Jun 15 2013

Unreasonable searches and drone killings

Category: Information Privacy,Security and privacy LawDISC @ 1:52 pm
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Search (Photo credit: ~FreeBirD®~)

Peter Scheer @ SFChronicle.com on June 12, 2013 – Open Forum on NSA’s snooping

First came news accounts of the government’s use of armed drones in the targeted killing of terrorists abroad. Then came the revelations about government surveillance programs, breathtaking in their scale, tapping into data on phone calls, e-mails, Internet searches and more.

These activities are, in fact, linked.

The use of drones to target America’s enemies represents the fruition of technological evolution in weapon accuracy. Though America’s previous military conflicts have been characterized by military strategies that often maximized enemy casualties (think of the “body counts” during the Vietnam War), the technology of drones makes possible the highly discriminate targeting of selected individuals, with minimal civilian casualties.

U.S. intelligence gathering has evolved in the opposite direction. Before data mining, and especially before the end of the Cold War, intelligence gathering was focused narrowly on selected institutions or individuals. America knew who its enemies were; the objective of espionage operations, from wiretaps to infiltration by American spies, was to find out what they were doing: with whom they were communicating, their capacities and plans.

In recent years, by contrast, the focus has shifted to intercepting and analyzing mountains of data in order to discern patterns of activity that could lead to the identification of individual enemies. Intelligence gathering has evolved from the penetration of known groups or individuals to the sifting and mining of Big Data – potentially including information on all U.S. citizens, or all foreign customers of Google, Facebook, et al. – in order to identify individuals or groups that are plotting attacks against Americans.

The logic of warfare and intelligence has flipped. Warfare has shifted from the scaling of military operations to the selective targeting of individual enemies. Intelligence gathering has shifted from the targeting of known threats to wholesale data mining for the purpose of finding terrorists.

The resulting paradigms, in turn, go a long way to account for our collective discomfort with the government’s activities in these areas. Americans are understandably distressed over the targeted killing of suspected terrorists because the very individualized nature of the drone attacks converts acts of war into de facto executions – and that, in turn, gives rise to demands for high standards of proof and due process.

Similarly, intelligence activities that gather data widely, without fact-based suspicions about specific individuals to whom the data pertain, are seen as intrusive and subject to abuse. The needle-in-a-haystack approach to intelligence gathering is fundamentally at odds with Americans’ understanding of the Constitution’s promise to safeguard them against “unreasonable” government searches. There is nothing reasonable about giving government secret access to phone calls and e-mails of tens of millions of Americans.

Our fear of these changes is reinforced by the absence of transparency surrounding drone strikes – specifically, the protocols for selecting targets – and intelligence operations that cast a broad net in which U.S. citizens are caught. This is why Americans remain supportive of, and thankful for, an independent and free press.

Peter Scheer, a lawyer and writer, is executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. FAC has filed suit against the U.S. Justice Department for access to classified legal memos analyzing the use of drones to target suspected terrorists. The views expressed here are Scheer’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the FAC board of directors.

Unreasonable Searches and Seizures: Rights and Liberties
under the Law (America’s Freedoms)

Tags: Big Data, Data mining, First Amendment Coalition


Jun 12 2013

Why you should care about your digital privacy?

Category: Information Privacy,Information SecurityDISC @ 4:25 pm
English: Infographic on how Social Media are b...

English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Surveillance Countermeasures

When we use internet browser for a web search, social media site, communication (skype), buy something from a site, we are leaving digital tracks all over the internet. Your service provider of the above services have access to this information because they are collecting  this treasure trove to identify and figure out what you like and don’t like so they can serve you appropriate ads and services accordingly. Most importantly they want to know that what you may buy or do next on the internet.

Well now we know that our government is utilizing that data as well from these providers to figure out if you may have some ties with the bad elements out there. To elaborate a bit at this point, for example, if a bad guy call you and left a message on you voice mail, you are presumed guilty by association and you and your friends may come under heavy surveillance after this incident.  So far all this collection and analysis of data has been done without your knowledge and permission.

