Our simple and unconditional response to the FBI: Fuck You.

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[SOURCE: Freedom to Tinker]

CALEA II: Risks of wiretap modifications to endpoints

Today I joined a group of twenty computer scientists in issuing a report criticizing an FBI plan to require makers of secure communication tools to redesign their systems to make wiretapping easy. We argue that the plan would endanger the security of U.S. users and the competitiveness of U.S. companies, without making it much harder for criminals to evade wiretaps.

The FBI argues that the Net is “going dark”—that they are losing their ability to carry out valid wiretap warrants. In fact, this seems to be a golden age of surveillance—more collectable communications are available than ever before, including whole new categories of information such as detailed location tracking. Regardless, the FBI wants Congress to require that voice, video, and text communication tools be (re-)designed so that lawful wiretap orders can be executed quickly and silently.

Our report focuses in particular on the drawbacks of mandating wiretappability of endpoint tools—that is, tools that reside on the user’s computer or phone. Traditional wiretaps are executed on a provider’s equipment. That approach works for the traditional phone system (wiretap in the phone company’s switching facility) or a cloud service like GMail (get data from the service provider). But for P2P technologies such as Skype, information can only be captured on the user’s computer, which means that the Skype software would have to be changed to add a virtual “wiretap port” that could be activated remotely without the user’s knowledge.

Our report argues that mandating a virtual wiretap port in endpoint systems is harmful. The port makes it easier for attackers to capture the very same data that law enforcement wants. Intruders want to capture everything that happens on a compromised computer. They will be happy to see a built-in tool for capturing and extracting large amounts of audio, video, and text traffic. Better yet (for the intruder), the capability will be stealthy by design, making it difficult for the user to tell that anything is amiss.

Beyond this, the mandate would make it harder for users to understand, monitor, and fix their own systems—which is bad for security. If a system’s design is too simple or its operation too transparent or too easy to monitor, then wiretaps will be evident. So a wiretappability mandate will push providers toward complex, obfuscated designs that are harder to secure and raise the total cost of building and operating the system.

Finally, our report argues that it will not be possible to block non-compliant implementations. Many of today’s communication tools are open source, and there is no way to hide a capability within an open source code base, nor to prevent people from simply removing or disabling an undesired feature. Even closed source systems are routinely modified by users—as with jailbreaking of phones—and users will find ways to disable features they don’t want. Criminals will want to disable these features. Ordinary users will also want to disable them, to mitigate their security risks.

Our report discusses other issues, such as the impact of a wiretappability mandate on the ability of U.S. companies to compete in international markets. The bottom line is that harms that would result from the FBI’s plan vastly outweigh any benefits. The cybersecurity problem is bad enough as it is. Let’s not make it any worse.

>> Read the rest

[SOURCE: Ars Technica]

by Cyrus Farivar

If we’ve told you once, we’ve told you a thousand times—the feds can (and do) easily access your e-mail. In fact, sending materials through the United States Postal Service is legally more secure than e-mail.

On Wednesday, as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request, the American Civil Liberties Union has published the first public copy of the 2012 edition of the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. And this document clearly draws that distinction. The new disclosure shows that the FBI believes it does have the authority to open your e-mail essentially whenever it wants:

18.7.1.3.4.3 (U) MAIL OPENINGS

(U) Mail in United States postal channels may be searched only pursuant to court order, or presidential authorization. United States Postal Service regulations governing such activities must be followed. A search of items that are being handled by individual couriers, or commercial courier companies, under circumstances in which there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, or have been sealed for deposit into postal channels, and that are discovered within properties or premises being searched, must be carried out according to unconsented FISA or FRCP Rule 41 physical search procedures.

