From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 1 11:17:34 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2014 12:17:34 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - DARPA Tried to Build Skynet in the 1980s Message-ID: <328C1A02-B6B4-497D-8D2E-AFA9068E0A88@infowarrior.org> DARPA Tried to Build Skynet in the 1980s Matt Novak From 1983 to 1993 DARPA spent over $1 billion on a program called the Strategic Computing Initiative. The agency's goal was to push the boundaries of computers, artificial intelligence, and robotics to build something that, in hindsight, looks strikingly similar to the dystopian future of the Terminator movies. They wanted to build Skynet. Much like Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program, the idea behind Strategic Computing proved too futuristic for its time. But with the stunning advancements we're witnessing today in military AI and autonomous robots, it's worth revisiting this nearly forgotten program, and asking ourselves if we're ready for a world of hyperconnected killing machines. And perhaps a more futile question: Even if we wanted to stop it, is it too late? < big snip > http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/darpa-tried-to-build-skynet-in-the-1980s-1451000652 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 2 10:31:28 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2014 11:31:28 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Happy 100th birthday, information warfare Message-ID: <9D552F79-F272-4279-A9E1-826E2035095E@infowarrior.org> (c/o JH) IMHO say "IW" and its various applications have been around FAR longer than just WW1. But it's weekend, I'm not going to quibble (much). --rick Happy 100th birthday, information warfare How World War I led to modern propaganda and surveillance http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/happy-100th-birthday-information-warfare/2014/08/01/3786e262-1732-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html By John Maxwell Hamilton August 1 at 4:28 PM One hundred years ago this Monday, after German troops marched into Belgium, Britain declared war and scarcely an hour later it sent its cable ship Alert into the English Channel. By dawn, amid heavy rain and wind, the crew had severed Germany?s five most important Atlantic cables. For the duration of the war, Berlin?s ability to communicate abroad, even with many of its embassies, was impaired. Today we take for granted that information warfare ? whether the disruption of other nations? computer systems, the monitoring of citizens? telephone calls to detect terrorist threats or the use of social media to shape foreign attitudes ? is a key tool of national security. These measures, and the debates about their proper limits in a democracy, seem unprecedented because they are driven by new technologies. But virtually all our concerns about such tactics find their roots in the Great War, particularly in its first hours, when the Alert?s hatchet-wielding crew began its work. The notion of winning the ?hearts and minds? of local populations, so common to discussions of war today, played out not only abroad but at home a century ago. The unprecedented scale of World War I required mass domestic mobilization. Governments had to persuade their citizens to serve in the military or, if they stayed at home, to conserve precious resources, pay higher taxes, buy war bonds and patriotically stick with the war as it dragged bloodily along. While the British sprinted ahead in disrupting communications, all belligerents quickly sought the high ground in the battle of propaganda. The same day the Germans invaded Belgium, they issued a ?White Book? justifying their actions to the world. Similar reports, known by the rainbow of colors on their covers, followed: a British ?Blue Book? on Aug. 6, a Russian ?Orange Book? on Aug. 16 and so forth until the French, who were especially egregious in omitting and falsifying facts, issued a ?Yellow Book? on Dec. 1. The warring nations understood that propaganda is a function of both what is said and what is not said. The first German government press directive included in its list of prohibited subjects any mention of censorship itself. The French banned references to a former finance minister who favored diplomatic solutions to disagreements with Germany. Despite its long democratic tradition, the British government kept secret the existence of the propaganda agency it created at Wellington House. The United States was a key propaganda target. The Germans wanted it to stay out of the war and hoped the American government would press the British to relax their naval blockade. The British wanted all the material support possible and a free hand to tighten the noose around Germany. The blockade, plus control of transatlantic cables, allowed the British to intercept American communications, including consular mail, which they did shamelessly. This was a major source of irritation to Washington, much as the Germans took umbrage at U.S. tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel?s cellphone . The Germans aggressively courted German Americans and the legislators who represented them. To reach mass audiences, they bought U.S. newspapers, at one point even considering the purchase of The Washington Post. But the Germans were clumsy. Their chief propagandist in the United States was so intemperate in his remarks, most notably with an over-the-top defense of Germany?s sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania, that he had to return home. Two German military attaches, who had the odd dual responsibilities of propaganda and the sabotage of American plants supplying the Allies, were expelled when documents revealed their plans to foment labor strikes and contained unflattering comments about President Woodrow Wilson. In contrast was Britain?s Sir Gilbert Parker, whose work seems like a precursor to social media. Married to an American and well known to U.S. readers, the novelist headed a secret program in which he and other leading British figures urged the Allied viewpoint in seemingly innocent letters to American influentials. In one of his reports, which survive in the British archives, Parker noted, ?In the eyes of the American people the quiet and subterranean nature of our work has the appearance of a purely private patriotism and enterprise.? Americans came late to the war. But within a week of entering in April 1917, President Wilson launched the nation?s first effort to systematically shape public attitudes, the Committee on Public Information. The CPI was headquartered in a brick rowhouse still standing on Lafayette Square. Its director, the aggressive journalist George Creel, frequently walked the short distance to the White House. He was considered one of the half-dozen most influential political figures in Washington during the war. The CPI?s influence at home was manifested in articles, cartoons and advertisements in newspapers and magazines; in public school lessons, university textbooks and Sunday sermons; in talks at movie theaters, Indian reservations and anywhere else the CPI?s 75,000 Four Minute Men (volunteers charged with delivering short speeches on the war effort) found an audience; in feature films and in ads on theater curtains; in posters plastered on buildings and on storefronts; in pamphlets distributed by the millions. Abroad, Creel?s staff set up reading rooms, tested techniques for dropping leaflets in enemy territory by air, established a cable news service and distributed movies with propaganda value. To a degree never seen before for a president?s pronouncements, the CPI promoted Wilson?s idealistic rhetoric overseas. The men and women of the CPI were muckrakers, suffragists, municipal reformers and leading progressive educators. Their legacy includes the public affairs officers in our embassies, who explain American values abroad, and the Federal Register, which evolved from a CPI publication created to bring the daily actions of government to light. Yet in making the world ?safe for democracy,? the CPI could not resist using its considerable powers to set anti-democratic precedents. Creel headed off official news censorship domestically, but the CPI suppressed and sanitized news ? and views. ?News itself must be given a new definition,? he said. The committee extolled transparency but supplied the news media with stories that were not identified as CPI-written, and created front organizations to work with immigrant groups and labor. The CPI foreswore emotional propaganda, but with other domestic propaganda groups pushing it along, the committee contributed to hate propaganda against Germany and German Americans. One war poster, referring to Germany, declared: ?Such a civilization is not fit to live.? Overseas the CPI subsidized publications and bribed editors. Zealousness and naivete led it to publicize bogus documents aimed at undermining the Bolshevik revolution, an act that contributed to deteriorating ties with the new Russian government. In its efforts to stifle dissent, the CPI became an accomplice to the trampling of civil liberties under such laws as the 1917 Espionage Act. That act is a legal basis for the current administration?s prosecution of journalists and leakers . And that is just one ominous echo. When National Security Agency officials resist explaining the extent to which they burrow into our lives, we can hear Creel arguing for squelching public discussion of postal censorship. When the Obama administration discourages journalists? access to government officials, we hear Wilson?s secretary of state insisting that none of his subordinates speak to the press. For his part, Wilson advocated ?pitiless publicity? of government actions but suspended presidential news conferences for the duration of the war on the grounds that he was too busy. Before the Great War, the authoritative Encyclopedia Britannica had no entry for ?propaganda.? The subject was not deemed significant. In the edition published shortly after the war, an entry on propaganda ran nearly 10 pages of small, dense type. Its pithy definition hinted at the odious connotation the word had acquired: ?Those engaged in a propaganda may genuinely believe that success will be an advantage to those whom they address, but the stimulus to their action is their own cause.? The CPI was a catalyst for government opinion-molding, which has become so pervasive it is impossible to identify all the people who engage in it during all or part of their workday. It also is a lesson in a fundamental threat to democracy ? the too-easy morphing of wholesome government information that the public needs to reach sound opinions into the distortion and suppression of information inconvenient to a leader?s objectives. The most profound legacy of the information war of a century ago is the doubt it planted about the integrity of government. ?This whole discussion about the ways and means of controlling public opinion testifies to the collapse of the traditional species of democratic romanticism,? a leading scholar in the new field of propaganda, Harold Lasswell, wrote in 1927. ?.?.?. That credulous utopianism, which fed upon the mighty words which exploited the hopes of the mass in war, has in many minds given way to cynicism and disenchantment.? jhamilt at lsu.edu --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 2 18:44:28 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2014 19:44:28 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - How Al-Qaeda Uses Encryption Post-Snowden Message-ID: How Al-Qaeda Uses Encryption Post-Snowden (Part 2) ? New Analysis in Collaboration With ReversingLabs https://www.recordedfuture.com/al-qaeda-encryption-technology-part-2/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 4 07:21:28 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 08:21:28 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: WAC legacy honored as 108-year-old vet Lucy Coffey fulfills her dream Message-ID: <0DFB34C7-5EBE-4FBD-8A72-2AF8CA52659E@infowarrior.org> WAC legacy honored as 108-year-old vet Lucy Coffey fulfills her dream Visit to Washington, D.C., includes meeting with Obama and Biden By Meredith Tibbetts Stars and Stripes Published: August 1, 2014 http://www.stripes.com/wac-legacy-honored-as-108-year-old-vet-lucy-coffey-fulfills-her-dream-1.295422 WASHINGTON ? Lucy Coffey dreamed of going to the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Arlington, Va. Last weekend she got her wish ? and then some. Coffey, 108 and the nation?s oldest living female military veteran, was greeted with thunderous applause July 25 at Reagan National Airport and was welcomed to the White House by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. ?She?s waited over 65 years to see her memorial. ... Not too often we get to bring a veteran to the White House to meet the president and the vice president. They spent some time with her and thanked her for her service,? Allen Bergeron, chairman of the Austin Honor Flight, said. Though Coffey ? who was part of the Women?s Army Corps during World War II ? did not walk and cannot speak much, she was actively engaging with the people around her. ?At 108, think of all she has seen. And now she has seen everything that was built for her,? Bergeron said. ?The World War II Memorial representing the 400,000 killed and the 16 million that served and this beautiful Women?s Memorial that was built in her honor.? Coffey enlisted in 1943, around the time of her 37th birthday. She had tried to enlist several times before, but was rejected for being too short or too slim. She earned two Bronze Stars (for support services in the Philippines and what is now Dutch New Guinea), a WAC Service Medal, a Good Conduct Medal and a World War II Victory Medal. Coffey, whose last rank was staff sergeant, was one of 150,000 women who served as WACs during the war. WAC members were the first women besides nurses to serve in the U.S. Army. Coffey served mainly in the Pacific theater, going to Australia and Dutch New Guinea before finally arriving in the Philippines in April 1945. Her last stop was Okinawa, Japan. While in the Army, she worked as an accountant-statistician and served in the procurement office. ?Two of Lucy?s brothers also joined the service in World War II,? John Mulrey, Coffey?s nephew, said. ?They both served in the Pacific theater in Philippines and Guam. All three of them ended up in the Pacific at the same time. ?We could have sworn they made a connection one time ... but her brothers were actually in the infantry and a day ahead,? Mulrey said. That meant Coffey?s brothers were usually out of the area by the time she arrived. One time, however, Coffey?s group was much closer to the fighting than they had intended, which she described as ?pretty terrifying.? Food and water were sometimes scarce for Coffey and her fellow WACs. On at least one occasion, ?Navy boys? gave her onion sandwiches and beer. In New Guinea, each WAC member was given two helmets of water for personal use during periods of water shortages. John Mulrey, a Vietnam veteran, accompanied his aunt from San Antonio, Texas, on the trip to Washington, D.C., with his wife JoAnn. He joined the military because he thought it was better to join than be drafted and because he wanted to serve his country. ?I guess (being in the military) just runs in the family,? he said. Coffey was honorably discharged in November 1945, but stayed in Japan as a civil servant for about 10 years. She later transferred to Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio where she worked until her retirement in 1971. ?She is very, very shy about her time in the service. She doesn?t talk about it much,? Mulrey said. ?She just did what she had to do.? ?She?s just very humble,? his wife said. Though Coffey dreamed of going back to Japan, she never did. But she was able to go to the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery on July 26. She smiled at the old uniforms on display and listened intently to the president of the women?s memorial, Ret. USAF Brig. Gen. Wilma L. Vaught, explain different exhibits as she was wheeled around the memorial. Earlier in the day, Coffey visited the National World War II Memorial, where she met former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). American Airlines provided a free, first-class trip for Coffey. The Austin Honor Flight team took care of the rest, spending about two weeks pulling everything together. ?This, I think, has made her feel so proud. ... and I think it has awoken a spirit that she buried a long time ago,? John Mulrey said. ?It is the ultimate memory for Lucy.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 4 10:39:38 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 11:39:38 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - FBI to hire media monitor about its coverage Message-ID: <425D3A12-97AB-435C-9CFB-064619027FFD@infowarrior.org> Obama?s FBI to hire firm to rate ?positive? and ?negative? stories about the agency Officials mum on need for and use of such info By Jim McElhatton - The Washington Times - Sunday, August 3, 2014 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/3/fbi-hires-firm-to-rate-news-stories-about-the-agen/ The FBI is hiring a contractor to grade news stories about the agency as ?positive? ?neutral? or ?negative,? but the agency won?t say why officials need the information or what they plan to do with it. FBI officials wouldn?t even reveal how they will go about assigning the grades, which were laid out in a recent contract solicitation. The contract tells potential bidders to ?use their judgment? in scoring news coverage as part of a new ?daily news briefing? service the agency is seeking as part of a contract that could last up to five years. The move is reminiscent of a similar effort the Obama administration made to grade media coverage of its response to the BP oil spill. A separate defense contract rating reporters? work was scrapped in 2009. In a statement of work, the agency says its public affairs office needs a contractor to help monitor ?breaking news, editorials, long-form journalism projects and the larger public conversation about law enforcement.? But the lack of clear public methods and goals raises ?troubling questions,? said Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northwestern University. ?You would certainly worry this could affect access,? he said. ?It might affect the way they?re going to approach your questions, whether they?re going to be extra careful not to make news if you?re on the ?bad list.?? Mr. Kennedy also pointed out that journalism can be nuanced and complicated, raising questions about what sort of guidance the agency provides to contractors to fit stories into positive, neutral or negative boxes. ?If you?re rigorously fair about it and you?re getting the FBI?s point of view out there, they would probably write that as a negative story, but it strikes me as neutral,? he said. David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, said the FBI, like many agencies, may want to know what people are saying and writing about them. And media-clipping services, while often done in-house, aren?t an unusual use of resources, he said. But he questioned how rating journalists fits with the agency?s core mission of enforcing federal laws. ?It just seems like you?re creating a whole other layer of work,? he said. The contractor must ?characterize the coverage such that FBI officials can quickly get a sense of how widely various story elements were run and also for the general tonality of the coverage,? FBI officials said in the contract?s statement of work. It?s not the first time the Obama administration has sought outside help in deciphering media coverage. In 2011, The Associated Press reported on an $18,000 contract that called, in part, for a vendor to assess the ?tone? of news stories about the administration?s response to the BP oil spill. Past contracts have created problems too, the AP noted, referring to a 2009 defense contract grading journalists? work before they embedded with troops. Ultimately, the Pentagon scrapped that contract, which graded reporters? work as ?positive,? ?negative? or ?neutral,? according to Stars and Stripes. The decision to scrap the contract came after the newspaper reported that military officials were using the contractor-created profiles to help decide whether to grant or deny ?embed? requests. Under the FBI contract proposal, the vendor would deliver a daily news briefing through a website using ?extremely fresh? content each day, including links to media coverage, by 7 a.m. Monday through Friday. ?This service shall allow personnel to have better situational awareness as well as support both proactive and reactive public communications strategies,? officials stated in the statement of work. The briefing materials would include date of coverage, tonality, story focus, type of media outlet and ?overall impact? of news coverage in chart and graph form, records show. The FBI also would have the right to archive the daily briefings indefinitely. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 4 15:18:30 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 16:18:30 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - FBI Refuses To Let Public Know How Its Drone Usage Affects Their Privacy Message-ID: FBI Refuses To Let Public Know How Its Drone Usage Affects Their Privacy https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140726/22502628024/fbi-refuses-to-let-public-know-how-its-drone-usage-affects-their-privacy.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 5 06:14:00 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 07:14:00 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Visit the Wrong Website, and the FBI Could End Up in Your Computer Message-ID: <286E13D7-9D26-47C6-A0D7-57C5143C95A3@infowarrior.org> (I wonder how long before someone develops malware to DDOS this system with hijacked http requests to 'controversial' sites. Malware-v-Malware? --rick) Visit the Wrong Website, and the FBI Could End Up in Your Computer ? By Kevin Poulsen ? 