As Mark Zukerberg said that Facebook only provide information which is required by law. Well in this case the law (PRISM) wants everything without warrant. By using social media we create a treasure trove of data, which can be analyzed to figure out patterns, one may deduce what that person may do next. You may want to remember that when you post next time on a social media.

Tags: Business, facebook, Internet Marketing, PRISM, Social media, Social network, Twitter, YouTube


Dec 04 2012

Top 10 ways to avoid being tracked online

Category: Information PrivacyDISC @ 11:20 pm

By Stacey Vanek Smith

1. Read the agreements for all mobile phone apps before you download them. Some of them are scary! They will track your location using your GPS and some (like Facebook) will download ALL OF THE CONTACTS IN YOUR PHONE. Can’t remember who you’ve handed your data to? MyPermissions can help.

2. Read the Terms of Service Agreements for sites you give your information to. Especially sites you give your financial information to. You maybe thinking:”I’ve been on page 5 of Freedom for 8 months, HOW am I going to find the time to read online agreements?” ToS;DR can help.

3. Use a search engine that doesn’t track you, like DuckDuckGo or Startpage for searches you want to keep private. Google’s Incognito setting, Microsoft’s Do Not Track setting and other browser privacy settings are not always effective, because they typically leave the decision of whether to track you up to the website you visit. There are no regulations requiring websites honor a “Do Not Track” request.

4. Use a browser add-on like Ghostery, Privacyfix or Do Not Track Plus to see who is tracking you on any given website. You can use these tools to avoid being tracked altogether or to limit who can access your data.

5. Use a tool to encrypt your connection, like CyberGhost VPN or Tor (which routes your search through servers all over the globe, the way criminals in the movies route their calls to avoid having them traced). Be sure to use one of these tools if you are accessing the Internet through a public WiFi connection at a coffee shop, for instance.

6. Adjust your Facebook privacy settings so that only your friends can see your information. You know that 6 Degress of Kevin Bacon game? That should give you an idea of how many friends your friends have and how many thousands of people can see your information (not to mention the impressive scope of Bacon’s work)

7. Have different email addresses for different things, i.e. an email for work, a personal email, and an email you give to online stores. This makes it harder for companies to flesh out a profile of you. You can also use an email cloaking device like Gliph.

8. Use different passwords for different sites. A lot of sites store your password and know your email login name. You may be thinking that there is no way you will be able to remember any password more complicated than “Password,” but take heart! LastPass can help you with that.

9. Regularly clear out the cookies and caches in your computer. Many companies will track you for months if you don’t clean these out. Cookies aren’t the only way companies track you, but it will help. http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner This site can be used to clean up your cache.

10. Use a service that removes your data from data brokers, like DeleteMe, Safe Shepherd and Catalog Choice. They usually charge a monthly fee and they won’t remove your online profile entirely, but it will help.

Related articles

The growing art of data dodging
CONSUMER PROFILER: Look up your data mining profile
Information Privacy risks and safeguards


Aug 12 2011

The End of Online Privacy? Fight the Internet Snooping Bill!

Category: Information PrivacyDISC @ 9:24 pm

The End of Online Privacy? Fight the Internet Snooping Bill! (Must watch/share)
HR1981 would force the company you pay for Internet access to store a year’s worth of personal data and hand it over at the request of law enforcement. For sake of protecting childern from Pornographers does not mean that you start collecting everybody data “just in case” they may commit crime in future.

The New York Post noted that if legislators were required to assign bills honest names, this one would read: Forcing Your Internet Provider to Spy On You Just in Case You’re a Criminal Act of 2011.

CLICK HERE TO EMAIL YOUR LAWMAKERS: http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/snooping_bill/


Jul 11 2011

Privacy and Law

Category: Information Privacy,Security and privacy LawDISC @ 1:55 pm

Your personal info is manageable and controlable most of the time as far as privacy is concern , until you have to use it for commercial use (to apply cxredit card, to apply for bank account or to apply for a job). then it depends on these commercial entities how they are goning to use, share, manage or secure your personal information. Most of the laws regarding privacy tells you how your privacy being violated but they leave to us how to make these commercial entities to protect our personal information or stop them from selling it to the highest bidder.