18.7.1.3.4.4 (U) COMPELLED DISCLOSURE OF THE CONTENTS OF STORED WIRE OR ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

(U) Contents in "electronic storage" (e.g., unopened e-mail and voice mail) require a search warrant. See 18 U.S.c. § 2703(a). A distinction is made between the contents of communications that are in electronic storage (e.g., unopened e-mail) for less than 180 days and those in "electronic storage" for longer than 180 days, or those that are no longer in "electronic storage" (e.g., opened e-mail). In enacting the ECPA, Congress concluded that customers may not retain a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in information sent to network providers. However, the contents of an e-mail message that is unopened should nonetheless be protected by Fourth Amendment standards, similar to the contents of a regularly mailed letter. On the other hand, if the contents of an unopened message are kept beyond six months or stored on behalf oft he customer after the e-mail has been received or opened, it should he treated the same as a business record in the hands of a third party, such as an accountant or attorney. In that case, the government may subpoena the records from the third party without running afoul of either the Fourth or Fifth Amendment. If a search warrant is used, it may be served on the provider without notice to the customer or subscriber.

Here’s what all that means: under the much-maligned (but frustratingly still-current) 1986-era Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), law enforcement must get a warrant to access e-mail before it has been opened by the recipient. However, there are no such provisions once the e-mail has been opened or if it has been sitting in an inbox, unopened, for 180 days. In March 2013, the Department of Justice acknowledged in a Congressional hearing that this distinction no longer makes sense and the DOJ would support revisions to ECPA.

If that weren’t complicated enough, one United States circuit court of appeals decided that federal authorities do need a warrant before accessing e-mail. The case, known as United States v. Warshak, has created a split as other circuits haven’t yet taken up the issue, including the United States Supreme Court. (Google has since taken the public stance that it will follow the Warshak standard.)

The ACLU has been at the forefront of trying to figure out exactly where various federal agencies stand in observing or not observing the Warshak standard. Just last month, the advocacy group unveiled the fact that the Internal Revenue Service believes it has the authority to investigate tax cheats under ECPA, but soon after the interim director said the agency has never done so.

>> Read the rest

[SOURCE: truthdig]

This is the final paragraph of a long piece by Chris Hedges published at truthdig. It is a profile of, and interview with, Julian Assange which touches on many areas including Bradley Manning. The whole piece is well worth reading.

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The world has been turned upside down. The pestilence of corporate totalitarianism is spreading rapidly over the earth. The criminals have seized power. It is not, in the end, simply Assange or Manning they want. It is all who dare to defy the official narrative, to expose the big lie of the global corporate state. The persecution of Assange and Manning is the harbinger of what is to come, the rise of a bitter world where criminals in Brooks Brothers suits and gangsters in beribboned military uniforms — propped up by a vast internal and external security apparatus, a compliant press and a morally bankrupt political elite — monitor and crush those who dissent. Writers, artists, actors, journalists, scientists, intellectuals and workers will be forced to obey or thrown into bondage. I fear for Julian Assange. I fear for Bradley Manning. I fear for us all.

>> Read the rest

[SOURCE: Miller’s Genuine Draft]

by James E. Miller

Following the bombing at the Boston marathon, the mandatory condolence period of three days came and went before the news media fixes its gaze on another topic of little relevance. The tears, mourning, tributes, and pledges of vengeance played out in usual fashion. Democrats, in their infinite conniving for power, used the tragedy to supplement their email list. The whole episode finally climaxed with a predictably grand and empty statement from someone who has a passing affiliation with the city.

Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz was the lucky one chosen to deliver the sermon of adversity. Upon taking the field in Fenway Park the day after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was caught, the record slugger bellowed to the crowd, “this is our f***ing city and nobody is going to dictate our freedom.” Ortiz, who is originally from the Dominican Republic, previously played on the Seattle Mariners and Minnesota Twins; in addition to numerous minor league teams. “Big Papi,” as he is affectionately known, never made the Cradle of Liberty his home until 2003. You could say Papi was an absent father to the city he now claims as his own. Ortiz’s accent had a deficiency of the famous Bostonian sneer, but that was no impediment to the riling of the masses who reveled in the utterance of an expletive. Even the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission let the profanity slip in tribute to the raw uncouthness of the delivery.

Theatricality aside, the statement of triumph through adverse circumstances was nothing but hubris covering for a less-than-courageous response. After the bombings occurred, the ensuing manhunt saw a pandemic of armored, militarized police rush into residential neighborhoods and effectively turned the city into something out of a zombie outbreak film. Public transportation shut down, businesses forced to closed, armed searches of homes without judge-issued warrants – this was the intrepid response of a city that would never let its freedom be dictated. As former Congressman Ron Paul wrote, it was a “taste of martial law,” force fed to a metropolitan too scared to resist. The goal of terrorism is to invoked political change by implanting violence and fear. If Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were attempting to strike at the root of American freedom, they certainly succeeded for a timespan of almost twenty four hours. The people displayed their gratitude for blatant property violations by celebrating the mighty-fine police work of Boston authorities. The private citizen who actually located the wounded suspect received little thanks even as the men in blue lied about their own shoddy work.

