omnibus PRISM/NSA/free Edward Snowden/encryption tutorial thread

And we do not live in a revolutionary time. People are not prepared to contest power.

I think this is a really important bit bc i don't buy his explanation that ppl aren't prepared to contest power bc of state indoctrination. states w/ a far larger totalitarian grasp on media /communication (ie actual state-owned media, internet censorship) still seem to be living in a more 'revolutionary time' than we are in the US, cf egypt, iran, ukraine, hong kong?, idk i'm sure there are lots of examples of this. nb that i do accept the kind of zizekian logic that the US is even more totalitarian bc our democracy allows the illusion of change and the free press allow the illusion of free speech while dictatorships are self-evidently fascist. on the other hand tho - he admitted recently in the guardian that the form is important bc you can only express the longing for full freedom if you have the empty shell available to show you what you're missing. also nb it could be Ferguson and Occupy and other things are examples of a revolutionary spirit that exists in the US (tho they seem limited / this could just be a consequence of a compliant media). idk tho. it seems to me like in areas like speech and media the US is very free and i suspect revolutionary spirits aren't so high here bc even w/ dire economic circumstances for many ppl, standard of living has remained historically high? like maybe things aren't bad enough and really it is material conditions that inspire revolutions - not knowledge/education/ideology. if this is true - it really doesn't matter how many drones the US drops on other countries, or how many phone conversations they monitor, or even how much political dissent they suppress. as long as they deliver a certain level of quality of life the majority of ppl will support the government.

M, he has praise for OWS's effect on the polity earlier in this interview.

At this time, I would agree that you'd only get revolutionary fervor from Americans if you took away their smartphones. Your last two sentences seem accurate to me.

You really are gonna be thrilled at the movie-star turn of your hero Greenwald in Citizenfour.

i'll watch it when it comes to hbo

Revolution does not always have to be weapons and warfare; it’s also about revolutionary ideas. It’s about the principles that we hold to be representative of the kind of world we want to live in. A given order may at any given time fail to represent those values, even work against those values. I think that’s the dynamic we’re seeing today. We have these traditional political parties that are less and less responsive to the needs of ordinary people, so people are in search of their own values. If the government or the parties won’t address our needs, we will. It’s about direct action, even civil disobedience. But then the state says: “Well, in order for it to be legitimate civil disobedience, you have to follow these rules.” They put us in “free-speech zones”; they say you can only do it at this time, and in this way, and you can’t interrupt the functioning of the government. They limit the impact that civil disobedience can achieve. We have to remember that civil disobedience must be disobedience if it’s to be effective. If we simply follow the rules that a state imposes upon us when that state is acting contrary to the public interest, we’re not actually improving anything. We’re not changing anything.

yeah, that's key. i don't think most people in america get that. it reminds me of the U of California administrators who were like "civil disobedience is fine as long as nobody breaks the law"

"you're allowed to have your voices heard as long as nobody in a position of power actually has to listen to them"

tho that's bc if ppl privilege the rule of law then they're less willing to see it undermined for the sake of change. if things are bad enough, or the law is worthless enough, then violating it becomes easier.

sure but the cognitive dissonance of people supporting "civil disobedience" but only if it obeys the law is notable

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-and-dangers-unchecked-surveillance

so there's something called the USA Freedom Act (uh oh), a "surveillance fix" that's gonna get a lame-duck vote, and this guy says it's crap.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2014/11/12/why-i-dont-support-usa-freedom-act/

When black people do stuff, when they have a complaint, after all this time, all of this history, it still does not qualify as "civil disobedience". It's disorder, violence - plain disobedience. This attitude toward poor blacks is very real and the powers that be still justify this regard based on crime rates.

I don't think comfortable folks realize how easy it is to abuse and disrespect poor black people, I don't think they know how these communities function. I am shocked at what I have read online about Ferguson.

Then again, who ever said people respected civil rights activists? When did that happen? I think we comfortable people get too much magical thinking from television.

Amnesty International has released a program that can spot spying software used by governments to monitor activists and political opponents

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30115679

nice

http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/23/7272157/regin-malware-has-secretly-spied-on-computers-for-years

this is cool

https://www.iab.org/2014/11/14/iab-statement-on-internet-confidentiality/

The IAB urges protocol designers to design for confidential operation by default. We strongly encourage developers to include encryption in their implementations, and to make them encrypted by default. We similarly encourage network and service operators to deploy encryption where it is not yet deployed, and we urge firewall policy administrators to permit encrypted traffic.

