Sep 21 2012

Social Media, Smartphones and Police Ctreate a Stasi Web of Surveillance

Source: Susanne Posel

Twitter has released a report confirming that the US government leads the world in requesting information on their citizens. TheTransparency Report shows the US government has made requests that are infringing on American privacy rights. Twitter states that “we’ve received more government requests in the first half of 2012, as outlined in this initial dataset, than in the entirety of 2011.”

As the US government sifts through the tweets US citizens are making and analyzing information from illegal means, there are decisions about particular citizens being made to justify the construction of an all-encompassing Big Brother network.

Cloud computing is also under surveillance as every conversation is recording and filed. While Microsoft denies this is true, the adherence to their rules and regulations explains that all your personal information is stored within Skype. In section 2 of their user contract explains: “Our primary purpose in collecting information is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customized experience. Skype collects and uses, or has third party service providers acting on Skype’s behalf collecting and using, personal data relating to you, as permitted or necessary to . . .”

The Department of Homeland Security’s Delaware Information and Analysis Center (DIAC) “now offers a mobile app to report suspicious activities in real-time by attaching a photo, sending location information, or entering details about suspicious vehicles or persons. In addition, users can choose to make their report anonymously or can include contact information for follow-up by law enforcement.”

The Anti-Terrorism Mobile FORCE 1-2 App is designed for iPhone and Android users that create spies out of average citizens for the sake of the State. The information collected by users is funneled to a National Security Agency (NSA) Fusion Center to be disseminated with federal agencies and local law enforcement.

Using terrorism and 9/11 phone calls as a fear-mongering campaign to coerce the general public into participating in this new Stasi, the Delaware government hopes to keep its citizens “ever vigilant in the fight against terrorism and this new app is just one way for our citizens to help.”

Simultaneously, Symantec’s Norton Cybercrime Report states that cybercrimes involving smartphones are costing consumers $110 billion annually as these thieves peruse mobile devices and social networks looking for loopholes. Smartphones are sent fake bills which add to the telecommunications services and rack-up charges as well as implant viruses into devices through apps.

Infected phones infect other phones through sending of information, text messages and emails. Nameless, faceless hackers change segments of code and inject the malware into the smartphone. However, most mobile phone and telecommunications corporations still maintain that mobile applications are safe and there should be no precautions taken when downloading these apps.

The CIA-sponsored AntiSec hacker group was successful in stealing millions of ID numbers from Apple, Inc. from databases where the corporation had been storing user personal data. They then leaked this information out for the general public to see. However this action serves another purpose.

The FBI was also infiltrated by the same state-controlled hacker group wherein a laptop was “compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time, there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.” The bureau’s press office later posted on its Twitter account that it “never had” the information in question and that the reports its laptop was hacked were “totally false.”

While data mining, cell phone corporations are using mobile phone habits to decipher the predictive movements of users. Scientists from the University of Brimingham in the UK have revealed that they can predict the movements of mobile phone users through tracking the network usage in real time with algorithms that forecast probabilities. This means that cell phone corporations, if using this system could predict the future whereabouts of their customers at any time of the day or night.

As our cell phone become weapons of mass surveillance, police departments across the nation are installing more CCTV cameras to better spy on citizens. In Maryland, local police have been using speed cameras at intersections to watch citizens under the guise of mitigating damages caused by car accidents.

Researchers for the Defense Department have created working prototypes of bi-static radar that can utilize WiFi to spy on citizens through walls. In tests, a one foot think brick wall was used and the monitoring radar could send back visual data to be interpreted.

WiFi signals can be extended and are available virtually everywhere which makes the capability of transmitting information easier with radio signals and laptops.

With the siphoning of information from a wireless router, surveillance software can be used as well to see through walls. A person’s whereabouts can be correctly pinpointed by using WiFi signals that bounce off objects which can decipher speed, location and direction of an individual.

Justification for this technology is surmised as: “See Through The Wall (STTW) technologies are of great interest to law enforcement and military agencies; this particular device has the UK Military of Defense exploring whether it might be used in ‘urban warfare,’ for scanning buildings. Other more benign applications might range from monitoring children to monitoring the elderly.”

These surveillance grids are being implemented to compliment the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Traning (SLATT) program that defines for police departments what an extremist is and how to “recognize and report indicators of terrorism/criminal extremism.”

The SLATT’s definition of terrorism is vague and broad. It encompasses “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” While terrorism is meant to intimidate and coerce a population into submission, the local law enforcement is employed to play an integral part in bringing intelligence to the federal agencies and “international intelligence communities” involved with hindering terrorism.

