Whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades – virtual privacy in US, Petraeus affair and whistleblowers’ odds in fight against the authorities are among key topics of this exclusive interview…
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Posts Tagged ‘google’
Argentina Censors Millions Of Websites
August 23, 2011Argentine ISPs Use Bazooka to Kill Fly
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By Jillian York
August 22, 2011
On Tuesday, eff reported that Argentina’s National Telecommunications Commission (CNC) had issued a directive to local ISPs to block two websites- leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com- in response to an order from a federal judge.
Today, on Google’s Latin America blog (in Spanish), Senior Policy Counsel Pedro Less Andrade writes that Google records indicate that some service providers in Argentina are blocking access to the IP address 216.239.32.2, which is linked to more than one million blogs hosted on Google’s Blogger service.
IP blocking is a blunt method of filtering content that can erase from view large swaths of innocuous sites by virtue of the fact that they are hosted on the same IP address as the site that was intended to be censored. One such example of overblocking by IP address can be found in India, where the IP blocking of a Hindu Unity website (blocked by an order from Mumbai police) resulted in the blocking of several other, unrelated sites.
As Andrade points out, “There are other less restrictive technical procedures than the one used, which allow ISPs to comply with court orders fully, while affecting only the sites involved.”
In this case, it would appear that the block is likely related to the aforementioned case, and that ISPs–in an attempt to comply with the court order–have enacted the overbroad measure of IP blocking rather than blocking the site’s URL.
Google reports that they are working with stakeholders to restore access to the hundreds of thousands of blocked blogs and other sites in Argentina.
Reprinted From eff and Active Politic under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
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ANDROID TROJAN HORSE CAN RECORD YOUR PHONE CALLS
August 2, 2011CA security team finds more advanced Android malware
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A new Android Trojan is capable of recording phone conversations, according to a CA security researcher.
While a previous Trojan found by CA logged the details of incoming and outgoing phone calls and the call duration, the malware identified this week records the actual phone conversations in AMR format and stores the recordings on the device’s SD card.
BACK DOOR: Mobile Trojan malware can record your most private conversations.
The malware also “drops a ‘configuration’ file that contains key information about the remote server and the parameters,” CA security researcher Dinesh Venkatesan writes in a blog, perhaps suggesting that the recorded calls can be uploaded to a server maintained by an attacker.
TARGET: Malware writers gunning for Google Android
Venkatesan tested the Trojan in “a controlled environment with two mobile emulators running along with simulated Internet services,” and posted screenshots with the results. It appears the Trojan can only be installed if the Android device owner clicks the “install” button on a message that looks strikingly similar to the installation screens of legitimate applications.
After the malware and the remote server configuration file are installed on the Android device, making a phone call “triggers the payload” — in other words, recording the call and storing it on the SD card.
“As it is already widely acknowledged that this year is the year of mobile malware, we advice the smartphone users to be more logical and exercise the basic security principles while surfing and installing any applications,” Venkatesan writes.
While Android provides more flexibility than the iPhone by allowing installation of third-party applications, even those that were not approved for the Android Market, this freedom seems to come with increased security risk. Malware-infected applications have also been found in the Android Market itself, but users can protect themselves by installing antivirus software, just as they would on a PC.
Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin
Read more about security in Network World’s Security section.
Facebook in new privacy row over facial recognition feature
June 8, 2011Social network turns on new feature to automatically identify people in photos, raising questions about privacy implications of the service
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By Charles Arthur
Guardian
June 8, 2011
Facebook has come under fire for quietly expanding the availability of technology to automatically identify people in photos, renewing concerns about its privacy practices.
The feature, which the giant social network automatically enabled for its more than 500 million users, has been expanded from the US to “most countries”, Facebook said on its official blog on Tuesday.
BIG BROTHER: Facebook hopes to get further into your personal space with new Orwellian technology.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the non-profit privacy advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the system raised questions about which personally identifiable information, such as email addresses, would become associated with the photos in Facebook’s database.
He also criticised Facebook’s decision to automatically enable the facial-recognition technology for its users.
“I’m not sure that’s the setting that people would want to choose. A better option would be to let people opt-in,” he said.
Internet security consultancy Sophos noted that many Facebook users had seen the facial recognition option turned on without any notice in the last few days.
“Yet again, it feels like Facebook is eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth,” commented Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos.
Facebook’s “Tag Suggestions” feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of labeling friends and acquaintances in photos posted on the site.
