Archives November 2014

Here’s a recent LifeHacker article that may be well received: a manual on how to turn off the “read receipt” feature in some of the most popular apps, including What’s App. And yes, that’s another one up for privacy.

I saw this Sky News clip earlier this week and thought I should share it. The 2 opposing views illustrate how these arguments could go on forever. But which side are you on?

Above from Sky News: The Campaign Director of the Don’t Spy On Us campaign, Mike Harris and the Director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, Professor Anthony Glees discuss whether the UK needs more anti-terror laws.

Interesting to know one of my favorite TV series “The West Wing” had privacy issues of today figured back in 1999.

Fancy rolling up your sleeves and doing something about the (continued) intrusions of your privacy and communications? Now here’s your chance.

The US Senate was just 2 votes shy last Tuesday on the USA Freedom Act, a surveillance reform bill which would have otherwise put a (legal) stop to the National Security Agency’ clandestine domestic surveillance programs and metadata collection as revealed by the Snowden revelations.

Here is a list of the senators and their respective votes:

And here’s a list of those 42 senators that voted NAYs – ie. they support more NSA surveillance – along with their social media handles so you can send them a personal Twitter message. Reckon they wouldn’t mind at all since they don’t value privacy, or respect your privacy to be precise. Besides it’s only their contact coordinates disclosed. Tell them how you feel about losing more than your contact coordinates, ie. your metadata and privacy. And share it with your friends, they may have something to tell those senators. So why are you waiting?

And here’s one to highlight:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he will appeal, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, after a Swedish appeals court upheld last Thursday an arrest warrant issued 4 years ago – for accusations of sexual assault and rape allegations that Assange said are false and politically motivated.

Meanwhile, Ecuador has voiced its continued support and guaranteed him political asylum for “as long as necessary”. So it looks like poor Assange will continue to live in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has stayed for more than 2 years to avoid extradition to Sweden, which he feared would then hand him over to the United States where a death penalty possibly awaits if he is convicted of uploading troves of US government secrets through WikiLeaks.

A media friend once revealed how a stranger called him to offer some leaks, tried to force him to disclose his sources (which he declined) when they met and eventually coerced him to cooperate or “bear the consequences”.

He sought my advice after running away from the stranger – that he assumed to be a Chinese spy – as he reckoned all his communication channels have been snooped. It was a fear he lives to this day.

I suppose he is not as “lucky” as these British journalists (see story below), who filed a lawsuit against the London’s Metropolitan Police and Britain’s Home Office after they discovered evidence of how the British police have spent years stalking and detailing their movements.

UK Police Spied on Reporters for Years, Docs Show

LONDON — Nov 21, 2014, 12:28 PM ET
By RAPHAEL SATTER Associated Press

Freelance video journalist Jason Parkinson returned home from vacation this year to find a brown paper envelope in his mailbox. He opened it to find nine years of his life laid out in shocking detail.

Twelve pages of police intelligence logs noted which protests he
covered, who he spoke to and what he wore all the way down to the color of his boots. It was, he said, proof of something he’d long suspected: The police were watching him.

“Finally,” he thought as he leafed through documents over a strong black coffee, “we’ve got them.”

Parkinson’s documents, obtained through a public records request, are the basis of a lawsuit being filed by the National Union of Journalists against London’s Metropolitan Police and Britain’s Home Office. The lawsuit, announced late Thursday, along with recent revelations about the seizure of reporters’ phone records, is pulling back the curtain on how British police have spent years tracking the movements of the country’s news media.

“This is another extremely worrying example of the police monitoring journalists who are undertaking their proper duties,” said Paul Lashmar, who heads the journalism department at Britain’s Brunel University.

The Metropolitan Police and the Home Office both declined to comment.

Parkinson, three photographers, an investigative journalist and a newspaper reporter are filing the lawsuit after obtaining their surveillance records. Parkinson, a 44-year-old freelancer who has covered hundreds of protests some of them for The Associated Press said he and his colleagues had long suspected that the police were monitoring them.

“Police officers we’d never even met before knew our names and seemed to know a hell of a lot about us,” he said.

Several journalists told AP the records police kept on them were sometimes startling, sometimes funny and occasionally wrong.

One intelligence report showed that police spotted Parkinson cycling near his then-home in northwest London and carried detailed information about him and his partner at the time.

Jules Mattsson, a 21-year-old journalist with the Times of London, says another record carried a mention of a family member’s medical history, something he says made him so upset he called the police to demand an explanation.

