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He has a great analogy: "If you see an armoured car now on the street, you know there must be something valuable inside," Hogewoning explained. "If everybody drives around in an armoured car, I can go around and put a lot of effort into breaking into each and every car, and hope I get lucky and find something valuable inside, but it might be empty. If everybody encrypts everything, all you can see is armoured cars." However, valuable as these moves will be in raising the cost of surveillance, there is always the problem of the endpoints: While the IETF might be able to secure the pipes through which users' data travel, users must also be able to trust the parties where their data is stored: software, hardware and services such as Cisco, Gmail and Facebook. These parties can hand over user data directly to government agencies. To address that, technical improvements aren't enough -- we need political solutions, too. Unfortunately, those are rather more difficult to engineer.

Recent Israeli police actions at the site scandalised the Muslim world and raised tensions. Israel has also banned two volunteer Islamic watch groups – male and female – accusing them of harassing Jews during the hours they are allowed to visit. That has combined with the lack of a peace process and growing resentment and frustration in Palestinian society aimed at both Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has complained in recent weeks of an increase in stone throwing and molotov cocktail attacks on West Bank roads and in areas adjoining mainly Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, where an elderly motorist died after crashing his car during an alleged stoning attack. In response, Netanyahu and his cabinet have loosened live-fire regulations over the use of .22 calibre bullets on Palestinian demonstrators. Although described by Israel as “less lethal”, it is this type of ammunition that killed 13-year-old Abdul Rahman Shadi on Monday.

Part of the problem is the leadership on both sides. Netanyahu leads a rightwing/far-right coalition with the smallest of majorities. Several cabinet ministers support the settler movement and have publicly criticised him for not cracking down harder on Palestinian protest. Netanyahu’s weakness is reflected on the Palestinian side, where the ageing Abbas is seen as isolated, frustrated and increasingly out of step with other members of the Palestinian leadership, who would like a tougher line against Israel over continued settlement building and the absence of any peace process.

In his recent speech to the UN general assembly, Abbas went further than he had ever done before in threatening to end what he claims is Palestine’s unilateral adherence to the Oslo accords, which he said Israel refuses to honour. “We cannot continue to be bound by these signed agreements with Israel and Israel must assume fully its responsibilities of an occupying power,” he said. Abbas, however, stopped short of ending security cooperation between Israel and Palestinian security forces – mainly aimed at Hamas on the West Bank – and asked the UN for international protection. His speech at the United Nations has been seen as a move to placate growing discontents in Palestinian society. Both Abbas and Netanyahu are now both engaged in a delicate balancing act, trying to avoid further escalation that would be detrimental to both while trying not to lose the support of key constituencies. On Abbas’s side, that has meant ordering Palestinian factions and security forces to desist from joining the conflict, while on Netanyahu’s side it has seen numerous warnings of harsh measures – many of which have been repeatedly announced.

Nentanyahu does not want to risk a position where Abbas ends security cooperation and in the local jargon “hands back the keys” – in other words revokes the Oslo accords and insists on Israel once again taking full responsibility for administering the occupied territories. For his part, Abbas is said to see a limited popular uprising as useful because of the message it delivers to both Israel and the international community of the mounting risks of a moribund peace process and how serious things could become if security cooperation were to end.

At the end of the last round of the peace process last year, US diplomats warned about this potential outcome and Washington has largely withdrawn from a guiding role, exhausted by the lack of progress and frustrated with Netanyahu. Despite the Palestinian desire for a new multilateral international approach, it has failed to materialise as have any US guarantees to Abbas that they intend to advance the peace process. While Syria, migration and Russia are preoccupying western governments, Israel and Palestine have been largely left to their own devices.

