Where Has Our Freedom Gone ? lets ask the Pirates
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
This is our post from Freedom Sunday – Read All About it, and Decide which story means most to you. then click on the title link and read the whole story; at it’s home blog. these stories were gleaned from Slashdot.
Make sure to leave us a comment, telling us What Freedom Means To You, Really.
NSA Overstepped the Law On Wiretaps
Hugh Pickens writes “The NY Times reports that legal and operational problems surrounding the NSA’s surveillance activities have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees, and a secret national security court, and that the NSA had been engaged in ‘overcollection’ of domestic communications of Americans.
The practice has been described as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional. The Justice Department has acknowledged that there had been problems with the NSA surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community, did not address specific aspects of the surveillance problems, but said in a statement that ‘when inadvertent mistakes are made, we take it very seriously and work immediately to correct them.’
The intelligence officials said the problems had grown out of changes enacted by Congress last July to the law that regulates the government’s wiretapping powers, as well as the challenges posed by enacting a new framework for collecting intelligence on terrorism and spying suspects.
Joe Klein at Time Magazine says the bad news is that ‘the NSA apparently has been overstepping the law,’ but the good news is that ‘one of the safeguards in the [FISA Reform] law is a review procedure that seems to have the ability to catch the NSA when it’s overstepping — and that the illegal activities have been exposed, and quickly.’”
FBI and States Vastly Expand DNA Collection, Databases
Mike writes “Starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will also collect DNA from detained immigrants. For example, This year, California began taking DNA upon arrest and expects to nearly double the growth rate of its database, to 390,000 profiles a year, up from 200,000. Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts, however law enforcement officials are expanding their collection of DNA to include millions of people who have only been arrested or detained, but not yet convicted. The move, intended to ‘help solve more crimes,’ is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.”
DHS Seeks “Ethical Hackers” To Protect Federal Net Infrastructure
Death Metal sends this excerpt from an AP report: “General Dynamics Information Technology put out an ad last month on behalf of the Homeland Security Department seeking someone who could ‘think like the bad guy.’ Applicants, it said, must understand hackers’ tools and tactics and be able to analyze Internet traffic and identify vulnerabilities in the federal systems. In the Pentagon’s budget request submitted last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon will increase the number of cyberexperts it can train each year from 80 to 250 by 2011. With warnings that the US is ill-prepared for a cyberattack, the White House conducted a 60-day study of how the government can better manage and use technology (PDF) to protect everything from the electrical grid and stock markets to tax data, airline flight systems, and nuclear launch codes. … Nadia Short, vice president at General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, said the job posting for ethical hackers fills a critical need for the government.”
EFF Unveils Search Tool for FOIA Results
The EFF has released a beta version of a new search tool that lets you mine the documents the EFF has unearthed using FOIA requests and lawsuits over the years. Quoting: “In celebration of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy.” I tried a search for “border” among the documents relating to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and turned up 21 results and fascinating reading.
FBI Is the Worst FOIA Performer
krou writes “The National Security Archive at George Washington University has awarded its 2009 Rosemary Award to the FBI for worst freedom of information performance (PDF of the award). Previous winners have been the CIA and the Treasury. The NSA notes that ‘The FBI’s reports to Congress show that the Bureau is unable to find any records in response to two-thirds of its incoming FOIA requests on average over the past four years, when the other major government agencies averaged only a 13% “no records” response to public requests.’ The FBI’s explanation, according to the NSA, is that ‘files are indexed only by reference terms that have to be manually applied by individual agents,’ and even then, ‘agents don’t always index all relevant terms.’ Furthermore, ‘unless a requester specifically asks for a broader search, the FBI will only look in a central database of electronic file names at FBI headquarters in Washington.’ Any search will therefore ‘miss any internal or cross-references to people who are not the subject of an investigation, any records stored at other FBI offices around the country, and any records created before 1970.’”
Beyond Firewalls — Internet Militarization
angry tapir writes “One of the discussions at the Source Boston Security Showcase has been the militarization of the Internet. Governments looking to silence critics and stymie opposition have added DDOS attacks to their censoring methods, according to Jose Nazario, senior security researcher at Arbor Networks, with international political situations spawning DDOS attacks.”
Service Via Facebook Shouldn’t Always “Count”
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes “A New Zealand court has allowed a plaintiff to serve papers on a defendant via Facebook, following a similar ruling from an Australian court last year. But as these rulings do not necessarily mean, as Facebook announced in a press release, that the courts have endorsed Facebook ‘as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication.’ The trend could lead to abuses if courts start taking ‘Facebook service’ too seriously.” For more of the many words written by Bennett, hop on that curiously named link right below.
Court Demands Private Facebook Data
Defeat Globalism writes in with a Canadian court decision that has ordered a man suing over injuries from a car accident to answer questions about content on his private “friends only” Facebook page. “Lawyers for Janice Roman, the defendant in the lawsuit, believe information posted on John Leduc’s private Facebook site — normally accessible only to his approved ‘friends’ — may be relevant to his claim an accident in Lindsay in 2004 lessened his enjoyment of life. As a result of the ruling by Justice David Brown of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, Leduc must now submit to cross-examination by Roman’s lawyers about what his Facebook page contains. Brown’s Feb. 20 ruling also makes clear that lawyers must now explain to their clients ‘in appropriate cases’ that postings on Facebook or other networking sites — such as MySpace, LinkedIn and even blogs — may be relevant to allegations in a lawsuit, said Tariq Remtulla, a Toronto lawyer who has been following the issue.”
Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop’s Facebook Status
longacre writes “A man on trial in New York for possession of a weapon has been acquitted after subpoenaing his arresting officer’s Facebook and MySpace accounts. His defense: Officer Vaughan Ettienne’s MySpace ‘mood’ was set to ‘devious’ on the day of the arrest, and one day a few weeks before the trial, his Facebook status read ‘Vaughan is watching “Training Day” to brush up on proper police procedure.’ From the article: ‘”You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street,” Officer Ettienne said on Tuesday. “What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room.” Except that trash talk in locker rooms almost never winds up preserved on a digital server somewhere, available for subpoena.’”
Libel Suits OK Even If Libel Is Truthful
Defeat Globalism writes to tell us that many journalists, bloggers, and media law specialists are concerned about a new ruling by a US Court of Appeals in Boston. The new ruling is allowing a former Staples employee to sue the company for libel after an email was sent out informing other employees that he had been fired for violations of company procedures regarding expenses reimbursements. “Staples has asked the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling, and 51 news organizations have filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying that the decision, if allowed to stand, ‘will create a precedent that hinders the media’s ability to rely on truthful publication to avoid defamation liability.’ But Wendy Sibbison, the Greenfield appellate lawyer for the fired Staples employee, Alan S. Noonan, said the ruling applies only to lawsuits by private figures against private defendants, that is, defendants not involved in the news business, over purely private matters.”
UK ISPs Could Be Forced To Block Or Restrict P2P
MJackson writes “The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has published a draft set of proposals for tackling illegal broadband file sharing (P2P) downloads by persistent infringers, among other things. The proposals form part of a discussion piece concerning the role that a UK Digital Rights Agency (DRA) could play. UK Internet Providers will already be required to warn those suspected of such activity and collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers, though they could soon be asked to go even further. The new discussion paper, while not going into much detail, has proposed two potential example solutions to the problem. UK ISPs could employ protocol blocking or bandwidth restrictions in relation to persistent infringers. In other words, P2P services could be blocked, or suspected users might find their service speeds seriously restricted.”
US Pentagon Plans For a Spy Blimp
nloop writes “The Pentagon is intending to develop a new spy ship — a dirigible. At 65,000 feet it would provide a 10 year, solar power based, unblinkingly intricate and continuous view of the surface via radar surveillance. Because of its altitude it would be safe from surface-to-air missiles and most aircraft.
A 1/3-scale prototype, now being designed, is ‘known as ISIS, for Integrated Sensor Is the Structure, because the radar system will be built into the structure of the ship. … ‘If successful, the dirigible… could pave the way for a fleet of spy airships, military officials said.’”
Feds Demand Prison For Guns N’ Roses Uploader
Defeat Globalism writes with this excerpt from Wired: “Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are pursuing a 6-month prison term for a Los Angeles man who pleaded guilty in December to one misdemeanor count of uploading pre-release Guns N’ Roses tracks, according to court documents. Kevin Cogill was arrested last summer at gunpoint and charged with uploading nine tracks of the Chinese Democracy album to his music site — antiquiet.com. The album, which cost millions and took 17 years to complete, was released November 23 and reached No. 3 in the charts. The sentence being sought — including the calculation of damages based on the illegal activity of as many as 1,310 websites that disseminated the music after Cogill released it — underscores how serious the government is about punishing those for uploading pre-release material.”
Cybercrime-As-a-Service Takes Off
pnorth writes “Malware writers that sell toolkits online for as little as $400 will now configure and host the attacks as a service for another $50, according to email offers cited by security experts. A technical account manager at authentication firm Vasco said that cyber crime is becoming so business-like that online offerings of malicious code often include support and maintenance services. He said ‘it was inevitable that services would be sold to people who bought the malware toolkits but didn’t know how to configure them. Not only can you buy configuration as a service now, you can have the malware operated for you, too.’”
Kremlin-Backed Nashi Admits Cyberattacking Estonia
An anonymous reader writes “Russia’s Kremlin-based youth movement Nashi admits being responsible for 2007 cyberattacks against Estonia. An interesting point is that when you DDoS the systems, it’s not the fault of some people who want to crash it but instead the systems’ for blocking their users due to technical limitations. So if I shot someone to death it’s not my fault for shooting them, but theirs instead because of technical limitations of their body.”
DHS to Use Body Odor as a Lie Detector
The US Department of Homeland Security is studying lies, damned lies, and smells. They hope to prove that human body odor could be used to tell when people are lying. The department says they are already “conducting experiments in deceptive behavior and collecting human odor samples” and that the research it hopes to fund “will consist primarily of the analysis and study of the human odor samples collected to determine if a deception indicator can be found.”
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