The SLATT explains that those who use cash, stay in tight-knit groups, repeatedly use the word “God”, carry video or observation equipment and have hand-drawn maps are terrorists. The document goes on to explain that any type of surveillance that is not state-sponsored is terroristic in nature and should be reported.

Susanne Posel’s website is Occupy Corporatism.

May 27 2012

GOOGLE GRABS SECRETS OF PRIVATE LIVES

Source: DAVID STREITFELD and KEVIN J. O’BRIEN

After months of negotiation, Johannes Caspar, a German data protection official, forced Google to show him exactly what its Street View cars had been collecting from potentially millions of his fellow citizens. Snippets of e-mails, photographs, passwords, chat messages, postings on Web sites and social networks — all sorts of private Internet communications — were casually scooped up as the specially equipped cars photographed the world’s streets.

“It was one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we had ever seen,” Mr. Caspar recently recalled about that long-sought viewing in late 2010. “We were very angry.”

Google might be one of the coolest and smartest companies of this or any era, but it also upsets a lot of people — competitors who argue it wields its tremendous weight unfairly, officials like Mr. Caspar who says it ignores local laws, privacy advocates who think it takes too much from its users. Just this week, European antitrust regulators gave the company an ultimatum to change its search business or face legal consequences. American regulators may not be far behind.

The high-stakes antitrust assault, which will play out this summer behind closed doors in Brussels, might be the beginning of a tough time for Google. A similar United States case in the 1990s heralded the comeuppance of Microsoft, the most fearsome tech company of its day.

But never count Google out. It is superb at getting out of trouble. Just ask Mr. Caspar or any of his counterparts around the world who tried to hold Google accountable for what one of them, the Australian communication minister Stephen Conroy, called “probably the single greatest breach in the history of privacy.” The secret Street View data collection led to inquiries in at least a dozen countries, including four in the United States alone. But Google has yet to give a complete explanation of why the data was collected and who at the company knew about it. No regulator in the United States has ever seen the information that Google’s cars gathered from American citizens.

The tale of how Google escaped a full accounting for Street View illustrates not only how technology companies have outstripped the regulators, but also their complicated relationship with their adoring customers.

Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple supply new ways of communication, learning and entertainment, high-tech wizardry for the masses. They have custody of the raw material of hundreds of millions of lives — the intimate e-mails, the revealing photographs, searches for help or love or escape.

People willingly, at times eagerly, surrender this information. But there is a price: the loss of control, or even knowledge, of where that personal information is going and how it is being reshaped into an online identity that may resemble the real you or may not. Privacy laws and wiretapping statutes are of little guidance, because they have not kept pace with the lightning speed of technological progress.

Michael Copps, who last year ended a 10-year term as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, said regulators were overwhelmed. “The industry has gotten more powerful, the technology has gotten more pervasive and it’s getting to the point where we can’t do too much about it,” he said.

Although Google thrives on information, it is closemouthed about itself, as the Street View episode shows. When German regulators forced the company to admit that the cars were sweeping up unencrypted Internet data from wireless networks, the company blamed a programming mistake where an engineer’s experimental software was accidentally included in Street View. It stressed that the data was never intended for any Google products.

The F.C.C. did not see it Google’s way, saying last month the engineer “intended to collect, store and review” the data “for possible use in other Google products.” It also said the engineer shared his software code and a “design document” with other members of the Street View team. The data collection may have been misguided, the agency said, but was not accidental.

Although the agency said it could find no violation of American law, it also said the inquiry was inconclusive, because the engineer cited his Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. It tagged Google with a $25,000 fine for obstructing the investigation.

Google, which has repeatedly said it wants to put the episode behind it, declined to answer questions for this article.

“We don’t have much choice but to trust Google,” said Christian Sandvig, a researcher in communications technology and public policy at the University of Illinois. “We rely on them for everything.”

That reliance has built an impressive company — and a self-assurance that can be indistinguishable from arrogance. “Google doesn’t seem to think it ever will be held accountable,” Mr. Sandvig said. “And to date it hasn’t been.”

When Street View was introduced in 2007, it elicited immediate objections in Europe, where privacy laws are tough. The Nazis used government data to systematically pursue Jews and other unwanted groups. The East German secret police, the Stasi, similarly controlled data to monitor perceived enemies.

May 11 2012

US spy agency can keep mum on Google ties: court

Source: AFP

The top-secret US National Security Agency is not required to reveal any deal it may have with Google to help protect against cyber attacks, anappeals court ruled Friday.

The US Court of Appeals in Washington upheld a lower court decision that said the NSA need not confirm or deny any relationship with Google, because its governing statutes allow it keep such information secret.

The ruling came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from a public interest group, which said the public has a right to know about any spying on citizens.

