“That sound you hear? It’s the Bill of Rights being torn in half. Talk about losing the war on terror. Who needs external forces threatening your way of life when your elected lawmakers are doing such a good job of it?”
- Cory Doctorow

Senate Approves Bill to Broaden Wiretap Powers

The Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a major expansion of the government’s surveillance powers, handing President Bush one more victory in a series of hard-fought clashes with Democrats over national security issues.

The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, is the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years. It includes a divisive element that Mr. Bush had deemed essential: legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program

- Eric Lichtblau, NY Times (July 10, 2008): Link.

Slashdot reports: Senate Passes Telecom Immunity Bill.

And yes — Barack Obama voted for it.

“Anyone is a potential target.”
- Julian Sanchez

The award for the most bald-faced lie on the House floor Friday, however, goes to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who insisted that the bill “does not allow warrantless surveillance of Americans.” She is wrong. It does.

… The bill … allows the government to conduct “vacuum cleaner” surveillance — sweeping up international traffic willy-nilly — then filter it for anything that looks interesting. Indeed, many believe that licensing such surveillance is precisely the point of this legislation. If so, “warrantless surveillance of Americans” could well become routine, whether or not they are the formal “targets” of eavesdropping.

- Julian Sanchez @ American Prospect (June 25, 2008): Link.

Via Boing Boing: Link.

See also Obama’s support for the FISA “compromise”.

Wikipedia: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

“Open-records laws in Ohio mean anyone can follow the machines’ paper trail to see who voted for which candidates.”

Ohio’s method of conducting elections with electronic voting machines appears to have created a true privacy nightmare for state residents: revealing who voted for which candidates.

Two Ohio activists have discovered that e-voting machines made by Election Systems and Software and used across the country produce time-stamped paper trails that permit the reconstruction of an election’s results–including allowing voter names to be matched to their actual votes.

[Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com, August 20, 2007: Link]

Via SlashDot.

Comments @ SlashDot
In the UK, polls aren’t really secret either.

In the 1980s (and probably subsequently) it was normal practice for Special Branch to inspect the ballot papers of those who voted for parties which were considered potentially subversive (Communists, BNP, National Front.) They could then match those voting papers to the voters (by dint of the fact that the voter’s name was written on a list next to the voting paper number) and keep a handy database of undesirables.

[Harold Halloway: Link]

Skype (covertly) learns a lot about your computer

Users of Skype that run 64-bit versions of Windows like me probably have noticed that … Skype’s trying to run a .com file, which won’t work on Win64 because there’s no NTVDM. Let’s try opening it in Hex Workshop. Access denied? OK, I’ll terminate Skype to read it. Still can’t?! This thing is really starting to annoy me. I’ll use WinDbg to terminate winlogon.exe to force a kernel panic. I reboot and NOW I can read the damn file.

An unreadable executable file coming from Skype sounds interesting, so I look at it …. It’s dumping your system BIOS, which usually includes your motherboard’s serial number, and pipes it to the Skype application. I have no idea what they’re using it for, or whether they send anything to their servers, but I bet whatever they’re doing is no good given their track record.

[pagetable.com]

Via SlashDot.

BIOS coder opinion - discussion @ SlashDot

Reading your BIOS to determine CPU ain’t gonna be useful. I doubt any BIOSes store info on which CPU is on the board.

As a former BIOS coder, I’ll second that. Even if the BIOS did store some system specific info in Flash (on Embedded BIOSs sometimes this is done because CMOS is not reliable), there is NO way that Skype would know the format/place/meaning of this. It would be specific to a certain build of a specific BIOS for a specific board by a specific vendor.

In any case, the method described to dump the BIOS is not very likely to get anything close to the complete, original BIOS image to begin with. By dumping memory at F000:0000 through F000:FFFF, a 16 bit DOS program, under Windows, will get the memory resident part of the BIOS. Most BIOSs are far bigger than 64KB and the memory resident part is the decompressed runtime part, which is nothing like what the actual BIOS image looks like at boot time.

They are most likely using this in combination with other more or less ‘unique’ things to identify a specific machine. It wouldn’t surprise me if after this some people would do a more in-depth analysis of their code and find out that it also reads the serial number of the harddrive and gets the MAC address of the Ethernet adapter.

[slashdot.org: SlashDot]

Bad History? - discussion @ SlashDot

[Bad history] could be referring to the time where Skype would only allow 10-way conference calling on dual-core Intel processors. Those running AMD processors could only have 5-way conference calls. At the time they cited the “technical superiority” of Intel processors over AMD ones.

Of course thie gave bad publicity to both Intel and Skype after AMD issued a subpoena against Skype and the fact that it was discovered that the software simply checked the processor ID and enabled the feature based on that. A patched version was also released which bypassed this artificial limitation.

