desktops with newer versions running a newer version of Windows, four years later we would have to do the same again and so on," he said. "So there was an inclination to try and do something different - especially as we know that with all the budget challenges that local government is going to be faced with, we're going to have to halve the cost of our ICT service over the next five years." Barking and Dagenham outsourced its IT in December 2010 to Elevate East London, which is a joint-venture between the council and services firm Agilisys. Lucock and systems architect Rupert Hay-Campbell are responsible for strategy, policy
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    Meanwhile, some organizations missed the end of life deadline and are now paying Microsoft for extended support. E.g., the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, which is still running 58,000 desktops on WinXP. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/irs-another-windows-xp-laggard-will-pay-microsoft-for-patches/
Paul Merrell

First Look Publishes Open Source Code To Advance Privacy, Security, and Journalism - Th... - 0 views

  • today we’re excited to contribute back to the open source community by launching First Look Code, the home for our own open source projects related to privacy, security, data, and journalism. To begin with, First Look Code is the new home for document sanitization software PDF Redact Tools, and we’ve launched a brand new anti-gag order project called AutoCanary.
  • AutoCanary A warrant canary is a regularly published statement that a company hasn’t received any legal orders that it’s not allowed to talk about, such as a national security letter. Canaries can help prevent web publishers from misleading visitors and prevent tech companies from misleading users when they share data with the government and are prevented from talking about it. One such situation arose — without a canary in place — in 2013, when the U.S. government sent Lavabit, a provider of encrypted email services apparently used by Snowden, a legal request to access Snowden’s email, thwarting some of the very privacy protections Lavabit had promised users. This request included a gag order, so the company was legally prohibited from talking about it. Rather than becoming “complicit in crimes against the American people,” in his words, Lavabit founder Ladar Levison, chose to shut down the service.
  • Warrant canaries are designed to help companies in this kind of situation. You can see a list of companies that publish warrant canary statements at Canary Watch. As of today, First Look Media is among the companies that publish canaries. We’re happy to announce the first version of AutoCanary, a desktop program for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux that makes the process of generating machine-readable, digitally-signed warrant canary statements simpler. Read more about AutoCanary on its new website.
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    The internet continues to fight back against the Dark State. On the unsettled nature of the law in regard to use of warrant canaries in the U.S. see EFF's faq: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq (it needs a test case).
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

How to use the NMAP Security Scanner on Linux - 1 views

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    "Nmap is a free and open source network discovery and security auditing utility that is widely used in the Linux users community as it is simple to use yet very powerful. Nmap works by sending data packets on a specific target (by IP) and by interpreting the incoming packets to determine what posts are open/closed, what services are running on the scanned system, whether firewalls or filters are set up and enabled, and finally what operation system is running. Those abilities are used for a wide variety of reasons and howtoforge.com is not encouraging nor suggesting the use of nmap for malicious purposes"
Paul Merrell

InternetNews Realtime IT News - Novell Turns ICE Into Kablink - 0 views

  • The newly-renamed project is being expanded with workflow capabilities that Novell hopes will expand business usage. The Kablink project is Novell's effort to grow the market for open source collaboration solutions, and chip away at the hold that Microsoft's Sharepoint commands among small business users.
  • "We have a system inside of Kablink that allows developers to create business objects and these business objects model data," McConnell explained. "Then with the model of the data you can pass it views for forms and displaying the business model. So you can model a business object and then add collaboration items for that object." With the Kablink release, workflow capability is being added to the ICEcore collaboration features. A business user can now create a business workflow for a process -- be it approval, development or otherwise and attach that workflow to the business objects.
  • "We think our offering is unique; there are point solutions that have workflow embedded in them but the kind of social networking collaboration that we do, I don't know anyone that has a workflow component that can do the things that we can," McConnell claimed. "There are customers that have designed ISO 9000 processes with this, so it's a nifty thing to have, especially in an open source project."
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    See the video demo of the enterprise version at http://www.novell.com/products/teaming/demo.html Sourceforge project home page at http://sourceforge.net/projects/icecore/ Project home page at http://www.icecoreopen.org/ Reading related materials. This is open source crippleware. Enterprise version has features unavailable in open source version. Open source version packaged for SuSE, RHEL, and Windows, but clients only for Windows and SuSE (seems somewhat odd since the demo shows it running in Firefox). License is CPAL. Intra-corporate politics afoot? Seems like an X/K/Ubuntu package would be a natural for the Kablink product itself and drive uptake. OTOH, this is a new acquisition for Novell, so packaging may reflect what was done before Novell acquired. A lot of signs on the web site that the rebranding from ICEcore to Kablink was rushed, conceivably for OSCON, where it was announced.
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Gary Edwards