“No one could possibly defend this,” he said.

Jess Hurd, a 41-year-old freelance photographer and Parkinson’s partner, said she was worried the intelligence logs were being shared internationally.

“I go to a lot of countries on assignment,” she said. “Where are these database logs being shared? Who with, for what purpose?”

The revelations add to public disclosures about British police secretly seizing journalists’ telephone records in leak investigations. Several senior officers have recently acknowledged using anti-terrorism powers to uncover journalists’ sources by combing through the records.

Some police argue they’re hunting for corrupt officers, a particularly salient issue in the wake of Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which exposed how British tabloid journalists routinely paid officers in exchange for scoops.

It isn’t yet clear how often the practice takes place, but the admission drew concern in Parliament and outrage from media groups.
Lashmar, a member of the National Union of Journalists who is not involved in the lawsuit, said the specter of terrorism was pushing police to be bolder and bolder about how closely they watch the nation’s press.

“Police seem to have got the message that journalists are now fair game and you can surveil and watch them,” he said.

A video chip that purportedly supports the theories Putin has recently boosted Russian espionage activities given the rapidly deteriorating relations with the West (given his incursion into Ukraine) and fear of being surrounded by enemies.

The decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to leave the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia prematurely earlier this week, following a cold reception by other world leaders for his incursion into Ukraine, hit the global headlines but Putin, who bailed himself out on sleep deprivation grounds, might actually be laughing on his flight back to Moscow: his recognition of the rapidly deteriorating relations with the West and fear of being surrounded by enemies have probably justified his decision to beef up Russia’s espionage operations.

But it was probably for the same reason – the increased efforts in intelligence gathering – and its consequences that also prompted Putin to rush back to the Krelim.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry earlier this week, Poland “made such an unfriendly and incomprehensible step” to expel some of its diplomats and subsequently:

Russia undertook adequate response measures. Several Polish diplomats have left the territory of our country for the activities not compatible with their status.

The Russian media reported last weekend that Moscow has deported former Latvian parliamentarian Aleksejs Holostovs after its intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), alleged Holostovs of spying for both Latvia and America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine also reported last weekend that a female diplomat at the German embassy in Moscow was expelled after a Russian diplomat working in Bonn was forced to leave amid media reports the latter was a spy.

There could be more to come following these sudden frenzies on the deportations of suspected Russian spies, and Russia’s (usual) tit-for-tat response, much reminiscent of the Cold War era.

And speaking of the Cold War, here’s a nice wrap up (below) from The Moscow Times about 6 spies who have defined that era.

One lasting impression I had on Robert Hanssen (below) – a former US Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States for 22 years from 1979 to 2001 – was the book Spy: The Inside Story of How FBI’s Robert Hanssen Betrayed America which described Hanssen’s initial reaction when he was eventually caught:

“What took you so long?!”

Six Spies Who Defined the Cold War Era
The Moscow Times Nov. 17 2014 21:54

1. Aldrich Ames

Plagued by drinking problems and a propensity toward extramarital affairs, Ames was lured into spying for the Soviet Union by the promise of money. Over the course of nine years, he received $4.6 million for revealing at least eight CIA sources. He was arrested in 1994 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

2. Robert Hanssen

Also motivated by the siren’s song of money, Hanssen worked for both the Soviet Union and Russia. He was suspected of acting as a double agent on a number of occasions, but was only arrested in 2001 while dropping off a garbage bag full of information in a park near Washington D.C. The failure to identify him for several decades was described by the U.S. Justice Department as “possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history.” Hanssen was sentenced to life imprisonment.

3. Dmitri Polyakov

Both Hanssen and Ames reportedly exposed Polyakov’s work as a CIA agent. A Soviet major general and a high-ranking GRU military intelligence officer, Polyakov served as a CIA informant for 25 years, ultimately becoming one of the best sources for the agency, providing information on the growing rift between the Soviet Union and China. He was arrested by the KGB in 1986, sentenced to death and executed in 1988. According to CIA officers who worked with him, he provided the information out of principle, not for money.

4. Kim Philby

Philby was the most successful member of the Cambridge Five, a group of British spies who — driven by their socialist beliefs — defected to the Soviet Union. Philby was MI-6’s director for counter-espionage operations. In particular, he was responsible for fighting Soviet subversion activities in Western Europe. After arousing suspicion that he might be a defector, Philby was dismissed from his post and from MI-6 overall in 1956. He fled to the Soviet Union in 1963, where he lived until his death from heart failure in Moscow in 1988.