08.05.14 | http://www.wired.com/2014/08/operation_torpedo/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 5 15:05:47 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 16:05:47 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - 2014 Maryland Cyber Challenge registration Message-ID: Maryland Cyber Challenge 2014 (@MDCyberChall) registration is now open! Since 2011, the Maryland Cyber Challenge has brought together students and professionals for a series of technical challenges leading to meaningful prizes, bragging rights, and fun, motivating educational experiences. Teams of up to six players from three divisions (high school, college, & professional) will compete in a series of cybersecurity scenarios (e.g., defense, attack, forensics, CTF) that put their critical thinking, technical prowess, and teamwork skills to the test. The top teams then meet to compete in their respective division's finals in-person at the CyberMaryland conference in Baltimore on 29-30 October. All rounds will be completed online except for the finals. See complete schedule for details. ? Voluntary Practice Rounds (5 Sessions): August 12-27 ? Qualification Round 1: (Everyone): September 13-15 ? Qualification Round 2 (College & Pro ONLY): September 21-23 ? Qualification Round 2 (High School ONLY): October 3-5 ? LIVE Finals at CyberMaryland 2014 Conference: October 29-30 Additional information, schedlule, fees, and sign-up details can be found @ https://www.fbcinc.com/e/cybermdconference/challenge.aspx The Maryland Cyber Challenge welcomes teams from across the region, nation, and around the world. However, please note that travel assistanceships are not available --- meaning, if your team makes it to the finals, you are responsible for getting here in person to compete. Developed and designed primarily to encourage young Marylanders to enroll in IT and computer science courses and pursue careers in Maryland's cybersecurity workforce, the Challenge is a partnership between the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Leidos, and the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED). Feel free to pass the word and/or sign up! :) -- rick Co-founder & Director, Maryland Cyber Challenge --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 5 16:45:09 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 17:45:09 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - UNSEALED: The US Sought Permission To Change The Historical Record Of A Public Court Proceeding Message-ID: UNSEALED: The US Sought Permission To Change The Historical Record Of A Public Court Proceeding A few weeks ago we fought a battle for transparency in our flagship NSA spying case, Jewel v. NSA. But, ironically, we weren't able to tell you anything about it until now. On June 6, the court held a long hearing in Jewel in a crowded, open courtroom, widely covered by the press. We were even on the local TV news on two stations. At the end, the Judge ordered both sides to request a transcript since he ordered us to do additional briefing. But when it was over, the government secretly, and surprisingly sought permission to ?remove? classified information from the transcript, and even indicated that it wanted to do so secretly, so the public could never even know that they had done so. We rightly considered this an outrageous request and vigorously opposed it. The public has a First Amendment right not only to attend the hearing but to have an accurate transcript of it. Moreover, the federal law governing court reporting requires that ?each session of the court? be ?recorded verbatim? and that the transcript be certified by the court reporter as ?a correct statement of the testimony taken and the proceedings had.? 28 U.S.C. ? 753(b). The Court allowed the government a first look at the transcript and indicated that it was going to hold the government to a very high standard and would not allow the government to manufacture a misleading transcript by hiding the fact of any redactions. Ultimately, the government said that it had *not* revealed classified information at the hearing and removed its request. But the incident speaks volumes about the dangers of allowing the government free rein to claim secrecy in court proceedings and otherwise. We couldn't tell you anything about that fight because the government's request, our opposition to it, and the court's order regarding it were all sealed. But with today's order by Judge White, the transcript and the arguments over the government's request to revise it are finally public documents. Here's how the events transpired: < ? > https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/unsealed-us-sought-permission-change-historical-record-public-court-proceeding --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 5 16:46:20 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 17:46:20 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - New leaker disclosing U.S. secrets, government concludes Message-ID: New leaker disclosing U.S. secrets, government concludes By Evan Perez, CNN updated 5:16 PM EDT, Tue August 5, 2014 http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/index.html (CNN) -- The federal government has concluded there's a new leaker exposing national security documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN. Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden's leaks. The Intercept article focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases of known or suspected terrorist names during the Obama administration. The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid criminal charges. Greenwald has suggested there was another leaker. In July, he said on Twitter "it seems clear at this point" that there was another. Government officials have been investigating to find out that identity. In a February interview with CNN's Reliable Sources, Greenwald said: "I definitely think it's fair to say that there are people who have been inspired by Edward Snowden's courage and by the great good and virtue that it has achieved." He added, "I have no doubt there will be other sources inside the government who see extreme wrongdoing who are inspired by Edward Snowden." It's not yet clear how many documents the new leaker has shared and how much damage it may cause. So far, the documents shared by the new leaker are labeled "Secret" and "NOFORN," which means it isn't to be shared with foreign government. That's a lower level of classification than most of the documents leaked by Snowden. Government officials say he stole 1.7 million classified documents, many of which were labeled "Top Secret," a higher classification for the government's most important secrets. Big databases The biggest database, called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, now has 1 million names, a U.S. official confirmed to CNN. That's boosted from half that many in the aftermath of the botched attempt by the so-called underwear bomber to blow up a U.S.-bound jetliner on Christmas Day in 2009. The growth of TIDE, and other more specialized terrorist databases and watchlists, was a result of vulnerabilities exposed in the 2009 underwear plot, government officials said. A year after Snowden The underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, was not on government watchlists that would have prevented him from being allowed to fly to the United States. In 2012, the National Counterterrorism Center reported that the TIDE database contained 875,000 names. There were about 500,000 in 2009 before the underwear bomb plot. The Intercept first reported the new TIDE database numbers, along with details of other databases. The Intercept article As of November, 2013, there were 700,000 people listed in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), or the "Terrorist Watchlist, according to a U.S. official. Fewer than 1% are U.S. persons and fewer than 0.5% are U.S. citizens. The list has grown somewhat since that time, but is nowhere near the 1.5 million figure cited in recent news reports. Current numbers for the TSDB cannot be released at this time. The Intercept report said, citing the documents, that 40% on the "Terrorist Watchlist" aren't affiliated with terror groups. U.S. officials familiar with the matter say the claim is incorrect based on a misreading of the documents. Americans on lists The report said that as of August, 2013, 5,000 Americans were on the TSD watchlist. Another 15,800 were on the wider TIDE list. A smaller subset, 16,000 names, including 1,200 belonging to Americans, are listed as "selectees" who are subject to more intensive screening at airports and border crossings. According to the Intercept, citing the documents, the cities with the most names on the list are: New York, Dearborn, Michigan; Houston; San Diego; and Chicago. Dearborn is home to one the nation's biggest concentrations of Arab and Muslim populations. According to the documents cited by the Intercept, the government has also begun a new effort to collect information and biometric data on U.S. persons in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. The data includes photos from driver's licenses. That effort likely was spurred by the fact that FBI agents investigating the Boston bombings found existing databases lacking when they tried to match images of the two bombers isolated from surveillance video, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. Stored on Pentagon system Documents classified as "Secret" are stored on a Pentagon-operated computer system called SIPRNet, which the Defense and State departments use to share classified information. A recent Government Accountability Office study found that between 2006-2011 there were 3.2 million approved by the Pentagon to handle secret, top secret, SCI (sensitive compartmented) information. SIPRnet is one of the computer systems that the former Army soldier now known as Chelsea Manning accessed to leak hundreds of thousands documents, including State Department cables. The Manning leak was the largest U.S. intelligence leak until Snowden. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 5 21:32:51 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 22:32:51 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Former NSA chief defends cybersecurity venture Message-ID: Former NSA chief defends cybersecurity venture By KEN DILANIAN AP Intelligence Writer http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NSA_SURVEILLANCE_ALEXANDER WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even in an era when former officials routinely profit from business ventures linked to their public service, recently retired National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander raised eyebrows when he disclosed he is working on patents for what he calls a game-changing cybersecurity model. Alexander had access to the nation's deepest secrets about cyberwarfare, and he spent the last several years warning about cyberthreats to private industry. Critics questioned whether he was cashing in on classified information he learned at NSA, and they asked why he didn't deploy his new ideas while he led the government's cyber defenses. In an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, Alexander sought to answer those questions and rebut what he says are misimpressions about the new company he leads, IronNet Cybersecurity. The retired four-star general, who departed in March after nine years as NSA director, said there is nothing improper about working in his field of expertise. He also led the military's cyber command. "If I retired from the Army as a brain surgeon, wouldn't it be OK for me to go into private practice and make money doing brain surgery?" he asked. "I'm a cyber guy. Can't I go to work and do cyber stuff?" His firm is developing as many as 10 patents, he said, and has secured contracts with three clients he declines to name. The technological innovations in the new patents came from an unidentified partner, he said, and are not specifically derived from anything he learned at NSA or cyber command. Alexander also filed three patents while he was NSA director, but the taxpayers own the rights to those, and if he wants to use them he must apply for a license, as anyone could, he said. Lawyers at NSA and his private lawyers- including former FBI Director Robert Mueller, now with the Wilmer Hale law firm in Washington - have told him he is on firm legal footing, Alexander said. "I've been in government for 40 years; I fully understand the importance and sanctity of classified material," said Alexander, who ended his career dealing with the stunning revelations of former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden. Reports of his firm charging $1 million a month for consulting services are not accurate, he said, though he declined to disclose his firm's fees. "That number was inflated from the beginning," he said. Alexander acknowledged he stands to become a rich man, if his firm perfects what he calls a new behavioral model designed to detect sophisticated hackers who penetrate a corporate network using techniques whose pattern is not previously known. "If it actually works, this will be worth a lot," he said. He said he didn't develop the idea while working at NSA, but even if he had, that agency lacks the authority to defend private networks. The agency mainly protects secret networks with classified tools and information sharing that does not exist in the private sector. Alexander's path from a government job to a related private venture is well worn. His predecessor, Michael Hayden, is a consultant with Chertoff Group, the security consulting and private equity firm led by Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security chief, who is also working with Alexander on the cyber venture. The three NSA directors prior to Alexander and Hayden have each worked in the defense industry after leaving office, including retired Vice Admiral Michael McConnell, who has earned more than $1 million a year in recent years as vice chairman of intelligence contractor Booz Allen, according to the company's proxy statements. Participants in Alexander's new venture include James Heath, a former NSA adviser, and Russell Richardson, a former Army intelligence official. John "Chris," Inglis, who retired in March as the NSA deputy director, is helping part time. "Actually knowing something about cybersecurity is a rare commodity," said James Lewis, a cyber expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "He's got the skills and he's trying to figure out how to monetize them. It's hardly unusual." ? 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 6 07:07:05 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2014 08:07:05 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Spy Agency Stole Scoop From Media Outlet And Handed It To The AP Message-ID: <97C74085-AF21-4834-8B4E-552C54CF2884@infowarrior.org> Spy Agency Stole Scoop From Media Outlet And Handed It To The AP Posted: 08/05/2014 2:16 pm EDT Updated: 08/05/2014 8:59 pm WASHINGTON -- The Associated Press dropped a significant scoop on Tuesday afternoon, reporting that in the last several years the U.S. government's terrorism watch list has doubled. A few minutes after the AP story, then consisting of three paragraphs, was posted at 12:32 p.m., The Intercept published a much more comprehensive article. The original article, which has since been updated and expanded, appears below: The government, it turned out, had "spoiled the scoop," an informally forbidden practice in the world of journalism. To spoil a scoop, the subject of a story, when asked for comment, tips off a different, typically friendlier outlet in the hopes of diminishing the attention the first outlet would have received. Tuesday's AP story was much friendlier to the government's position, explaining the surge of individuals added to the watch list as an ongoing response to a foiled terror plot. < --- > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/05/terror-watch-list_n_5651757.html?&ir=Media&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000021 --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 7 06:10:33 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 07:10:33 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Snowden can stay in Russia Message-ID: <8DAC5D84-62F1-4059-B71E-DDD01D1E52E4@infowarrior.org> Edward Snowden given permission to stay in Russia for three more years NSA whistleblower's lawyer tells Russian news agency Snowden has been granted three-year residency after year's asylum ran out ? Agencies in Moscow ? theguardian.com, Thursday 7 August 2014 06.53 EDT http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/edward-snowden-permission-stay-in-russia-three-years Edward Snowden has been granted permission to stay in Russia for three more years, his lawyer said on Thursday. The NSA whistleblower was last year granted temporary asylum for one year, which ran out on 1 August. His lawyer, Analtoly Kucherena, was quoted by Russian news agencies on Thursday as saying Snowden had been granted residency for three more years. Snowden arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on a flight from Hong Kong on 23 June 2013 after identifying himself as the source of the Guardian's revelations on the US security agency's clandestine internet surveillance. He spent five weeks in the transit area after the US cancelled his travel documents before being given asylum in Russia. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 7 10:23:46 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 11:23:46 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - USIS hacked, DHS says Message-ID: DHS contractor suffers major computer breach, officials say By Ellen Nakashima August 6 at 4:07 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dhs-contractor-suffers-major-computer-breach-officials-say/2014/08/06/8ed131b4-1d89-11e4-ae54-0cfe1f974f8a_story.html A major U.S. contractor that conducts background checks for the Department of Homeland Security has suffered a computer breach that probably resulted in the theft of employees? personal information, officials said Wednesday. The company, USIS, said in a statement that the intrusion ?has all the markings of a state-sponsored attack.? The breach, discovered recently, prompted DHS to suspend all work with USIS as the FBI launches an investigation. It is unclear how many employees were affected, but officials said they believe the breach did not affect employees outside the department. Still, the Office of Personnel Management has also suspended work with the company ?out of an abundance of caution,? a senior administration official said. ?Our forensic analysis has concluded that some DHS personnel may have been affected, and DHS has notified its entire workforce? of the breach, department spokesman Peter Boogaard said. ?We are committed to ensuring our employees? privacy and are taking steps to protect it.? The intrusion is not believed to be related to a March incident in which the OPM?s databases were hacked, said officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. That intrusion was traced to China and none of the personal data, which was encrypted, was stolen. In the DHS case, said a second senior administration official, ?We have an inclination that, based on what the company has been telling us, there has been a spill. The degree to which that information has been exfiltrated for other purposes is what we?re trying to discern now.? Officials said that, although the DHS encrypts the employee data it sends USIS, it?s unclear whether the data remain encrypted. USIS, a Falls Church, Va., company, is the largest provider of background investigations for the federal government. It conducts checks for DHS employees and applicants who require security clearances. While the OPM manages the bulk of federal background investigations, some departments, such as Homeland Security, have authority to hire contractors for their own investigations, officials said. Company officials said they recently discovered the penetration of the firm?s corporate network and informed the FBI, the OPM and other relevant agencies. ?We are working collaboratively with OPM and DHS to resolve this matter quickly and look forward to resuming service on all our contracts with them as soon as possible,? the firm said in its statement. The U.S. government and its contractors are a favorite target for hackers who are interested in obtaining sensitive data, ranging from employee information contracts to weapons-system designs. In 2006, Chinese hackers breached the system of a sensitive Commerce Department bureau. Also that year, the State Department suffered an intrusion traced to China. In recent years, hackers have penetrated systems at the Defense Department, the Navy and the Environmental Protection Agency. Last year, hackers stole personal data from more than 100,000 people from an Energy Department system. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a component of DHS, is conducting an on-site assessment at USIS, including a forensic analysis. Officials said they are seeking to learn exactly what happened and who was behind the intrusion. US-CERT has also instructed the company on how to mitigate the breach, officials said. Some lawmakers have announced they will investigate the breach. ?It is extremely concerning that the largest private provider of background investigations to the government was hacked,? said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. ?I am asking Chairman [Darrell] Issa to work with me in having our committee investigate this matter with the utmost urgency.? The USIS breach ?is very troubling news,? said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a Homeland Security Committee member. ?Americans? personal information should always be secure, particularly when our national security is involved. An incident like this is simply unacceptable.? Cummings and other lawmakers have been critical of DHS for recently awarding USIS a contract, worth up to $190 million, to provide services related to DHS?s immigration system. They noted the company is facing a lawsuit by a whistleblower and the Justice Department that accuses it of defrauding the government. The suit alleges that USIS ?dumped? or did not fully complete 665,000 background checks used for security clearances to hit revenue targets. Since the accusations have emerged, the company says it has hired a new management team and has enhanced oversight procedures. USIS performed the background checks on Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis and on former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Christian Davenport and Josh Hicks contributed to this report. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 7 12:58:49 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 13:58:49 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - City Of London Police Arrest Creator Of Anti-Censorship Proxy Service Based On Hollywood's Say So Message-ID: <95D13012-4D53-4E52-A14F-F5CAEB3234AF@infowarrior.org> City Of London Police Arrest Creator Of Anti-Censorship Proxy Service Based On Hollywood's Say So https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140806/07262728128/city-london-police-arrest-creator-anti-censorship-proxy-service-based-hollywood.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 8 06:23:49 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 07:23:49 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?We=92re_Scared_of_the_Wrong_Thin?= =?windows-1252?q?gs?