Brainlink

What the Supreme Court Giveth in 4th Amendment Protections (namely, GPS surveillance requires warrants), a lower court takes away in 5th Amendment protections.

Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops

Declan McCullagh

by Declan McCullagh January 23, 2012 3:35 PM PST

American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.

Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21–or face the consequences including contempt of court.

Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.

“I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well.

Ramona Fricosu, who is accused of being involved in a mortgage scam, has declined to decrypt a laptop encrypted with Symantec’s PGP Desktop that the FBI found in her bedroom during a raid of a home she shared with her mother and children (and whether she’s even able to do so is not yet clear).

via Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops | Privacy Inc. – CNET News.

Celebrate!! The 4th Amendment isn’t dead…yet.

The feds will need warrants to install GPS trackers on your vehicles.

From The Register:

US Supremes: GPS tracking requires warrant

‘Stop! In the name of the 4th Amendment…’

By Iain Thomson in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Law, 24th January 2012 01:29 GMT

The US Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that police need to request a warrant before attaching GPS tracking devices to suspects’ cars.

“We decide whether the attachment of a Global-Positioning-System (GPS) tracking device to an individual’s vehicle, and subsequent use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements on public streets, constitutes a search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,” the judgment reads. Their decision – after extensive hearings – was, at core, “Yes”.

The case reviewed by the Supremes revolved around Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner the police linked with the drug trade, and the decision to follow his car’s movements using a GPS tracking system. The police obtained a court order for the use of such a device, but were a day late in installing it. The data it obtained was then used to link Jones to a house containing $850,000 in cash, 97kg of cocaine, and a kilo of cocaine base.

via US Supremes: GPS tracking requires warrant • The Register.

Data Privacy Day: Social media ‘private’ data is fair game for e-discovery in court

Microsoft Trustworthy Computing released data about how posting on social networking sites can impact more than online profiles and reputation; it can also cause negative consequences in the real world. All that data, even the allegedly ‘private’ social media data, is not private but is fair game as e-discovery in civil litigation. Another study found who you are digitally on Facebook is who you are offline in real life. Lastly, the more data we overshare on social media, the more it becomes the “norm” for society . . . meaning for society as a whole, it lowers what is considered a reasonable expectation of privacy.

via Privacy and Security Fanatic: Data Privacy Day: Social media ‘private’ data is fair game for e-discovery in court.

I’ve waited a few days to post this, because with all things Google, there’s more obscured behind the clouds.

The US congress has a few questions for Google

Some old Congressional privacy watchdogs are nipping at Google’s heels

Whether any of this will improve the internet, privacy or cyber liberties is an open question.

What isn’t debatable is that Google is finally living up to Larry & Sergey’s grad school yearnings – they want to know you better than your mother, or your therapist does.

And as usual, The Register has the best take on the whole show.

Google finally admits it wants to OWN YOU

Big changes to Terms of Service due in March

Posted in Platform, 25th January 2012 10:14 GMT

Mountain View’s Chocolate Factory is putting its vast userbase on notice of major changes to its privacy policies.

Come 1 March the 350 million people worldwide who have Gmail accounts, for example, will no longer be able to use that service in isolation of other Google products they browse to online.

That’s because the company’s Terms of Service are changing.

Some will argue that Google is merely doing some neat housekeeping by cutting and shutting the majority of its 70 privacy policies into one clean explanation of what will happen with the information users input into the company’s array of products.

Others might note that these privacy tweaks are coming ahead of any public antitrust battle Google potentially faces on both sides of the Atlantic where formal regulatory probes of the world’s largest ad broker are already well underway.

…

Google is reasserting that ALL of its products relate back to its search estate. In other words, Page’s crew are insisting that the company only really offers one service online.

via Google finally admits it wants to OWN YOU • The Register.

Nietzsche declared “God is dead” (or “the death of God”) in Thus Spake Zarathustra.  For that work, and many others, he is widely created with creating whole new branches in Western philosophy.

In Indonesia, simply stating that “God does not exist” can land you in jail.

I wonder what the Indonesians (and others) would have done if Neitzsche were alive today.

From ZDNET:

31-year-old Alexander Aan faces up to fives years in prison after he declared himself an atheist on Facebook. The Indonesian man is in protective police custody because he fears physical assault.31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting “God does not exist” on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault.The posting was made on a Facebook Page titled Ateis Minang Minang Atheist, which Aan created. At the time of writing, it had over 1,700 Likes. Aan’s posting has been removed, but supporters on the Page are urging police to release him.

via Man faces five years for ‘God does not exist’ Facebook post | ZDNet.