The sad display of faux bravado in Boston was not exclusive to the city. Human beings seem to take pride in fabricated conceptions of their own gallantry. The world is a battlefield and nobody wants to look weak in comparison to their fellow man.  And no, I am not referring to a combat zone envisioned by neoconservatives in their disturbingly restful dreams. The sphere of social relations we enjoy comes with stigmas developed over the course of thousands of years. Along the way, it became acceptable to puff out one’s chest for deeds of little heroism, or even downright timidness.

This longing for empty acceptance often manifests itself in deference to the state and its all-mighty power. Just as people pay fealty to authority figures who help themselves to the productive efforts of the public at large, they will petition for a share of the omnipotence. No group excels at the practice like the slice and diced mobs of “victims” who feel entitled because of a metaphysical oppression they have been told to decry. Arguably the bravest of these warrior clans dedicated to wiping social injustice off the Earth is the gay community. Their crusade for eradicating marriage conventions could once be considered a noble effort, rebel wise. Rabble rousers need a spine to break norms. Now, homosexuals have become another tired cliche of privilege complainers, albeit dressed in ridiculous attire. The call for gay matrimony is no expression of an unorthodox minority. It is conformity through the perpetuation of the unnecessary role the state plays in private relationships. Monopoly government has corrupted the sanctity of marriage, and gays are courting the devil for their own benefit. This quid pro quo has tarnished whatever righteousness the movement once had. Putting on drag and begging for the political class’s respect is just plain pitiful.

The betrayal extends beyond the right of nuptials. In the soon to be held Gay Pride Festival in San Francisco, imprisoned Army private Bradley Manning was supposed to be honored as a grand marshal. One day after the announcement, the President of the Board of SF Pride overturned the decision by claiming his crimes put “in harms way [sic] the lives of our men and women in uniform.” In totalitarian fashion she overturned the SF Pride Electoral College’s vote for Manning because the decision did not have the interest of the “broader community” in mind. With sponsors like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and the Bain Capital-owned Clear Channel, it’s tough for a Gay Pride Festival to dress itself up as anything different than a mainstream event funded by right-wing linked corporations. Any memory of the gay private known as Bradley Manning, who had the actual courage to put his conscience above the law reveal the true barbarity of war, is hushed and disregarded. As Glenn Greenwald trenchantly puts it,

“That’s how this parade was so seamlessly transformed from orthodoxy-challenging, individualistic and creative cultural icon into yet another pile of obedient apparatchiks that spout banal slogans doled out by the state while viciously scorning those who challenge them.”

The counterculture movement, which the gay community inhabits, once shrugged off bourgeoisie values to right society’s various wrongs. Misguided as the worldview was, at least the ethos of defiance was consistent. Today, homosexuals will do everything they can to court the state; even if it means sacrificing one of their own. For every principle forfeited by a movement, legitimacy dissolves incrementally. Eventually, any bold foundation that may have existed begins to resemble a paltry caricature of what it was.

Thoreau once wrote that a man is man who “has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through.” Two young men murder three people and bring an entire city to its knees. A gay pride festival celebrating diversity and counterculture values shuns a homosexual in order to maintain corporate sponsorship. These are the stories of empty bluster in America – though it’s doubtful they are unique to the United States. Heads of government are of a cowardly class. Their loyalty is easily won by those who find no moral anxiety in diving headfirst into the sludge of political patronizing. The combined assault of jingoism, nationalism, welfarism, and contempt for higher learning has done inestimable harm to the idea of courage. The very same people lauded as heroes are more often than not despicable.

Most of us will lie to ourselves to look at the face staring back in the mirror. I have yet to determine which is more natural to human conduct: taking pride in cowardice or accepting the truth, no matter how distressing. I would like to think the latter. Having to witness the tossing away of liberty for safety on a daily basis makes me question my own judgement.