The appeals court agreed that the NSA can reject the request, and does not even have to confirm whether it has any arrangement with the Internet giant.

“Any information pertaining to the relationship between Google and NSA would reveal protected information about NSA’s implementation of its information assurance mission,” Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in the appeals opinion.

The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a formal request to make public documents related to the dealings, and said much of the information had already been in news media.

The request stemmed from a January 2010 cyber attack on Google that primarily targeted the Gmail email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

According to the Google blog, the Internet group’s chief legal officer David Drummond stated that the firm was notifying other companies that may have been targeted and was also working with the relevant US authorities.

The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reported that Google had contacted the NSA immediately following the attack.

According to news reports, the NSA agreed to help Google analyze the attacks in a bid to better protect the California-based search company and its users from future intrusions.

The reported alliance would seek to allow the spy agency to evaluate Google’s hardware and software vulnerabilities, as well as estimate the sophistication of its adversary in order to help the firm understand whether it has the right defenses in place.

Privacy advocates already critical of Google policies regarding saving user data and targeting ads to match online behavior patterns fear that an alliance with the spy network could put private information at risk.

May 5 2012

13 million Facebook users fail to use privacy controls

Source: Agence France-Presse

Many users of Facebook are unaware of the privacy risks from the massive social network site or fail to take adequate precautions, a report by Consumers Reports said Thursday.

The report found nearly 13 million US Facebook users do not use, or are not aware of the site’s privacy controls.

An estimated 4.8 million Americans have posted about where they planned to go on a certain day — a potential tip-off to burglars, the report noted.

And it found that 4.7 million have “liked” a Facebook page about health conditions or treatments, details that insurers might use against them.

The report, part of the nonprofit group’s State of the Net survey, estimated that seven million households using Facebook said they had trouble last year, ranging from someone using their log-in without permission to being harassed or threatened. That was up 30 percent from the previous year.

Only 37 percent of Facebook users said they have used the site’s privacy tools to customize how much information is shared with third parties, according to the Consumer Reports survey.

“Facebook really is changing the way the world socially communicates and has become a successful service in part by leveraging copious amounts of personal data that can be spread far wider than its users might realize,” said Jeff Fox, Consumer Reports technology editor.

“Our investigation revealed some fascinating, and some disquieting trends — but ones always worth knowing for consumers who wish to keep their personal data under better control.”

The report indicates Facebook gathers a considerable amount of information from users that they may not be aware of.

“Some users might be surprised to know that Facebook gets a report every time they visit a site with a ‘Like’ button, regardless of whether or not they click on that button, have a Facebook account, or are even logged in,” the organization said.

It did give credit to Facebook for taking privacy and security “seriously” by implementing checks against abuses and inappropriate applications.

But Consumer Reports said Facebook should do more by fixing “a security lapse” that permits users to set up weak passwords including some six-letter dictionary words and to help users avoid inadvertently sharing status updates with the public.

Consumer Reports points out that all of this data collection is not without risks.

The report was based on a survey from January 16-31 of a sample of 2,002 people.

In a statement, Facebook said it works to help protect the safety and privacy of its users.

“We believe more than 900 million consumers have voluntarily decided to share and connect on Facebook because we provide them options and tools that place them in control of their information and experience,” the company said.

“As part of our effort to empower and educate consumers, we always welcome constructive conversations about online privacy and safety.”

The number of people using Facebook worldwide had risen to 901 million by the end of the quarter, according to company documents.

Facebook is expected to make its much-anticipated stock market debut in the coming weeks in a public offering which could raise as much as $10 billion, the largest flotation ever by an Internet company on Wall Street.

Apr 13 2012

Admin. to force media to use gov’t computers to write stories on unemployment data…

Source: The Examiner

Unrest is simmering in some quarters of the Washington news universe regarding changes in the way the Department of Labor (DOL) manages its pre-release media “lockups” on sensitive data like weekly jobless benefits and unemployment.

For years, journalists participating in the lockups have shown up at DOL at the appointed time, then entered a limited-access area to receive the new data and prepare news stories for release as soon as official embargoes end.

The system insures that major news organizations get the data as soon as possible and allows journalists covering the release get a jump on providing analyses and opinion about the data.

But Carl Fillichio, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ top communications advisor, circulated a memo earlier this week to interested media informing them that everybody is being required to re-submit their credentials requests.

Fillichio reminded participants that there are only 20-30 seats available for the lockups and that priority will be given by DOL in selecting participants to those that “are primarily journalistic enterprises.”

He also offered a one-sentence assurance that “the department will not consider editorial or political viewpoints in making credentialing decisions.”