Below are the some of the privacy protection laws for consumers which you need to be aware of:

Privacy act of 1974: this legoslation prohibits the federal government from creating secret database on individuals and limits how agencies can share information. This give you the right to request your information and to sue the government for failing to follow the Act. This might be important to know for the people who are on the no fly list database. For more details check out http://www.epic.com/privacy/1974act/

Fair Credit Reporting Act: FCRA lets you access your cedit bureau records and corrects inaccuracies and it alos allows you to obtain free credit resport every year.

Telephone Consumer Protection Act: This law does not provides a whole lot of protection against telemarketing calls but TCPA made it illegal to send unsolicited fax advertisement.

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act: FERPA limits sharing of the students and lets you opt out.

Gramm leach Bliley Act: GLBA allows you to tell your bank to stop sharing your information with third parties.

Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act: HIPAA gives you access to your medical records and limits the disclosure of medical information by health care entity or provider

More on Privacy and Law


Jun 24 2011

How safe is your personal information on social network?

Category: Information PrivacyDISC @ 10:53 pm

With corporations, criminals and governments all looking to capture your information via the internet, how safe are you once you logon?

How to Be Invisible

How Disappear Erase Digital Footprint


Jun 12 2011

U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors

Category: Information Privacy,Information SecurityDISC @ 11:05 pm

By JAMES GLANZ and JOHN MARKOFF

The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”

Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.

The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.

Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe.

The State Department, for example, is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.

In one of the most ambitious efforts, United States officials say, the State Department and Pentagon have spent at least $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country. It is intended to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services, seemingly at will.

The effort has picked up momentum since the government of President Hosni Mubarak shut down the Egyptian Internet in the last days of his rule. In recent days, the Syrian government also temporarily disabled much of that country’s Internet, which had helped protesters mobilize.

The Obama administration’s initiative is in one sense a new front in a longstanding diplomatic push to defend free speech and nurture democracy. For decades, the United States has sent radio broadcasts into autocratic countries through Voice of America and other means. More recently, Washington has supported the development of software that preserves the anonymity of users in places like China, and training for citizens who want to pass information along the government-owned Internet without getting caught.

But the latest initiative depends on creating entirely separate pathways for communication. It has brought together an improbable alliance of diplomats and military engineers, young programmers and dissidents from at least a dozen countries, many of whom variously describe the new approach as more audacious and clever and, yes, cooler.

Sometimes the State Department is simply taking advantage of enterprising dissidents who have found ways to get around government censorship. American diplomats are meeting with operatives who have been burying Chinese cellphones in the hills near the border with North Korea, where they can be dug up and used to make furtive calls, according to interviews and the diplomatic cables.

The new initiatives have found a champion in Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose department is spearheading the American effort. “We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations,” Mrs. Clinton said in an e-mail response to a query on the topic. “There is a historic opportunity to effect positive change, change America supports,” she said. “So we’re focused on helping them do that, on helping them talk to each other, to their communities, to their governments and to the world.”

For remaining article on U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors

A version of this article appeared in print on June 12, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors..


Mar 04 2011

Alex Jones Exposes Google’s Plan to Dominate the Internet

Category: Information Privacy,Information SecurityDISC @ 10:55 pm

Net Neutrality at Stake – Check it out how it matters to your privacy and security


Expolre the titles below if Net Neutrality matters to you


Mar 02 2011

GPS ON CELL PHONES CAMERAS a PRIVACY ISSUE

Category: Information PrivacyDISC @ 3:08 pm

Big GOVERNMENT & CRIMINALS ADVANTAGE OVER US

  • Anyone who’s posted cell photos online: The bad guys can now tell the EXACT location where photos were taken.




  • more on how privacy is at risk and possible safeguards


    Dec 21 2010

    Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets

    Category: cyber security,Information PrivacyDISC @ 10:13 pm

    How a digital copier can become a treasure trove for an identity thief, because they have a hard drive which permanently store all images which have been digitally printed, scanned, faxed, emailed or copied on that printer. Storing images on the hard drive can be a huge threat to the security of an organization and a serious breach to the privacy law when these printers need maintenance, needed to be returned at end of a lease period or simply retired without erasing the data from the hard drive.