Flare-ups of violence have a habit of coming and going but hopes that this one is coming to an end appear premature for now. However, the likelihood of the current violence fading away still remains the strongest bet. The biggest risk is a miscalculation by either side, which is out of the hands of either leader, that would alter the dynamics. Individuals on both sides have led some of the worst attacks: Jewish extremists in the summer burning three members of a Palestinian family to death, and “lone wolf attacks” launched by Palestinians angry about al-Aqsa and other issues. With neither side having a clear exit strategy, there is a risk is that Netanyahu and Abbas are being led by events rather than leading.

The new license plate reader contract comes after years of internal lobbying by the agency. ICE first tested Vigilant’s system in 2012, gauging how effective it was at locating undocumented immigrants. Two years later, the agency issued an open solicitation for the technology, sparking an outcry from civil liberties group. Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson canceled the solicitation shortly afterward, citing privacy concerns, although two field offices subsequently formed rogue contracts with Vigilant in apparent violation of Johnson’s policy. In 2015, Homeland Security issued another call for bids, although an ICE representative said no contract resulted from that solicitation. As a result, this new contract is the first agency-wide contract ICE has completed with the company, a fact that is reflected in accompanying documents. On December 27th, 2017, Homeland Security issued an updated privacy assessment of license plate reader technology, a move it explained was necessary because “ICE has now entered into a contract with a vendor.” The new system places some limits on ICE surveillance, but not enough to quiet privacy concerns. Unlike many agencies, ICE won’t upload new data to Vigilant’s system but simply scan through the data that’s already there. In practical terms, that means driving past a Vigilant-linked camera might flag a car to ICE, but driving past an ICE camera won’t flag a car to everyone else using the system. License plates on the hot list will also expire after one year, and the system retains extensive audit logs to help supervisors trace back any abuse of the system. Still, the biggest concern for critics is the sheer scale of Vigilant’s network, assembled almost entirely outside of public accountability. “If ICE were to propose a system that would do what Vigilant does, there would be a huge privacy uproar and I don’t think Congress would approve it,” Stanley says. “But because it’s a private contract, they can sidestep that process.”

9. The whole law enforcement apparatus insisted that there was a heavy exchange of gunfire with Dzokhar while he was hiding in a boat, before his arrest. That is false. He was unarmed, barely moving and the hail of bullets towards the boat came from the police.

5. The description of the car hijacked by the brothers, a Mercedes E350 SUV, matches the description of their car left at a service station in Cambridge for two weeks prior to the bombing. A mechanic in Cambridge said Dzhokhar, Tamerlan's brother, picked up his "black Mercedes SUV" on Tuesday, the day after the marathon. The two cars may be one and the same; that blows up the whole official ''carjacking'' narrative. 6. Additionally, there's a media blackout on the owner of the allegedly hijacked Mercedes, who in theory managed to escape and call the police, who maintains that the brothers went to three ATMs and withdrew US$800 from his account - not before telling him they were the ''marathon bombers and had killed an MIT police''. The driver said he was let off at a gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge. But some witnesses saw Dzhokhar at the station's convenience store - without any driver. Then the narrative of the brothers robbing a convenience store was revealed to be false. Police scanners referred to a "black top" person. Still, the official narrative is that the Tsarnaev brothers were at the same place and the same time of the robbery.

Do the martial dance What the day-long delay in Dzhokhar's arrest indeed made possible was to turn Watertown into a monster dry run for urban martial law - euphemized as ''lockdown'' - in a very near future. As total militarization of civilian life goes - featuring, for instance, Homeland Security running amok with hundreds of armored vehicles - this was a major success. Meanwhile, on the ''legal'' front, the White House and the Justice Department are firmly on track to finally suppress the Miranda warning; that went into effect already two years ago, when an Obama secret executive order ruled the Miranda warning would not apply to suspected terrorists. Dzhokhar is a ''suspected'' terrorist - now charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, yet already convicted by corporate media. Welcome to Police State USA - where at least everyone still has the right to go out shopping. For now.