= Message-ID: <96C146C2-07A1-48B1-A677-EB75F5FDAB8B@infowarrior.org> We?re Scared of the Wrong Things Americans freak out over small threats and ignore big ones Middle East. The Ebola virus spreads across West Africa. Edward Snowden, Chinese hackers and Anonymous make a mockery of national cyber security. Religious fanatics are trying to get their hands on nuclear and chemical weapons. Americans are afraid. And who can blame us? Spend too long with any of the major news outlets and the future can look pretty bleak. But many of things Americans fear the most more or less are fantasies. That doesn?t stop us from spending time, effort and billions upon billions of dollars trying to defend ourselves. Meanwhile, we often ignore the real threats?the technology, people and phenomena that actually can hurt us. What are Americans getting wrong about national security? From nuclear terrorism to the much-ballyhooed ?cyber 9/11,? here?s where we think our priorities are wrong. And while we?re at it, we?ll mention what we think you really should be afraid of. < - > https://medium.com/war-is-boring/youre-scared-of-the-wrong-things-f7b581e78aa3 From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 9 14:57:00 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 15:57:00 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Father of PGP encryption: Telcos need to get out of bed with governments Message-ID: <33AD1B77-DF02-408C-AF3D-93E0486DFC0B@infowarrior.org> Father of PGP encryption: Telcos need to get out of bed with governments Zimmermann?s Silent Circle working with Dutch telco to deliver encrypted calls. by Sean Gallagher - Aug 9 2014, 1:35pm EDT http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/father-of-pgp-encryption-says-telcos-need-to-get-out-of-bed-with-government/ LAS VEGAS?Phil Zimmermann, the creator of Pretty Good Privacy public-key encryption, has some experience when it comes to the politics of crypto. During the ?crypto wars? of the 1990s, Zimmermann fought to convince the US government to stop classifying PGP as a ?munition? and shut down the Clipper Chip program?an effort to create a government-mandated encryption processor that would have given the NSA a back door into all encrypted electronic communication. Now Zimmermann and the company he co-founded are working to convince telecommunications companies?mostly overseas?that it?s time to end their nearly century-long cozy relationship with governments. Zimmermann compared telephone companies? thinking with the long-held belief that tomatoes were toxic until it was demonstrated they weren?t. ?For a long time, for a hundred years, phone companies around the world have created a culture around themselves that is very cooperative with governments in invading people?s privacy. And these phone companies tend to think that there?s no other way?that they can?t break from this culture, that the tomatoes are poisonous," he said. A call for crypto Back in 2005, Zimmermann, Alan Johnston, and Jon Callas began work on an encryption protocol for voice over IP (VoIP) phone calls, dubbed ZRTP, as part of his Zfone project. In 2011, ZRTP became an Internet Engineering Task Force RFC, and it has been published as open source under a BSD license. It?s also the basis of the voice service for Silent Circle, the end-to-end encrypted voice service Zimmermann co-founded with former Navy SEAL Mark Janke. Silent Circle, which Ars tested on the Blackphone in June, is a ZRTP-based voice and ephemeral messaging service that generates session-specific keys between users to encrypt from end to end. The call is tunneled over a Transport Layer Security-encrypted connection through Silent Circle?s servers in Canada and Switzerland. ZRTP and the Silent Circle calls don?t rely on PGP or any other public key infrastructure, so there?s no keys to hand over under a FISA order or law enforcement warrant. Now, thanks largely to the revelations of NSA and GCHQ monitoring of telecommunications triggered by documents leaked by Edward Snowden, there?s a growing market demand for call privacy ?and telecom companies, especially in Europe, have become more receptive to the idea of giving customers the power to protect their privacy. In February, Dutch telecommunications carrier KPN signed a deal to be the exclusive provider of Silent Circle?s encrypted voice call service in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. The company started offering Silent Circle services to customers this summer. That move was driven, Zimmermann said, by KPN?s chief information security officer, Jaya Baloo. ?She decided she wanted to break ranks from the rest of the phone companies and get KPN to offer their customers privacy,? Zimmermann said. ?So for the first time, you see a phone company offer real privacy. My hope is that other phone companies will find the tomatoes are not poisonous.? Defense through dependency Thanks in part to Janke?s connections, the service has been adopted by the Navy SEALS?not just for calling home, but for operational communications, as well as Canadian, British, and Australian special operations forces, members of the US Congress and US law enforcement. ?About a year ago we had a visit from the FBI in our office,? Zimmermann said. ?Mike Janke called and told, ?The FBI was in our office today,? and I said, ?Oh no, it?s started already.? And he said, ?No, no, they were just here to ask about pricing.? All of this plays into Zimmermann?s strategy to keep government agencies from pressing for backdoors into Silent Circle's service. ?I thought what we need is, we needed to create the conditions where nobody was going to lean on us for backdoors because they need it themselves. If Navy SEALs are using this, if our own government develops a dependency on it, then they?ll recognize that it would be counter-productive for them to get a backdoor in our product. Now maybe it was an overabundance of caution, because they never asked for a backdoor in PGP, but that took years to get that propagated into government customers. We saw government customers take this up almost as soon as the product was ready?in fact before the product was ready they were asking about it. So we?ve created a situation where it?s difficult for them to even bring up the suggestion of a backdoor.? That?s not to say that everything has gone smoothly. Zimmermann?s company had to abandon its secure email service in the wake of the shutdown of LavaBit. ?We wiped out our entire secure email service?backups, and everything,? Zimmermann told the Def Con audience. ?Some of our customers were pissed off, but for the most part they understood we were protecting their privacy.? Giving NIST (and RSA) the finger Doing business with US government customers generally requires the use of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards for encryption. But by default, Zimmermann said, Silent Circle uses an alternative set of encryption tools. ?It wasn?t because there was anything actually wrong with the NIST algorithms,? Zimmermann explained. ?After the Snowden revelations, we felt a bit resentful that NIST had cooperated with the NSA." He continued, ?So to express our displeasure at NIST, we offered alternative algorithms. We?re using a new elliptic curve (encryption algorithm) that we commissioned Dan Bernstein to do for us, we use a Twofish block cypher, and we use Skein as our hash function.? Silent Circle does offer the NIST algorithms as an alternative. But he took the opportunity to use the controversy over the NIST standard?s now-deprecated random number generator standard?one that was crafted by the NSA to provide a way to break encryption?to get in a few digs about an old adversary. ?We?re not using the stupid random number generator that NIST did at the behest of the NSA,? he said in response to an Def Con audience question. ?I can?t imagine why anyone would use such a stupid random number generator. But apparently RSA did, and put it in their Bsafe subroutine library, which is closed source. It?s funny, back in the 90s, back when RSA started the criminal investigation against me by calling up the prosecutor and asking him to put me in prison, they said RSA was the most trusted name in cryptography?So, it?s ironic that we find today that they were paid $10 million to put an NSA-designed random number generator in their subroutine library.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 9 22:00:40 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 23:00:40 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - OT: Social Engineering a Telemarketer Message-ID: <127516B2-83E8-4DD6-9DBF-E61EC05A9DD2@infowarrior.org> Chris Blasko Shared publicly - Aug 5, 2014 https://plus.google.com/+ChrisBlasko/posts/GzCuzTyUXNq Today is a good day. I just had a call from a telemarketer. Did I yell and scream at them, you ask? Certainly not. Like a good IT administrator I put my skills to use for their benefit. Here's how the conversation went: Computer: "Press 9 to not be contacted in the future. Press 4 to speak to someone about your mortgage issues" TM: "Hello, are you having problems paying your mortgage?" Me: "Hi, this is the IT department. We intercepted your call as we detected a problem with you phone and need to fix it." TM: "Oh... ok, well what do we need to do?" Me: "We're going to need to fix the settings by pressing 4-6-8 and * at the same time" TM: "Ok, nothing happened." Me: "Are you using the new Polycom phones that we deployed?" TM: "No, it's a Yealink" Me: "Ok, I see. You haven't had the new Polycom phone deployed to your desk yet. Let me check our technical documentations for the Yealink." Me: "Alright, do you see an "OK" button on your phone?" TM: "Yes I do" Me: "Alright, you're going to press and hold that button for 10 seconds." TM: "OK, pressing it now" Me: "Perfect, let me know if you get a password request" TM: "OK, nothing has popped up ye----" That's right. I made a telemarketer unwittingly factory reset his phone which means he will be unable to make anymore calls until someone is able to reconfigure his phone and that will take at least an hour or longer if they can't do it right away!? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 11 15:33:36 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 16:33:36 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Gene_Linked_to_Alzheimer=92s_Fou?= =?windows-1252?q?nd_Not_Needed_by_Brain?= Message-ID: <1EEA4728-915C-4B3A-A977-EC58A3BF21FF@infowarrior.org> Gene Linked to Alzheimer?s Found Not Needed by Brain By Nicole Ostrow Aug 11, 2014 4:00 PM ET http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-11/gene-linked-to-alzheimer-s-found-not-needed-by-brain.html Loss of function of the gene in the brain tied to Alzheimer?s disease may not lead to memory and thinking problems, according to a surprise finding that upends some theories about the disease. Researchers found that a man with no apolipoprotein E, or APOE, in his body was cognitively normal and showed no other neurological signs of Alzheimer?s, according to a case study published today in the journal JAMA Neurology. Those with a mutation of the gene called APOE4 have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer?s. More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer?s disease, the most common form of dementia, and the number is expected to triple by 2050, according to the Alzheimer?s Association. Today?s findings show that APOE isn?t necessary for brain function, a notion that could lead to a new approach for treating the disease, researchers said. ?Minimizing APOE4 levels in the brain may provide us with a new venue for intervention with Alzheimer?s disease and other cognitive disorders,? Mary Malloy, a study author and professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco, said in an Aug. 8 telephone interview. ?The observations of this patient suggest this strategy can now be entertained seriously. We think the potential harm in minimizing APOE4 levels seems to be nonexistent.? There are three types of APOE, which helps transport cholesterol, in the body. About 20 percent of people carry APOE4, which is linked to Alzheimer?s, Bruce Miller, a study author and a professor of neurology at UCSF, said in an interview. Regulating APOE4 ?You?re better off having no APOE then APOE4,? he said. ?Turning off APOE in the brain, this gives some hope to the idea that we might have very selective ways of down regulating APOE4 in the brain and diminishing its risk for Alzheimer?s.? In today?s study, a 40-year-old California man was seen at UCSF for severe high cholesterol that wasn?t responsive to treatment. Researchers found he had no APOE in his body, a very rare occurrence, yet he had normal cognitive and eye function, Malloy said. ?We know from other diseases that there are many metabolic process that are very highly redundant that can come in and do a job if one is missing,? she said. ?APOE has a purpose but maybe there are ways to get around that. Maybe another protein can take over.? Joachim Herz, who wrote an accompanying editorial, said now that it?s been shown in humans that a lack of APOE isn?t harmful to the brain, researchers can begin looking for ways to shut off the gene in the brain only. ?This opens the door to explore such possibilities more rigorously because we have the proof of concept that reducing APOE isn?t harmful to patients,? Herz, a professor of molecular genetics, neurology and neurotherapeutics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said today in an interview. To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Ostrow in New York at nostrow1 at bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5 at bloomberg.net Andrew Pollack, Drew Armstrong --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 12 07:09:33 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 08:09:33 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Who Receives Hacker Threat Info From DHS? References: <52B1A921772A004889BEE74C87EF2C4E63EBDC94@EMP-EXMR103.corp.leidos.com> Message-ID: (more like who receives, wants, and/or finds it useful? --rick) http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2014/08/who-receiving-hacker-threat-info-dhs/91154/ Who Receives Hacker Threat Info From DHS? By Aliya Sternstein August 11, 2014 Health care, banking and other key sectors at risk of cyberattacks have not joined a Department of Homeland Security program required to offer these industries protections against a potential catastrophic hack, according to federal inspectors. President Obama ordered in early 2013 that DHS expand an information-sharing program once restricted to Pentagon contractors to the 16 so-called critical infrastructure industries. The Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program feeds confidential alerts about the digital hallmarks, or "indicators," of threats so companies and their Internet service providers can load them into network-protection systems. The sometimes-classified information is culled from National Security Agency intelligence and other government agencies. Obama issued the executive order after Congress failed to pass cybersecurity legislation. Only three of the 16 industries -- energy, communications services and the defense industrial base ? are part of the program, according to a DHS inspector general report released Monday. And just two ISPs, termed "communications service providers" or CSPs, are authorized to receive and load the indicators. The pair, CenturyLink and AT&T, has been the only approved ISPs since the program?s launch. When asked if he had heard of the program, Scott Jensen, communications director for the American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical sector, told Nextgov, ?We're not familiar with the specific program you mentioned, but there are other ways that DHS communicates with our industry regarding cyber threats.? DHS does not directly communicate with companies to promote the program, relying instead on CenturyLink and AT&T to advertise their services to businesses, according to the report, which is dated July 29. Companies must pay for equipment and expertise from one of the ISPs or use their own in-house security specialists. The government information is free. Such information includes, for example, suspicious IP addresses, domains, email headers, and files. Energy, Defense and Communications Sectors Are In About 40 companies from the energy, defense and communications sectors are participating right now. DHS officials say they have signed memorandums of agreement with another 22 interested in joining. A chicken-and-egg problem is partially responsible for the slow rollout. The "program should include all 16 critical infrastructure sectors by increasing the number of operational CSPs," writes Richard Harsche, acting assistant IG for information technology audits. But CSPs might not have a financial incentive to operate, until more critical sectors enroll. "Without improving communication and outreach to increase critical infrastructure sector entities? interest, CSPs may not have the financial means or incentive to participate in the [cyber] program due to the lack of new critical infrastructure entity customers,? Harsche said. Most corporate technology workers and company facilities do not have the proper security clearances and secure equipment to handle the government data. And DHS has only finished validating one additional ISP, the report states. The entire vetting process for ISPs can take eight months. "Enrollment in the [Enhanced Cybersecurity Services] program has been slow because of limited communication and outreach and a necessary in-depth security validation and accreditation process for potential program participants,? Harsche said. Who Wants to Buy Free Information? The inspector general also found the hacker information is not always unique. DHS distributes about 60 threat hallmarks a week, but some of them were redundant and a "majority of the information provided was unclassified and available through other sources," he said. Typically, the data exchange works as follows: DHS transmits threat indicators to the cleared ISPs and specially equipped critical companies about three times a week. The alerts include directions to scan emails for the indicators, such as malicious attachments, and quarantine flagged messages, so they do not reach employee inboxes. Some sectors have their own industry-specific cyber programs and don?t want to pay communications providers to receive similar information. Many banks, for instance, rely on the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, for cyber warnings and receive alerts from the Treasury Department, a financial services industry leader told Nextgov. Obtaining clearances and building secure communications space to receive the DHS alerts is not an option for many financial institutions. And some of them already spend $250 million a year on network security, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said last month. The financial services advocate said the FS-ISAC is among the best sources of information and commended Lew?s work on safeguarding the sector?s networks. Lew announced last month the creation of a cyber information sharing and analysis unit within Treasury that delivers network protection instructions to financial companies. In response to a draft report, DHS officials said in a July 2 letter they are working to enlarge the program and improve the quality of the information provided. The department will boost the number of cyber experts who vet ISPs using fiscal 2014 and 2015 job openings. Homeland Security also expects to award a contract for security engineering services by December, to further expedite enrollment. "These measures will significantly increase the number of assessment activities that can be accomplished at one time, resulting in the timely completion of the security validation and accreditation processes," wrote Andy Ozment, assistant secretary for the DHS Office of Cybersecurity and Communications. By October, DHS plans to have an outreach strategy for publicizing program benefits to critical industry companies. The strategy will highlight "the value of the sensitive and classified federal government data" and authorized ISP services, Ozment said. On Monday, DHS officials said their program is meant to play a supporting role to cyber tools that firms already are using. The program ?is a voluntary initiative intended to augment, not replace, existing security services operated by or available to critical infrastructure companies,? DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee said in an email. It ?automates the use of cyber threat indicators ? up to and including classified information ? by commercial service providers to assist participating critical infrastructure companies in their cyber protection efforts.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 12 07:14:15 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 08:14:15 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - More on NYPD's reactive spin control Message-ID: <5833450E-2360-4DD7-90B2-37BA7CB29215@infowarrior.org> NYPD Officer Chokes Man To Death; Cops Blame Cellphone Recordings And People 'Feeling They Have More Rights' https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140810/20475228171/nypd-officer-chokes-man-to-death-cops-blame-cellphone-recordings-people-feeling-they-have-more-rights.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 12 09:35:50 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 10:35:50 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Comcast, Time Warner Cable, FCC conflict-of-interest dinner? Message-ID: Comcast, Time Warner Cable help honor Mignon Clyburn amid merger review By: Alex Byers August 11, 2014 05:34 PM EDT Comcast and Time Warner Cable are sponsoring a dinner honoring FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn at a time when the agency is weighing whether to approve a multibillion-dollar merger between the two companies. Comcast will pay $110,000 to be a top-level ?presenting sponsor? at the Walter Kaitz Foundation?s annual dinner in September, at which Clyburn is receiving the ?diversity advocate? award, according to a foundation spokeswoman. Time Warner Cable paid $22,000 in May to the foundation for the same event, according to a Senate lobbying disclosure filed at the end of last month. The foundation supports diversity in the cable industry. There are no rules preventing businesses from helping to honor regulators in this way, and both companies say they have supported the foundation for years. But one watchdog is pointing out the appearance of a conflict. ?I think that the timing is curious,? said Carrie Levine, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which noted the corporate sponsorships in a blog post Monday. ?They?re honoring an FCC commissioner at the exact same time they?re trying to get approval for a merger. And that doesn?t look so good.? < - > http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=6E392652-CFD3-413D-B279-81CF25CB9C6A --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 13 09:50:26 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 10:50:26 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Meet MonsterMind, the NSA Bot That Could Wage Cyberwar Autonomously Message-ID: Meet MonsterMind, the NSA Bot That Could Wage Cyberwar Autonomously ? By Kim Zetter ? 08.13.14 | ? 