Monthly Archives: June 2015

County sheriff has used stingray over 300 times with no warrant

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“The sheriff in San Bernardino County—east of Los Angeles County—has deployed a stingray hundreds of times without a warrant, and under questionable judicial authority.  In response to a public records request, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department (SBSD) sent a rare example of a template for a ‘pen register and trap and trace order’ application which, surprisingly, cites no legal authority on which to base its activities. The SBSD did not respond to Ars’ request for comment. Further, the SBSD, like other departments nationwide, maintains a questionable non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with the FBI to dismiss cases rather than reveal information in court about stingrays.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/county-sheriff-has-used-stingray-over-300-times-with-no-warrant/

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Airbus confirms software configuration error caused plane crash

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“An executive of Airbus Group has confirmed that the crash of an Airbus A400M military transport was caused by a faulty software configuration. Marwan Lahoud, chief marketing and strategy officer for Airbus, told the German newspaper Handelsblatt on Friday that there was a ‘quality issue in the final assembly’ of the components of the aircraft engine.  As Ars reported on May 19, Airbus had issued a warning to its military customers about a potential software problem in the engine control software for the A400M. The release of the exact cause of the crash, however, had been delayed because a Spanish magistrate placed the flight data recorders from the aircraft under seal.”

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/06/airbus-confirms-software-configuration-error-caused-plane-crash/

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New exploit leaves most Macs vulnerable to permanent backdooring

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“Macs older than a year are vulnerable to exploits that remotely overwrite the firmware that boots up the machine, a feat that allows attackers to control vulnerable devices from the very first instruction.  The attack, according to a blog post published Friday by well-known OS X security researcher Pedro Vilaca, affects Macs shipped prior to the middle of 2014 that are allowed to go into sleep mode.  The attack is more serious than the Thunderstrike proof-of-concept exploit late last year. While both exploits give attackers the same persistent and low-level control of a Mac, the new attack doesn’t require even brief physical access. That means attackers half-way around the world may remotely exploit it.”

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/new-remote-exploit-leaves-most-macs-vulnerable-to-permanent-backdooring/

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Zombie Patriot Act Will Keep U.S. Spying—Even if the Original Dies

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“For starters, there will be what’s left of the Patriot Act itself. One former U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast that Section 214 of the law, which allows ‘pen register/trap & trace,’ could be used to collect phone and even email records. That former official and another both noted that there are other tools, including under different laws than the Patriot Act, for obtaining ‘roving wiretaps,’ which allow the government to monitor one person’s multiple communications devices.  Then there’s another powerful tool that the FBI and intelligence agencies have long had in their arsenal and still will—national security letters.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/31/zombie-patriot-act-will-keep-u-s-spying-even-if-the-original-dies.html

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Asking Obama to protect encryption, and why that’s not enough

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“The letter was signed by some of the most important cryptologists in the world, including the inventors of many of the key technologies behind modern encryption. The letter is a response to recent requests from the FBI and other agencies for laws requiring that backdoors and attack vectors be built into any encrypted system made by US companies. These backdoors would be specially created to allow law enforcement to snoop on the personal information of the company’s customers. Even if you trust the government not to misuse your personal information, this is very risky; any backdoor created for the government will significantly weaken software against other attacks as well.”

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/asking-obama-to-protect-encryption-and-why-thats-not-enough

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When a government spies on its citizens: lessons from Chile

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“What are the deep, long-term effects of clandestine surveillance on a country? The current debates in Congress regarding the renewal — or modification — of the Patriot Act offer an occasion to hold an open discussion that is long overdue.  My own experience may be relevant to that discussion.  It was on Sept. 12, 1973, the day after a military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile, that I started to understand that language was also a victim when massive state spying permeates a hitherto free nation.”

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0531-dorfman-surveillance-censorship-20150531-story.html

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You’re a Criminal in a Mass Surveillance World – How to Not Get Caught

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“To apologists of mass surveillance, what did Anne Frank have to hide? I ask because the person credited with popularizing the nothing-to-hide argument is none other than Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda for the Third Reich.  Minister Goebbels would have wrung his hands with delight at having this depth of data on his regime’s citizens. But this data is absolutely trivial compared to what the U.S. government actually knows about you. Thanks to William Binney and Edward Snowden, we know that the U.S. regime has for many years been secretly constructing the means to monitor and record every aspect of our lives.”

https://bananas.liberty.me/youre-a-criminal-in-a-mass-surveillance-world-how-to-not-get-caught/

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NYPD’s Crackdown on “Manspreading”: Enforcing Courtesy At Gunpoint

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“The Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) puts together a report called ‘How They Get You‘.  People (mostly young non-white men) are arrested and held for hours, or overnight, or for several days, for trivial charges.  PROP’s report, which you should read if you can bear it, records arrests of people for putting stickers on scaffolds, for dropping a dog’s leash long enough to scoop dog poop from the sidewalk, for standing in the hallways of buildings where they live, and for swerving a bike to avoid being hit by a car and landing on the sidewalk.  And to that proud list of protections, we can now add arrests made for ‘manspreading.'”

http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/detail/arrested-for-criminal-manspreading-the-crackdown-on-rudeness

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Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life (and Death) in Prison

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“When you couple the eBay-style reputation engine with the relative anonymity of a black market, you get what we might call a ‘gray market.’ And that gray market allowed those determined to buy certain items — illegal drugs, etc. — to do so in a far, far safer way than ever before.  Silk Road and dark websites like it remove commercial activity from the hands of violent cartels fighting over territory, from the gangland districts of US cities, and from dodgy dealings behind shady buildings.  Second, in a pragmatic sense, the apprehension and sentencing of Ulbricht has not deterred these grey market entrepreneurs.”

http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/detail/ross-ulbricht-fool-martyr-or-trailblazer

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The Bernie Sanders Save the Children Fund

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“Meet Hanna. Hanna wasn’t always hungry – but then Old Spice released its Red Zone Aqua Reef Sweat Defense Solid. Now she’s starving.”

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