[Cocoshimmy: SlashDot]

Conspiracy Theory - discussion @ SlashDot

I am gonna repeat my grand conspiracy theory: It is my belief that eBay’s purchase of Skype was somehow coaxed by the NSA/CIA and here is why: Ebay’s purchase of Skype never made sense.

Ebay could have included skypeout:// links in their auctions without spending a penny. That would be like saying slashdot can’t use IM unless they buy AOL. Skype spent way above considered market value for Skype and their share holders have applied no real pressure to have it turn a profit. This makes the transaction suspicious.

The reason of course if because prior to the eBay’s purchase Skype was owned in Luxembourg and definitely not an ideal partner for eavesdropping on “terra’rists” (given those crazy European privacy laws).

Given that the calls are encrypted, and that Skype does maintain the keys to decrypt those session, getting Skype under US subpeona power is a powerful tool for eavesdropping. Infact, because it is VoIP for most if not all of the calls, it can easily route traffic into the US were it can be picked up, decoded and monitored. Or, since it is known that open IP’s become super nodes, Skype can naturally be coaxed into steering packets toward a super-node that can easily be monitored.

I use to work for the company that wrote Carnivore. People got worked up over that? It was only the prototype.

[sideswipe76: SlashDot]

FBI to release last of its John Lennon files. LA Times: “The U.S. had said such an act could stir military retaliation. The papers, withheld 25 years, don’t seem to bear that out.”

The FBI agreed Tuesday to make public the final 10 documents about the surveillance of John Lennon that it had withheld for 25 years from a UC Irvine historian on the grounds that releasing them could cause “military retaliation against the United States.”

Despite the fierce battle the government waged to keep the documents secret, the files contain information that is hardly shocking, just new details about Lennon’s ties to New Left leaders and antiwar groups in London in the early 1970s, said the historian, Jon Wiener.

For example, in one memo, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote to H.R. Haldeman, President Nixon’s chief of staff, that “Lennon had taken an interest in ‘extreme left-wing activities in Britain’ and is known to be a sympathizer of Trotskyist communists in England.”

… Another describes an interview with Lennon published in 1971 in an underground London newspaper called the Red Mole. “Lennon emphasized his proletarian background and his sympathy with the oppressed and underprivileged people of Britain and the world,” the document says.

Wiener and his attorneys, Dan Marmalefsky of Morrison & Foerster and Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, all said the documents revealed there was no sign that government officials considered Lennon a serious threat. They said they were mystified that several administrations had resisted making the material public.

… Wiener initially obtained some files showing that the FBI closely monitored Lennon’s activities in 1971 and 1972. The documents indicated Nixon administration concern that Lennon would support then-Sen. George S. McGovern (D-S.D.) for president against incumbent Richard M. Nixon in 1972, the first year that 18-year-olds could vote.

But the FBI also withheld numerous files, saying they were exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, including part of a surveillance report on a December 1971 antiwar rally in Michigan. There, Lennon urged the release of activist and singer John Sinclair, who was serving a 10-year sentence for possession of two marijuana joints. A judge soon freed him.

… Scott Hodes, who was acting chief of the FBI litigation unit dealing with freedom of information cases, said disclosure of the documents could strain relations between the U.S. and a foreign government, lead to diplomatic, political or economic retaliation and have a chilling effect on the flow of information between the two countries. Hodes also said disclosure of the documents could subject the government agents involved in the Lennon operation to “public ridicule, ostracism” or even jeopardize their safety.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

[LA Times]

Interview with Jon Wiener: Talk of the Nation, December 21, 2006

After a 25-year-long legal battle, the FBI has released the final documents relating to its surveillance of John Lennon in the 1970s.

Jon Wiener, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine and author of Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files.

[NPR]

John Lennon - FBI Files: lennonfbifiles.com

Interview - Thursday 21st January 1971 - John Lennon and Yoko Ono talk to Robin Blackburn and Tariq Ali for the underground magazine Red Mole

John Lennon: I’ve always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo. It’s pretty basic when you’re brought up, like I was, to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere.

… I’d always felt repressed. We were all so pressurised that there was hardly any chance of expressing ourselves, especially working at that rate, touring continually and always kept in a cocoon of myths and dreams. It’s pretty hard when you are Caesar and everyone is saying how wonderful you are and they are giving you all the goodies and the girls, it’s pretty hard to break out of that, to say ‘Well, I don’t want to be king, I want to be real.’

… Art is only a way of expressing pain. I mean the reason Yoko does such far out stuff is that it’s a far out kind of pain she went through.

… Oh, Jesus Christ, [stardom] was a complete oppression. I mean we had to go through humiliation upon humiliation with the middle classes and showbiz and Lord Mayors and all that. They were so condescending and stupid. Everybody trying to use us. It was a special humiliation for me because I could never keep my mouth shut and I’d always have to be drunk or pilled to counteract this pressure. It was really hell …. I found I was having continually to please the sort of people I’d always hated when I was a child.