7:00 am | http://www.wired.com/2014/08/nsa-monstermind-cyberwarfare/ Edward Snowden has made us painfully aware of the government?s sweeping surveillance programs over the last year. But a new program, currently being developed at the NSA, suggests that surveillance may fuel the government?s cyber defense capabilities, too. The NSA whistleblower says the agency is developing a cyber defense system that would instantly and autonomously neutralize foreign cyberattacks against the US, and could be used to launch retaliatory strikes as well. The program, called MonsterMind, raises fresh concerns about privacy and the government?s policies around offensive digital attacks. Although details of the program are scant, Snowden tells WIRED in an extensive interview with James Bamford that algorithms would scour massive repositories of metadata and analyze it to differentiate normal network traffic from anomalous or malicious traffic. Armed with this knowledge, the NSA could instantly and autonomously identify, and block, a foreign threat. Cryptographer Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania, says if the NSA knows how a malicious algorithm generates certain attacks, this activity may produce patterns of metadata that can be spotted. ?An individual record of an individual flow only tells you so much, but more revealing might be patterns of flows that are indicative of an attack,? he says. ?If you have hundreds or thousand of flows starting up from a particular place and targeted to a particular machine, this might indicate you?re under attack. That?s how intrusion detection and anomaly-detection systems generally work. If you have intelligence about the attack tools of your adversary, you may be able to match specific patterns to specific tools that are being used to attack.? Think of it as a digital version of the Star Wars initiative President Reagan proposed in the 1980s, which in theory would have shot down any incoming nuclear missiles. In the same way, MonsterMind could identify a distributed denial of service attack lobbed against US banking systems or a malicious worm sent to cripple airline and railway systems and stop?that is, defuse or kill? it before it did any harm. More than this, though, Snowden suggests MonsterMind could one day be designed to return fire?automatically, without human intervention?against the attacker. Because an attacker could tweak malicious code to avoid detection, a counterstrike would be more effective in neutralizing future attacks. Snowden doesn?t specify the nature of the counterstrike to say whether it might involve launching malicious code to disable the attacking system, or simply disable any malicious tools on the system to render them useless. But depending on how its deployed, such a program presents several concerns, two of which Snowden specifically addresses in the WIRED story. First, an attack from a foreign adversary likely would be routed through proxies belonging to innocent parties?a botnet of randomly hacked machines, for example, or machines owned by another government. A counterstrike could therefore run the risk of embroiling the US in a conflict with the nation where the systems are located. What?s more, a retaliatory strike could cause unanticipated collateral damage. Before returning fire, the US would need to know what it is attacking, and what services or systems rely upon it. Otherwise, it could risk taking out critical civilian infrastructure. Microsoft?s recent move to take down two botnets?which disabled thousands of domains that had nothing to do with the malicious activity Microsoft was trying to stop?is an example of what can go wrong when systems are taken down without adequate foresight. Blaze says such a system would no doubt take the attribution problem?looking beyond proxies to find exactly where the attack originated?into consideration. ?Nobody would build a system like this and be unaware of the existence of decentralized botnet attacks laundered through the systems of innocent users, because that?s how pretty much all attacks work,? he says. That does not, however, make so-called hackback attacks any less problematic, he says. The second issue with the program is a constitutional concern. Spotting malicious attacks in the manner Snowden describes would, he says, require the NSA to collect and analyze all network traffic flows in order to design an algorithm that distinguishes normal traffic flow from anomalous, malicious traffic. ?[T]hat means we have to be intercepting all traffic flows,? Snowden told WIRED?s James Bamford. ?That means violating the Fourth Amendment, seizing private communications without a warrant, without probable cause or even a suspicion of wrongdoing. For everyone, all the time.? It would also require sensors placed on the internet backbone to detect anomalous activity. Blaze says the algorithm scanning system Snowden describes sounds similar to the government?s recent Einstein 2 (.pdf) and Einstein 3 (.pdf) programs, which use network sensors to identify malicious attacks aimed at U.S. government systems. If that system were secretly being extended to cover all U.S. systems, without public debate, that would be a concern. Although MonsterMind does resemble the Einstein programs to a certain degree, it also sounds much like the Plan X cyberwarfare program run by Darpa. The five-year, $110 million research program has several goals, not the least of which is mapping the entire internet and identifying every node to help the Pentagon spot, and disable, targets if needed. Another goal is building a system that allows the Pentagon to conduct speed-of-light attacks using predetermined and pre-programmed scenarios. Such a system would be able to spot threats and autonomously launch a response, the Washington Post reported two years ago. It?s not clear if Plan X is MonsterMind or if MonsterMind even exists. The Post noted at the time that Darpa would begin accepting proposals for Plan X that summer. Snowden said MonsterMind was in the works when he left his work as an NSA contractor last year. The NSA, for its part, would not respond to questions about the MonsterMind program. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 13 12:39:05 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 13:39:05 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - EU Lawyers Confirm 'General And Blanket Data Retention Is No Longer Possible' In European Union Message-ID: <836C9DCC-EA94-4424-9AE5-8EEFD122D7B3@infowarrior.org> (c/o DM) EU Lawyers Confirm 'General And Blanket Data Retention Is No Longer Possible' In European Union https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140811/07430928173/eu-lawyers-confirm-general-blanket-data-retention-is-no-longer-possible-european-union.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 14 07:16:29 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 08:16:29 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Reagan-Era Order on Surveillance Violates Rights, Says Departing Aide Message-ID: <36FBADC5-5E16-475A-8F6A-C0D23CC3CD83@infowarrior.org> Reagan-Era Order on Surveillance Violates Rights, Says Departing Aide By CHARLIE SAVAGE AUG. 13, 2014 John Napier Tye, a former State Department official, filed a whistle-blower complaint arguing that the N.S.A.?s broader data collection practices abroad violated Americans? Fourth Amendment rights. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times WASHINGTON ? After President Obama delivered a speech in January endorsing changes to surveillance policies, including an end to the National Security Agency?s bulk collection of Americans? domestic calling records, John Napier Tye was disillusioned. A State Department official, Mr. Tye worked on Internet freedom issues and had top-secret clearance. He knew the Obama administration had also considered a proposal to impose what an internal White House document, obtained by The New York Times, portrayed as ?significant changes? to rules for handling Americans? data the N.S.A. collects from fiber-optic networks abroad. But Mr. Obama said nothing about that in his speech. So in April, as Mr. Tye was leaving the State Department, he filed a whistle-blower complaint arguing that the N.S.A.'s practices abroad violated Americans? Fourth Amendment rights. He also met with staff members for the House and Senate intelligence committees. Last month, he went public with those concerns, which have attracted growing attention. When operating abroad, the N.S.A. can gather and use Americans? phone calls, emails, text messages and other communications under different ? and sometimes more permissive ? rules than when it collects them inside the United States. Much about those rules remains murky. The executive branch establishes them behind closed doors and can change them at will, with no involvement from Congress or the secret intelligence court that oversees surveillance on domestic networks. ?It?s a problem if one branch of government can collect and store most Americans? communications, and write rules in secret on how to use them ? all without oversight from Congress or any court, and without the consent or even the knowledge of the American people,? Mr. Tye said. ?Regardless of the use rules in place today, this system could be abused in the future.? Mr. Tye, 38, is speaking out as Congress considers amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs how the N.S.A. operates domestically. The legislation resulted from the uproar over leaks by Edward J. Snowden, a former agency contractor. But the proposed changes would not touch the agency?s abilities overseas, which are authorized by Executive Order 12333, a Reagan-era presidential directive. The administration has declassified some rules for handling Americans? messages gathered under the order, but the scope of that collection and other details about how the messages are used has remained unclear. ?The debate over the last year has barely touched on the executive order,? said Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer. ?It?s a black box.? The Times interviewed nearly a dozen current and former officials about 12333 rules for handling American communications, bringing further details to light. The rules are detailed in an accompanying chart. < -- > http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/us/politics/reagan-era-order-on-surveillance-violates-rights-says-departing-aide.html From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 14 09:28:24 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 10:28:24 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - SpiderOak Implements A Warrant Canary Message-ID: <3C8577FF-84B2-4B33-A9F7-0F6F57D8AEC7@infowarrior.org> SpiderOak Implements A Warrant Canary http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/spideroak-implements-a-warrant-canary/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 14 11:17:37 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:17:37 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Rift_grows_between_Obama=2C_medi?= =?windows-1252?q?a_as_press_groups_blast_administration_=91spin=92?= Message-ID: <1B9F74B4-200B-47B2-9DA9-71151F748B9F@infowarrior.org> Rift grows between Obama, media as press groups blast administration ?spin? Published August 13, 2014 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/13/rift-grows-between-obama-media-as-press-groups-blast-administration-spin/ While Congress is on recess and President Obama vacations in Martha's Vineyard, a coalition of free press groups is escalating an already-aggressive campaign against the Obama administration for allegedly freezing out the press and cracking down on reporters. The flood of critical letters and petitions and statements from First Amendment groups marks a new level of tension in a relationship that for years has been deteriorating. Though Obama, as a candidate in 2008, was widely seen to enjoy favorable media treatment, his administration now is fielding accusations that it's one of the least transparent in history. Society of Professional Journalists President David Cuillier, in a statement earlier this week, blasted the administration for what he called "excessive message management and preventing journalists from getting information on behalf of citizens." SPJ is among the groups that's been leading the charge on the issue. Last month, more than three dozen groups, including SPJ, wrote to the White House about what they described as growing censorship throughout federal agencies. Cuillier's latest statement came in response to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest's Aug. 11 letter to his organization regarding their complaints. In it, Earnest said Obama's commitment to transparency is "unwavering." While he acknowledged "there will always be a healthy, natural tension between journalists and the White House," Earnest vowed greater transparency going forward and pointed to several steps the administration has taken: like processing more "freedom of information" requests, declassifying records and releasing information on White House visitors. "Typical spin and response through non-response," Cuillier shot back. He said he hopes the administration is "sincere" about being more open, "but we want action. We are tired of words and evasion." Media groups are gearing up for another confrontation on Thursday, when they plan to present a petition with 100,000 signatures -- backed by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and others -- to the Justice Department. It calls for the administration to halt legal action against New York Times reporter James Risen, who detailed a botched CIA effort during the Clinton administration to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. Risen's reporting is at the center of criminal charges against former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling. Federal prosecutors want to force Risen to testify about his sources at Sterling's trial, and the Supreme Court recently refused to get involved in the case. Risen argued he has a right to protect his sources' identity, either under the Constitution or rules governing criminal trials. A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., earlier rejected Risen's bid to avoid being forced to testify. At the same time federal prosecutors have fought Risen in court, Attorney General Eric Holder has suggested that the government would not seek to put Risen in jail should he refuse to testify as ordered. But journalist groups want assurances. Risen also is expected to speak during a press conference at the National Press Club on Thursday afternoon. The case follows tension last year surrounding the Justice Department's snooping on Fox News' reporter James Rosen's phone records and emails, and its seizure of AP phone records in the course of leak investigations. The controversy over those actions led to some reforms at the Justice Department. Press groups' complaints about the administration are manifold. They say agencies are prohibiting staffers from talking to journalists without public affairs office approval -- and sometimes without public affairs employees sitting in on interviews. Further, they complain about long delays in getting information and about communications staff speaking "confidentially" even on routine matters. In yet another complaint, journalist and scientific organizations accused the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday of attempting to muzzle its independent scientific advisers by directing them to funnel all outside requests for information through agency officials. In a letter, the groups representing journalists and scientists urged the EPA to allow advisory board members to talk directly to news reporters, Congress and other outside groups without first asking for permission from EPA officials. An April memo from the EPA's chief of staff said that "unsolicited contacts" need to be "appropriately managed" and that committee members should refrain from directly responding to requests about committees' efforts to advise the agency. The scientific advisory board's office had asked the EPA to clarify the communications policy for board members, who are government employees. "The new policy only reinforces any perception that the agency prioritizes message control over the ability of scientists who advise the agency to share their expertise with the public," the groups wrote. The chair of that panel, H. Christopher Frey, said in an interview with the Associated Press Tuesday in which he stressed he was offering his personal opinion, that he found the tone of the EPA memo to be unnecessary. Frey, a distinguished professor in North Carolina State University's engineering department, said that many of the scientists that seek to serve on the committees are national and internationally-renowned experts and that EPA "need not be too strong in precluding interactions with the media or others." An EPA spokeswoman said there are no constraints on members fielding requests in a personal or professional capacity. She said the memo was designed to assure transparency. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 14 14:00:19 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 15:00:19 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Why_Obama=92s_statement_on_repor?= =?windows-1252?q?ters=92_arrests_in_Ferguson_is_hypocritical?= Message-ID: Why Obama?s statement on reporters? arrests in Ferguson is hypocritical http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/obama.php#sthash.ywNUe3LI.dpuf In a news conference Thursday addressing the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown and resulting unrest in Ferguson, MO, President Barack Obama criticized the arrests of two reporters there on Wednesday night. ?Here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying or arresting journalists who are just trying to do their jobs,? Obama said in a news conference televised from Martha?s Vineyard, where he?s vacationing. On Wednesday, Washington Post Reporter Wesley Lowery and Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly were arrested when working out of a McDonald?s in Ferguson. After being taken to the Ferguson Police Department, both were quickly released. Just minutes after the president finished his remarks, a coalition of journalism organizations at the National Press Club in Washington began a news conference condemning the Obama administration?s attempt to compel James Risen, a New York Times reporter, to identify a confidential source. The menagerie of groups this morning presented a petition, signed by more than 125,000 people, calling on the Justice Department to end its six-year effort to force Risen to testify against his source. In June, the US Supreme Court turned down a last-ditch appeal from Risen, removing the final legal barrier for federal prosecutors who want him to take the stand. The coincidental timing puts a spotlight on a White House that has repeatedly defended its claim as the most transparent administration in history. In the past five years, however, the Obama administration has been decried repeatedly for both its secrecy and its aggression toward the press. What?s more, it has pursued more criminal leak investigations than every previous White House combined. As for Risen, the Pulitzer Prize winner risks jail time if he does not reveal the identity of his source, who provided information for a chapter of Risen?s 2006 book, State of War. The reporter and several other veteran journalists are slated to speak at the National Press Club this afternoon. ?As Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama classified more and more of the government?s actions over the last 14 years, denying the public critical information to judge how its democracy is faring, it has fallen to reporters like Risen to keep Americans informed and to question whether a gigantic government in the shadows is really even a good idea,? longtime Washington Post reporter Dana Priest said in a statement before Thursday?s news conference. ?We will all be worse off if this case proceeds.? - See more at: http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/obama.php#sthash.ywNUe3LI.dpuf --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 14 14:05:12 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 15:05:12 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Greenwald on The Militarization of U.S. Police Message-ID: The Militarization of U.S. Police: Finally Dragged Into the Light by the Horrors of Ferguson By Glenn Greenwald 14 Aug 2014, 8:40 AM EDT https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/14/militarization-u-s-police-dragged-light-horrors-ferguson/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 14 19:26:24 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 20:26:24 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Comcast, Time Warner pull funding from dinner honoring FCC's Clyburn Message-ID: Comcast, Time Warner pull funding from dinner honoring FCC's Clyburn updated 07:10 pm EDT, Thu August 14, 2014 Companies withdraw contributions after watch dog group call the donations suspect http://www.electronista.com/articles/14/08/14/companies.withdraw.contributions.after.watch.dog.group.call.the.donations.suspect/ Comcast and Time Warner Cable have withdrawn contributions to the Kaitz Dinner, a yearly event that celebrates diversity in the cable industry. News of the funding removal came after the Citizens of Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) objected to the contributions, as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Mignon Clyburn was being honored with an award at the event. The dinner is put on by the Walter Kaitz Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that promotes diversity in the cable industry, including the roles of women and multi-ethnic professionals. The dinner often brings in the majority of funding for the foundation, which is then used to seek added diversity, some of which is channeled through three organizations. For this year's dinner scheduled for September 17, Commissioner Clyburn is being honored with a "diversity advocate" award. Funding by the two cable companies, who are currently seeking approval for a merger, was seen as questionable since a member of the FCC was tied to the event. As CREW put it, "using honorary contributions to lawmakers and regulators' favored charities to curry favor is one of the more under the radar moves in Comcast's merger playbook -- a playbook that also emphasizes lobbying, campaign contributions, and winning support from third-party groups, especially those representing minorities." CREW called foul on two companies, as it seems that Comcast and Time Warner Cable made sizable donations in different ways. It appears that Time Warner Cable made a donation in Clyburn's honor to the tune of $22,000 in May, also earning them a "benefactor" title for the event. Comcast gave the foundation $110,000 to be a "presenting sponsor." It was previously reported by the Washington Post that Clyburn obtained the appropriate approval needed to attend the dinner. Politico reports today that both cable companies have asked that the contributions to the dinner be removed. Previously, it was stated that the contributions were something the companies had done for years, but in light of the situation they decided to change the contributions to be in more of a general capacity. Comcast wrote a letter to the Walter Kaitz Foundation, obtained by Politico, which states the company is withdrawing support for the dinner. Charisse Lillie, the vice president of community investment for Comcast, requested that "there be no recognition of Comcast at the dinner." Even though the contribution was agreed upon in 2013 before any honorees were mentioned, Comcast didn't want to penalize the foundation in the process. Instead, the $110,000 would be an "unrestricted donation to the Kaitz Foundation." Time Warner Cable withdrew their support by telephone said spokesman Bobby Amirshahi. In a statement to Politico, he said that it was unfortunate that the sponsorship was "mischaracterized by a few." He added that Time Warner Cable wouldn't be seen as a sponsor of the event, but the funding would be converted into unrestricted funds. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 15 09:23:40 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 10:23:40 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Vines, Gifs, the new infringement Message-ID: Some groups learn about the Internet, while others remain idiots. ---rick The UK's Premier League has put fans on notice that it's preparing a crackdown against those who post match GIFs and Vines online. The short clips might only be a few seconds, but the football giant says they are illegal and will be dealt with. < - > http://torrentfreak.com/premier-league-to-clamp-down-on-gifs-and-vines-140815/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 15 12:03:37 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:03:37 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - NSA/GCHQ: The HACIENDA Program for Internet Colonization Message-ID: NSA/GCHQ: The HACIENDA Program for Internet Colonization Julian Kirsch, Christian Grothoff, Monika Ermert, Jacob Appelbaum, Laura Poitras, Henrik Moltke 1 5.08.2014 Translations of this article are available in German, French, Italian and Spanish. Since the early days of TCP, port scanning has been used by computer saboteurs to locate vulnerable systems. In a new set of top secret documents seen by Heise, it is revealed that in 2009, the British spy agency GCHQ made port scans a "standard tool" to be applied against entire nations (Figure 1, see the picture gallery). Twenty-seven countries are listed as targets of the HACIENDA program in the presentation (Figure 2), which comes with a promotional offer: readers desiring to do reconnaissance against another country need simply send an e-mail (Figure 3). < - > http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/NSA-GCHQ-The-HACIENDA-Program-for-Internet-Colonization-2292681.html --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 15 13:58:31 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 14:58:31 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Schrodinger=92s_Cat_Video_and_th?= =?windows-1252?q?e_Death_of_Clear-Text?= Message-ID: <5E850D90-C1A6-4890-873F-089243CC1F38@infowarrior.org> Schrodinger?s Cat Video and the Death of Clear-Text August 15, 2014 Key Findings ? Commercial network injection appliances are actively targeting Google?s YouTube and Microsoft?s Live services in order to install surveillance implants on targets across the globe. ? Documents indicate that a prototype for targeted surveillance network injection appliances sold to the governments of Oman and Turkmenistan was designed by CloudShield Technologies, a US Department of Defense contractor.1 ? This report reveals never before seen documentation on the operation of Network Injection appliances from both Hacking Team and FinFisher and provides source code for an early prototype of FinFisher?s FinFly ISP product. Introduction While there has been much discussion about the use of software described as ?implants? or ?backdoors? to perform targeted surveillance, this report is about the less well understood method by which most targeted surveillance is delivered: network injection. Taking advantage of security flaws in major web presences (such as Google?s ?YouTube? and Microsoft?s ?Live?)2, vendors have started selling turnkey solutions that enable easy installation of targeted surveillance software at scale. This report provides a detailed analysis of two products sold for facilitating targeted surveillance known as network injection appliances. These products allow for the easy deployment of targeted surveillance implants and are being sold by commercial vendors to countries around the world. Compromising a target becomes as simple as waiting for the user to view unencrypted content on the Internet. While the technology required to perform such attacks has been understood for some time, there is limited documentation of the operation of these attacks by state actors. This report provides details on the use of such surveillance solutions including how they are built, deployed, and operated. < -- > https://citizenlab.org/2014/08/cat-video-and-the-death-of-clear-text/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 16 13:20:11 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 14:20:11 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Anti-Piracy Outfit Wants to Hijack Browsers Until Fine Paid Message-ID: Anti-Piracy Outfit Wants to Hijack Browsers Until Fine Paid ? By Andy ? on August 16, 2014 http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-outfit-wants-to-hijack-browsers-until-fine-paid-140816/ Piracy monetization service Rightscorp has provided investors with details of its end game with cooperative ISPs. Initially service providers are asked to forward notices to subscribers with requests for $20.00 settlements, but the eventual plan is to hijack the browsers of alleged pirates until they've actually paid up. Many rightsholders around the world are looking for ways to cut down on Internet piracy and US-based Rightscorp thinks it has an attractive solution. The company monitors BitTorrent networks for infringement, links IP addresses to ISPs, and then asks those service providers to forward DMCA-style notices to errant subscribers. Those notices have a sting in the tail in the shape of a $20 settlement demand to make supposed lawsuits go away. The company says 75,000 cases have been settled so far with copyright holders picking up $10 from each. Earlier this year the company reported that its operation cost $2,134,843 to run in 2013, yet it brought in just $324,016, a shortfall of more than $1.8 million. With the second quarter of 2014 now in the bag, Rightscorp has been reporting again to investors. TorrentFreak has seen a transcript of an August 13 conference call which contains some interesting facts. In pure revenue terms the company appears to be doing better, $440,414 during the first six months of 2014. However, operating costs were $1.8m compared to $771,766 in the same period last year. Bottom line ? the company lost $1.4m in the first six months of 2014. Still, Rightscorp is pushing on. It now represents the entire BMG catalog, plus artists belonging to the Royalty Network such as Beyonce, Calvin Harris and Kanye West. And, as previously reported, it?s now working with 140 ISPs, some of which are apparently disconnecting repeat infringers. Interestingly, and despite the ISP removing settlement demands from infringement notices, Comcast subscribers are apparently handing cash over to Rightscorp too. How this is being achieved wasn?t made clear. What is clear is that Rightscorp is determined to go after ?Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Cable Vision and one more? in order to ?get all of them compliant? (i.e forwarding settlement demands). The company predicts that more details on the strategy will develop in the fall, but comments from COO & CTO Robert Steele hint on how that might be achieved. ?So we start in the beginning of the ISP relationship by demanding the forwarding of notices and the terminations,? Steele told investors. ?But where we want to end up with our scalable copyright system is where it?s not about termination, it?s about compelling the user to make the payment so that they can get back to browsing the web.? Steele says the trick lies in the ability of ISPs to bring a complete halt to their subscribers? Internet browsing activities. ?So every ISP has this ability to put up a redirect page. So that?s the goal,? he explained. ?[What] we really want to do is move away from termination and move to what?s called a hard redirect, like, when you go into a hotel and you have to put your room number in order to get past the browser and get on to browsing the web.? The idea that mere allegations from an anti-piracy company could bring a complete halt to an entire household or business Internet connection until a fine is paid is less like a ?piracy speeding ticket? and more like a ?piracy wheel clamp?, one that costs $20 to have removed. Except that very rarely are Rightscorp looking for just $20. According to comments Steele made to investors, ?very few? people targeted by his company pay a fine of just $20, even though that?s what most of them believe to be the case after Googling the company. ?[For] most people, piracy is a lifestyle, and so most people are getting multiple notices,? Steele explained. ?So we?re closing cases everyday for $300, $400, $500 because people got multiple notices.? One of the ways Rightscorp achieves these inflated settlements is by having a headline settlement fee of $20, but not applying that to a full album. By charging $20 for each and every album track, costs begin to climb. So, while someone receiving an initial infringement notice might think the matter can be solved by paying $20, after contacting the company they realize the matter is much more serious than first believed. At this point the company knows the name and address of the target, something they didn?t initially know. Now the pressure is really on to settle. Finally, we come to the question of success rates. We know that 75,000 cases have been settled overall, but how many people have simply ignored Rightscorp notices and moved on. One investor indirectly asked that question, but without luck. ?At the moment we consider that trade secret,? Steele said. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sat Aug 16 13:31:28 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 14:31:28 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet Message-ID: <65B1E997-1487-4BFD-862E-FBB2D2F17E9B@infowarrior.org> Some very good points made in this article. ?rick Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet Alexis C. Madrigal Aug 14 2014, 12:34 PM ET http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/why-email-will-never-die/375973/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 17 08:34:16 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 09:34:16 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Guardian interviews DotCom Message-ID: Kim Dotcom: from playboy entrepreneur to political firebrand ? Carole Cadwalladr ? The Observer, Saturday 16 August 2014 He was the flamboyant founder of the popular Megaupload site. But when the US got New Zealand police to arrest him on charges of internet piracy, Kim Dotcom began a remarkable fightback < - > http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/17/kim-dotcom-megaupload-new-zealand-interview Interesting tidbit from the article ?.. "On 15 September, five days before New Zealand's general election, Dotcom and Glenn Greenwald will be holding a press conference in Auckland at which Dotcom claims they will unveil explosive new revelations relating to the NZ and US governments' spying programmes. And owing to the country's highly complex proportional representation system ? think Borgen-style machinations ? the Internet party, and its alliance partner, Mana, a Maori social justice party, could hold the balance of power.? --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 17 08:38:47 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 09:38:47 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Army contemplates new career branch for cyber personnel Message-ID: <3F63FDB8-5657-45FB-8869-61444F19C153@infowarrior.org> Army contemplates new career branch for cyber personnel Friday - 8/15/2014, 4:27am EDT By Jared Serbu http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=241&sid=3682590 The Army, along with the rest of the military services, is in the midst of an ambitious endeavor to build a joint cadre of several thousand cyber warriors that will conduct offensive cyber operations, defend the country from cyber attacks and operate the military's own networks via three different groups of cyber mission teams. But the soldiers the Army is contributing to those teams and the ones who currently operate within the service's own formations are drawn from a "potpourri" of specialties that span several occupational branches, some of which pre-date the Internet itself. Army Secretary John McHugh is currently considering a proposal that would change that by establishing a branch of the service whose members are dedicated to cyber, putting the career on par with more traditional military work fields like infantry, aviation and armor. In an interview with Federal News Radio, Col. Carmine Cicalese, the branch chief for cyber and information operations at Army headquarters, stressed that no final decision had been made, but the notion of a dedicated branch had the potential to bring several benefits to the Army's nascent workforce of soldiers who work primarily in the cyber field. "It does a couple things for you, one of which is to give you a professional identity, which is an important thing," he said. "It also helps to establish a guaranteed training and education and professional career path, so that you have a way of moving throughout your career into growth positions and then ultimately leadership positions, so that 20 to 30 years from now we'll have general officers and sergeant majors who came through a cyber track. They'll be steeped in cyber with regard to Army and joint operations, and that formal track is what helps build the profession of arms." The Army already has a large and growing body of uniformed cyber professionals, but very few job titles ? or military occupational specialties, in Army parlance ? that specifically include the word "cyber." Instead, most enlisted members and officers are drawn from other fields that have traditionally been dedicated to other disciplines. Among them are enlisted personnel from the "35Q" field, currently part of the military intelligence branch and "25D" soldiers, who are part of the signal branch. Officers who make up the de facto cyber workforce come from signals, intelligence and a handful of other legacy Army branches and functional areas. Given the military's current emphasis on building up cyber expertise, those soldiers are getting significant training in cyber defense, offense, network operations or some combination of the three, depending on their specific assignments. But absent a dedicated field, there's no guarantee that any individual soldier will continue to work in the cyber field throughout his or her career, and some risk that they'll be re-tasked into careers that have nothing to do with cyber. "That's what would occur otherwise," Cicalese said. "You go do something for a while, and then that expertise is doing something else." Even if the Army doesn't wind up creating a special branch for cyber, the service has taken other steps in recent months to institutionalize it as a vital discipline. Like each of the other DoD services, it now has a three-star command dedicated to cyber. And late last year, the Army renamed its Signal Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Georgia. It is now the Cyber Center of Excellence, and the Army's Cyber Command is in the process of relocating there from its initial headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. At Fort Gordon, where the National Security Agency is also a major tenant, the Army also wants to begin to inculcate a new piece of doctrine which it terms Cyber Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA). The idea is to blend Army operations in cyberspace with what it's already been working on for years with respect to electronic warfare and manipulating the electromagnetic spectrum. "It's not a final decision, but the Army is certainly contemplating the idea of collecting all of the cyberspace-related fields at the center of excellence," said Col. Jim Ekvall, the Army's chief for electronic warfare. "We know we're going to develop a cyber school there. We believe what will eventually happen is that the electronic warfare school will move there. So in essence, you will have one location, with one commanding general who is going to be the single force modernization proponent for cyberspace." --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 17 11:59:18 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 12:59:18 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?WWE_Asked_Google_to_Hit_Live_Pir?= =?windows-1252?q?acy=85From_the_Future?= Message-ID: <0C4F905C-B5A3-4F00-B99F-47F388142262@infowarrior.org> WWE Asked Google to Hit Live Piracy?From the Future ? By Andy ? on August 17, 2014 http://torrentfreak.com/wwe-asked-google-to-hit-live-piracy-from-the-future-140817/ An anti-piracy company working on behalf of World Wrestling Entertainment has sent a rather unusual DMCA notice to Google. The takedown requested the removal of dozens of URLs related to a live event scheduled for two days after the notice. Which means, of course, it hadn't even aired yet. Removing content from the Internet has become big business in recent years, with rightsholders from all over the globe seeking to limit access to infringing content. As the world?s leading search engine, Google receives millions of DMCA-style notices every week. Its internal systems, both automated and human-reviewed, then attempt to assess the validity of the notices before removing URLs from its indexes. What these notices all have in common is that they refer to infringements that have already taken place, since that?s the nature of a takedown. However, a notice that recently appeared in Google?s Transparency Report reveals that for at least one organization, looking into the future is now also on the agenda. The notice was sent by an anti-piracy company working on behalf of World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE as it?s more commonly known. The notice aimed to tackle piracy of a WWE Event titled Money In The Bank 2014, which took place on June 29, 2014. However, the notice was sent to Google two days before, on June 27. ?The following links infringe on WWE?s copyrighted Pay Per View event Money In The Bank 2014, set to air this Sunday, June 29, by one or more of the following means,? the notice begins. WWE then sets out three potential infringements. ?Providing a link to a free (pirated) stream of this event? is misleading since it?s impossible to link to an event that hasn?t aired yet. Conceivably an advance static link could have been setup to air the event come June 29, but on June 27 the event had definitely not aired, hence no piracy. ?Providing a promise of DIRECT free streaming of this event on the identified site? seems no different from the allegation made above. It?s certainly possible that some of the sites promised to illegally stream the event, but at the date of the notice that would have been impossible. The fact that WWE resorted to telling Google that the event?s predictions show was the source material being infringed upon shows that no actual live event infringements had yet taken place. The final claim ? ?Using copyrighted images, logos and celebrity photos to promote the site? ? is one that carries far more weight than the two key instances of infringement alleged above. Some of the sites listed did use WWE artwork to promote their upcoming streams, but there were some notable omissions, not least the homepage of Justin.tv. Google refused to comply in this and three other instances. The notice from WWE, which can be viewed here, illustrates the problems faced by companies airing live events. While outfits such as WWE often know where streams and links to streams will appear once an event goes live, taking them down quickly once it actually begins may not always go as smoothly as they would like. While attempts at a pro-active DMCA-style notice like this might work on a small scale, it?s not difficult to imagine the chaos that would ensue if all rightsholders tried to have unauthorized content removed before it even appeared online. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 17 12:01:39 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 13:01:39 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Twitter Starts to Change the Central Logic of Its Service Message-ID: Twitter Starts to Change the Central Logic of Its Service The company is now showing users tweets from accounts they don't follow. That?s a bigger deal than it seems. Robinson Meyer Aug 17 2014, 10:47 AM ET http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/twitter-starts-to-change-the-central-logic-of-its-service/378650/ When will Twitter no longer be Twitter? This week, the company tested a change to its core product that could alter the service in a small but important way. According to Mashable, Twitter is altering the timeline of a small number of users, so that they see tweets from accounts they don?t follow. Right now, users only see tweets for three reasons: they?re from an account that user follows; they were retweeted by an account that user follows; or they?re an ad. Now, a user might see tweets from an account that someone whom they follow follows, or a tweet that someone they follow favorited. I can independently confirm this news because I am one of the users they?re testing on. Earlier this week, I was flicking through my Twitter timeline and found something odd: a tweet from a user I?d never seen before. A small line of text above the tweet informed me that it was there because a friend of mine favorited it. This new feature seems a big deal, because it alters the central conceit of Twitter. Right now, users only only see tweets from users you follow. This is seemingly the feature that made Twitter Twitter. As Mashable found, users already appear annoyed to be seeing tweets of ambiguous origin. But users already see tweets from users they don?t follow. These tweets are ads. Twitter already accepts money to show users tweets from brands and personalities that they don?t follow, and while this method of display-ads-for-Twitter may frustrate users, but it?s the path the company has chosen. No, this feature strikes me as a big deal because it breaks something that may seem less pressing: the fave. As The Atlantic has previously documented, users hit the fave button for many reasons. A fave can mean ?I agree,? ?This made me laugh,? or ?good chat.? Often, the only two users aware of a fave are the faver and the favee. There have long been ways to see other user?s faves. The Discover tab in the company?s official mobile app, for instance, lists all the faves a certain user has made that day. But by and large, other people?s faves didn?t just pop up on your screen. By transforming what a fave does, this feature fundamentally changes what a fave is. Users will have to adjust, and that process will exact communal costs. That?s fine?software changes, and social software is no different. Back in April, Adrienne LaFrance and I wrote a eulogy for Twitter. We argued not that the service was dead, but that it was almost completely changed from when we began to use it, shaped by a mixture of community and interface shifts that had altered its feel entirely. This is exactly the kind of feature we were talking about. Twitter remains indispensable. I tried to take a complete vacation from it this month, but the protests and police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri, brought me right back. Many argue that it needs changes like this to attract a new set of users, and, indeed, its second quarter results showed promising user growth. At some point in the future, though, its core product will be so altered by these changes that what we once called Twitter will no longer exist. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 17 19:07:02 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 20:07:02 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Hundreds of bioterror lab mishaps cloaked in secrecy Message-ID: Hundreds of bioterror lab mishaps cloaked in secrecy More than 1,100 laboratory incidents involving potential bioterror germs were reported to federal regulators during 2008 through 2012, reports show. Details of what happened are cloaked in secrecy. Alison Young, USA TODAY 5:25 p.m. EDT August 17, 2014 http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/17/reports-of-incidents-at-bioterror-select-agent-labs/14140483/ More than half these incidents were serious enough that lab workers received medical evaluations or treatment, according to the reports. In five incidents, investigations confirmed that laboratory workers had been infected or sickened; all recovered. In two other incidents, animals were inadvertently infected with contagious diseases that would have posed significant threats to livestock industries if they had spread. One case involved the infection of two animals with hog cholera, a dangerous virus eradicated from the USA in 1978. In another incident, a cow in a disease-free herd next to a research facility studying the bacteria that cause brucellosis, became infected due to practices that violated federal regulations, resulting in regulators suspending the research and ordering a $425,000 fine, records show. But the names of the labs that had mishaps or made mistakes, as well as most information about all of the incidents, must be kept secret because of federal bioterrorism laws, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates the labs and co-authored the annual lab incident reports with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The issue of lab safety and security has come under increased scrutiny by Congress in recent weeks after a series of high-profile lab blunders at prestigious government labs involving anthrax, bird flu and smallpox virus. On Friday, a CDC investigation revealed how a rushed laboratory scientist had been using sloppy practices when a specimen of a mild bird flu virus was unwittingly contaminated with a deadly strain before being shipped to other labs. Earlier this summer, other researchers at CDC potentially exposed dozens of agency staff to live anthrax because of mistakes; nobody was sickened. Meanwhile, at the National Institutes of Health, long-forgotten vials of deadly smallpox virus were discovered in a cold-storage room where they weren't supposed to be. The new lab incident data indicate mishaps occur regularly at the more than 1,000 labs operated by 324 government, university and private organizations across the country that are registered with the Federal Select Agent Program. The program is jointly run by the USDA and the CDC, which are required by law to annually submit short reports with incident data to Congress. The reports, released by CDC in response to a request from USA TODAY, contain few details beyond a count of incidents by categories, such as incidents involving bites or scratches from infected animals, needle sticks, failures of personal protection equipment, spills or specimen packages that temporarily went missing after they were shipped. No thefts were reported. Data for incidents reported in 2013 is not yet finalized, CDC said. In 2012, lab regulators received 247 reports of potential releases of dangerous pathogens. They also received 247 reports in 2011. There were 275 reports in 2010; 243 in 2009; and 116 in 2008. The reports come from regulated select agent research labs as well as clinical or diagnostic labs that are exempted from registration with federal officials but still must report incidents if they identify a select agent. "More than 200 incidents of loss or release of bioweapons agents from U.S. laboratories are reported each year. This works out to more than four per week," said Richard Ebright, a biosafety expert at Rutgers university in New Jersey, who testified before Congress last month at a hearing about CDC's lab mistakes. The only thing unusual about the CDC's recent anthrax and bird flu lab incidents, Ebright said, is that the public found out about them. "The 2014 CDC anthrax event became known to the public only because the number of persons requiring medical evaluation was too high to conceal," he said. CDC officials were unavailable for interviews and officials with the select agent program declined to provide additional information. The USDA said in a statement Friday that "all of the information is protected under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002." Such secrecy is a barrier to improving lab safety, said Gigi Kwik Gronvall of the UPMC Center for Health Security in Baltimore, an independent think tank that studies policy issues relating to biosecurity issues, epidemics and disasters. "We need to move to something more like what they do in aviation, where you have no-fault reporting but the events are described so you get a better sense of what actually happened and how the system can be fixed," said Gronvall, an immunologist by training and an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Gronvall notes that even with redundant systems in high-security labs, there have been lab incidents resulting in the spread of disease to people and animals outside the labs. She said a lab accident is considered by many scientists to be the most likely source of the re-emergence in 1977 of an H1N1 flu strain that had disappeared in 1957 because the genetic makeup of the strain hadn't changed as it should have over those decades. A 2009 article in the New England Journal of Medicine noted the 1977 strain was so similar to the one that disappeared that it suggests it had been "preserved" and that the re-emergence was "probably an accidental release from a laboratory source." "People understand that mistakes will happen," Gronvall said. "But you want it to be captured, you want it to be learned from, you want there to be a record of how it was dealt with. That's something I think should happen with biosafety." In 2012, CDC staff published an article in the journal Applied Biosafety on select agent theft, loss and releases from 2004 through 2010, documenting 727 reported incidents, 11 lab-acquired infections and one loss of a specimen in transit among more than 3,400 approved shipments. The article noted that the number of reports received by CDC likely underestimates the true number of suspected losses and releases. Still, the data "indicate that the risk of exposure to [select agents] managed by US laboratories to the general population is low." The number of reports submitted rose annually during the period, from just 16 in 2004 to 269 reports in 2010, the article said. It's unclear why the numbers in the journal article differ slightly from those in the select agent reports to Congress reviewed by USA TODAY. The newly released reports give limited information about the handful of incidents where there was occupational illness or an animal becoming unexpectedly infected. ? 2012: Two workers in different select agent facilities showed signs of infection with the bacteria that causes Q fever, a select agent that primarily causes illness in livestock but can also sicken people with sudden or chronic symptoms including high fevers, headaches, nausea and vomiting. While most people recover, some will experience serious illness and complications, including pneumonia, hepatitis and an inflammation of heart tissue. The report says both of the lab workers returned to full work status, but their cases were not being counted as confirmed laboratory acquired infections because each may have been infected outside their labs. One also worked with vaccine strains of the bacteria that aren't counted as select agents; the other served as a large-animal vet outside of the lab work, the report says. ? 2011: A worker in a privately owned veterinary clinic had a confirmed occupational exposure to the bacteria that causes tularemia, which primarily sickens rabbits and rodents. It also can cause mild to life-threatening illness in people ? from skin ulcers to pneumonia ? depending on how they become infected. The worker fully recovered and there was no evidence of spread to anyone else, the report says. ? 2010: Three reports of confirmed releases were filed with the select agent program this year, the report says. "These releases resulted in two laboratory workers who were infected with Brucella suis in two separate states." Brucella bacteria cause brucellosis, a disease primarily of sheep, goats and cattle. When people are infected, it can cause recurrent fevers, arthritis, neurologic symptoms and chronic fatigue. The third incident involved a release of Classical Swine Fever virus, also known as hog cholera, which resulted in the illness of two animals, which were euthanized. ? 2009: A laboratory worker contracted tularemia, received medical treatment and recovered from the infection, the report says. ?2008: A research facility studying brucellosis was fined $425,000 and was ordered to suspend its research after a cow in a disease-free herd adjacent to the facility became infected with the disease. USDA officials would not answer USA TODAY's questions about the incident. CDC officials said: "The cow was destroyed. This release was determined not to be a threat to public, animal or plant health or safety." A second 2008 incident noted in the report involved a lab worker who became ill as a result of her working with brucella bacteria. There were 76 reported incidents of potential lost specimens during 2008-2012, according to the reports. In most cases, the reports attribute these incidents to inventory or record-keeping errors. In 2012, one report of a possible loss involved an entity that is not required to register with the federal select agent program. It "could not account for the select agent that had been in its custody. The loss was reported to the FBI," the report says. "The FBI concluded that the most plausible explanation was that the entity inadvertently disposed of the select agent into the biomedical waste stream." The report doesn't say what kind of agent it was. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 18 06:17:19 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 07:17:19 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Boston Police Used Facial Recognition Software To Grab Photos Of Every Person Attending Local Music Festivals Message-ID: <63AAFDEB-CDFD-4377-B331-A5800E7E2BD6@infowarrior.org> Boston Police Used Facial Recognition Software To Grab Photos Of Every Person Attending Local Music Festivals https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140814/09082228212/boston-police-used-facial-recognition-software-to-grab-photos-every-person-attending-local-music-festivals.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 18 09:08:28 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 10:08:28 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Community Health Systems: 4.5M records compromised Message-ID: <1315AC37-3AD1-48E1-980B-AA5B810C1F1B@infowarrior.org> Community Health Systems says personal data stolen in cyber attack Mon Aug 18, 2014 9:32am EDT http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/18/us-community-health-cybersecurity-idUSKBN0GI16N20140818 (Reuters) - U.S. hospital operator Community Health Systems Inc said on Monday personal data, including patient names and addresses, of about 4.5 million people were stolen by hackers from its computer network, likely in April and June. The company said the data, considered protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, included patient names, addresses, birth dates, telephone numbers and Social Security numbers. It did not include patient credit card or medical information, Community Health Systems said in a regulatory filing. It said the security breach had affected about 4.5 million people who were referred for or received services from doctors affiliated with the hospital group in the last five years. The FBI warned healthcare providers in April that their cybersecurity systems were lax compared to other sectors, making them vulnerable to hackers looking for details that could be used to access bank accounts or obtain prescriptions, Reuters previously reported. [ID:nL6N0NF4VL] The company said it and its security contractor, FireEye Inc unit Mandiant, believed the attackers originated from China. They did not provide further information about why they believed this was the case. They said they used malware and other technology to copy and transfer this data and information from its system. Community Health, which is one of the largest hospital operators in the country with 206 hospitals in 29 states, said it was working with federal law enforcement authorities in connection with their investigation into the attack. It said federal authorities said these attacks are typically aimed at gathering intellectual property, such as medical device and equipment development data. It said that prior to filing the regulatory document, it had eradicated the malware from its systems and finalized the implementation of remediation efforts. It is notifying patients and regulatory agencies as required by law, it said. It also said it is insured against such losses and does not at this time expect a material adverse effect on financial results. (Reporting by Caroline Humer and Shailesh Kuber; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Lisa Von Ahn and Chizu Nomiyama) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 18 13:51:42 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 14:51:42 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Teens_Are_Waging_a_Privacy_War_o?= =?windows-1252?q?n_the_Internet_=97_Why_Marketers_Should_Listen?= Message-ID: <8F591244-591F-4A8F-9AE8-60F0C7F831AF@infowarrior.org> Teens Are Waging a Privacy War on the Internet ? Why Marketers Should Listen http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/teens-privacy-online/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 18 14:53:14 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 15:53:14 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - U.S. Court Grants Order to Wipe Pirate Sites from the Internet Message-ID: U.S. Court Grants Order to Wipe Pirate Sites from the Internet ? By Ernesto ? on August 18, 2014 http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-court-wants-search-engines-remove-pirate-sites-140818/ A U.S. federal court in Oregon has granted a broad injunction against several streaming sites that offer pirated content. Among other things, the copyright holder may order hosting companies to shut down the sites' servers, ask registrars to take away domain names, and have all search results removed from Google and other search engines. The entertainment industries often complain that they have virtually no means to target pirate sites, especially those run from overseas. This grim outlook isn?t shared by the operators of ABS-CBN, the largest media and entertainment company in the Philippines, who filed a lawsuit against several unauthorized streaming sites at a District Court in Oregon. The company?s complaint alleges a mixture of trademark and copyright infringement against a dozen websites including Pinoystreaming.com, Pinoytvko.biz and Pinoy-tube.com. The sites in question are operated by different people, some of whom have no apparent connection to the United States. To stop the sites from operating as quickly as possible the media company requested a temporary restraining order. This was done under seal without the knowledge of the defendants, as ABS-CBN feared that they would otherwise switch domain names and continue operating as usual. ?Absent a temporary restraining order, Defendants will be able to completely erase the status quo by transferring the benefits of their prior illegal activities to new websites,? the company argued. In short, ABS-CBN requested power to take the sites offline before the owners knew that they were getting sued, and without a chance to defend themselves. While that may seem a lot to ask, Judge Anna Brown granted the request. Earlier this month the Judge signed the temporary restraining order which bars the operators from running their sites. In addition, it allows the media company to order hosting companies to take down the servers, domain registrars to seize the domain names, and search engines to remove all results linking to the sites. ?Upon Plaintiffs? request, those with actual notice of the injunction, including any Internet search engines, Web hosts, domain-name registrars, and domain name registries or their administrators, shall cease facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites?,? the order reads. The court also ordered the domain name registrars to point the domains to a copy of the complaint, so the website owners would know why their sites had been wiped from the Internet. Further, to prevent the defendants from passing on Google traffic to a new domain, ABS-CBN was granted permission to access the Google Webmaster Tools of the defendants. ?Plaintiffs may enter the Subject Domain Names into Google?s Webmaster Tools and cancel any redirection of the domains that have been entered there by Defendants which redirect traffic to a new domain name or website and thereby evade the provisions of this Order,? the order reads. The above is just part of the injunction which effectively shuts down the sites in question. All websites in the suit are now redirected to a copy of the complaint. Also, several domains are no longer present in Google?s search results. The preliminary injunction is unique in its kind, both due to its broadness and the fact that it happened without due process. This has several experts worried, including EFF?s Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. ?It?s very worrisome that a court would issue a rapid and broad order affecting speech based on allegations, without careful consideration and an opportunity for the targets to defend themselves,? McSherry tells TorrentFreak. In addition to the restraining order, Judge Brown also granted ABS-CBN?s request to freeze all financial assets of the defendants until further notice. The defendants were given the option to appeal both orders after they were issued, but it?s unknown whether they have done so. This is not the first ex-parte injunction to be handed down against alleged pirate sites this month. The same happened in the Expendables 3 case, although this order wasn?t nearly as broad as the one against the Filipino streaming sites. Whether it?s the start of a new trend has yet to be seen, but considering the broad measures judges are willing to sign off, things could get messy. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 19 09:39:13 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 10:39:13 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - US cites hacker risk in security disclosures about its health website Message-ID: <5A3291CB-749C-43FF-9225-D8528258738A@infowarrior.org> US cites hacker risk in security disclosures about its health website By JACK GILLUM ? Aug. 19, 2014 3:25 AM EDT http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-wont-reveal-records-health-website-security WASHINGTON (AP) - After promising not to withhold government information over "speculative or abstract fears," the Obama administration has concluded it will not publicly disclose federal records that could shed light on the security of the government's health care website because doing so could "potentially" allow hackers to break in. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied a request by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act for documents about the kinds of security software and computer systems behind the federally funded HealthCare.gov. The AP requested the records late last year amid concerns that Republicans raised about the security of the website, which had technical glitches that prevented millions of people from signing up for insurance under President Barack Obama's health care law. In denying access to the documents, including what's known as a site security plan, Medicare told the AP that disclosing them could violate health-privacy laws because it might give hackers enough information to break into the service. "We concluded that releasing this information would potentially cause an unwarranted risk to consumers' private information," CMS spokesman Aaron Albright said in a statement. The AP is asking the government to reconsider. Obama instructed federal agencies in 2009 to not keep information confidential "merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears." Yet the government, in its denial of the AP request, speculates that disclosing the records could possibly, but not assuredly or even probably, give hackers the keys they need to intrude. Even when the government concludes that records can't be fully released, Attorney General Eric Holder has directed agencies to consider whether parts of the files can be revealed with sensitive passages censored. CMS told the AP it will not release any parts of any of the records. The government's decision highlights problems as it grapples with a 2011 Supreme Court decision that significantly narrowed a provision under open records law that protected an agency's internal practices. Federal agencies have tried to use other, more creative routes to keep information censored. In addition to citing potential health-privacy violations, the government cited exemptions intended to protect personal privacy and law-enforcement records, although the agency did not explain what files about the health care website had been compiled for law-enforcement purposes. Some open-government advocates were skeptical. "Here you have an example of an agency resorting to a far-fetched privacy claim in an unprecedented attempt to bridge this legal gap and, in the process, making it even worse by going overboard in withholding such records in their entireties," said Dan Metcalfe, a former director of the Justice Department's office of information and privacy who's now at American University's law school. Keeping details about lockdown practices confidential is generally derided by information technology experts as "security through obscurity." Disclosing some types of information could help hackers formulate break-in strategies, but other facts, such as numbers of break-ins or descriptions of how systems store personal data, are commonly shared in the private sector. "Security practices aren't private information," said David Kennedy, an industry consultant who testified before Congress last year about HealthCare.gov's security. Last year, the AP found that CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner took the unusual step of signing the operational security certificate for HealthCare.govherself, even as her agency's security professionals balked. That memo said incomplete testing created uncertainties that posed a potentially high security risk for the website. It called for a six-month "mitigation" program, including ongoing monitoring and testing. The site has since passed a full security test. Government cyber-security experts were also worried that state computers linking to a federal system that verifies the personal information of insurance applicants were vulnerable to attack. About a week before the launch of HealthCare.gov, a federal review found significant differences in states' readiness. The administration says the concerns about state systems have been addressed. Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 19 12:31:29 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 13:31:29 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Memorization as copyright infringement Message-ID: <40313525-EBDE-4DB8-9F9A-B3B2E2ED9962@infowarrior.org> Licensing Boards Think Studying For A Test Is Copyright Infringement, Forbid Memorization Of Material https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140716/05332527890/licensing-boards-think-studying-test-is-copyright-infringement-forbid-memorization-material.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 20 07:51:19 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 08:51:19 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - US police given billions from Homeland Security for 'tactical' equipment Message-ID: <5F2517BA-87F4-4777-AA71-DEA13FF3F25D@infowarrior.org> US police given billions from Homeland Security for 'tactical' equipment With little oversight, federal agency awarded billions to local police for spending on drones, drugs, vehicles and ?animals and plants?, among eligible purchases http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/police-billions-homeland-security-military-equipment --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 20 09:49:14 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 10:49:14 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Researchers_Easily_Slipped_Weapo?= =?windows-1252?q?ns_Past_TSA=92s_X-Ray_Body_Scanners?= Message-ID: <1F6C28D3-EB39-4535-B0A3-45EFA6D597A6@infowarrior.org> Researchers Easily Slipped Weapons Past TSA?s X-Ray Body Scanners ? By Andy Greenberg ? 08.20.14 | ? 9:00 am | http://www.wired.com/2014/08/study-shows-how-easily-weapons-can-be-smuggled-past-tsas-x-ray-body-scanners/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 20 09:59:37 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 10:59:37 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - U.S. Military Bans The Intercept Message-ID: <526939E3-7379-47B8-9F03-7925F42AE19F@infowarrior.org> U.S. Military Bans The Intercept By Ryan Gallagher 20 Aug 2014, 10:46 AM EDT The U.S. military is banning and blocking employees from visiting The Intercept in an apparent effort to censor news reports that contain leaked government secrets. According to multiple military sources, a notice has been circulated to units within the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps warning staff that they are prohibited from reading stories published by The Intercept on the grounds that they may contain classified information. The ban appears to apply to all employees?including those with top-secret security clearance?and is aimed at preventing classified information from being viewed on unclassified computer networks, even if it is freely available on the internet. Similar military-wide bans have been directed against news outlets in the past after leaks of classified information. A directive issued to military staff at one location last week, obtained by The Intercept, threatens that any employees caught viewing classified material in the public domain will face ?long term security issues.? It suggests that the call to prohibit employees from viewing the website was made by senior officials over concerns about a ?potential new leaker? of secret documents. < - > https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/20/u-s-military-bans-the-intercept/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 20 16:25:07 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:25:07 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - UK: Watching a terror video may be illegal Message-ID: <9E92207D-D3A4-4086-8AD1-4A29504D6FFF@infowarrior.org> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/isis-british-militant-james-foley-video < - > Scotland Yard warned the public that viewing, downloading or disseminating the video within the UK might constitute a criminal offence under terrorism legislation. A spokesman said: "The Metropolitan police service counter terrorism command (SO15) is investigating the contents of the video that was posted online in relation to the alleged murder of James Foley." < - > --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 20 16:28:01 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:28:01 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - University Bans Social Media, Political Content and Wikipedia Pages on Dorm Wifi Message-ID: <504D9B11-29C0-4CD7-9E86-17CC019BC8D6@infowarrior.org> University Bans Social Media, Political Content and Wikipedia Pages on Dorm Wifi By Sage Lazzaro 8/20 10:37am http://betabeat.com/2014/08/university-bans-social-medial-political-content-and-wikipedia-pages-on-dorm-wifi/ ?Finally, I can do whatever I want!? thought every incoming college freshman ever. But for some unlucky students arriving on campus this fall, that sought-after right of passage applies to just about everything except internet usage. Northern Illinois University enacted an Acceptable Use Policy that goes further than banning torrents, also denying students access to social media sites and other content the university considers ?unethical? or ?obscene.? A discussion on the ban was brought to Reddit by user darkf who discovered the new policy while trying to access the Wikipedia page for the Westboro Baptist Church from his personal computer in his dorm room. The student received a filter message categorizing the page as ?illegal or unethical.? It seems possible to continue to the webpage, but the message warns that all violations will be reviewed. (Screengrab via darkf). ?This kind of policy comes out of the blue,? darkf told Betabeat. ?I feel that if someone doesn?t speak out about it at the start, it might be here to stay. I hope they can understand how restrictive it is to students.? Effective for residents, students and staff, the restrictions span across the NIU network, which includes both campus research and education center as well as the school?s Wifi network. The revised policy ? enacted July 25 ? isn?t entirely new, but the implementation of a new filter that will strictly enforce it was the first ?act of office? for the university?s new head of technology, according to darkf. The full terms of the policy are explained here, but we?ll sum up the less obvious ones: Firstly, misrepresenting your identity is forbidden. It?s unclear how far this goes, but catfishing may be out. Anything the university considers to be ?obscene, defamatory, or [that] constitutes a threat? is also a big no. This is quite vague, but they throw on ?including pornography? at the end of that bullet point, to no surprise. A number of additional screenshots provided by darkf confirm that porn is inaccessible. Perhaps one of the most controversial of the terms is the restriction on political activities such as surveying, polling, material distribution, vote solicitation and organization or participation in meetings, rallies and demonstrations, among other activities. According to the policy, social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Foursquare are also unacceptable ?unless associated with professional responsibilities.? However, students have reportedly been able to access social media. To top it off, illicit activity discovered during ?routine monitoring? is grounds for an investigation. The policy is loaded with phrases like ?but not limited to? and ?etc.? to make it all as vague as possible. What exactly each bullet point means is unclear, but the idea of such censorship is concerning students and Redditors alike. ?Explain to them that in the interest of advancing education you might need to access certain websites that may seem controversial or unethical/?illegal,? commented one logical Redditor. Reddit, you?re so wise. Isn?t it obvious that an institute of higher learning should be the last place to put a huge block in the information pathway? Banning illegal activity is completely understandable, and porn shouldn?t be censored, but I couldn?t hate them for it. But banning Wikipedia pages? How do they expect students to do their assignments? Update Restricted access to social media sites only applies to university equipment and only following instructions to cease use of the equipment for such usage. The other restrictions still apply to personal computers on the network. Read more at http://betabeat.com/2014/08/university-bans-social-medial-political-content-and-wikipedia-pages-on-dorm-wifi/#ixzz3AyCi0x00 Follow us: @betabeat on Twitter | betabeatNYO on Facebook --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 20 20:41:21 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 21:41:21 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Twitter makes random tweets, favorites on timelines official feature Message-ID: <16A08889-3498-4B5D-BF88-2DABBFDB60F8@infowarrior.org> Twitter makes random tweets, favorites on timelines official feature updated 07:50 pm EDT, Wed August 20, 2014 http://www.electronista.com/articles/14/08/20/company.alters.help.page.to.reflect.change.in.timeline.content.from.popular.relevant.accounts/ Company alters help page to reflect change in timeline content from popular, relevant accounts Twitter users may have seen a number of items showing up in their feeds from users they don't follow for the last few weeks. In what was thought to be one of the company's experiments, tweets from users that aren't followed and random favorites from others were showing up in timelines. It appears that the feature is no longer in testing, as Twitter has added the new feature to its help page about timelines. According to the help page update, Twitter is offering what it believes is popular or relevant accounts or tweets to users. This happens on top of retweets, promoted tweets and other advertising items that already show up on official Twitter app feeds. The idea behind the new content is that Twitter is trying to give its users a better experience by exposing them to more content. "Additionally, when we identify a Tweet, an account to follow, or other content that's popular or relevant, we may add it to your timeline," reads the help page. "This means you will sometimes see tweets from accounts you don't follow. We select each tweet using a variety of signals, including how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it. Our goal is to make your home timeline even more relevant and interesting." Quartz first spotted the timeline page change, pointing out that the change doesn't seem to include retweeted content. By altering what shows up in the timeline, however, Twitter is changing its basic approach. Previously content from followed accounts showed up in chronological order, but the change could alter that in the future. Either way, there will be more content to sift through depending on the amount the company intends to add to feeds. However, it does show that Twitter is looking toward the future. As with all of the tests that the company runs, Twitter is constantly looking to make the user experience better. While many of these tests are only pushed out to a few users and are never adopted, the company continues to look for ways to survive as trends, technology and social media changes. It isn't explained how the tweets are being injected into timelines, but its probably some kind of algorithm based on the idea that the are tweets from "popular or relevant accounts." Facebook does something similar with extra content that it delivers to news feeds. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 21 18:34:31 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 19:34:31 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - WH cyber czar brags about lack of technical experience Message-ID: <6C36AE4B-8203-4651-A8DE-12CF08914294@infowarrior.org> White House cybersecurity czar brags about his lack of technical expertise Updated by Timothy B. Lee on August 21, 2014, 4:00 p.m. ET tim at vox.com http://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053819/white-house-cybersecurity-czar-brags-about-his-lack-of-technical Michael Daniel is the White House's cybersecurity coordinator, the man who "leads the interagency development of national cybersecurity strategy and policy" for the president. And in a recent interview with GovInfoSecurity, he argued that his lack of technical expertise gave him an advantage in doing that job. "You don't have to be a coder in order to really do well in this position," Daniel said, when asked if his job required knowledge of the technology behind information security. "In fact, actually, I think being too down in the weeds at the technical level could actually be a little bit of a distraction." "You can get taken up and enamored with the very detailed aspects of some of the technical solutions," he explained, arguing that "the real issue is looking at the broad strategic picture." As Princeton computer scientist (and, full disclosure, my former advisor) Ed Felten points out, it's hard to imagine senior policymakers with responsibility for other technical subjects making this kind of claim. Imagine a White House economic advisor arguing that experience in the weeds of economic research would be a distraction, an attorney general making that claim about time in a courtroom, or a surgeon general bragging about never having set foot in an operating room. In most parts of government, it's considered a major asset if senior policymakers have experience in the weeds of the topics they work on. The surgeon generalhas an MD, as does the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The head of the National Institutes of Health has a PhD in chemistry and did groundbreaking research on the human genome. All three members of the Council of Economic Advisors have PhDs in economics, as does the head of the Federal Reserve. The attorney general has a law degree, as do both of his deputies. In contrast, Daniel has degrees in public policy and spent 17 years at the Office of Management and Budget. He did some policy work on cybersecurity there, but by his own admission has little experience programming computers or securing computer networks from attack. Experience in the weeds of a technical subject is hugely valuable in senior policymaking jobs Daniel says that his most important skill is "being able to analyze and break down really complicated public policy problems and present them in a manner that makes them more amenable to analysis." That's obviously an important skill, and it's one that many computer programmers lack. You wouldn't want to give Daniel's job to a random Google coder. But at the same time, it would be helpful for Daniel to have some experience in the weeds of computer security. Washington is full of defense contractors peddling alarmist stories in order to sell their overpriced cybersecurity "solutions." To distinguish genuine threats from trumped up ones, it's hugely valuable to have spent some time in the cybersecurity trenches. No one would deny that having spent time in a courtroom makes you a better attorney general or that spending time in an operating room makes you a better surgeon general. This kind of experience doesn't just provide people with deeper knowledge of their subjects, it also connects them to a network of other experts who can help them evaluate and implement policy. People who do cybersecurity policy need the same kind of experience and connections to do their jobs well. With that said, there's a reason that presidents so often rely on people without technical expertise when making cybersecurity decisions: there aren't many people with experience in both computer security and government. The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve are full of trained economists with government experience. The Department of Justice is full of lawyers with both courtroom and policymaking experience. The CDC is full of physicians who understand the policymaking process. But right now, there isn't a good career path for young computer scientists to gain the kind of policy experience that would lead to senior government jobs. As a result, presidents are too often forced to choose between people with government experience or computer science experience. But there are some people with both. The president and other senior policymakers should be trying harder to hire them. And we should be expanding opportunities for younger cybersecurity and IT policy experts to work in government, so presidents a decade or two from now have a deeper bench to choose from. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Sun Aug 24 20:48:10 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 21:48:10 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - China to release its own OS Message-ID: <4E2A9DF2-2A4D-4EF5-96A5-16E4F4799E5D@infowarrior.org> China targets own operating system to take on likes of Microsoft, Google SHANGHAI Sun Aug 24, 2014 6:07am EDT http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/24/us-china-technology-idUSKBN0GO08H20140824 (Reuters) - China could have a new homegrown operating system by October to take on imported rivals such as Microsoft Corp, Google Inc and Apple Inc, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday. Computer technology became an area of tension between China and the United States after a number of run-ins over cyber security. China is now looking to help its domestic industry catch up with imported systems such as Microsoft's Windows and Google's mobile operating system Android. The operating system would first appear on desktop devices and later extend to smartphone and other mobile devices, Xinhua said, citing Ni Guangnan who heads an official OS development alliance established in March. Ni's comments were originally reported by the People's Post and Telecommunications News, an official trade paper run by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). "We hope to launch a Chinese-made desktop operating system by October supporting app stores," Ni told the trade paper. Some Chinese OS already existed, but there was a large gap between China's technology and that of developed countries, he added. He said he hoped domestically built software would be able to replace desktop operating systems within one to two years and mobile operating systems within three to five years. In May, China banned government use of Windows 8, Microsoft's latest operating system, a blow to the U.S. technology firm's business which raised fears China was moving to protect domestic firms. Microsoft is also under investigation for anti-trust violations. In March last year, China said that Google had too much control over China's smartphone industry via its Android mobile operating system and has discriminated against some local firms. Mutual suspicions between China and the United States over hacking have escalated over the past year following revelations by Edward Snowden that U.S. intelligence planted "backdoor" surveillance tools on U.S.-made hardware. The U.S. Justice Department, meanwhile, indicted five Chinese military officers in May on counts of extensive industrial espionage. Ni said the ban on Windows 8 was a big opportunity for the Chinese sector to push forward its own systems, but that the industry needed further development and investment. "Creating an environment that allows us to contend with Google, Apple and Microsoft - that is the key to success," he added. (Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Nick Macfie) --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 25 08:58:10 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 09:58:10 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Feds Issue Bulletin on Google Dorking Message-ID: <229547F1-6414-4FAE-9705-E7C5377B65EC@infowarrior.org> As if "Google Hacking" wasn't already well-known enough, we need a new redundant term. Because that's the way government rolls. --rick Feds Issue Bulletin on Google Dorking https://publicintelligence.net/feds-google-dorking/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 25 17:29:24 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 18:29:24 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google Message-ID: <50D9C60B-B284-438C-B3DF-A6590A59AE99@infowarrior.org> How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google By Ryan Gallagher 25 Aug 2014, 1:09 PM EDT 32 The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a ?Google-like? search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept. < - > https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/25/icreach-nsa-cia-secret-google-crisscross-proton/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Aug 25 17:29:42 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 18:29:42 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?OT=3A_The_=93Participation_Troph?= =?windows-1252?q?y=94_generation?