We believe that each of these changes will help restore the trust users must have in the Internet, and foster development of new approaches which allow us to move to an Internet where traffic is confidential by default.

backdoor men

The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases.

Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed the use of this legal authority to search for data related to “US persons”.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/01/nsa-surveillance-loophole-americans-data

Great story from Ars: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/

Jesus

feel like i am getting closer and closer to that shotgun canned food bunker

i thought stuxnet was fascinating and cool even if it was unnerving--this 'equation group' stuff is legit petrifying though

Man, I remember when talking about Echelon and NSA/GCHQ super teamups 20 years ago was such a blank stare contest in the para-political/conspiracy theory crowd. Who cares, the Cold War is over. Let's all go camp out at Area 51. We're the good guys, right?

It was all an elaborate plot to win an oscar

just

literally intercepting hardware in the mail, adding uneraseable invisible malware, and putting it back in the mail without evidence of tampering

that stuxnet and flame were just forks of what these people can do

fucking mind boggling

John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, told a cybersecurity conference in Washington on Monday that officials could try to blunt ISIS’s violent PR operation by essentially trying propagandists as terrorists. He suggested the Justice Department could bring prosecutions under the law against providing material support to a terrorist organization. His remarks were believed to be the first time a U.S. official has ever said that people who assist ISIS with online media could face criminal prosecution.

Carlin was asked at the conference whether he would “consider criminal charges” against people who are “proliferating ISIS social media.” His answer: “Yes. You need to look at the particular facts and evidence.” But Carlin noted that the United States could use the material support law to prosecute “technical expertise” to a designated terrorist organization. And spreading the word for ISIS online could count as such expertise....

NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers said he agreed with public statements by FBI Director James Comey that the use of encryption, particularly on popular products like the iPhone 6, put the government at risk of not being able to monitor terrorists and spies. Rogers said lawmakers should come up with a solution for ensuring government access to encrypted communications, a plan that many technologists and civil libertarians have decried as a “backdoor” to spy on people around the world.

In a tense exchange, Alex Stamos, the chief information security officer for Yahoo, asked Rogers whether what he was really advocating was “building defects” into encryption technology.

“That would be your characterization,” Rogers replied, to nervous laughter from the audience....

Stamos asked, “If we’re going to build defects, backdoors, or golden master keys for the U.S. government, do you believe we should do so—we have about 1.3 billion users around the world—should we do so for the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Saudi Arabian government, the Israeli government, the French government? Which of those countries should we give backdoors to?”

“The way you framed the question isn’t designed to elicit a response,” Rogers said.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/23/justice-department-we-ll-go-after-isis-twitter-army.html

friend of mine does a/v at ^^ this place and says there was audible uncomfortable-shifting-in-chairs during this exchange

btw this was in the snowden/greenwald/poitras Reddit AMA after the oscars

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-ovezEUAAAK9mm.png

that + the password scene in Citizenfour suggests that Oliver Stone should've cast Steve Carell as GG.

Was thinking Jeremy Piven for GG myself.

"Why is your agency above the law, sir?…Why can you lie to the Senate about mass surveillance presuming the entire globe to be subject to pervasive collection, twisting the meaning of the terms in violations of the statutes in the Constitution restraining your agency?

Why are you above the law for perjury and why is the NSA above the law for mass surveillance, even violating the contours that the authors of the Patriot Act intended to authorize in 2001?…[A]nd Senators, why won’t you do your job? You’re charged with oversight of these officials."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN2973g0QUw#t=19

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2015/02/26/after-hearing-capitol-police-arrest-lawyer-for-shouting-question-at-clapper-about-nsa-surveillance/

buttar fuckin rules

whoa

Researchers working with the Central Intelligence Agency have conducted a multi-year, sustained effort to break the security of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Intercept.

The security researchers presented their latest tactics and achievements at a secret annual gathering, called the “Jamboree,” where attendees discussed strategies for exploiting security flaws in household and commercial electronics. The conferences have spanned nearly a decade, with the first CIA-sponsored meeting taking place a year before the first iPhone was released.