    Due diligence of erasing the data before an identity thief gets their paws on it is squarely falls on the shoulder of the organization who owns the digital printer.


    Aug 23 2010

    How a digital copier can be a treasure trove for a identity thief

    Category: Information Privacy,Information SecurityDISC @ 12:19 pm

    How a digital copier can become a treasure trove for an identity thief, because they have a hard drive which permanently store all images which have been digitally printed, scanned, faxed, emailed or copied on that printer. Storing images on the hard drive can be a huge threat to the security of an organization and a serious breach to the privacy law when these printers need maintenance, needed to be returned at end of a lease period or simply retired without erasing the data from the hard drive.

    Due diligence of erasing the data before an identity thief gets their paws on it is squarely falls on the shoulder of the organization who owns the digital printer.

    Below is the video which optimize the risk of digital copier


    Nov 05 2009

    Senate Panel Clears Data Breach Bills

    Category: Information Privacy,Security BreachDISC @ 6:29 pm

    The Senate's side of the Capitol Building in DC.
    Image via Wikipedia
    Legislation Heads for a Senate Vote

    November 5, 2009 – Eric Chabrow, Managing Editor
    The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday approved two companion bills that would require businesses and government agencies to notify individuals of security breaches involving sensitive personally identifiable information. Both bills go to the Senate for consideration.

    The Personal Data Privacy and Security Act, or S. 1490, designates as fraud unauthorized access of sensitive personally identifiable information, which would lead to racketeering charges. The measure, sponsored by Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (at left), D.-Vt., also would prohibit concealment of security breaches involved in fraud and prohibit the dismissal of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case if the debtor is an identity-theft victim.

    The other measure, the Data Breach Notification Act, or S. 139, would require federal agencies and businesses engaged in interstate commerce to notify American residents whose personal information is accessed when a security breach occurs. An exception: if notification would hinder national security or a law enforcement investigation. S. 139, sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D.-Calif., also would require notice to the Secret Service if records of more than 10,000 individuals are obtained or if the database breached has information on more than 1 million people, is owned by the federal government, or involves national security or law enforcement.

    Among the objections raised by Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the committee’s ranking Republican, and Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, focused on the provisions defining personally identifiable information (PII) to include an individual’s full name along with at least two of the following: the person’s birth date, home address, telephone number and mother’s maiden name.

    Sessions said this information is available from other public records, such as a telephone directory, and would place an undue financial burden on businesses to notify customers of the breach if that was the only information exposed. Kyl said if the bill results in too many notices being sent, consumers might ignore them, similar to how the public views the orange alert on terrorism. “With frequent notices, customers may not worry about it,” he said.

    Another objection raised by a few Republicans – a point dismissed by some of their Democratic colleagues – was the bankruptcy provision in the Leahy bill. The consensus of committee members was that a person victimized by identity theft should face bankruptcy but several GOP members worried that the provision might be used to get persons facing bankruptcy for other reasons off the hook if they also had their identities compromised.

    Still, Leahy said the legislation, first introduced four years ago, is overdue, and the public is clamoring for it. He cited a Unisys study that contends more Americans are concerned about identity theft than the H1N1 virus or meeting their financial obligations. Since 2005, the year the bill was first proposed, more than 340 million records containing sensitive PII have been involved in data breaches, he said, citing a Privacy Rights Clearinghouse report.

    “This loss of privacy is not just a grave concern for American consumers; it is also a serious threat to the economic security of American businesses,” Leahy said. “The president’s recent report on Cyberspace Policy Review noted that industry estimates of losses from intellectual property to data theft in 2008 range as high as $1 trillion. The FBI’s latest annual report on Internet crime found that online crime hit a record high in 2008 – a 33 percent increase over the previous year. This loss of data privacy is a serious and growing threat to the economic security of American businesses.”