Ajaxian » Making creating DOM-based applications less of a hassle - 0 views

  • Dojo also has an implementation of the Django templating language, dojox.dtl. This is an extremely powerful template engine that, similar to this one, creates the HTML once, then updates it when the data changes. You simply update the data, call the template.render method, and the HTML is updated - no creating nodes repeatedly, no innerHTML or nodeValue access.
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    a framework for JavaScript applications called ViewsHandler. ViewsHandler is not another JavaScript templating solution but works on the assumption that in most cases you'll have to create a lot of HTML initially but you'll only have to change the content of some elements dynamically as new information gets loaded or users interact with the app. So instead of creating a lot of HTML over and over again all I wanted to provide is a way to create all the needed HTML upfront and then have easy access to the parts of the HTML that need updating. The first thing you'll need to do to define your application is to create an object with the different views and pointers to the methods that populate the views:
Gary Edwards

ptsefton » OpenOffice.org is bad for the planet - 0 views

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    ptsefton continues his rant that OpenOffice does not support the Open Web. He's been on this rant for so long, i'm wondering if he really thinks there's a chance the lords of ODF and the OpenOffice source code are listening? In this post he describes how useless it is to submit his findings and frustrations with OOo in a bug report. Pretty funny stuff even if you do end up joining the Michael Meeks trek along this trail of tears. Maybe there's another way?

    What would happen if pt moved from targeting the not so open OpenOffice, to target governments and enterprises trying to set future information system requirements?

    NY State is next up on this endless list. Most likely they will follow the lessons of exhaustive pilot studies conducted by Massachusetts, California, Belgium, Denmark and England, and end up mandating the use of both open standard "XML" formats, ODF and OOXML.

    The pilots concluded that there was a need for both XML formats; depending on the needs of different departments and workgroups. The pilot studies scream out a general rule of thumb; if your department has day-to-day business processes bound to MSOffice workgroups, then it makes sense to use MSOffice OOXML going forward. If there is no legacy MSOffice bound workgroup or workflow, it makes sense to move to OpenOffice ODF.

    One thing the pilots make clear is that it is prohibitively costly and disruptive to try to replace MSOffice bound workgroups.

    What NY State might consider is that the Web is going to be an important part of their informations systems future. What a surprise. Every pilot recognized and indeed, emphasized this fact. Yet, they fell short of the obvious conclusion; mandating that desktop applications provide native support for Open Web formats, protocols and interfaces!

    What's wrong with insisting that desktop applciations and office suites support the rapidly advancing HTML+ technologies as well as the applicat
Gary Edwards

Design for Developers: Interactivity, animations, and AJAX - 0 views

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    Awesome commentary in the must read category. JC nails it; starting with "layout"! ....... "We were both part of the same team and he was creating some UI elements that I was to wire up. As I sat there (in awe) watching him work I realized that much of his considerable skill was rooted in fundamentals not unlike the art of programming. Of course, there are design skills that are intuitive that can't be "learned." But, that can also be said of the logical clarity found in a really elegant data model or a brilliant inheritance tree. I am certainly no designer, but I have observed the more creative among us for several years and have gained some insight into their world. In this article I'll share some basic principles that can help raise your design acumen and improve the experience of your users...... " Layout I'd like to attack my goal of imparting design wisdom by breaking the topic into four buckets. The first is layout.
Gary Edwards

Google Gets Oracle's Help In War Against Microsoft (GOOG, MSFT) - 0 views

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    Interesting discussion at Business Insider. I disagree with the Eric Krangel somewhat in that Oracle does benefit from working with Google Apps. Check the comments section for my response.

    "If Google (GOOG) is going to get big companies to pay for its Google Apps service, plugging into other enterprise software is going to be helpful. So it's good news for Google that Oracle (ORCL) is willing to play along."