>> Read the rest

[SOURCE: reason.com]

by J.D. Tuccille

From the Department of Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste comes word that New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly thinks that now is a great time to install even more surveillance cameras hither and yon around the Big Apple. After the Boston Marathon bombing, the Tsarnaev brothers were famously captured on security camera footage and thereby identified. That just may soften up Americans to the idea of the all-seeing glass eye. "I think the privacy issue has really been taken off the table," Kelly gloats.

From WNYC:

Could more cameras in New York City help prevent attacks like the one at the Boston Marathon? That's what Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says the NYPD is looking into.

The department already uses so-called smart cameras that hone in on unattended bags, and set off alarms.

Kelly dismisses critics who argue that increased cameras threaten privacy rights, giving governments the ability to monitor people in public spaces.

“The people who complain about it, I would say, are a relatively small number of folks, because the genie is out of the bottle,” Kelly said. “People realize that everywhere you go now, your picture is taken.”

Surveillance cameras helped authorities find the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing — giving more fuel to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s argument that the more cameras exist, the better.

The NYPD is touting its use of the so-called smart cameras that have been used for nearly a decade in Lower Manhattan to identify potential threats such as unattended bags left for too long.

>> Read the rest

[SOURCE: Truthout]

By Jason Leopold

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once declared that individuals captured by the US military in the aftermath of 9/11 and shipped off to the Guantanamo Bay prison facility represented the “worst of the worst.”

During a radio interview in June 2005, Rumsfeld said the detainees at Guantanamo, “all of whom were captured on a battlefield,” are “terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama Bin Laden’s] body guards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th hijacker, 9/11 hijacker.”

Click here to listen to Truthout’s Jason Leopold discuss this story on The Peter B. Collins show (mp3).

But Rumsfeld knowingly lied, according to a former top Bush administration official.

And so did then Vice President Dick Cheney when he said, also in 2002 and in dozens of public statements thereafter, that Guantanamo prisoners “are the worst of a very bad lot” and “dangerous” and “devoted to killing millions of Americans, innocent Americans, if they can, and they are perfectly prepared to die in the effort.”

Now, in a  sworn declaration obtained exclusively by Truthout, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell during George W. Bush’s first term in office, said Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld knew the “vast majority” of prisoners captured in the so-called War on Terror were innocent and the administration refused to set them free once those facts were established because of the political repercussions that would have ensued.

“By late August 2002, I found that of the initial 742 detainees that had arrived at Guantánamo, the majority of them had never seen a US soldier in the process of their initial detention and their captivity had not been subjected to any meaningful review,” Wilkerson’s declaration says. “Secretary Powell was also trying to bring pressure to bear regarding a number of specific detentions because children as young as 12 and 13 and elderly as old as 92 or 93 had been shipped to Guantánamo. By that time, I also understood that the deliberate choice to send detainees to Guantánamo was an attempt to place them outside the jurisdiction of the US legal system.”

He added that it became “more and more clear many of the men were innocent, or at a minimum their guilt was impossible to determine let alone prove in any court of law, civilian or military.”

For Cheney and Rumsfeld, and “others,” Wilkerson said, “the primary issue was to gain more intelligence as quickly as possible, both on Al Qaeda and its current and future plans and operations but increasingly also, in 2002-2003, on contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s intelligence and secret police forces in Iraq.”

“Their view was that innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years was justified by the broader war on terror and the capture of the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks, or other acts of terrorism,” Wilkerson added. “Moreover, their detention was deemed acceptable if it led to a more complete and satisfactory intelligence picture with regard to Iraq, thus justifying the Administration’s plans for war with that country.”

Documents have been released over the past year that showed how in 2002 several high-value detainees were tortured and forced to make statements that linked Iraq to al-Qaeda and 9/11, which the Bush administration cited as intelligence to support its invasion of the country in March 2003. But the confessions were utterly false.

Wilkerson’s declaration was made in support of a  lawsuit filed by Adel Hassan Hamad, a 52-year-old former Guantanamo detainee who is suing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Joint Chief of Staff Richard Myers, and a slew of other Bush administration officials for wrongfully imprisoning and torturing him.

>> Read the rest