Current Affairs Surveillance in the US reaches new levels

[blandy]

There are 3 specific and conflicting aspects to this

 

1. Governments will look at it like this: There is a whole ton of "data" out there that could/does include some criminal, terrorist or undesireable data that could or will or does relate to criminal or terrorist or harmful activity. We can't just ignore it. We need to get it to prevent or prosecute.

 

2. Citizens believe that "their" e mails and phone records and so on are "theirs" and that Gov'ts should only have access to that data if the law requires it, on a specific case basis. They do not onsent willingly to Gov'ts having this data by right. It's none of Gov'ts business what they legally say or do or write.

 

3. Data retention by private enterprises: Companies keep internal e mails and so on, because they need to, to discharge their business, or because the law requires that they do (product liability etc.) But it's not joined up. Each Co. does it their own way.

 

Gov'ts would like to get Co.s to do their dirty work for them.

Individuals don't want that to happen. Though they generally accept that Co.s exchange services for their data as a "deal". But the deal does not include Gov't having that data too.

Co.s don't want to pay the costs of doing the Govt's snooping for them, and certainly not on a universal basis. They don't want to retain, forever, all their customers mails and calls and so on. They want to get rid of it as soon as it's of no value to them in going about their enterprise.

 

I think Gov't is there to serve the citizen, that citizens should be totally free to do and say whatever they like as long as it harms no other person. They should not be monitored, recorded, tracked unless there is a known and given reason for it, approved by a court. I think that argument outweighs the [claimed] "wider good", which is often no such thing. It's more an excuse to hide behind for Ministers. The way they jump on it as soon as anything bad happens. Like that horrible attack in woolwich - Teresa May was straight there, saying she wanted to have more snooping powers. That even the security services said it wouldn't have made any difference seemed to carry no weight with her. She wanted to be seen to be doing something, so came out with the nonsense reason.

 

It's not the type of world I want to live in where people's communications, medical histories and so on are used to either tag them as problems to be ever more closely "followed". They work for us, they are not our masters and monitors, and nor should they be.

[snowychap]

Grauniad story.

[snowychap]

Bruce Schneier

 

 

June 4, 2013

The Problems with CALEA-II

The FBI wants a new law that will make it easier to wiretap the Internet. Although its claim is that the new law will only maintain the status quo, it's really much worse than that. This law will result in less-secure Internet products and create a foreign industry in more-secure alternatives. It will impose costly burdens on affected companies. It will assist totalitarian governments in spying on their own citizens. And it won't do much to hinder actual criminals and terrorists.

As the FBI sees it, the problem is that people are moving away from traditional communication systems like telephones onto computer systems like Skype. Eavesdropping on telephones used to be easy. The FBI would call the phone company, which would bring agents into a switching room and allow them to literally tap the wires with a pair of alligator clips and a tape recorder. In the 1990s, the government forced phone companies to provide an analogous capability on digital switches; but today, more and more communications happens over the Internet.

What the FBI wants is the ability to eavesdrop on everything. Depending on the system, this ranges from easy to impossible. E-mail systems like Gmail are easy. The mail resides in Google's servers, and the company has an office full of people who respond to requests for lawful access to individual accounts from governments all over the world. Encrypted voice systems like Silent Circle are impossible to eavesdrop on—the calls are encrypted from one computer to the other, and there's no central node to eavesdrop from. In those cases, the only way to make the system eavesdroppable is to add a backdoor to the user software. This is precisely the FBI's proposal. Companies that refuse to comply would be fined $25,000 a day.

The FBI believes it can have it both ways: that it can open systems to its eavesdropping, but keep them secure from anyone else's eavesdropping. That's just not possible. It's impossible to build a communications system that allows the FBI surreptitious access but doesn't allow similar access by others. When it comes to security, we have two options: We can build our systems to be as secure as possible from eavesdropping, or we can deliberately weaken their security. We have to choose one or the other.

This is an old debate, and one we've been through many times. The NSA even has a name for it: the equities issue. In the 1980s, the equities debate was about export control of cryptography. The government deliberately weakened U.S. cryptography products because it didn't want foreign groups to have access to secure systems. Two things resulted: fewer Internet products with cryptography, to the insecurity of everybody, and a vibrant foreign security industry based on the unofficial slogan "Don't buy the U.S. stuff -- it's lousy."

In 1993, the debate was about the Clipper Chip. This was another deliberately weakened security product, an encrypted telephone. The FBI convinced AT&T to add a backdoor that allowed for surreptitious wiretapping. The product was a complete failure. Again, why would anyone buy a deliberately weakened security system?

In 1994, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act mandated that U.S. companies build eavesdropping capabilities into phone switches. These were sold internationally; some countries liked having the ability to spy on their citizens. Of course, so did criminals, and there were public scandals in Greece (2005) and Italy (2006) as a result.

In 2012, we learned that every phone switch sold to the Department of Defense had security vulnerabilities in its surveillance system. And just this May, we learned that Chinese hackers breached Google's system for providing surveillance data for the FBI.