    "This morning the two companies announced a new collaboration between Google Apps and Oracle's Siebel customer care/CRM software. With the new "Oracle Gadget Wizard for Google Apps," it's now easier to port data between Oracle and Google Apps spreadsheets..........." That gives Google a new selling point as it deploys salespeople to the enterprise in its bid to convert Microsoft Office users into paying Google Apps customers.
Maluvia Haseltine

OpenNebula :: The Open Source Toolkit for Building Clouds - 0 views

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    OpenNebula is a Virtual Infrastructure Manager that orchestrates storage, network and virtualization technologies to enable the dynamic placement of multi-tier services (groups of interconnected virtual machines) on distributed infrastructures, combining both data center resources and remote cloud resources, according to allocation policies. OpenNebula provides internal and Cloud administration and user interfaces for the full management of the Cloud platform.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

'Right to Oblivion' Erase Your Data from Google | Legal Help - 1 views

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    "A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.""
Paul Merrell

U.S. Says It Spied on 89,000 Targets Last Year, But the Number Is Deceptive | Threat Le... - 0 views

  • About 89,000 foreigners or organizations were targeted for spying under a U.S. surveillance order last year, according to a new transparency report. The report was released for the first time Friday by the Office of the Director of Intelligence, upon order of the president, in the wake of surveillance leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. But the report, which covers only surveillance orders issued in 2013, doesn’t tell the whole story about how many individuals the spying targeted or how many Americans were caught in the surveillance that targeted foreigners. Civil liberties groups say the real number is likely “orders of magnitude” larger than this. “Even if it was an honest definition of ‘target’—that is, an individual instead of a group—that also is not encompassing those who are ancillary to a target and are caught up in the dragnet,” says Kurt Opsahl, deputy general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
  • The report, remarkably, shows that the government obtained just one order last year under Section 702 of FISA—which allows for bulk collection of data on foreigners—and that this one order covered 89,138 targets. But, as the report notes, “target” can refer to “an individual person, a group, an organization composed of multiple individuals or a foreign power that possesses or is likely to communicate foreign intelligence information.” Furthermore, Section 702 orders are actually certificates issued by the FISA Court that can cover surveillance of an entire facility. And since, as the government points out in its report, the government cannot know how many people use a facility, the figure only “reflects an estimate of the number of known users of particular facilities (sometimes referred to as selectors) subject to intelligence collection under those Certifications,” the report notes.
  • “If you’re actually trying to get a sense of the number of human beings affected or the number of Americans affected, the number of people affected is vastly, vastly larger,” says Julian Sanchez, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “And how many of those are Americans is impossible to say. But [although] you may not think you are routinely communicating with foreign persons, [this] is not any kind of assurance that your communications are not part of the traffic subject to interception.” Sanchez points out that each individual targeted is likely communicating with dozens or hundred of others, whose communications will be picked up in the surveillance. “And probably a lot of these targets are not individuals but entire web sites or companies. While [a company like the Chinese firm] Huawei might be a target, thousands of emails used by thousands of employees will be swept up.” How many of those employees might be American or communicating with Americans is unknown.
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  • Also revealed in today’s report is the number of times the government has queried the controversial phone records database it created by collecting the phone records of every subscriber from U.S. providers. According to the report, the government used 423 “selectors” to search its massive phone records database, which includes records going back to at least 2006 when the program began. A search involves querying a specific phone number or device ID that appears in the database. The government has long maintained that its collection of phone records isn’t a violation of its authority, since it only views the records of specific individuals targeted in an investigation. But such searches, even if targeted at phone numbers used by foreigners, would include calls made to and from Americans as well as calls exchanged with people two or three hops out from the targeted number.
  • In its report, the government indicated that the 423 selectors involved just 248 “known or presumed” Americans whose information was collected by the agency in the database. But Opsahl says that both of these numbers are deceptive given what we know about the database and how it’s been used. “We know it’s affecting millions of people,” he points out. But “then we have estimated numbers of affected people [that are just] in the three digits. That requires some effort [on the government's part] to find a way to do the definition of the number [in such a way] to make it as small as possible.”
  • One additional figure today’s report covers is the number of National Security Letters the government issued last year to businesses to obtain data on accountholders and users—19,212. NSLs are written demands from the FBI that compel internet service providers, credit companies, financial institutions and others to hand over confidential records about their customers, such as subscriber information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses, websites visited, and more. These letters are a powerful tool because they do not require court approval, and they come with a built-in gag order, preventing recipients from disclosing to anyone that they have received an NSL. An FBI agent looking into a possible anti-terrorism case can self-issue an NSL to a credit bureau, ISP, or phone company with only the sign-off of the Special Agent in Charge of their office. The FBI has merely to assert that the information is “relevant” to an investigation into international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.
  • The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs over the years and has been reprimanded for abusing them. Last year a federal judge ruled that the use of NSLs is unconstitutional, due to the gag order that accompanies them, and ordered the government to stop using them. Her ruling, however, was stayed pending the government’s appeal.
  • According to the government’s report today, the 19,000 NSLs issued last year involved more than 38,000 requests for information.
Gary Edwards