5. Oleg Gordievsky

After growing disenchanted with the KGB and the Soviet Union, Gordievsky, a KGB colonel, became a longtime high-ranking spy for MI-6. In 1982, he was promoted to manage Soviet espionage in Britain as a resident in the London Embassy. He was called back to Moscow on suspicion of working for a foreign power, but the British managed to smuggle him out of the country. He has lived in England ever since.

6. Arkady Shevchenko

Shevchenko was one of the highest-ranking Soviet officials to defect to the West. Working as undersecretary general of the United Nations, he became a CIA informant in 1975. Shevchenko was often referred to as a triple agent: While working as a Soviet diplomat at the UN, he was allegedly passing secrets to the U.S. In 1978 he fled to the U.S., dying of cirrhosis of the liver there in 1998.

It’s a fitting scene from the classic movie Gone with the Wind with the famous closing quote “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”.

The US Senate vote on the USA Freedom Act Tuesday night to rein in the NSA spying power came shy of just 2 votes of the 60 needed to take up the legislation, which would have otherwise stopped the controversial phone record metadata collection by the NSA

Any hope will now hinge on June next year as the legal grounds for the NSA phone snooping, as revealed by the Snowden revelations, under the Patriot Act will then expire – which means the NSA would require then new legislation to justify their access to these mass data.

A new software called Phantom Terrains, developed by London-based science writer Frank Swain, can now help the deaf listen to the sounds of wi-fi signals.

The software would utilize the wi-fi sensors of an iPhone to pick up, analyze and transform the invisible data around us – in the form of wi-fi networks and radio waves – into audible sound which are then sent wirelessly to a customized Bluetooth-enabled hearing aid – see video below.

But it turned out that we can also see wi-fi signals – see pictures above and below.

In a project called “A creative exploration of wireless spectres”, artist Luis Hernan used a “Kirilian device” to capture the images of invisible wireless networks that levitate around us at all times every day – the resulting eerie and ghost-like images are no surprise because Kirilian photography is often associated with paranormal activity.

AfriLeaks, a brand new anonymous whistleblowing platform, will be launched end November but unlike the renowned and established WikiLeaks, this African cousin will not be releasing secret information directly to the public.

“[AfriLeaks will] provide a secure tool for connectivity between the whistleblowers and the media who then investigate the substance and character of the leak,” according to Khadija Sharife of the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) – the organization that will host the platform – in a Deutsche Welle report earlier this week

According to Deustche Welle, unlike WikiLeaks’ aim to publish and disclose information, “AfriLeaks will be there to provide leads for stories to media and research organizations. The new platform will allow whistleblowers to choose the media or research organization to which they want to send the information”.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may be smiling. According to a biography (above), Assange described “going to Africa and testing my ground” in the early days of WikiLeaks where one of the very first story his whistleblowing platform broke was on Kenya – which was then fed to The Guardian who ran “The Looting of Kenya” as a front-page story. The article was subsequently picked up by the Kenyan media.

“From our point of view, the leak supported the idea that oppressed media organizations could suddenly be freed when a story that mattered to them – and which they couldn’t reveal on their own – was given legitimacy and the oxygen of international exposure first,” according to the book.

“We kept at it, kept publishing stuff that the African papers were too frightened to publish…”

Did you say you love conspiracy theories?

You’re in luck. Here’s one on Snowden from AMTV – Alternative Media Television.

Are you concerned that someone might be spying on you using drones, Google Glass or hidden cameras and microphones – and streaming the recording online? Fancy owning a gadget that can detect and disconnect these intrusive surveillance devices?

A new German product called Cyborg Unplug, now available for online order (at 52 Euros), is designed to block wireless surveillance where you are most vulnerable – in public spaces where the devices can be easily prying, and streaming online, without your knowledge.

“It sniffs the air for wireless signatures from devices you don’t want around, sending an alert to your phone when detected. Should the target device connect to a network you’ve chosen to defend, Cyborg Unplug will immediately disconnect them, stopping them from streaming video, audio and data to the Internet.”

But do note that whilst this Cyborg Unplug can disconnect the spying devices, it cannot prevent them from saving the video and audio recording locally. It’s only half the problem solved…

And equipments like the Cyborg Unplug are considered illegal in some countries, including the US.