Facebook has been repeatedly criticised for changing settings involving privacy and identity in favour of making more data public in ways that means its users have to opt out of, rather than opt in to, the service.
Facebook, which announced in December that it planned to introduce the facial recognition service in the US, acknowledged that the feature was now more widely available.
The site also said in an emailed statement that “we should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them”.
The statement noted that the photo-tagging suggestions are only made when new photos are added to Facebook, that only friends are suggested and that users can disable the feature in their privacy settings.
While other photo software and online services such as Google Inc’s Picasa and Apple Inc’s iPhoto use facial recognition technology, its use on a social network like Facebook could raise thorny privacy issues.
Google has stepped away from the widespread implementation of its Google Goggles service, which would try to identify people based on facial recognition through mobile phones running its Android operating system. Instead it only uses it for translating text and identifying objects. Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, said earlier in June that he had concerns about its use with people.
“We do have the relevant facial recognition technology at our disposal. But we haven’t implemented this on Google Goggles because we want to consider the privacy implications and how this feature might be added responsibly,” he said. “I’m very concerned personally about the union of mobile tracking and face recognition.”
Rotenberg noted that Apple’s iPhoto software gave users control over facial recognition technology by letting them elect whether or not to use it with their personal photo collections.
Facebook’s technology, by contrast, operates independently, analysing faces across a broad swathe of newly uploaded photos.
Last year the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint about Facebook’s privacy practices with the US Federal Trade Commission, which Rotenberg said was still pending.
He noted that he planned to take a close look at Facebook’s new announcement involving facial recognition technology.
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NET TRENDS: Strangling of the Free Internet Begins
March 22, 2011Matt Ryan
Infowars.com
March 22, 2011
AT&T’s pending acquisition of T-Mobile USA has the tech world buzzing with various pros and cons of what this merging would mean for the consumer. Among the pros are the possibility of having a single mobile standard (4G LTE) and a market where phones aren’t restricted to a single carrier. The cons include having less choice between carriers and rate plans, millions of customers suddenly being subject to a more restricted terms of service, and the loss of what T-Mobile customers considered to be a much better overall customer experience.
What’s more troubling, are recent announcements by AT&T to begin capping the monthly usage and impose overage fees on their DSL and U-Verse customers. These customers were originally given a promise of unlimited usage by AT&T only to find an essential mode of communication is now restricted. In a sense, AT&T is forcing their customers to buy in to their cable and phone service to defer the bandwidth used by their online competitors, Skype, Hulu, Netflix, and others.
BIG BROTHER KNOWS BEST: Telecoms giant AT&T working towards an eventual digital monopoly. IMAGE: Infowars.com
If you’ve spent time searching for an apartment in the U.S. over the past few years, you may have noticed complexes are beginning to sign contracts with service providers like AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, and others that forbid their tenants from switching to any other provider than the one they’re under contract with. This deal is offered to landlords in exchange for either what amounts to a kickback or a mock coupon giving their tenants a small discount on service costs. In a sense, you’re subject to your carrier’s restrictive terms and conditions as long as you’re under lease. With some of these contracts, tenants are forced as part of the lease to purchase and maintain a cable and/or Internet service with the carrier. For many in small towns and rural communities where WiMax and other options are impossible, this means you are all but forced to use a carrier’s service, especially when a certain complex is all you can afford.
As we’ve covered here in the past, all signs point to an eventual collapse of the Internet as we know it today. With phone, cable, and web services provided by only a handful select single corporations, more and more Americans are essentially at the mercy of an elite few. AT&T has been in hot water before with privacy advocates, in particular their sharing of private information with the NSA. (Hepting v. AT&T)
This trend to restrict services is even more concerning when coupled with Google and other search engines moves to limit search ranking for news aggregates and other sites they deem to be a “content farm”. This determination is based on the “quality” of a site’s content as determined by the search engine…
Road To Damascus: Sheriff Google and Deputy Facebook Skidaddle To Syria
March 3, 2011By Cochise Johnson
21st Century Wire
March 3, 2011
Yes, it’s an order, the Facebook page telling people to meet peacefully across Syria for freedom and democracy, now go do that voodoo that youdoo best. Nevermind the central bank, that comes after you topple the government for them, more important things on the agenda now, gold-juggling in Tunisia, a pesky fly to swat in Tripoli, lock down in Cairo. Banking cartels need it busted up, ready for them to dash in and save.