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    Tags: Cyberspace Policy, Data Breach Notification, Dianne Feinstein, Identity Theft, loss of privacy, Personal Data Privacy and Security Act, Personally identifiable information, S. 139, S. 1490, Senate Judiciary Committee, United States Senate


    Apr 15 2009

    Growing social networks and widening threats

    Category: Information Privacy,MalwareDISC @ 2:08 am

    Jump on the social media bandwagon
    Image by Matt Hamm via Flickr
    The worm targeted a social network Twitter with four attacks and created havoc for couple of days. This worm happens to self replicated itself when clicked on but didn’t steal 6 million users personal information.
    According to SF chronicle article by Michael Liedtke (Apr. 14 2009, c2) Twitter deleted 10,000 tweets after a worm makes a squirm.

    “The worm was intended to promote a Twitter knock off, StalkDaily.com. It displayed unwanted messages on infected Twitter accounts, urging people to visit the website.”

    With all the resources of a big company Twitter was unable to quarantine the worm and the only way to get rid of the worm was to delete 10,000 Twitter messages, known tweets. The social network growth is widening the threats and making an inviting target for hackers and scam artist with a treasure trove of personal information. People personal and in some cases private information is up for grab unless we enact policy protections against these scam artists to pursue legal action.

    How to clean Twitter worm “StalkDaily” aka “Mikeyy”

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    Tags: facebook, San Francisco Chronicle, Social network, Twitter


    Apr 09 2009

    Social networks and revealing anonymous

    Category: Information PrivacyDISC @ 3:02 am

    Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
    Image via CrunchBase

    Privacy is a fundamental human right and in US a constitutional right. Advancement in technology are breaking every barrier to our privacy; at this rate individuals will be stripped of their privacy unless we enact policy protections. In this situation we need to define reasonable privacy for a society in general while keeping threats and public safety as a separate issue. Social networks are becoming a repository of sensitive information and usually privacy is anonymize by striping names and addresses. Fake profiles have been created on social network to be anonymous and a user may create multiple profiles with contradictory or fake information.

    Arvind Narayanan and Dr. Vitaly Shmatikov from Univ. of Texas at Austin established an algorithm which reversed the anonymous data back into names and addresses.

    The algorithm looks at the relationships between all the members of social networks an individual has established. More heavily an anonymous individual is involved in the social media, easier it gets for the algorithm to determine the identity of anonymous individual.

    One third of those who are both on Flickr & Twitter can be identified from the completely anonymous Twitter graph, which deduces that anonymity is not enough to keep privacy on social network. The idea of “de-anonym zing” social networks extends beyond Twitter and Flickr. It is equally applicable in other social networks where confidential and medical data can be exposed such as medical records in healthcare.

    “If an unethical company were able to de-anonymize the graph using publicly available data, it could engage in abusive marketing aimed at specific individuals. Phishing and spamming also gain from social-network de-anonymization. Using detailed information about the victim gleaned from his or her de-anonymized social-network profile, a phisher or a spammer will be able to craft a highly individualized, believable message”

    Now is it reasonable to say that social network wears no clothes?

    Personally identifiable information
    California Senate Bill 1386 defines “personal information” as follows:
    • Social security number.
    • Driver’s license number or California Identification Card number.
    • Account number, credit or debit card number, in combination with any required security code, access code, or password that would permit access to an individual’s financial account.

    Names, addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers do not fall under the scope of SB 1386.

    HIPAA Privacy defines “Individually identifiable health information” as follows
    1. That identifies the individual; or
    2. With respect to which there is a reasonable basis to believe the information can be used to identify the individual.
    The term “reasonable basis” leaves the defining line open to interpretation by case law.

    Arvind Narayanan and Dr. Vitaly Shmatikov paper.


    Social network privacy video


    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7gWEgHeXcA

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    Tags: Anonymity, Flickr, Personally identifiable information, privacy, Security, Social network, Twitter, Vitaly Shmatikov


    Dec 05 2008

    Telcos and information privacy

    Category: Information PrivacyDISC @ 2:26 pm

    Mobile Phone
    Image via Wikipedia

    With the economy in the tank, breach of privacy is not going to be a priority in Obama’s administration to do list. It will be quite difficult to make it a priority when Obama has signed a bill indemnifying telcos from suits due to privacy breaches.