Are you in trouble – still without any Christmas holiday plan? If that’s the case, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.

Have you ever (even secretly) fancy a holiday with absolute peace, ie. where no one can reach or find you AT ALL? Or is that even remotely possible? Seriously, in this post-Snowden era?

Now, there’s actually a place where you’ll find no modern conveniences at all – no cell phones, no wi-fi and not even digital cameras? And it’s in the US: Pocahontas County in West Virginia.

Now where are my tents and books…??

Business travels carry a huge price tag in security risks. Hence a common (but unspoken) practice amongst sleuths is particularly noteworthy: Avoid the biggest hotels in the biggest cities.

This is relevant because a Kaspersky Lab report (below) released earlier this week found a sophisticated industrial espionage campaign aimed at business executives using in-house wireless connections in luxury hotels across Asia, with thousands of victims since 2009 who otherwise believed they were using private and secure networks.

However, the risk with using hotel internet (both LAN and wireless) connections is nothing new.

The FBI has warned 2 years ago about malware being spread across hotel wi-fi systems.

And in the scandal involving former CIA director David Petraeus and his mistress Paula Broadwell (picture below) back in 2012, the way the FBI managed to trace emails sent by Broadwell from her hotel rooms also underscored the problems associated with using supposedly secure hotel internet connections – despite her attempt to shield her identity by using anonymous email accounts, the FBI were able to find out where the emails were sent from (ie. which cities, which wi-fi locations and which hotels) which eventually led to her name.

Previously on Shhh-cretly, several columns also highlighted the perilous voyage business travelers faced, especially in Asia and the risks go well beyond hotel internet connections. Some fellow sleuths are well aware of how some government would send their agents to break into hotel rooms when the house guests were out for the day. For example, a Shhh-cretly post 2 years ago revealed how the FBI had video footage, covertly taken in a hotel room somewhere in China, showing how Chinese agents broke in and swept through the belongings and laptop of an American businessman.

It also helps to know that the locks found on between 4 and 5 million hotel room doors worldwide can easily be opened by a simple hacking device.

And one is still not necessarily safe inside a hotel room, even if the door is locked and blocked. Spy gadgets may have been planted inside the room to snoop on the unwary house guests. And some rooms even have “spying walls“.

With these knowledge, some sleuths have gone to great lengths to protect themselves – such as planting a covert camera in the room, weighing a data-less laptop, with and without the battery, and the power plug before and after leaving the hotel room as well as hiding a SD card (which store all your data transferred from your laptop prior to a business trip, thus the data-less laptop) under the tongue, etc.

According to the Kaspersky report, “a key mystery remains how attackers appear to know the precise travel itinerary of each victim”.

Well, recall the Snowden revelations have also revealed that the British intelligence agency GCHQ had a secretive “Royal Concierge” program that broke into the global hotel booking system of some 350 luxury hotels for about 3 years, specifically to trace and wiretap the suites of traveling diplomats.

Now, has the world reached a state of paranoia?

Execs in Asian luxury hotels fall prey to cyber-espionage -study

By Eric Auchard
FRANKFURT Mon Nov 10, 2014 5:04am EST

Nov 10 (Reuters) – Security researchers have uncovered a sophisticated industrial espionage campaign that targets business executives in luxury hotels across Asia once they sign on to computers using in-room wireless connections they consider private and secure.

The attacks, which go well beyond typical cybercriminal operations, have claimed thousands of victims dating back to 2009 and continue to do so, Kaspersky Lab, the world’s largest private security firm, shows in a report published on Monday.

Executives from the auto, outsourced manufacturing, cosmetic and chemical industries have been hit, the security firm said. Others targeted include military services and contractors.

In 2012, the FBI issued a general warning to U.S. government officials, businessmen and academics, advising them to use caution when updating computer software via hotel Internet connections when travelling abroad (1.usa.gov/1xAP4YI).

Kaspersky’s report goes further in detailing the scale, methods and precise targeting of these attacks on top business travelers. (bit.ly/1xcU0Gs)

The movements of executives appear to be tracked as they travel, allowing attackers to pounce once a victim logs on to a hotel Wi-Fi network. Hackers cover their tracks by deleting these tools off hotel networks afterward.

“These attackers are going after a very specific set of individuals who should be very aware of the value of their information and be taking strong measures to protect it,” said Kurt Baumgartner, principal security researcher for Kaspersky, the world’s largest privately held cybersecurity firm.