Huddle: Consumer cloud services causing 'security time-bomb' for enterprises | ZDNet - 0 views

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    "AN FRANCISCO -- As more employees continue to access consumer cloud accounts at work (regardless of IT rules), the enterprise world is about to reach a breaking point, based on a new report. Quite simply, U.K. cloud collaboration company Huddle described the trend as a "security time-bomb." At least 38 percent of U.S. office workers are said to have admitted to storing work documents on personal cloud tools and services, while a whopping 91 percent of workers added they use personal devices (i.e. USB drives) to store and share sensitive company documents. Huddle argued that this means enterprise and government organizations are at severe risk of losing both data intellectual property forever as this fragmentation continues. The London-headquartered company published its first State of the Enterprise assessment report amid the official opening of its San Francisco offices on Thursday morning as Huddle branches out to attract a U.S. customer base. "Legacy technologies create barriers to how we want to work," said Mitchell. Huddle produces a team-based collaboration platform designed for large teams within enterprises storing content securely and individually. The idea behind Huddle is to replace personal USB drives and "dumb file storage" platforms with open-security models and folder-based content. As the cloud-based storage and collaboration market grows, it looks like Huddle will be aiming to take on the likes of Box, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, and Dropbox, among others. Huddle is framing itself as different in that it constructs a single network for working and collaborating beyond a firewall, removing VPN complexities with single, company-wide login. Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell described during an inaugural media presentation that its customers are replacing legacy technologies, calling out SharePoint and Outlook in particular as users move content collaboration out of email. "Legacy technologies create barriers to how we want to work," sai
Paul Merrell

What the Hack! 56 Suspected Hackers arrested in the UK | nsnbc international - 0 views

  • The UK National Crime Agency arrested 56 suspected hackers, including one 23-year-old male who allegedly attempted to hack his way into the U.S.’ Department of Defense in 2014. Not attempting to minimize the potential risks of hacking but how much does cyber-crime actually cost, what are the risks and what about those who hack the data of billions of internet users per day to, allegedly, “keep all of us safe?”
  • Besides the 23-year-old who allegedly attempted to hack his way into the a U.S. Department of Defense site, the other detainees allegedly were members of the hacking collectives Lizard Squad and D33DS which are being accused of fraud, money laundering and Denial of Service and Distributed Denial of Service (DOS & DDOS) attacks.  D33DS stands accused of having stolen data of some 450,000 Yahoo users. The arrests followed the recent announcement about the so-called FREAK security vulnerability that was leaving thousands of SSL sites unprotected. The arrest of the 56 hackers in the UK was reported as the National Crime Agency’s way of “sending a clear message” to the hacker community.
  • The U.S. DoD’s cyber-security functioned, obviously. A recent article by Benjamin Dean entitled “Hard Evidence: How much is cybercrime really costing us” suggests that the money spent on cyber-security per year is disproportional to the harm that is being caused by cyber-crime. Dean, who is a Fellow for Internet Governance and Cyber-security at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University would conclude that: There are numerous competing budgetary priorities at any one time and limited funds to spend on meeting all these needs. How much money does it make sense to invest in bolstering cybersecurity, relative to the losses? …In the hysteria created in the wake of the hacks of 2014, we risk making the wrong choice simply because we don’t know what the current sums of money are being spent on.
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  • Meanwhile, NSA whitleblower Edward Snowden (think about him what you want), would reveal that the NSA and the GCHQ hacked themselves into the possession of the encryption codes of the world’s largest SIM card manufacturer Gemalto. Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program wouldn’t come as a surprise to those who have known about the United States’ and allies mutual spying network Echelon for decades.
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