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NSA holds emergency hearing to fight off anti-surveillance amendment in Congress

rt.com

July 24, 2013

The National Security Agency has invited certain members of Congress to a top secret, invitation only meeting to discuss a proposed amendment that could end the NSA's ability to conduct dragnet surveillance on millions of Americans.

A letter circulated only to select lawmakers early Tuesday announced that NSA Director General Keith B. Alexander would host a question and answer session with members of Congress in preparation of a Thursday vote on Capitol Hill expected to involve an amendment introduced last month by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan). That amendment, a provision tacked along to a Department of Defense Appropriations Act along with nearly 100 others, aims to greatly diminish the NSA's domestic spying powers in the wake of disclosures attributed to Edward Snowden, a 30-year-old former employee of Booz Allen Hamilton currently fighting extradition to the US where he faces charges of espionage for his role in leaking state secrets.

White House denounces Amash amendment as dismantling of NSA

rt.com

July 24, 2013

On the eve of a congressional discussion that may lend to ending the National Security Agency's mass collection of domestic phone records, the White House made the rare move late Tuesday of issuing a statement condemning proposed legislation.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday evening that a bipartisan-supported amendment expected to go before a vote later this week would "hastily dismantle" a key counterterrorism tool used by the United States intelligence community if approved. The amendment, authored by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) and supported by democratic colleague Rep. John Conyers, would forbid the NSA from further interpreting Section 215 of the Patriot Act in the manner that has allowed the agency to routinely collect the daily phone records of millions of Americans for the past several years.

Hackers Reveal Nasty New Car Attacks--With Me Behind The Wheel

forbes.com

by Andy Greenberg

July 24, 2013

A pair of Pentagon-funded hackers prove it]s possible to take control of your car with a few keystrokes. Time for Detroit to wake up.

Stomping on the brakes of a 3,500-pound Ford Escape that refuses to stop-or even slow down-produces a unique feeling of anxiety. In this case it also produces a deep groaning sound, like an angry water buffalo bellowing somewhere under the SUV's chassis. The more I pound the pedal, the louder the groan gets-along with the delighted cackling of the two hackers sitting behind me in the backseat. Luckily, all of this is happening at less than 5mph. So the Escape merely plows into a stand of 6-foot-high weeds growing in the abandoned parking lot of a South Bend, Ind. strip mall that Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have chosen as the testing grounds for the day's experiments...

11 Simple Ways to Protect Your Privacy

techland.time.com

by Christina Desmarais

July 24, 2013

Privacy is an increasingly rare commodity these days. Just search for yourself on Pipl.com-you might be surprised at the number of companies that claim to have information about your family, income, address, phone number and much, much more.

That's because your personal information, including your email address, phone number and social security number, is worth a lot of money to legitimate businesses and bad guys alike. The bad guys just want to steal from you. Companies want to know as much about you as possible so they can sell you more products and services or serve you ads that are highly relevant to your demographics and preferences. So take these simple steps to protect your valuable personal information...

Discovering Malicious Domains Using Co-Occurrences

labs.umbrella.com

by Frank Denis

July 24, 2013

The infection chain for serving a single piece of malware is frequently made of many, constantly-changing domains. The security community finds thousands of new sites serving malware or acting as intermediaries every day.

Hosts used to control botnets are also constantly changing in order to be resilient to takedowns. In this context, we need to discover and block new suspicious domains as soon as possible. In order to do so, we use different models, each of them capturing different sets of domains. Once we have evidence of a server distributing malware or acting as a command-and-control server, the first thing we usually do is try to find other domains used, or soon-to-be-used, by the same malware.

The Libertarian Paradox

lewrockwell.com

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

July 24, 2013

As libertarians attempt to persuade others of their position, they encounter an interesting paradox. On the one hand, the libertarian message is simple.

It involves moral premises and intuitions that in principle are shared by virtually everyone, including children. Do not hurt anyone. Do not steal from anyone. Mind your own business. A child will say, "I had it first." There is an intuitive sense according to which the first user of a previously unowned good holds moral priority over latecomers. This, too, is a central aspect of libertarian theory. Following Locke, Murray Rothbard, and other libertarian philosophers sought to establish a morally and philosophically defensible account of how property comes to be owned.

Federal government going after master encryption keys from Internet companies for easier spying

endthelie.com

by Madison Ruppert

July 24, 2013

According to a new report, the U.S. government is demanding the master encryption keys that are used by Internet companies to protect the private communications of countless users from government surveillance.

A recent government report revealed that encryption actually thwarted attempted wiretaps for the first time on record, which makes it all the more understandable that the government would now be attempting to break through any and all methods of encryption. The demands for these master encryption keys have not been disclosed previously, according to Declan McCullagh, the journalist who broke the story for CNET. It represents a new level in the secret methods used by the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) in their quest to spy on millions of Internet users. The NSA is now facing a major lawsuit over their surveillance programs. If the NSA had master encryption keys, they would never have to worry about directly placing surveillance equipment in the server rooms of ISPs and would have a much easier time of spying on people around the world.

Pirate Bay founder plans NSA-proof messaging app

globalpost.com

by Richard Orange

July 24, 2013

In a post-Edward Snowden world, Peter Sunde says everyone understands the scope of government snooping. So he's got a new messaging app.

Peter Sunde evidently knows a thing or two about secrecy. The co-founder of the song and film-sharing website The Pirate Bay revealed the venue for an interview for this article by emailing a Google Maps link, which when opened, shows a nondescript Konditori, the Swedish equivalent of an old-fashioned diner. It's the kind of place, he says smiling as he orders coffee, where you can more or less guarantee you won't be seen by anyone under the age of 50.

NSA claims inability to search agency's own emails

rt.com

July 23, 2013

Despite the ability to monitor the Internet and cell phone activities of millions, the National Security Agency says it lacks the technology necessary to sift through its own employees' personal email accounts, according to a new report.

The claim came in response from a Freedom of Information Act request sent by Justin Elliot, a reporter at Pro Publica seeking to identify to relationship between the NSA and the National Geographic Channel, which has aired what Pro Publica characterized as sympathetic documentaries on the secretive intelligence entity. "There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told Elliot, adding that the current system is "a little antiquated and archaic." In a trailer for the National Geographic Channel documentary entitled Inside the NSA: America's Cyber Secrets, an NSA official described the agency as "energy central" and "the emergency room" to gain intelligence for American decision makers.

NSA locates cell phones even when switched off - report

rt.com

July 23, 2013

Never mind the non-stop collection of metadata and other sneaky surveillance tools being implemented by the US: a new report has revealed the National Security Agency's spy powers allow the government to grab location data on just about anyone.

The technology was allegedly developed by the NSA in 2004 as part of the agency's cooperation with the military, the CIA and the clandestine Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). By the time NSA analysts and data collectors have been helping them for three years to track down and kill "high value targets" among terrorist and militant groups in Afghanistan and later Iraq, according to a Washington Post report. The newspaper provides few further details on the technology, only saying that JSOC troops called it "The Find" and that it gave them thousands of new targets to track and attack. The article further describes how post-September 2001 the NSA made "a gigantic leap from using the nation's most sophisticated spy technology to record the words of presidents, kings and dictators to using it to kill a single man in a terrorist group."

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