Government snooping, backdoors and #necessaryhashtags

[only_human]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Anti-privacy unkillable super-cookies spreading around the world – study | The Register

Makes me glad I use an aged mostly-dumb phone, though I agree with the ending of the piece that doing *anything* on one's phone/webdevice without being tracked is likely going to become increasingly difficult, not just because telcos have a neverending appetite for all our potentially monetizable data, but because governments do, as well. On the government side of things (insofar as it differs from the corporate side), one sees continual encroachments on privacy in forms like 'trackable money' - paired with a continual push to make untrackable cash transactions either more difficult or outright illegal, on the pretext of 'keeping us safe' and 'fighting drug trafficking'. Various Euro countries now ban cash purchases in amounts above a mere few hundred Euros (and the limits keep getting lower), and in the US, in addition to the longstanding 'banks must report all cash transactions of $10000 or more to the government' rule, we now have the fun and profitable-for-law-enforcement sport of civil forfeiture, in which guilt is presumed and victims are forced to go to Kafkaesque (and very time-consuming and expensive) lengths to 'prove their innocence' for carrying amounts which are often quite a bit smaller. Ain't Freedom™ grand?

Don't forget bank transactions under $10,000 may be considered "structured" to avoid obligatory reporting and are also verboten.
Bank Deposits, Structuring, and Asset Forfeitures

[ewmayer]

http://www.smh.com.au/business/world...06-gk2x3b.html

And by way of a free bonus, contains a "law firm of former US AG Eric 'Place' Holder sighting!" With an attorney making a strikingly similar argument as fmr Holder underboss Lanny Breuer's 60 Minutes admission that pursuit of so-called justice vis-a-vis corporate 'persons' must ever be tempered by considerations of possible detrimental effects of said pursuit on corporate share prices, no less.

[only_human]

CISA Security Bill Passes Senate With Privacy Flaws Unfixed

But privacy advocates and civil liberties groups see CISA as a free pass that allows companies to monitor users and share their information with the government without a warrant, while offering a backdoor that circumvents any laws that might protect users’ privacy. “The incentive and the framework it creates is for companies to quickly and massively collect user information and ship it to the government,” says Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst for the civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “As soon as you do, you obtain broad immunity, even if you’ve violated privacy law.”

The version of CISA passed Tuesday, in fact, spells out that any broadly defined “cybersecurity threat” information gathered can be shared “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” Privacy advocates consider that a vague and potentially reckless exemption in the protections of Americans’ personal information. “Every law is struck down for the purposes of this information sharing: financial privacy, electronic communications privacy, health privacy, none of it would matter,” says Robyn Greene, policy counsel for the Open Technology Institute. “That’s a dangerous road to go down.”

[kladner]

How public safety agencies responded to major vulnerabilities in vehicle surveillance tech

I guess it's not just private individuals with WiFi who neglect such basic security needs as passwords.

[kladner]

Defendant pleads guilty. Prosecutors still trying to force Apple to comply with decrypt order.

Federal prosecutors said they will continue their attempt to compel Apple to unlock a seized iPhone 5S running iOS 7 even after the defendant in the relevant felony drug case pleaded guilty. On Thursday, defendant Jun Feng pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine. Feng was originally charged with three counts of possessing and distributing methamphetamine. As part of the government's effort to convict Feng, the feds wanted Apple to unlock a seized iPhone 5S belonging to Feng—but Apple objected.

On Friday, United States Magistrate Judge James Orenstein said in a court filing that he is confused why prosecutors are still trying to compel the tech giant:

In light of the fact that the defendant against whom evidence from the subject telephone was to be used has pleaded guilty, I respectfully direct the government to explain why the application is not moot. To the extent the response requires the disclosure of information occurring before a grand jury, the government may file its response under seal, along with a redacted version suitable for public access.

If Feng's phone had iOS 8 or later installed—as 90 percent of iPhones do—this entire issue would likely be moot. Apple now enables full encryption by default, and the company specifically said the move happened "so it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8."

[Xyzzy]

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015...-watching-you/

The tracking—which Vizio calls “Smart Interactivity”—is turned on by default for the more than 10 million Smart TVs that the company has sold. Customers who want to escape it have to opt-out.

[Xyzzy]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015...-watching-you/

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015...iewing-habits/

Today's lesson comes courtesy of a smart TV from Vizio that was subjected to a man-in-the-middle attack because it couldn't be bothered to validate the HTTPS certificates of servers it connected to.

[ewmayer]

Snowden Vindicated as Judge Shuts Down NSA Bulk Spying in Epic Smackdown | The AntiMedia

Good news, but headline too optimistic: Ordering a shutdown is not the same as effecting one. How can it be confirmed whether NSA is complying?

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Snowden Vindicated as Judge Shuts Down NSA Bulk Spying in Epic Smackdown | The AntiMedia

Good news, but headline too optimistic: Ordering a shutdown is not the same as effecting one. How can it be confirmed whether NSA is complying?

It can't be verified. The NSA farts in the general direction of said judge, and waves their private parts at his aunties.

[ewmayer]

That was quick:

A federal appeals court has granted a stay that will allow a controversial NSA telephone surveillance program to continue through its planned end on Nov 29.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the order Monday afternoon without offering any explanation beyond saying that the government had “satisfied the requirements for a stay pending appeal.”

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon issued an injunction last week ordering NSA to stop collecting the telephone data of California lawyer J.J. Little and his legal practice. The judge had previously found the anti-terrorism phone-records program appeared to violate the Constitution by collecting metadata on calls of people not suspected of any crime.

[Xyzzy]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...d-and-its-bad/

For the first time, as part of a First Amendment lawsuit, a federal judge ordered the release of what the FBI was seeking from a small ISP as part of an NSL.