… I keep on reading the Morning Star [the Communist newspaper] to see if there’s any hope, but it seems to be in the 19th century; it seems to be written for dropped-out, middle-aged liberals. We should be trying to reach the young workers because that’s when you’re most idealistic and have least fear.

… I’ve been reading Khrushchev Remembers. I know he’s a bit of a lad himself - but he seemed to think that making a religion out of an individual was bad; that doesn’t seem to be part of the basic Communist idea. Still people are people, that’s the difficulty.

Yoko Ono: I want to incite people to loosen their oppression by giving them something to work with, to build on. They shouldn’t be frightened of creating themselves - that’s why I make things very open, with things for people to do, like in my book.

Because basically there are two types of people in the world: people who are confident because they know they have the ability to create, and then people who have been demoralised, who have no confidence in themselves because they have been told they have no creative ability, but must just take orders [emphasis added]. The Establishment likes people who take no responsibility and cannot respect themselves.

[Link]

“Audio ‘fingerprint’ for content-relevant ads”
The Register reports:

The first thing that came out of our mouths when we heard that Google is working on a system that listens to what’s on your TV playing in the background, and then serves you relevant adverts, was “that’s cool, but dangerous”.

… The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject.

… Google says that its fingerprinting technology makes it impossible for the company (or anyone else) to eavesdrop on other sounds in the room, such as personal conversations, because the conversion to a fingerprint is made on the PC, and a fingerprint can’t be reversed, as it’s only an identity.

But we should think that “spyware” might take on an extra meaning if someone less scrupulous decided on a similar piece of software.

[The Register: Link]

Thanks, Geoff.

CNN reports:

A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the U.S. government’s domestic eavesdropping program is unconstitutional and ordered it ended immediately.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the Bush Administration disagrees with the ruling and has appealed.

The administration secretly instituted the program after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. It gives the National Security Administration [sic; “Agency”] authorization to secretly conduct wiretaps without a court order.

In a 44-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor struck down the NSA program, which she said violates the rights to free speech and privacy. (Read the complete ruling — PDF)

The defendants “are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III,” she wrote.

She declared that the program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III.”

Her ruling went on to say that “the president of the United States … has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders.”

The lawsuit, filed January 17 by civil rights organizations, lawyers, journalists and educators, “challenges the constitutionality of a secret government program to intercept vast quantities of the international telephone and Internet communications of innocent Americans without court approval.”

[CNN: Link]

Via Boing Boing.

Rush Limbaugh opines:

RUSH: A federal judge ruled just moments ago that the government’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it. “US district Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, in Detroit, became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency’s program, which she says violates the rights of free speech and privacy.” Who is this babe? Who is Judge Anna Diggs Taylor? By the way, you see what’s happening, ladies and gentlemen, the judiciary, which I and others have been warning you, is out of control, is now assuming commander-in-chief duties. Some federal judge, Eastern District of Michigan, decides to take it on her shoulders. She campaigned for Jimmy Carter. He appointed her to the federal bench in 1979. She is a Carter appointee. It all makes sense.

…. Thank you, Jimmy Carter, you doofus. Glittering jewel of colossal ignorance, worst president in my lifetime and in the modern era, an utter disaster.

[Rush Limbaugh: Link]

I take a different view: it does not all make sense. Jimmy Carter is no doofus. And Judge Taylor is not a babe.

Darknet: anonymous data transfer –

Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

“There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,” says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. “If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check. The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to the democratic society. Without a safe and convenient way of accessing the Internet anonymously, this right is rendered null and void.”

File sharing of music, films, and other forms of culture is where the surveillance of Internet addresses has attracted the most attention, largely because the entertainment industry has been so aggressive in suing Internet users for copyright infringement, suing college students and single mothers alike without concern.

“But there are much more fundamental values at stake here than copyright,” Rickard Falkvinge says. “The new technology has brought society to a crossroads. The only way to enforce today’s unbalanced copyright laws is to monitor all private communications over the Internet. Today’s copyright regime cannot coexist with an open society that guarantees the right to private communication.”

“Until we have changed the laws to ensure that citizens’ right to privacy is respected, we have a moral obligation to protect the citizens from the effects of the current routine surveillance,” Falkvinge continues. “This is our technical means to do just that.”

The service is provided by the Swedish high-tech company Relakks, which offers a neutral IP on top of your existing ISP service through a strongly encrypted VPN connection. Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.

The cost of the service is 5 euros per month, and it is available now at www.relakks.com. A portion of the subscription fees will go towards the Pirate Party’s work in changing the copyright and privacy laws and making the service obsolete.

[Pirate Party: Link]

Via SlashDot.

See also

• Pirate Party
• Pirate Bay’s Backstory via Boing Boing

.