By targeting essential security keys used to encrypt data stored on Apple’s devices, the researchers have sought to thwart the company’s attempts to provide mobile security to hundreds of millions of Apple customers across the globe. Studying both “physical” and “non-invasive” techniques, U.S. government-sponsored research has been aimed at discovering ways to decrypt and ultimately penetrate Apple’s encrypted firmware. This could enable spies to plant malicious code on Apple devices and seek out potential vulnerabilities in other parts of the iPhone and iPad currently masked by encryption.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/10/ispy-cia-campaign-steal-apples-secrets/

Wikimedia files suit against NSA

http://time.com/3738697/wikimedia-nsa-upstream-surveillance/

The Obama administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ab029d7c625149348143a51ff61175c6/us-sets-new-record-denying-censoring-government-files

as usual, "most transparent"

what the ████ is this ████████

█ █ █ █ █ █ █

our corporate and spook overlords: Working Together

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/01/nsa-corporate-america-push-broad-cyber-surveillance-legislation/

... except for any actual software / internet companies. Silicon Valley spends a fair bit on lobbying now, will be interesting/terrifying to see who wins.

fun in Fort Greene Park

http://mashable.com/2015/04/07/edward-snowden-hologram-statue-brooklyn/

oh, Clapper!

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241508-spy-head-had-absolutely-forgotten-about-nsa-program

i guess for a few hours at least, the government isn't collecting our metadata

let's plot something

oh, naivete; the Zombie Patriot Act goes on.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/31/zombie-patriot-act-will-keep-u-s-spying-even-if-the-original-dies.html

I'm still irked that people don't remember that USA PATRIOT Act is an acronym.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Contrived_acronyms

Pierce:

Let me say for the record that, because I am not five-years-old, I do not believe for a moment that the NSA has stopped collecting that data while Mitch McConnell tries to tease a vote out of his unruly caucus, nor do I believe for a moment that it will cease to do so if and when the compromise passes. The NSA's messianic delusions about its role in the world, which is something it has in common with the rest of the heroes of our intelligence community, will sustain it through these minor eruptions of actual democracy.

The one ray of hope to come out of the windbaggery yesterday is the fact that, for the first time since the attacks of 9/11, the national legislature came out from under the bed and confronted, however meekly, the idea that in the freedom-vs.-security debate, the sides ought to be at equal strength. For this, we have to thank Senator Aqua Buddha, who forced the issue. His performance was choppy and, occasionally, incoherent. The blog's Five Minute Rule was in effect throughout his presentation. For example, he found himself consistently incapable of pronouncing "Tsarnaev," and he botched (for his own rhetorical purposes) James Madison's famous quote from Federalist 51...

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a35380/rand-paul-patriot-act/

As Washington weighs new cybersecurity steps amid a public backlash over mass surveillance, U.S. tech companies warned President Barack Obama not to weaken increasingly sophisticated encryption systems designed to protect consumers' privacy.

In a strongly worded letter to Obama on Monday, two industry associations for major software and hardware companies said, "We are opposed to any policy actions or measures that would undermine encryption as an available and effective tool."

The Information Technology Industry Council and the Software and Information Industry Association, representing tech giants, including Apple Inc, Google Inc, Facebook Inc, IBM and Microsoft Corp, fired the latest salvo in what is shaping up to be a long fight over government access into smart phones and other digital devices.

Obama administration officials, led by the FBI, have pushed the companies to find ways to let law enforcement bypass encryption to investigate illegal activities, including terrorism threats, but not weaken it so that criminals and computer hackers could penetrate the defenses.

So far, however, the White House has not spelled out specific regulatory or legislative steps it might seek.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/09/us-cybersecurity-usa-encryption-idUSKBN0OP09R20150609

find ways to let law enforcement bypass encryption to investigate illegal activities, including terrorism threats, but not weaken it so that criminals and computer hackers could penetrate the defenses

as anyone with any knowledge of information security will tell you, this is literally impossible

A digital network that would only allow the pure of heart to access its records, employing safeguards to restrict potential security breaches by Hacktivists and Vagabonds.

Obama has built quite a base by promising the literally impossible and doing what he wants