Whatever grumbling might be occasioned by being forced to go through the credentialing process again, the element of the Fillichio memo that has journalists worried is this paragraph:

“Second, as a measure toward enhancing security in its main lockup facility (the DOL news room), the department will supply and maintain standardized equipment with a standard configuration for all participants. This change means that privately owned computer and telephone equipment, including hardware, software, cabling, wiring and Internet and telephone lines will be replaced with equipment owned by the department.”

In other words, journalists will no longer be allowed to bring their laptops or other equipment to the lockups, they will have to use government-supplied equipment, described by Fillichio as including “a virtualized desktop running a Windows operation system, a web browser, word-processing software, an Adobe Reader application and secure file transfer capability. Equipment provided will not have wireless networking capability. Provisions will be in place for news organizations to transmit their stories over the Internet.”

The changes evidently are in response at least in part to worries that some of the non-traditional news organizations allowed in recent years to participate in the lockups may not be using their access simply for journalistic purposes.

Since the stock market can rise or fall by hundreds of points as a result of such a data release, making sure nobody gets an advance peek at the data is critical to insuring the integrity of the process.

But some news organizations worry about having to use government equipment that could compromise their editors and reporters in preparing publishable charts, consulting previous stories and charts for comparison purposes, and reviewing prior stories for context and analyses.

They are also concerned that the whole process will slow down delivery of the news at a time when unemployment is high, the economy is in the doldrums and public concerns about future job prospects are unusually high.

Delays will make it more difficult for independent analysts to understand the new data and could give White House and DOL political appointees more time to blunt the impact of the negative news resulting from the data.

In addition, Fillichio’s promise not to consider editorial or political viewpoints is somewhat less than reassuring in view of his boss’s recent appearance in a poster distributed throughout DOL show Solis arm-in-arm with Rev. Al Sharpton, solidarity-style.

There are also rumblings about transferring control of the whole process from political appointees in DOL to career employees within the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The BLS has a spotless record of maintaining data integrity and insulation from political pressures to manipulate data content or release timing. Solis and Fillichio are said to be quietly resisting efforts in Congress to shift control of the lockups to BLS.

Fillichio has scheduled a conference call for Monday with interested media to discuss the memo and implementation of the new system.

Apr 1 2012

Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool

Source: ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.

The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.

With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.

But civil liberties advocates say the wider use of cell tracking raises legal and constitutional questions, particularly when the police act without judicial orders. While many departments require warrants to use phone tracking in nonemergencies, others claim broad discretion to get the records on their own, according to 5,500 pages of internal records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union from 205 police departments nationwide.

The internal documents, which were provided to The New York Times, open a window into a cloak-and-dagger practice that police officials are wary about discussing publicly. While cell tracking by local police departments has received some limited public attention in the last few years, the A.C.L.U. documents show that the practice is in much wider use — with far looser safeguards — than officials have previously acknowledged.

The issue has taken on new legal urgency in light of a Supreme Court ruling in January finding that a Global Positioning System tracking device placed on a drug suspect’s car violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches. While the ruling did not directly involve cellphones — many of which also include GPS locators — it raised questions about the standards for cellphone tracking, lawyers say.

The police records show many departments struggling to understand and abide by the legal complexities of cellphone tracking, even as they work to exploit the technology.

In cities in Nevada, North Carolina and other states, police departments have gotten wireless carriers to track cellphone signals back to cell towers as part of nonemergency investigations to identify all the callers using a particular tower, records show.

In California, state prosecutors advised local police departments on ways to get carriers to “clone” a phone and download text messages while it is turned off.

In Ogden, Utah, when the Sheriff’s Department wants information on a cellphone, it leaves it up to the carrier to determine what the sheriff must provide. “Some companies ask that when we have time to do so, we obtain court approval for the tracking request,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a written response to the A.C.L.U.

And in Arizona, even small police departments found cell surveillance so valuable that they acquired their own tracking equipment to avoid the time and expense of having the phone companies carry out the operations for them. The police in the town of Gilbert, for one, spent $244,000 on such equipment.

Cell carriers, staffed with special law enforcement liaison teams, charge police departments from a few hundred dollars for locating a phone to more than $2,200 for a full-scale wiretap of a suspect, records show.

Most of the police departments cited in the records did not return calls seeking comment. But other law enforcement officials said the legal questions were outweighed by real-life benefits.

The police in Grand Rapids, Mich., for instance, used a cell locator in February to find a stabbing victim who was in a basement hiding from his attacker.

“It’s pretty valuable, simply because there are so many people who have cellphones,” said Roxann Ryan, a criminal analyst with Iowa’s state intelligence branch. “We find people,” she said, “and it saves lives.”

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