“Google’s employees were instrumental in bypassing policy regarding pharmacy verification,” Mr. Whitaker told the Journal. “The websites were blatantly illegal.”

At the agents’ direction, Mr. Whitaker said he signaled his illegal intent to Google ad executives, including Google’s top manager in Mexico. As a tape recorder ran, he walked Google executives through the illegal parts of the websites. He said he told ad executives that U.S. Customs had seized shipments, for example, and that one client wanted to be “the biggest steroid dealer in the United States.”

The government’s case also contained potentially embarrassing allegations that top Google executives, including co-founder Larry Page, were told about legal problems with the drug ads.

Mr. Page, now Google’s chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting. “We simply know from the documents we reviewed and witnesses we interviewed that Larry Page knew what was going on,” he said in an interview after the August settlement.

via Con Artist Starred in Sting That Cost Google Millions – WSJ.com.

So let’s get this straight:

1) Symantec failed to stop the SONY Rootkit because Sony is a well-known multinational

2) Symantec released source code to the Indian Government without adequate protections

3) They’ve known about the breach for over 6 years, but until Anonymous threatened them, Symantec kept quite.

So, which is it?

Do Symantec’s DLP, AV and Security Software work, but Symantec FAILED to use them properly?

Or is their DLP/AV/firewall useless junk?

And will Symantec be compensating clients for lost time, failed security and productivity loss?

Threatened by Anonymous, Symantec tells users to pull pcAnywhere’s plug

Source code leaked [over 6] years ago, but now Anonymous hacking group has software in its sights

By Gregg Keizer

January 26, 2012 06:44 AM ET1

Computerworld – Symantec this week took the highly unusual step of telling users of its pcAnywhere remote access software to disable or uninstall the software while it fixes an unknown number of bugs.Security experts said the move was unprecedented for a company of Symantec’s size.”This is the first time I have seen a company of Symantec’s scale tell their customers to stop using a shipping product, especially one that many users depend on for remote access,” said HD Moore, chief technology officer of Rapid7, and the creator of the popular Metasploit penetration testing toolkit.”It’s certainly a new precedent for a security breach,” added Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security. “Talk about dirty laundry getting aired.”Symantec’s recommendation was blunt.”At this time, Symantec recommends disabling the product until we release a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks,” the company in a statement Wednesday.

via Threatened by Anonymous, Symantec tells users to pull pcAnywhere’s plug – Computerworld.

“Everything You Say Can And Will Be Used Against You, By Anybody, Now Or Decades Into The Future.”

Freedom of Speech

There are politicians trying to eliminate anonymity on the net. That’s a very, very dangerous game to play. Beside the fact that it will always be easily circumvented when people know they need to be anonymous, the danger lies in when people don’t think of that need.

Every day, we say things that we wouldn’t say in other contexts. We react to news with WTF-type blurts, we react to stupid politicians and greedy bankers with emotional statements.

via “Everything You Say Can And Will Be Used Against You, By Anybody, Now Or Decades Into The Future.” – Falkvinge on Infopolicy.

This Is Data Retention.

Would You Give It To Any Future Government?

A new visualization of cellphone location data surfaced on Engadget. While it was hailed as a cool visualization of location, it is something more: it is an insight into the powers taken by European governments by means of the Data Retention Directive.Would you want the Police to be able to see your movements and the movements of all of your friends like this? Would you want the Police under any future government and set of laws to be able to track and correlate how you and your friends move, in real time and in recorded history, like this?

Many people dismiss Data Retention with the “I have nothing to hide” shrug. That is dangerous, careless and ignorant of everything history has to teach us. If the former East European governments had had this kind of visualization on their dissidents, they would still be around. The governments, that is, not necessarily the dissidents.

via This Is Data Retention. Would You Give It To Any Future Government? – Falkvinge on Infopolicy.

ACMA finds Facebook photos are not private

By Brett Winterford on Dec 19, 2011 1:56 PM

Users offered no safety from Facebook-trawling.

Australia’s communications regulator has ruled that television networks are not breaking the industry’s code of practice when publishing photos lifted from a public Facebook profile.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority ACMA determined that Channel Seven did not breach the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice when it accessed and broadcasted photographs – specifically in the case of a deceased person lifted from a Facebook tribute page, and another which broadcasted the name, photograph and comments penned by a 14-year old boy.

via ACMA finds Facebook photos are not private – Security – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au.