The more one investigates the assassination of John Kennedy, the more one becomes immersed in the depths of U.S. intelligence. The American intelligence community was the sea around Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and the host of anti-Castro Cuban exiles and gun runners with whom Oswald and Ruby worked closely.

Clifton Baird was a Louisville, Kentucky, police officer in l965 when he was asked to help kill Martin Luther King. On September l8, l965, Baird gave a ride home in his car to fellow Louisville officer Arlie Blair after their 3-ll pm shift. Baird parked his car in Blair’s driveway, and the two men talked. Alarmed at what Blair was saying, Clifton Baird secretly turned on a microphone hidden under his seat that was connected to a recorder in a rear speaker. What Baird taped was an offer to engage in a conspiracy to kill Dr. King. He later shared the information with author William F. Pepper who included it in his book on the King assassination Orders to Kill.[32] Blair told Baird that an organization he belonged to was willing to pay $500,000 for the death of King. Would Baird be willing to participate? Baird said he definitely would not. He urged Blair to stay away from it, too.

Myron Billett was another witness to the truth. By undergoing a conversion in his own life, Myron Billett was able to reveal that in January l968 FBI and CIA agents offered a New York Mafia leader a $l million contract to kill Martin Luther King.

But spy-agencies and law-enforcement have created a bustling marketplace for “zero-days,” which are weaponised for the purpose of attacking the computers and networks of “bad guys”. The incentives have shifted, and now a newly discovered bug had a good chance of remaining unpatched and live in the field because governments wanted to be able to use it to hack their enemies.

Last year, when I finished that talk in Seattle, a talk about all the ways that insecure computers put us all at risk, a woman in the audience put up her hand and said, “Well, you’ve scared the hell out of me. Now what do I do? How do I make my computers secure?”And I had to answer: “You can’t. No one of us can. I was a systems administrator 15 years ago. That means that I’m barely qualified to plug in a WiFi router today. I can’t make my devices secure and neither can you. Not when our governments are buying up information about flaws in our computers and weaponising them as part of their crime-fighting and anti-terrorism strategies. Not when it is illegal to tell people if there are flaws in their computers, where such a disclosure might compromise someone’s anti-copying strategy.But: If I had just stood here and spent an hour telling you about water-borne parasites; if I had told you about how inadequate water-treatment would put you and everyone you love at risk of horrifying illness and terrible, painful death; if I had explained that our very civilisation was at risk because the intelligence services were pursuing a strategy of keeping information about pathogens secret so they can weaponise them, knowing that no one is working on a cure; you would not ask me ‘How can I purify the water coming out of my tap?’”

Because when it comes to public health, individual action only gets you so far. It doesn’t matter how good your water is, if your neighbour’s water gives him cholera, there’s a good chance you’ll get cholera, too. And even if you stay healthy, you’re not going to have a very good time of it when everyone else in your country is striken and has taken to their beds.If you discovered that your government was hoarding information about water-borne parasites instead of trying to eradicate them; if you discovered that they were more interested in weaponising typhus than they were in curing it, you would demand that your government treat your water-supply with the gravitas and seriousness that it is due.The public health analogy is suprisingly apt here. The public health threat-model is in a state of continuous flux, because our well-being is under continuous, deliberate attack from pathogens for whom we are, at best, host organisms, and at worst, dinner. Evolution drives these organisms to a continuously shifting array of tactics to slide past our defenses.Public health isn’t just about pathogens, either – its thorniest problems are about human behaviour and social policy. HIV is a blood-borne disease, but disrupting its spread requires changes to our attitudes about sex, pharmaceutical patents, drugs policy and harm minimisation. Almost everything interesting about HIV is too big to fit on a microscope slide.

And so it is for security: crypto is awesome maths, but it’s just maths. Security requires good password choice, good password management, good laws about compelled crypto disclosure, transparency into corporate security practices, and, of course, an end to the governmental practice of spending $250M/year on anti-security sabotage through the NSA/GCHQ programmes Bullrun and Edgehill.