Unsuspecting executives who submit their room number and surname while logging on to their hotel room’s wireless network are tricked into downloading an update to legitimate software such as Adobe Flash, Google Toolbar or Microsoft Messenger, Kaspersky said. Because attacks happen at sign-on, encrypted communications set up later offer no defence against attack.

The same elite spying crew has used advanced keystroke-logging software and encryption-breaking at multiple hotel chains across Asia, it said.

Kaspersky declined to name the executives involved or the luxury destinations targeted but said it had informed the hotels as well as law enforcement officials in affected locations.

Ninety percent of the victims came from five countries — Japan, Taiwan, China, Russia and South Korea. Business travelers to Asia from Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland and the United States have also been duped, Baumgartner said.

The Kaspersky report said a key mystery remains how attackers appear to know the precise travel itinerary of each victim, which points to a larger compromise of hotel business networks that researchers say they are continuing to probe. (Reporting By Eric Auchard; Editing by Clara Ferreira Marques)

More than 50 well known musicians, actors and Nobel laureates (full list below) have shown their support for Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers like WikiLeaks and they are encouraging the public, through their social media outlets, to donate to the Courage Foundation which oversees the official legal defense fund for Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers, as well as fights for whistleblower protections worldwide.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reported that actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt (best remembered for his roles in “Lincoln,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Inception” – photo above) has been confirmed to play Snowden in a movie to be directed by Oliver Stone, who has won best director Oscars for “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July”. Stone is also noted for his political films like “JFK”, “Nixon” and “Looking for Fidel”.

According to a press release Monday, the list of signatories in support of Snowden includes:

Udi Aloni
Pamela Anderson
Anthony Arnove
Etienne Balibar
Alexander Bard
John Perry Barlow
Radovan Baros
David Berman
Russell Brand
Victoria Brittain
Susan Buck-Morss
Eduardo L. Cadava
Calle 13
Alex Callinicos
Robbie Charter
Noam Chomsky
Scott Cleverdon
Ben Cohen
Sadie Coles
Alfonso Cuaròn
John Deathridge
Costas Douzinas
Roddy Doyle
Bella Freud
Leopold Froehlich
Terry Gilliam
Charlie Glass
Boris Groys
Michael Hardt
P J Harvey
Wang Hui
Fredric Jameson
Brewster Kahle
Hanif Kureishi
Engin Kurtay
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Nadir Lahiji
Kathy Lette
Ken Loach
Maria Dolores Galán López
Sarah Lucas
Mairead Maguire
Tobias Menzies
M.I.A.
W. J. T. Mitchell
Moby
Thurston Moore
Tom Morello
Viggo Mortensen
Jean-Luc Nancy
Bob Nastanovich
Antonio Negri
Brett Netson
Rebecca O’Brien
Joshua Oppenheimer
John Pilger
Alexander Roesler
Avital Ronell
Pier Aldo Rovatti
Susan Sarandon
Peter Sarsgaard
Assumpta Serna
Vaughan Smith
Ahdaf Soueif
Oliver Stone
Cenk Uygur
Yanis Varoufakis
Peter Weibel
Vivienne Westwood
Tracy Worcester
Slavoj Zizek

A federal judge, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, ruled last week that the FBI’s futuristic facial-recognition database requires scrutiny from open-government advocates because of the size and scope of the surveillance technology as well as privacy concerns – see story below.

Quick background: The FBI announced in late September its US$1 billion facial recognition program – the Next Generation Identification (NGI) System – was finally up and running. In development since at least 2008, “the NGI System was developed to expand the Bureau’s biometric identification capabilities, ultimately replacing the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) in addition to adding new services and capabilities”.

Privacy groups are concerned that the NGI System becomes invasive by collecting images of people suspected of no wrongdoing.

Federal Judge Says Public Has a Right to Know About FBI’s Facial Recognition Database

By Dustin Volz National Journal November 7, 2014

A federal judge has ruled that the FBI’s futuristic facial-recognition database is deserving of scrutiny from open-government advocates because of the size and scope of the surveillance technology.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said the bureau’s Next Generation Identification program represents a “significant public interest” due to concerns regarding its potential impact on privacy rights and should be subject to rigorous transparency oversight.

“There can be little dispute that the general public has a genuine, tangible interest in a system designed to store and manipulate significant quantities of its own biometric data, particularly given the great numbers of people from whom such data will be gathered,” Chutkan wrote in an opinion released late Wednesday.

