Everyone faces this THREAT. The RISK increases depending on the
payoff. (What makes us think the hack was on Jeff Bezos’ end?)
Bezos Case
Exposes Billionaires' Vulnerability to Hackers
The stunning revelation that a tabloid obtained
below-the-belt selfies of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos -- the world's
richest man -- suggests that even billionaires are not out of the
reach of hackers.
… "It's a curious irony that billionaires
demonstrate astounding acumen related to their own industries, and
yet seemingly ignore the minutiae of common-place security measures."
Johnson sees billionaires and top executives as
especially vulnerable because their personal information is a gold
mine for criminals, intelligence agencies and competitors.
Another example of: “We can, therefore we must!”
In just two
years, 9,000 of these cameras were installed to spy on your car
The surveillance state is no longer limited to the
state.
For years, police departments have been tracking
people’s cars with cameras that capture the license plate number of
every vehicle that passes by. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
San Francisco-based digital privacy nonprofit, has described the
technology as “a form of mass
surveillance.”
Now, a new generation of tech firms has made it
possible for private citizens to use the devices, known as automatic
license plate readers, or ALPRs—without the strict oversight that
governs this type of data collection by law enforcement.
Putting ALPR into civilian hands allows for a
broad range of new applications, including customer service and
school security. But it also raises untold numbers of new legal and
ethical issues, few of which have yet been tested in the courts,
experts warn.
… At least one company, OpenALPR, offers
software for free, on Github. Anyone who downloads it can turn a
single web-connected camera into an automatic license plate reader
that can monitor
traffic across a four-lane highway with 99% accuracy. (Customers
pay between $49 and
$995 monthly for optional cloud-based storage and analysis.)
… Unlike police and other law enforcement
users of ALPR, private citizens are not beholden to constitutional
protections barring unlawful search and seizure, or racial profiling,
for example.
This is easy enough to check. If the government
is concerned about the use of foreign software, ban it!
Senators
Concerned Over DHS Employees Using Foreign VPNs
United States senators have voiced concerns over
the use of foreign-made Virtual Private Network (VPN) applications
within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
VPN services promise improved security and privacy
when browsing the Internet by routing all of the user’s traffic
through the provider’s servers, and a large number of people,
including mobile users, have adopted such services for increased
online privacy.
Furthermore, users are also adopting data-saving
apps, including mobile browsers such as Dolphin, Yandex, and Opera,
which route traffic through their servers and compress it before
serving them to the user, to provide data-saving functionality.
… “We
are particularly concerned about the potential threat posed by
foreign-made apps that are affiliated with countries of national
security concern and urge you to examine the national security risk
they pose,” the letter reads (PDF).
We
could do this here, if we wanted honest elections.
Switzerland
Launches Bug Bounty Program for E-Voting Systems
Switzerland
has been conducting e-voting trials since 2004 and the national
postal service, Swiss Post, now believes it has developed a fully
verifiable system that can make e-voting widely available in the
country.
The
security of the e-voting system is being tested by an “accredited
body,” but Swiss Post is also launching a bug bounty program open
to hackers from all around the world.
White hat hackers can sign up on onlinevote-pit.ch,
and between February 25 and March 24 they will be given the chance to
conduct penetration testing on both the frontend and backend of the
e-voting system.
..
The source code for the e-voting system is publicly available, but
Swiss Post noted that source code vulnerabilities must be reported
separately if they cannot be exploited against the test system.
It could happen here.
Not just
porn, Indian telecom firms are blocking other websites, too
Over three months after the Indian government
banned
hundreds of porn websites, internet users from across the country
are reporting blocked access to a wide variety of other online
services. These include VPN (virtual private network) and proxy
sites, torrent sites, the website for the messaging platform
Telegram, and even the audio-streaming site Soundcloud.
… Many of the reports were by people who said
they were blocked out of proxy sites and VPNs, something that the
telecom firm Reliance Jio was
accused of by Indian Reddit users last month. Among other
things, proxy sites often allow Indians to navigate bans and access
websites barred by the government.
… When Quartz tried accessing Soundcloud
through a Jio connection in Delhi, the web page displayed a note
saying the user was “not authorised to access” the webpage, in
compliance with India’s department of telecommunications (DoT).
A summary.
Sherlock at
scale: Law enforcement enters the connected age
GNC:
“Crime is common,” Sherlock Holmes said in the 1892 novel, The
Adventure of the Copper Beeches. “Logic is rare. Therefore it is
upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.”
Holmes famously used his intellect to make deductions about crimes
and solve them. For him, logic was the linchpin, helping him
associate disparate pieces of evidence. For law enforcement agencies
today, it’s not only logic, but connections and relationships that
are key in successfully using data as the foundation of information,
knowledge and wisdom for decision-making. So how can today’s law
enforcement agencies leverage technology to mitigate crime and do
their jobs better in the connected age? Here are three ways…”
One doesn’t often think of Facebook as a source
of free software.
How
Facebook Has Changed Computing
Over the past 15 years, Facebook
has changed the way we keep in touch with friends, how we feud with
family members, how we think about privacy, and how we consume
Russian propaganda—not always for the better. But Facebook also
changed computing. From Netflix to Uber to Walmart’s website, many
of the apps and services we use every day are built with technologies
that Facebook developed and then shared with the world.
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