The new FBI proposal will fail in all these ways and more. The bad guys will be able to get around the eavesdropping capability, either by building their own security systems -- not very difficult -- or buying the more-secure foreign products that will inevitably be made available. Most of the good guys, who don't understand the risks or the technology, will not know enough to bother and will be less secure. The eavesdropping functions will 1) result in more obscure -- and less secure -- product designs, and 2) be vulnerable to exploitation by criminals, spies, and everyone else. U.S. companies will be forced to compete at a disadvantage; smart customers won't buy the substandard stuff when there are more-secure foreign alternatives. Even worse, there are lots of foreign governments who want to use these sorts of systems to spy on their own citizens. Do we really want to be exporting surveillance technology to the likes of China, Syria, and Saudi Arabia?

The FBI's short-sighted agenda also works against the parts of the government that are still working to secure the Internet for everyone. Initiatives within the NSA, the DOD, and DHS to do everything from securing computer operating systems to enabling anonymous web browsing will all be harmed by this.

What to do, then? The FBI claims that the Internet is "going dark," and that it's simply trying to maintain the status quo of being able to eavesdrop. This characterization is disingenuous at best. We are entering a golden age of surveillance; there's more electronic communications available for eavesdropping than ever before, including whole new classes of information: location tracking, financial tracking, and vast databases of historical communications such as e-mails and text messages. The FBI's surveillance department has it better than ever. With regard to voice communications, yes, software phone calls will be harder to eavesdrop upon. (Although there are questions about Skype's security.) That's just part of the evolution of technology, and one that on balance is a positive thing.

Think of it this way: We don't hand the government copies of our house keys and safe combinations. If agents want access, they get a warrant and then pick the locks or bust open the doors, just as a criminal would do. A similar system would work on computers. The FBI, with its increasingly non-transparent procedures and systems, has failed to make the case that this isn't good enough.

Finally there's a general principle at work that's worth explicitly stating. All tools can be used by the good guys and the bad guys. Cars have enormous societal value, even though bank robbers can use them as getaway cars. Cash is no different. Both good guys and bad guys send e-mails, use Skype, and eat at all-night restaurants. But because society consists overwhelmingly of good guys, the good uses of these dual-use technologies greatly outweigh the bad uses. Strong Internet security makes us all safer, even though it helps the bad guys as well. And it makes no sense to harm all of us in an attempt to harm a small subset of us.

This essay originally appeared in Foreign Policy.

 

[peterms]

Please facilitate our national safety by having the courtesy to ensure your phone settings remain as programmed:

 

[peterms]

Grauniad story.

 

 

I love the bit that says the cost is $20m a year.  That's probably just the doughnut bill for the staff involved.

[snowychap]

I love the bit that says the cost is $20m a year.  That's probably just the doughnut bill for the staff involved.

That's outsourcing for ya.

[CVByrne]

Well BOF

 

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/6/4403868/nsa-fbi-mine-data-apple-google-facebook-microsoft-others-prism

 

 

Pretty much they can access what they like when they like. 

[AVFCforever1991]

[CVByrne]

This being america and all where the will of the people doesn't matter in the slightest to the law makers. So 90% of people were in favour of curtailing sale of automatic weapons and Congress voted the bill down overwhelmingly. 

 

So I assume a similar fate would befall any bill that would come to curtail the invasion of privacy that the government have done here. 

 

America. I always laugh hard when they call it land of the free. 

[BOF]

Well at least it's out in the public domain now. It's been painfully obvious that governments ride roughshod over legislation 'in the interests of national security'(sic) when there doesn't have to be any such interest at all. Spying timeline

[maqroll]

Anyone remotely suspicious of governmental overreach knows that illegal domestic surveillance has been going on since the creation of the FBI...the only difference now is that we have definitive proof. 

[Davkaus]

We had definitive proof several years ago, but unfortunately, most people don't give a shit, so they get away with it.

 

Isn't this the sort of shit that the right to bear arms was meant to sort out?

 

At least the Chinese government is up front  about spying on its people.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Davkaus

[tonyh29]

I know I'm supposed to be outraged about this whole GCHQ phone tapping scandal.

But I've got to admit, its a little refreshing that after a decade of marriage, someone is finally listening to me.

[peterms]

I see the government is annoyed that people have found out a little about the relentless spying that we are subject to, so they have taken steps to limit what we are allowed to be told.

 

Ian Puddick @ianpuddick

DA NOTICE 03 Leading quality sunday newspaper jounalist has just told me DA Notice is now in place re #PRISM reporting #GCHQ #Mi5 #Mi6 #SOCA

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

They can still print it though. In this instance I think they have a responsibility to us to print what information they have.

[maqroll]

The whistleblower-

 

[maqroll]

Brave boy. 

[Davkaus]

The streets of Hong Kong are dangerous. It'd be a shame if something were to...happen...to him.

[maqroll]

And the paranoid grow even more paranoid...and in this case, with good reason...it's hard to dismiss internet conspiracy theorists as total nut jobs when the truth of the matter is, everything you do online, on your phone, and out in public is monitored.

 

Everyone wave to the NSA guy in the cubicle reading this

 

[daft]

It's depressing how little people seem to care about this. More people cared about the royal wedding we just had in Sweden than this. But then again, organizing protests, contacting you representatives etc is a pain in the ass and takes, time, effort and money, so **** it. It's just easier to toe the line and not cross the powers that be.