Her ruling validated a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center that last year made a 2010 government report on the database public and awarded the group nearly $20,000 in attorneys’ fees. That government report revealed the FBI’s facial-recognition technology could fail up to 20 percent of the time. Privacy groups believe that failure rate may be even higher, as a search can be considered successful if the correct suspect is listed within the top 50 candidates.

“The opinion strongly supports the work of open-government organizations and validates their focus on trying to inform the public about government surveillance programs,” said Jeramie Scott, national security counsel with EPIC.

Privacy groups, including EPIC, have long assailed Next Generation Identification, which they argue could be used as an invasive means of tracking that collects images of people suspected of no wrongdoing. The program—a biometric database that includes iris scans and palm prints along with facial recognition—became “fully operational” this summer, despite not undergoing an internal review, known as a Privacy Impact Assessment, since 2008. Government officials have repeatedly pledged they would complete a new privacy audit.

FBI Director James Comey has told Congress that the database would not collect or store photos of ordinary citizens, and instead is designed to “find bad guys by matching pictures to mug shots.” But privacy groups contend that the images could be shared among the FBI and other agencies, including the National Security Agency, and even with state motor-vehicle departments.

In his testimony, given in June, Comey did not completely refute that database information could potentially be shared with states, however.

Government use of facial-recognition technology has undergone increasing scrutiny in recent years, as systems once thought to exist only in science fiction movies have become reality. TheNew York Times reported on leaks from Edward Snowden revealing that the NSA intercepts “millions of images per day” across the Internet as part of an intelligence-gathering program that includes a daily cache of some 55,000 “facial-recognition quality images.”

The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment regarding whether it will appeal Chutkan’s decision.

The FBI announced last week that law enforcement agencies including the bureau, the Department of Homeland Security and Europol have arrested 26-year old San Francisco resident Blake Benthall (below) who was allegedly the operator and administrator – under the handle “Defcon” – of the online drugs marketplace Silk Road 2.0, just a year after the original Silk Road’s alleged mastermind, Russ Ulbricht, was also arrested in San Francisco.

According to related court documents, Benthall was charged last Friday with narcotics trafficking, as well as conspiracy charges related to money laundering, computer hacking, and trafficking in fraudulent identification documents – which Benthall reportedly “admitted to everything”.

“The website [Silk Road 2.0] has operated on the “Tor” network, a special network of computers on the Internet, distributed around the world, designed to conceal the true IP addresses of the computers on the network and thereby the identities of the network’s users,” according to the FBI.

The globally coordinated effort involving 17 nations dubbed Operation Onymous – obviously as opposed to the “anonymous” Tor network – has reportedly led to 17 arrests and a seizure of more than 400 “hidden services” and darknet domains, $1 million in bitcoins, $250,000 in cash plus a variety of drugs, gold and silver.

It later emerged there were actually just over 27 sites seized – including Silk Road 2.0 – instead of more than 400 as initially reported: the FBI spokesperson David Berman later clarified the 400 URLs amounted only to a dozen or so sites.

However, several pertinent questions surfaced:

– Is Tor still safe given the FBI has obviously broken (how?) into it?

– Is the world really a safer place after the FBI shut down a major “darknet” marketplace? What makes the authorities rule out the emergence of a more secure, bigger and effective Silk Road 3.0? (The FBI said in its press release that “Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cyber-criminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired.”)

– How much of taxpayers’ monies were spent to make these 17 arrests in 17 nations with this global operation?

The authorities hate smartphone encryption and it shows. And they’re in concerted efforts to wage a war against it.

In echoing the recent messages from FBI director James Comey and GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan, former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker told the Web Summit audience in Dublin earlier this week that the moves by Google and Apple and others to encrypt user data was more hostile to western intelligence gathering than to surveillance by China or Russia.

In a conversation with Guardian special projects editor James Ball, Baker used Blackberry as an example:

Encrypting user data had been a bad business model for Blackberry, which has had to dramatically downsize its business and refocus on business customers. “Blackberry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now – that has not ended well for Blackberry,” said Baker.

“But I’ve worked with these companies and as soon as they get a law enforcement request no matter how liberal or enlightened they think they are, sooner to later they find some crime that is so loathsome they will do anything to find that person and identify them so they can be punished.

This latest anti-encryption blabbing drew quick defense from Blackberry COO Marty Beard, who found Baker’s remarks “don’t make any sense”.