    During the presidential election campaign, Verizon employee gained unauthorized access to President-elect Obama’s mobile phone records. You might assume that if telcos are having a hard time protecting the privacy of high profile individuals, how would that make you feel as a cell phone owner? Don’t you wonder why the mainstream media didn’t publicize this case of high profile privacy breach more widely?

    Basically Telcos have been immunized from privacy lawsuits so that big brother can snoop around our private phone records as they please. In this instance, law only applies to people and makes it illegal to snoop on each other but the telecom entities have been granted an exception by congress. Legal ruling require law enforcement to meet high “probable cause” standard before acquiring cell phone record. In recent report, document obtained by civil liberties group under FOIA request suggest that “triggerfish” technology can be used to pinpoint cell phone without involving cell phone provider and user knowing about it.

    Organizations should implement directive, preventive and detective controls to protect the privacy of information. Where directive controls include the policies, procedures, and training. Preventive controls deal with the separation of duties, principle of least privilege, network, application and data controls. Detective controls involve auditing, logging and monitoring.

    Verizon case shows lack of detective controls. Organization should have a clearly defined privacy policy which states that private information should be logged, monitored and audited. High profile individual should be identified and documented and reviews of audit logs should be conducted to identify inappropriate access to the privacy information of high profile individuals. The authorized person who has access to private information should be audited on regular basis to find out if they are following the privacy policies and procedures of the company. For privacy information, log who accessed which data, for who and when. Managers should train and monitor subordinate to help protect privacy information, which not only educate the subordinate but also serve as a major deterrence. Privacy is an essential ingredient of liberty and must be guarded with utmost due diligence.

    “Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” Benjamin Franklin

    Presidential Phone Compromised

    Privacy Debate: Shouldn’t Public Demand High Threshold?
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR6IEz4T7Yw

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    Tags: auditing, Barack Obama, breach of privacy, Civil liberties, detective, directive, Lawsuit, logging, mobile phone, monitoring, preventive, privacy, Security, tiggerfish, Verizon


    Oct 08 2008

    Skype and Information Privacy

    Category: Information PrivacyDISC @ 1:00 am

    According to an SF chronicle article by Peter Svensson (Oct 3, 2008, pg. c4) “A Canadian researcher (Nart Villeneuve) has discovered that the Chinese version of eBay Inc.’s Skype communication software snoops on text chats that contain keywords like “democracy”. “

    In other words, the Chinese version of Skype was used for surveillance of text messages between two users. Researcher Nart Villeneuve not only found that the application was filtering specific words but that it was also passing the messages caught by the filters to other servers. Because of poor security on those servers, Nart was able to recover more than a million messages from those servers.

    Well, based on Skype’s previous claim that messages between two systems are encrypted and only public keys on those systems can decrypt those messages, this is questionable. Also, this revelation does not agree with Skype’s claim that software discards the filtered messages.

    Now the question arises that how do we know that our text messages on Skype are not being tapped in the United States?

    Are privacy and security laws only applicable to consumers but not the corporations? If that’s true then our state of security and privacy is in pretty dire shape. It seems like consumers’ information is for sale to the higher bidder without our consent or appropriate compensation.

    Without any credible evidence, our Govt. should not be able to perform wholesale surveillance (profiling) for the sake of security. We are building a society of fear where everybody is under surveillance and is a suspect until proven innocent, which sounds like we are living in a police state.

    Laws of secrecy and unnecessary surveillance will ultimately diminish the fundamentals of democracy. To lift the cloud of secrecy behind these sorts of initiatives the public needs to put pressure on their public representatives to dig out the truth. Otherwise the mound of voluminous data from surveillance can be used to harass innocent people and be used as a tool to distract from reality.

    We cannot expect our information to be secure unless we trust our Govt. to protect our privacy and corporations to secure our information.

    Skype’s China Spying Uncovered
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60SFGH3lxLg


    (Free Two-Day Shipping from Amazon Prime). Great books

    Tags: compensation, credible evidence, democracy, dire shape, encrypted, filtering, poor security, reality, snoops, surveillance, voluminous


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