“Well, we can't divide markets by
talking directly with our competitors...”
How
America’s Top Tech Companies Created the Surveillance State
National Journal – They’ve
been helping the government spy on people for a very long time. The
cozy relationships go back decades. By Michael
Hirsh – July 25, 2013
“The saga of the private sector’s
involvement in the NSA’s scheme for permanent mass surveillance is
long, complex, and sometimes contentious. Often, in ways that
appeared to apply indirect pressure on industry, the NSA has
demanded, and received, approval authority—veto power,
basically—over telecom mergers and the lifting of export controls
on software. The tech industry, in more than a decade of
working-group meetings, has hashed out an understanding with the
intelligence community over greater NSA access to their systems,
including the nation’s major servers (although it is not yet clear
to what degree the agency had direct access). “I never saw [the
NSA] come and say, ‘We’ll do this if you do that,’ ” says
Rebecca Gould, the former vice president for public policy at Dell.
“But the National Security Agency always reached out to companies,
bringing them in. There are working groups going on as we speak…
Most of this co-opting of the private sector has happened with the
full-throated support of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress,
again behind closed doors. Today, Hayden says, the agency itself is
all but indistinguishable from the private sector it has exploited.
Its best technology is designed by the private sector—“There
isn’t a phone or computer at Fort Meade that the government owns,”
he says—and its surveillance systems are virtually interwoven with
their products. The huge controversy over Snowden’s employment by
one of these private contractors, Booz Allen Hamilton, was just the
barest tip of the iceberg, according to intelligence and industry
officials. One by one, [former NSA Director Michael] Hayden says,
the NSA contracted with companies to “make them part of our team,”
as he puts it.”
This got me thinking, perhaps what this
country needs is a Chief Surveillance Ombudsman.
Annual
Report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner to Prime Minister and
to Scottish Ministers
“The powersand duties of the
Surveillance Commissioners in scrutinising and deciding whether to
approve authorisations under PA97 (property interference) and under
RIPA and RIP(S)A (intrusive surveillance) have been explained in
earlier reports and are publicly available on our website. For
reasons explained later in this report, necessary legislation is not
yet implemented to enable the Commissioners to give prior approval to
some authorisations relating to a law enforcement Covert Human
Intelligence Source (CHIS–commonly termed an undercover officer).
My Inspectors continue to scrutinise the authorisation of any such
undercover officer who has been authorised for an uninterrupted
period exceeding 12 months.”
How should I classify this? Unintended
good from an evil malware scheme? Just another dumb criminal?
Man
gets fake FBI child porn alert, arrested for child porn
As far as I am aware, the FBI doesn't
usually send you a pop-up online notice, asking if you could kindly
pay a fine for child pornography.
Perhaps I should check with Edward
Snowden to be sure.
Still, 21-year-old Virginian Jay Riley
was sufficiently stunned to receive a pop-up "FBI Warning"
telling him to pay a fine for child pornography that he went to his
local police station in Prince William County.
As
WJLA-TV reports it, Riley asked if he was, indeed, wanted on
child pornography charges.
In what seems like a helpful and open
frame of mind, he allegedly offered the police his computer for
examination.
There, the police allegedly found child
pornography.
… The pop-up was an example of
Reveton ransomware, which monitors those who might log on to a
questionable Web site and then tries to extort money from them.
It claims to lock the user's computer
unless a fine is paid.
For my Website Development students.
Sometimes you want to reverse engineer a site.
… Cyotek WebCopy is a free
to use desktop application for Windows computers. The app
is sized at nearly 4 MB and is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, and
7. The function of the application is to let you download entire
websites onto your local storage device.
… In addition to these features,
the app lets you analyze websites and also specify passwords for any
secure site areas.
Related: WinWSD,
How
To Save A Complete Webpage For Offline Reading, 3
Easy Ways To Send a Complete Web Page via Email.
Always looking for storys about
applications for Math. (Esp. from respectable sources)
The
Science of Winning Poker
… The U.S. government's ban on the
major online poker sites in 2011 reined in enthusiasm, but the game
has continued to grow in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
This
growth over the past decade has been accompanied by a profound change
in how the game is played. Concepts from the branch of mathematics
known as game theory have inspired new ideas in poker strategy and
new advice for ordinary players. Poker is still a game of reading
people, but grasping the significance of their tics and twitches
isn't nearly as important as being able to profile their playing
styles and understand what their bets mean.
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