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The NSA's an American Stasi? Outrageous

nydailynews.com

July 18, 2013

East Germany's secret police was an entirely different - and far more dangerous - animal

At its height, the Staatssicherheit, or Stasi, employed one full-time agent for every 63 East German citizens. Taking into account unofficial informers, one out of every seven people in the communist country collaborated, in some capacity, with the secret police. There is probably no population, in all of human history, which lived under greater surveillance than those citizens of the former German Democratic Republic. These numbers are important to keep in mind as many rush to draw comparisons between America's National Security Agency and the late German spy service.

'Master key' to Android phones uncovered

bbc.co.uk

July 17, 2013

A 'master key' that could give cyber-thieves open access to almost any Android phone has been discovered by security researchers.

The bug could be exploited to let an attacker do what they want to a phone including stealing data, eavesdropping or using it to send junk messages. The loophole has been present in every version of the Android operating system released since 2009. Google said it currently had no comment to make on BlueBox's discovery. Writing on the BlueBox blog, Jeff Forristal, said the implications of the discovery were "huge". The bug emerges because of the way Android handles cryptographic verification of the programs installed on the phone.

The Truth Comes Out: Bush-Cheney Began Illegal NSA Spying BEFORE 9/11, Says Telcom CEO

secretsofthefed.com

by Benchmark

July 17, 2013

Contradicting a statement by ex-vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday that warrantless domestic surveillance might have prevented 9/11, 2007 court records indicate that the Bush-Cheney administration began such surveillance at least 7 months prior to 9/11.

The Bush administration bypassed the law requiring such actions to be authorized by FISA court warrants, the body set up in the Seventies to oversee Executive Branch spying powers after abuses by Richard Nixon. Former QWest CEO John Nacchios said that at a meeting with the NSA on February 27, 2001, he and other QWest officials declined to participate. AT&T, Verizon and Bellsouth all agreed to shunt customer communications records to an NSA database.

FEMA hacked: Anonymous hacks US server in defense of Snowden and government transparency

globalpost.com

by Jeb Boone

July 17, 2013

Refocused and reorganized, Anonymous has apparently breached an emergency management server, stealing valuable user information including that of US government and military personnel.

Hackers from within the Anonymous collective claim to have broken into a server used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and say they will release the stolen data in what would be one of the highest-profile security breaches since the release of secret NSA documents by Edward Snowden. In a document shared with GlobalPost on Tuesday night and published online Wednesday, the hacker collective revealed data that includes information on user accounts and passwords of what appear to be government employees. Several of the email addresses linked to those user accounts are hosted on .mil and .gov domains.

Tumblr Updates iOS App with ' 'Very important' Security Fix

thenextweb.com

by Jon Russell

July 17, 2013

The company is patching a vulnerability that was provided to it on Tuesday, although it has not provided specifics details.

In a post on the Tumblr staff blog, the company asks all iOS users to "please download this update now" and change their password on the service and any other services using the same password. The company provided TNW with a statement explaining that a security issue was brought to its attention on Tuesday, though it remains light on specifics...

Willful Waste and Destruction at the Economic Development Administration

mygovcost.org

by K. Lloyd Billingsley

July 17, 2013

It's not clear how much economic development the federal Economic Development Administration, a division of the Commerce Department, actually produces.

But the Commerce Department's inspector general has some observations about the administration's performance after a cyber attack that turned out to be bogus. "EDA's persistent, mistaken beliefs resulted in an excessive response and ultimately unnecessary expenditure of valuable resources," the inspector general wrote in a report. "There was no evidence to suggest that EDA's primary business application had been targeted by a cyber attack or maliciously altered."

Fake PC Optimizer Scam Uncovered

labs.umbrella.com

by Opendns Security Research

July 17, 2013

Follow along as our Labs Team leverages the power of the Umbrella Security Graph to uncover potential threats such as this PC optimizer scam.

Utilizing the power of the Umbrella Security Graph, our Labs Team is constantly on the lookout for any anomalies that could indicate potential threats. Recently, we've noticed several domains that appear to be search engines triggering a number of predictive models in the Security Graph. These high-volume domains seemed to be stable, but a number of red flags quickly became apparent: demonstrated fast flux behavior, residence at low reputation IP subnets, and an alarmingly low secure rank. Although the software appeared legitimate, and the domain registered at .IN had been around for a long time, a quick investigation indicated that the sites were involved in a PC optimizing scam:

The NSA Admits It Analyzes More People's Data Than Previously Revealed

theatlanticwire.com

by Philip Bump

July 17, 2013

As an aside during testimony on Capitol Hill today, a National Security Agency representative rather casually indicated that the government looks at data from a universe of far, far more people than previously indicated.

Chris Inglis, the agency's deputy director, was one of several government representatives—including from the FBI and the office of the Director of National Intelligence—testifying before the House Judiciary Committee this morning. Most of the testimony largely echoed previous testimony by the agencies on the topic of the government's surveillance, including a retread of the same offered examples for how the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act had stopped terror events. But Inglis' statement was new. Analysts look "two or three hops" from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity, Inglis revealed. Previously, the limit of how surveillance was extended had been described as two hops. This meant that if the NSA were following a phone metadata or web trail from a terror suspect, it could also look at the calls from the people that suspect has spoken with—one hop. And then, the calls that second person had also spoken with—two hops. Terror suspect to person two to person three. Two hops. And now: A third hop.

The Beacon: The Blog of The Independent Institute

blog.independent.org

by Randall Holcombe

July 17, 2013

Among the many facts recently revealed about the NSA’s constitutionally questionable collection of personal information, one that I find especially troubling is the government’s claim that it can legally prevent people from telling others what it does

The NSA has apparently ordered Microsoft to turn over some information to them, but has also ordered Microsoft to keep that activity secret. Microsoft has appealed to Attorney General Eric Holder to allow the company to tell the public what the federal government has forced them to do. I am not opposed to secrecy in general. Businesses keep secrets (a well-known one is the formula for Coca Cola, which is a trade secret), and the whole NSA issue is over the right of individuals to keep their personal information private. These are cases in which individuals and businesses keep secrets because they want to.

The NSA Admits It Analyzes More People's Data Than Previously Revealed

news.yahoo.com

by The Agencies On the Topic of the Government'S Surveillance

July 17, 2013

As an aside during testimony on Capitol Hill today, a National Security Agency representative rather casually indicated that the government looks at data from a universe of far, far more people than previously indicated.

Chris Inglis, the agency's deputy director, was one of several government representatives-including from the FBI and the office of the Director of National Intelligence-testifying before the House Judiciary Committee this morning. Most of the testimony largely echoed previous testimony by the agencies on the topic of the government's surveillance, including a retread of the same offered examples for how the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act had stopped terror events. But Inglis' statement was new. Analysts look "two or three hops" from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity, Inglis revealed. Previously, the limit of how surveillance was extended had been described as two hops. This meant that if the NSA were following a phone metadata or web trail from a terror suspect, it could also look at the calls from the people that suspect has spoken with-one hop. And then, the calls that second person had also spoken with-two hops. Terror suspect to person two to person three. Two hops. And now: A third hop.

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