= Message-ID: <0DD876DF-0B7C-4665-A73B-C26D1D0EE5AE@infowarrior.org> Posted without comment..... The ?Participation Trophy? generation http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/20/meet-the-participation-trophy-generation/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Tue Aug 26 14:48:26 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 15:48:26 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?_Comcast_tells_government_that_i?= =?windows-1252?q?ts_data_caps_aren=92t_actually_=93data_caps=94?= Message-ID: <776D5B71-5221-4133-BDAB-7F003DC8F1BB@infowarrior.org> Comcast tells government that its data caps aren?t actually ?data caps? http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/comcast-tells-government-that-its-data-caps-arent-actually-data-caps/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 27 06:48:21 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 07:48:21 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Time Warner Cable Is Down Nationwide Message-ID: Time Warner Cable Is Down Nationwide < - > Time Warner Cable is experiencing major outages at this time. People are over the country are reporting disruptions in service for the cable internet. http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/08/time-warner-outage/379193/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Wed Aug 27 14:04:27 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 15:04:27 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Fwd: NIST Randomness Beacon References: <53FE2B5B.4080804@inetassoc.com> Message-ID: Begin forwarded message: > From: Traveler > > http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/ct/nist_beacon.cfm > > NIST Randomness Beacon > > Summary: > > NIST is implementing a prototype source of public randomness. The prototype (at https://beacon.nist.gov/home) uses two independent commercially available sources of randomness, each with an independent hardware entropy source and SP 800-90-approved components. > The Beacon is designed to provide unpredictability, autonomy, and consistency. Unpredictability means that users cannot algorithmically predict bits before they are made available by the source. Autonomy means that the source is resistant to attempts by outside parties to alter the distribution of the random bits. Consistency means that a set of users can access the source in such a way that they are confident that they all receive the same random string. > > > Description: > > The Beacon will broadcast full-entropy bit-strings in blocks of 512 bits every 60 seconds. Each such value is time-stamped and signed, and includes the hash of the previous value to chain the sequence of values together. This prevents all, even the source, from retroactively changing an output packet without being detected. The beacon keeps all output packets and makes them available online. > > DRBG Beacon System Diagram > Uses: > > Tables of random numbers have probably been used for multiple purposes at least since the Industrial Revolution. The first published table appears to be by the English statistician L.H.C. Tippett. In the digital age, algorithmic random number generators have largely replaced these tables. The NIST Randomness Beacon expands the use of randomness to multiple scenarios in which the latter methods cannot be used. The extra functionalities stem mainly from three features. First, the Beacon-generated numbers cannot be predicted before they are published. Second, the public, time-bound, and authenticated nature of the Beacon allows a user application to prove to anybody that it used truly random numbers not known before a certain point in time. Third, this proof can be presented offline and at any point in the future. For example, the proof could be mailed to a trusted third party, encrypted and signed by an application, only to be opened if needed and authorized. > > NIST encourages the community at large to research and publish novel ways in which this tool can be used. A few examples of applications are described below: > ?Unpredictable Sampling > ?New Secure Authentication Mechanisms > ?Secure Multi-party Computation > > A Quantum Source: > > Commercially available physical sources of randomness are adequate as entropy sources for currently envisioned applications of the Beacon. However, demonstrably unpredictable values are not possible to obtain in any classical physical context. Given this fact, our team established a collaboration with NIST physicists from the Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML). The aim is to use quantum effects to generate a sequence of truly random values, guaranteed to be unpredictable, even if an attacker has access to the random source. In August 2012, this project was awarded a multi-year grant from NIST's Innovations in Measurement Science (IMS) Program. IMS awards highly competitive projects designed to explore high-risk, leading-edge research concepts that anticipate future measurement and standards needs of industry and science. For more information on this collaboration see http://www.nist.gov/pml/div684/random_numbers_bell_test.cfm > > Locality-Loophole-Free Bell Test > A space-time diagram illustrating a locality-loophole-free Bell test. In this test, entangled photons are verified to have correlations that exceed the maximum level possible with any predetermined (or classical) states. To demonstrate this unequivocally, it is important to make sure that the measurements performed on one photon cannot, by any means within the bounds of physics, influence the measurement of the other photon. Such an influence, if it were to exist, could allow fully predetermined states to appear to share quantum correlations. Conducting the two measurements outside of each other's light cones ensures this measurement independence. In the space-time diagram above, the speed of light is depicted by rays at ?45 degrees, and also represents the maximum speed at which information about any event could (conceivably) propagate away from the origin of the event. Therefore, positions outside the cone formed by the rays from any event represent locations and times that could not possibly have received any information from the event. In the loophole-free test illustrated above, entangled photons are emitted from the source and propagate in opposite directions towards receivers Alice and Bob. At some point in time, indicated by "i" and "j," Alice and Bob each independently choose how to measure the properties of the photon each will receive. To conduct a locality-loophole-free Bell test, Alice and Bob must complete their chosen measurements (Ai,and Bj, determining results a and b, respectively.) before any information about the other's choice could possibly reach their location; Alice must complete her measurement before the rays emanating from the event "j" intersect her location, similarly Bob must complete his measurement outside the light cone of event "i." Closing this and other loopholes in the Bell test provide certification that no information about the state of the photons could have been available prior to its observation, assuring that the correlations could not have been predetermined. That guarantee of no predetermination of the photon system and its measurement results, will ultimately be used to produce random bits that can be assured to be both random and unknown to anyone before a certain time. > From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 28 06:28:27 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 07:28:27 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Leaked_Draft_Reveals_Hollywood?= =?windows-1252?q?=92s_Anti-Piracy_Plans?= Message-ID: <0C9FD185-A4EB-443D-91F4-A233AD27AF0B@infowarrior.org> Leaked Draft Reveals Hollywood?s Anti-Piracy Plans ? By Andy ? on August 28, 2014 http://torrentfreak.com/leaked-draft-reveals-hollywoods-anti-piracy-plans-140828/ A leaked draft prepared for government submission has revealed Hollywood's Australian anti-piracy strategy. Among other things, the paper says that providers should be held liable for infringing customers even when they only "reasonably suspect" that infringement is taking place. As the discussions over the future of anti-piracy legislation in Australia continue, a draft submission has revealed the wish-list of local movie groups and their Hollywood paymasters. The draft, a response to a request by Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull for submissions on current anti-piracy proposals, shows a desire to apply extreme pressure to local ISPs. The authors of the draft (obtained by Crikey, subscription, ) are headed up by the Australia Screen Association, the anti-piracy group previously known as AFACT. While local company Village Roadshow is placed front and center, members including the Motion Picture Association, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Warner make for a more familiar read. Australian citizens ? the world?s worst pirates The companies begin with scathing criticism of the Australian public, branding them the world?s worst pirates, despite the ?fact? that content providers ?have ensured the ready availability of online digital platforms and education of consumers on where they can acquire legitimate digital content.? It?s a bold claim that will anger many Australians, who even today feel like second-class consumers who have to wait longer and pay more for their content. So what can be done about the piracy problem? The draft makes it clear ? litigation against individuals isn?t going to work and neither is legal action against ?predominantly overseas? sites. The answer, Hollywood says, can be found in tighter control of what happens on the Internet. Increased ISP liability In a nutshell, the studios are still stinging over their loss to ISP iiNet in 2012. So now, with the help of the government, they hope to introduce amendments to copyright law in order to remove service providers? safe harbor if they even suspect infringement is taking place on their networks but fail to take action. ?A new provision would deem authorization [of infringement] to occur where an ISP fails to take reasonable steps ? which are also defined inclusively to include compliance with a Code or Regulations ? in response to infringements of copyright it knows or reasonably suspects are taking place on its network,? the draft reads. ?A provision in this form would provide great clarity around the steps that an ISP would be required to take to avoid a finding of authorization and provide the very kind of incentive for the ISP to cooperate in the development of a Code.? With ?incentives? in place for them to take ?reasonable steps?, ISPs would be expected to agree to various measures (outlined by a ?Code? or legislation) to ?discourage or reduce? online copyright infringement in order to maintain their safe harbor. It will come as no surprise that subscriber warnings are on the table. ?Voluntary? Graduated Response ?These schemes, known as ?graduated response schemes?, are based on a clear allocation of liability to ISPs that do not (by complying with the scheme) take steps to address copyright infringement by their users,? the studios explain. ?While this allocation of liability does not receive significant attention in most discussions of graduated response schemes, common sense dictates that the schemes would be unlikely to exist (much less be complied with by ISPs) in the absence of this basic incentive structure.? While pointing out that such schemes are in place in eight countries worldwide, the movie and TV companies say that a number of them contain weaknesses, a trap that Australia must avoid. ?There are flaws in a number of these models, predominantly around the allocation of costs and lack of effective mitigation measures which, if mirrored in Australia, would make such a scheme ineffective and unlikely to be used,? the paper reads. It appears that the studios believe that the US model, the Copyright Alerts System (CAS), is what Australia should aim for since it has ?effective mitigation measures? and they don?t have to foot the entire bill. ?Copyright owners would pay their own costs of identifying the infringements and notifying these to the ISP, while ISPs would bear the costs of matching the IP addresses in the infringement notices to subscribers, issuing the notices and taking any necessary technical mitigation measures,? they explain. In common with the CAS in the United States, providers would be allowed discretion on mitigation measures for persistent infringers. However, the studios also imply that ISPs? ?power to prevent? piracy should extend to the use of customer contracts. ?[Power] to prevent piracy would include both direct and indirect power and definitions around the nature of the relationship which would recognize the significance of contractual relationships and the power that they provide to prevent or avoid online piracy,? they write. Voluntary agreements, required by law, one way or another The key is to make ISPs liable first, the studios argue, then negotiations on a ?voluntary? scheme should fall into place. ?Once the authorization liability scheme is amended to make clear that ISPs will be liable for infringements of copyright by their subscribers which they know about but do not take reasonable steps to prevent or avoid, an industry code prescribing the content of those ?reasonable steps? is likely to be agreed between rightsholders and ISPs without excessively protracted negotiations.? However, any failure by the ISPs to come to the table voluntarily should be met by legislative change. ?In the absence of any current intention of and incentive for ISPs in Australia to support such a scheme (and the strong opposition from some ISPs) legislative recognition of the reasonable steps involved in such a scheme is necessary,? they write. Site blocking Due to ?weakness? in current Australian law in respect of ISP liability, site blocking has proved problematic. What the studios want is a ?no-fault? injunction (similar to the model in Ireland) which requires ISPs to block sites like The Pirate Bay without having to target the ISPs themselves. ?Not being the target of a finding against it, an ISP is unlikely to oppose the injunction ? as long as the procedural requirements for the injunction are met. Once made, a blocking injunction would immediately prevent Australian internet users from being tempted to or accessing the blocked sites,? the studios explain. Despite The Pirate Bay doubling its traffic in the face of extensive blocking across Europe, the movie companies believe that not blocking in Australia is part of the problem. ?The absence of a no-fault procedure may explain the very high rates of film and TV piracy in Australia when compared with European countries that have such a procedure,? they write. Unsurprisingly, the studios want to keep the bar low when it comes to such injunctions. ?The extended injunctive relief provision should not require the Court to be satisfied that the dominant purpose of the website is to infringe copyright,? they urge. ?Raising the level of proof in this way would severely compromise the effectiveness of the new provision in that it would become significantly more difficult for rightsholders to obtain an injunction under the scheme: allegedly non-infringing content would be pointed to in each case, not for reasons of freedom of access to information on the internet, but purely as a basis to defeat the order.? The studios also want the ISPs to pick up the bill on site-blocking. ?[Courts in Europe] have ordered the costs of site blocking injunctions be borne by the ISP. The Australian Film/TV Bodies submit that the same position should be adopted in Australia, especially as it is not likely that the evidence would be any different on a similar application here,? they add. Conclusion If the studios get everything they?ve asked for in Australia, the ensuing framework could become the benchmark for models of the future. There?s a still a long way to go, however, and some ISPs ? iiNet in particular ? won?t be an easy nut to crack. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 28 06:33:32 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 07:33:32 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - University of Oregon Slaps Student With Five Conduct Charges Over Four Words Message-ID: University of Oregon Slaps Student With Five Conduct Charges Over Four Words https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140827/12064428343/university-oregon-slaps-student-with-five-conduct-charges-over-four-words.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 28 07:03:07 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 08:03:07 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni Message-ID: <757E0969-9D69-4D18-927C-DE571A174311@infowarrior.org> The executive order that led to mass spying, as told by NSA alumni http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/a-twisted-history-how-a-reagan-era-executive-order-led-to-mass-spying/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 28 08:12:16 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 09:12:16 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Keurig's K-Cup DRM cracked Message-ID: (Apologies for the Fool as a source, but I'm triple-tasking @ the moment. --rick) Bad News for Keurig Green Mountain Investors: TreeHouse Foods Says Keurig 2.0 Technology Can Be Cracked http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/23/bad-news-for-keurig-green-mountain-investors-treeh.aspx --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 28 11:48:22 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:48:22 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - ALS association filing trademark on ... you guessed it. Message-ID: <9085D7AF-C53E-4F80-B2E1-943A661E9A9F@infowarrior.org> ALS association filing trademark on ... you guessed it. Wondering if, should this be approved, whether or not the ALS association will start going all IP trolly on folks, like Komen does with anything 'for the cure' and/or pink? Because, what's a good cause for if you can't profit from it, too? http://www.erikpelton.com/2014/08/27/let-the-ice-bucket-trademark-challenges-begin-alsassociation-files-to-register-ice-bucket-challenge-with-uspto/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Thu Aug 28 13:10:07 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:10:07 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Netflix open sources internet security tools Message-ID: <6DA7A5D1-581C-4B49-B7AE-4E2CE45AC1D8@infowarrior.org> Netflix open sources internet security tools http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2362374/netflix-open-sources-internet-security-tools --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 29 06:15:32 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 07:15:32 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - Loose Tweets Sink Ships Message-ID: <93B8CB77-98C5-4420-8130-D9DD4C3D0FA6@infowarrior.org> Loose Tweets Sink Ships Will the Islamic State?s aggressive Internet strategy expose it to investigators? By JACOB SILVERMAN August 28, 2014 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/islamic-state-twitter-110418.html Jacob Silverman?s book, Terms of Service: Social Media, Surveillance, and the Price of Constant Connection, will be published by HarperCollins next year. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 29 09:37:08 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 10:37:08 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Meet_Obama=92s_new_=93piracy_cza?= =?windows-1252?q?r=2C=94?= Message-ID: <2C3FD63A-CCDF-45FB-82D6-F6DFF56AD09E@infowarrior.org> Meet Obama?s new ?piracy czar,? same as the old czar By Jeff John Roberts 31 mins ago http://gigaom.com/2014/08/29/meet-obamas-new-piracy-czar-same-as-the-old-czar/ The White House this week nominated an entertainment industry lawyer to be ?piracy czar,? a position that involves coordinating intellectual property enforcement across various parts of the federal government. The new czar, Danny Marti, arrives a year after the previous czar, Victoria Espinel left to head a software lobby group. The choice of Marti, a partner at Washington law firm Kilpatrick Townsend, was hailed by Hollywood lobbyists. ?Danny?s impressive record of commitment to enforcing IP rights in the Internet age makes him a particularly strong choice,? former senator Chris Dodd, who is now CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, told Variety. An executive from the Recording Industry of America offered similar plaudits. Marti, whose appointment must be confirmed by the Senate, is likely to devote most of his efforts to shutting down websites that distribute unauthorized media and branded merchandise. His predecessor, Espinel, oversaw programs like the ?Copyright Alert System,? for ISP?s and copyright owners, and ?Operation in Our Sites,? in which enforcement officials conducted ritual seizure of websites ahead of events like the Super Bowl and Black Friday. Espinel also handled the White House?s response to the debacle known as SOPA, in which outrage from internet communities led Congress to retreat from a sweeping new anti-piracy law. Marti himself has yet to say what he would do as piracy czar, but it?s hard to imagine he will chart a course much difference than Espinel?s. That?s a shame. Leaving aside the U.S. fixation with ?czar? titles, it?s worth asking why the intellectual property czar must focus exclusively on enforcement, and not on broader issues of fostering science and creativity ? which is the point of IP laws in the first place. While rights owners certainly have legitimate concerns over piracy, there is no reason why the White House czar can?t also spend his time on other IP-related problems such as curbing abusive copyright enforcement and patent trolls. The actions of the trolls can undercut respect for intellectual property in the same way that piracy does and, in the long run, stopping the trolls could win more sympathy for Hollywood in its campaign against the pirates. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 29 15:31:26 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 16:31:26 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - ALS Association Withdraws Trademark Application On Ice Bucket Challenge Message-ID: ALS Association Responds To Public Outcry; Withdraws Trademark Application On Ice Bucket Challenge https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140829/11363928364/als-association-responds-to-public-outcry-withdraws-trademark-application-ice-bucket-challenge.shtml --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. From rforno at infowarrior.org Fri Aug 29 19:34:34 2014 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 20:34:34 -0400 Subject: [Infowarrior] - =?windows-1252?q?Understanding_Apple=92s_Mastery_?= =?windows-1252?q?of_the_Media?= Message-ID: Understanding Apple?s Mastery of the Media http://9to5mac.com/2014/08/29/seeing-through-the-illusion-understanding-apples-mastery-of-the-media/ --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.