Government snooping, backdoors and #necessaryhashtags

[xilman]

I did not expect this. A mass-circulation tabloid in the UK has set up an anonymous dropbox for whistleblowers. It's accessible only through Tor and the paper has given instructions on how to acquire and use a Tor-enabled browser together with Tails Linux if desired.

[xilman]

https://goodcrypto.com/news/2015/03/...hip-in-europe/ has just appeared in a security mailing list. The finger appeares to point at NSA and/or GCHQ but I don't expect to find out who is really to blame.

The post is rather long but the take-home message is that wget has a completely different set of vulnerabilities to browsers and will often succeed in the face of adversity.

[chappy]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015...dministration/


Hint, hint, it's the topic of the day!

[ewmayer]

Angela Merkel’s NSA Nightmare Just Got A Lot Worse | naked capitalism

For Merkel, it is a dizzying reversal of roles and fortunes. In 2013 she was arguably the most high-profile victim of NSA surveillance when it was revealed that the NSA had targeted her cellphone. When confronted with Edward Snowden’s allegations of US National Security Agency mass surveillance of European citizens, Merkel famously said that “spying on friends is just not on.” According to official accounts, she even placed a “strongly worded phone call” to US President Barack Obama.

Beyond the hypocrisy, especially appalling for someone who grew up in the former DDR, as Merkel did.

And blogger Ian Welsh weighs in on the DDR angle:

Happiness and Freedom: East German Version

it’s a bad sign when you aren’t even considered a better place to live than East Germany, with its Stasi. The failures of the post-Soviet era are making that period look better and better. In Russia, there is a surge of nostalgia for the USSR, for reasons which are are remarkably similar. People are discovering that, as wonderful as Levis jeans are, there is a cost to the modern consumer society in terms of anomie, corruption, and economic precarity.

Though I think I like the bitter joke from 1990s Russia best:

Everything they (Communist authorities) told us about Communism was a lie. Unfortunately, everything they told us about Capitalism was the truth.

Some good reader comments to that one.

And by way of a "you simply can't make stuff like this up" counterpoint:

Snowden, Assange and Manning statues unveiled in Berlin | Euronews

Inquiring minds want to know: Will Angie be laying a wreath in honor of the three champions of liberty?

[xilman]

NSA phone data collection 'illegal', US court rules

[ewmayer]

Paul beat me to it (I snarfed the links below this morning, but been offline since then doing more needful things), but allow me to pile on and add a Salon link about an interesting connection:

o NSA's Bulk Collection of Phone Records Is Illegal, Appeals Court Says - The Intercept

Good in the sense that the decision was unanimous and the opinions demolish more or less all of the government's key claims about constitutionality and standing (of the petitioners), but without an accompanying "cease and desist" (in some independently verifiable form, which the liars and spooks will never allow), I doubt anything will change in the near future. When they demolish or repurpose the ginormous NSA data center that's being built in Utah, that would be a clear sign of a change in practices.

o "It’s pure authoritarianism": Glenn Greenwald exposes the link between Baltimore's uprising and the NSA - Salon.com

[ewmayer]

Worker fired for disabling GPS app that tracked her 24 hours a day [Updated] | Ars Technica

[xilman]

The US House of Representatives has voted to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records.

Looks like it's now for the Senate to decide.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by xilman

The US House of Representatives has voted to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records.

Looks like it's now for the Senate to decide.

With what, if any, enforcement mechanism? Not that the spookmasters would ever lie to us or anything ... (cough, 'Clapper congressional testimony', cough).

======================

CIA Whistleblower Sentenced to 42 Months Based on Metadata | naked capitalism

Wow, the standard of evidence here was pathetic -- was the judge asleep through this, or did he allow the prosecution to give the jury its instructions in his stead? "Certain unclassified-at-the-time documents which were later classified were found in defendant's possession ... ergo, defendant must have passed on highly classified documents, even though no evidence of possession of such documents was found."

The descent of the U.S. "justice" system into Kafkaesque hell continues. Is this one of the signal markers of empires in their death throes? We can only hope.

[Ralf Recker]

Another downgrade attack paper has been published recently. It might explain one of the stunts the NSA has allegedly pulled off.

If true, this would answer one of the major cryptographic questions raised by the Edward Snowden leaks:

How is NSA defeating the encryption for widely used VPN protocols?

[ewmayer]

Fleet of Government Aircraft Flying Secret Missions over U.S. Cities — Medium

And related:

Terrorist Risks by City, According to Actual Data -- Bruce Schneier