Social Network revolution rousing is a game of clinical commands, like ringing Pavlov’s bell to elicit the pre-conditioned response as he did with his luckless un-hungry dog who ate till it came out his nostrels. The youth of Damascus and every wired corner of the country are mostly resisting the urge to salivate, supressing the suggested hunger to congregate with other ‘meat-bots’ face to face after spending inordinate amounts of time online. But their best friends- Google and Facebook, want help reorganising the world.
NEXT FACEBOOK TARGET: Syria and Iran brace themselves for the next digital onslaught.
Assad’s stalwart supporters who decry his removal say he brought dignity back to a place that was sorely lacking during all the time Syria has had to exist with a cleverly belligerent Israel as next door neighbour. For the first time in nearly seventy years and after the thumping Israelis got stepping into Lebanon last time around, supporting Hezbollah has blossomed into a marvellous PR stunt, Iran’s friends are his too now.
And the mythical Iranian warships have passed safely through Suez to land at Latakia where they’ve agreed with Syria to inaugurate their new Mediterranean naval base. That’s quite a milestone actually, the last Persian war fleet fell into the hands of Alexander the Great twenty three hundred and thirty years ago and there hadn’t been another one since. Note to self ; hot-foot it to Delphi, consult the Oracle on this one.
Historically, it feels like irresistable forces are colliding with immovable objects and down on the ground, on the Arab Street, there’s a knowing sense of foreboding. Assad is not only shoring up his support abroad with the Iran deal, he’s inviting a contingent of friendly foreign troops into Syria, which he may one day have to call upon. Israel is top of his threat list but enemies of every pedigree lurk in the Souk’s dark corners.
Whether foreigners will be enlisted to suppress dissent at home remains to be seen, remembering the Russians have been skuking around there a long while too and right about now Assad can use friends with muscle. His minority Alawi community is a particular target from their adversaries in the south, believing the Hebrew people to be God’s second “chosen people” based on their claim the world began less than six thousand years ago and Damascus being an inhabited city for nine thousand years, etc.
ISRAELI CLOAK & DAGGER
All Syrians distrust Israelis, the devious wresting of the Golan Heights from their grasp hurt their national pride, which they’ll not forgive and therefore refuse to hand over Eli Cohen‘s body till this day. The strangest part of that spy story is that Cohen was operating out of Damascus as a fake Muslim, morally and financially supporting the Baath Party and terror groups attacking Israel. A tit for tat series of false flags that made the Six Day War look like the right thing for israel to do at their wit’s end.
All this… from Mossad’s man in Egypt that escaped the noose in 1955 for bombing in the Lavon Affair. Damascus can be forgiven for their mild paranoia about traitors in their midst, it was a cold slap- and still stings to this day. Spy chief Isser Harel‘s biography covers the subject quite thoroughly and the Syrian intelligence operatives who’ve read it can still not believe all it took was for Israel to operate in the dark, fund and egg on it’s supposed enemies so retaliative aggression dressed up as self-defense achieved Israel’s territorial ambitions. The outrage still boils over at the audacity of the theft.
1967 Spy Games: Israel gains its advantage under the cloak of regional conflict.
Damascus buzzes with two questions, does Israel think they can get away with an attack and is the commotion brewing online designed to lay the groundwork for a pseudo last resort IDF action? Meanwhile the international press drumbeats the ‘dictator’ and ‘years of repression’ theme to make Asaad look like an enemy of the freedom-loving masses. Whether he is or not doesn’t matter as much as the perception that it’s ok to kick and even kill him according to the drill, no flinching from the blood anywhere in mainstream media.
That’s bloody uncivilised from every angle. So who in digital Hell’s running that Posse?
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Author Cochise Johnson is a guest writer for 21st Century Wire, Gonzo Town and is a featured writer for the Runnymede Institute.
BEHIND THE SCENES OF A 21st CENTURY REVOLUTION
February 12, 2011Alliance of Youth Movements: Color Revolution 2.0
‘Google’s revolution factory’
Tony Cartalucci
Infowars.com
Feb 12, 2011
In 2008, the Alliance of Youth Movements held its inaugural summit in New York City. Attending this summit was a combination of State Department staff, Council on Foreign Relations members, former National Security staff, Department of Homeland Security advisers, and a myriad of representatives from American corporations and mass media organizations including AT&T, Google, Facebook, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and MTV.