But for me, the most important parallel between public health and internet security is their significance to our societal wellbeing. Everything we do today involves the internet. Everything we do tomorrow will require the internet. If you live near a nuclear power plant, fly in airplanes, ride in cars or trains, have an implanted pacemaker, keep money in the bank, or carry a phone, your safety and well-being depend on a robust, evolving, practice of network security.This is the most alarming part of the Snowden revelations: not just that spies are spying on all of us – that they are actively sabotaging all of our technical infrastructure to ensure that they can continue to spy on us.There is no way to weaken security in a way that makes it possible to spy on “bad guys” without making all of us vulnerable to bad guys, too. The goal of national security is totally incompatible with the tactic of weakening the nation’s information security.

“Virus” has been a term of art in the security world for decades, and with good reason. It’s a term that resonates with people, even people with only a cursory grasp of technology. As we strive to make the public and our elected representatives understand what’s at stake, let’s expand that pathogen/epidemiology metaphor. We’d never allow MI5 to suppress information on curing typhus so they could attack terrorists by infecting them with it. We need to stop allowing the NSA and GCHQ to suppress information on fixing bugs in our computers, phones, cars, houses, planes, and bodies.If GCHQ wants to improve the national security of the United Kingdom – if the NSA want to impove the American national security – they should be fixing our technology, not breaking it. The technology of Britons and Americans is under continuous, deadly attack from criminals, from foreign spies, and from creeps. Our security is better served by armouring us against these threats than it is by undermining security so that cops and spies have an easier time attacking “bad guys.”

"One’s cell phone, unlike an automobile, can accompany its owner anywhere. Thus, the exposure of the cell site location information can convert what would otherwise be a private event into a public one," he wrote. "In that sense, cell site data is more like communications data than it is like GPS information. That is, it is private in nature rather than being public data that warrants privacy protection only when its collection creates a sufficient mosaic to expose that which would otherwise be private." Finally, the government argued that, because Davis made outgoing calls, he "voluntarily" gave up his location data. Sentelle rejected that, too, citing a prior decision by a Third Circuit Court. "The Third Circuit went on to observe that 'a cell phone customer has not ‘voluntarily’ shared his location information with a cellular provider in any meaningful way.' That circuit further noted that 'it is unlikely that cell phone customers are aware that their cell phone providers collect and store historical location information,'” Sentelle wrote.

"Therefore, as the Third Circuit concluded, 'when a cell phone user makes a call, the only information that is voluntarily and knowingly conveyed to the phone company is the number that is dialed, and there is no indication to the user that making that call will also locate the caller,'" he continued.

the former calls for higher taxes that his firms seek to avoid, or targets his post-mortem wealth to (more efficient?) private foundations that rob the Treasury of billions in lost inheritance taxes, or knows higher taxes won’t much matter to his tens of billions in net worth;

The government’s brief does not acknowledge the sweeping implications of its arguments. It tries to portray its requested unlocking order as narrow and modest, because it “would not require Apple to make any changes to its software or hardware, … [or] to introduce any new ability to access data on its phones. It would simply require Apple to use its existing capability to bypass the passcode on a passcode-locked iOS 7 phone[.]” But that undersells the implications of the legal argument the government is making: that anything a company already can do, it could be compelled to do under the All Writs Act in order to assist law enforcement. Were that the law, the blow to users’ trust in their encrypted devices, services, and products would be little different than if Apple and other companies were legally required to design backdoors into their encryption mechanisms (an idea the government just can’t seem to drop, its assurances in this brief notwithstanding). Entities around the world won’t buy security software if its makers cannot be trusted not to hand over their users’ secrets to the US government. That’s what makes the encryption in iOS 8 and later versions, which Apple has told the court it “would not have the technical ability” to bypass, so powerful — and so despised by the government: Because no matter how broadly the All Writs Act extends, no court can compel Apple to do the impossible.