Download PDF document detailing activities of this globalist foundation:
http://allyoumov.3cdn.net/f734ac45131b2bbcdb_w6m6idptn.pdf
One might suspect such a meeting of representatives involved in US economic, domestic and foreign policy, along with the shapers of public opinion in the mass media would be convening to talk about America’s future and how to facilitate it. Joining these policy makers, was an army of “grassroots” activists that would “help” this facilitation.
The mobs in Egypt are not quite what they appear to be.
Among them was a then little known group called “April 6″ from Egypt. These Facebook “savvy” Egyptians would later meet US International Crisis Group trustee Mohamed ElBaradei at the Cairo airport in February 2010 and spend the next year campaigning and protesting on his behalf in his bid to overthrow the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The Alliance of Youth Movements mission statement claims it is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists to build their capacity and make a greater impact on the world. While this sounds fairly innocuous at first, even perhaps positive, upon examining those involved in “Movements.org,” a dark agenda is revealed of such nefarious intent it is almost difficult to believe.
A list US companies who are actively involved in the subversion of foreign governments
Movement.org is officially partnered with the US Department of State and Columbia Law School. Its corporate sponsors include Google, Pepsi, and the Omnicon Group, all listed as members of the globocrat Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). CBS News is a sponsor and listed on the globocrat Chatham House’s corporate membership list. Other sponsors include Facebook, YouTube, Meetup, Howcast, National Geographic, MSNBC, GenNext, and the Edelman public relations firm.
Movement.org’s “team” includes Co-Founder Jared Cohen, a CFR member, Director of Google Ideas, and a former State Department planning staff member under both Condoleezza Rice and Hilary Clinton.
Founding Movements.org with Cohen is Jason Liebman of Howcast Media which works with mega-corporate conglomerates like Proctor & Gamble, Kodak, Staples, Ford, and government agencies such as the US State Department and the US Defense Department, to create “custom branded entertainment, innovative social media, and targeted rich-media campaigns.” He was also with Google for 4 years where he worked to partner with Time Warner (CFR), News Corporation (FoxNews, CFR) Viacom, Warner Music, Sony Pictures, Reuters, the New York Times, and the Washington Post Company.
Roman Sunder is also credited with co-founding Movements.org. He founded Access 360 Media, a mass advertising company, and he also organized the PTTOW! Summit which brought together 35 top executives from companies like AT&T (CFR), Quicksilver, Activision, Facebook, HP, YouTube, Pepsi (CFR), and the US Government to discuss the future of the “youth industry.” He is also a board member of Gen Next, another non-profit organization focused on “affecting change for the next generation.”
It is hard, considering these men’s affiliations, to believe that the change they want to see is anything less than a generation that drinks more Pepsi, buys more consumerist junk, and believes the United States government every time they purvey their lies to us via their corporate owned media.
While the activists attending the Movements.org summit adhere to the philosophies of “left-leaning” liberalism, the very men behind the summit, funding it, and prodding the agenda of these activists are American’s mega-corporate combine. These are the very big-businesses that have violated human rights worldwide, destroyed the environment, sell shoddy, overseas manufactured goods produced by workers living in slave conditions, and pursue an agenda of greed and perpetual expansion at any cost. The hypocrisy is astounding unless of course you understand that their nefarious, self-serving agenda could only be accomplished under the guise of genuine concern for humanity, buried under mountains of feel-good rhetoric, and helped along by an army of exploited, naive youth.
What we see is not a foundation from which all activists can work from, but a foundation that has a very selective group of activists working on “problem spots” the US State Department would like to see “changed.” Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Eastern Europe, Venezuela, and even Thailand – where ever protesters and movements are working to undermine governments non-conducive to corporate America’s agenda, you will find Movements.org supporting their efforts.
The April 6 Movement of Egypt is one of them, and their role in the apparent success of the US ousting of Hosni Mubarak that may see their man Mohamed ElBaradei in office is a perfect example of how this new army of prodded youth will be deployed. It is color revolution 2.0, run directly out of the US State Department with the support of corporate America.
It would be strongly recommended that readers go to Movements.org themselves and explore the website, in particular the 3 summits they have held and those that were in attendance. Everyone from the RAND Corporation to the Council on Foreign Relations comes to “prod.” Movements.org truly is a new tentacle for manipulating and undermining the sovereignty of foreign nations.
DOWNLOAD MORE GLOBALIST PDF BRIEFS HERE:
2008 Summit New York City .pdf
2009 Summit Mexico City .pdf
2010 Summit London
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Tony Cartalucci writes the Land Destroyer blog.
21st Century Wire 