“Security is a topic that’s increasing in importance,” Beard told the audience at FedScoop’s FedTalks event Thursday. “It’s the reason that all G7 countries and the G20 work with BlackBerry.

“We just see it growing in importance. The increasing cybersecurity threats are exploding, security across all [technology] layers is critical.”

Do not be surprised to find yourself and your treasured private space broadcast round the clock and around the world if whoever installed the security surveillance systems at your home, office or the public areas simply left the default login and password unchanged.

The still images captured (with high-speed broadband) below are just some samples for illustration – the compromised CCTV cameras were conveniently categorized by countries and cities plus the details and exact coordinates like:

– Latitude
– Longitude
– ZIP code
– Time zone
– Channels
– Manufacturer (of the camera)
– Default login
– Default password

According to the web site:

Here you can see thousands of such cameras located in a cafes, shops, malls, industrial objects and bedrooms of all countries of the world. To browse cameras just select the country or camera type.

This site has been designed in order to show the importance of the security settings. To remove your public camera from this site and make it private the only thing you need to do is to change your camera password.

Photo: Someone bought the latest iPhone in Rome, Italy?

Photo: Early diners at a restaurant in Coruna, Spain.

Photo: Someone bothering a receptionist in Krasnodar, Russia?

Photo: She’s probably lost in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Photo: He switched off the lights in a staff quarters at the end of the day in Berlin, Germany.

Photo: A quiet part of Baker Street in London, England.

Photo: A busy gardener in San Felipe, Chile.

Photo: No one’s home in Austin, USA.

Photo: Home in Lo Prado, Chile.

Photo: Home in Kawasaki, Japan.

Glenn Greenwald appeared recently on CNN’s Reliable Sources to discuss his role in the new Snowden documentary “CitizenFour” and his second source at the NSA.

Question: If the NSA managed to threaten and make Internet and technology giants like Yahoo, Google, Apple, Facebook, etc to hand over our metadata, who else could they target?

The US Postal Service?

And why not – since the information like names, addresses and postmark dates of both the senders and recipients conveniently splashed on the package covers could provide valuable investigative leads to law enforcement agencies?

As it turned out, the USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) — the internal watchdog of the postal service – found that “USPS captured information from the outside of about 49,000 pieces of consumer mail in 2013 and turned much of it over to law enforcement organizations throughout the country, unbeknownst to the intended senders and recipients” – see full story below.

And why then should one trust the postal services outside the US – given the Snowden revelations also revealed how intelligence agencies across the globe have duly followed the NSA leads?

The US Postal Service has been quietly surveilling more mail than anyone thought

Program captured information from the outside of 49,000 pieces of mail in 2013 alone, sharing it with law enforcement agents

By Carl Franzen on October 28, 2014 02:15 pm

Snail mail is growing steadily less popular thanks to the internet, but people in the US still send lots of it every year — over 158 billion pieces of mail were handled by the US Postal Service in 2013 alone. As it turns out, the USPS has also been quietly spying on way more of the mail passing through its doors than previously acknowledged. A report from the agency’s internal watchdog — the USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) — found that USPS captured information from the outside of about 49,000 pieces of consumer mail in 2013 and turned much of it over to law enforcement organizations throughout the country, unbeknownst to the intended senders and recipients. This information reportedly did not include the contents of letters and packages, but rather was limited to the information appearing only on the exterior, such as names, addresses, and postmark dates.

The report on the USPS information capturing program, called “mail covers,” was initially published to little fanfare over the summer and subsequently reported on by Politico, but is getting more attention now with an article appearing today in The New York Times that includes additional details.

First some background: the mail covers program is hardly new, it’s been in existence for over a hundred years, as The Times notes. It’s also not as invasive as a full search warrant for the contents of mail, which the USPS also grants (although only for federal search warrants; state search warrants aren’t accepted by the agency). In a guide for law enforcement agencies, the USPS explains exactly how the program works: a police officer/law enforcement agent needs to be already conducting an investigation into a suspected felony and have the names and addresses for their intended surveillance targets. The officer must send this information to the USPS through the mail or provide it verbally (in person or over the phone), along with a reason why the mail cover is needed. Then the USPS will begin capturing the information from the exterior of all the targets’ incoming and outgoing mail for up to 30 days (although extensions are available). The USPS says that “information from a mail cover often provides valuable investigative leads,” but adds that it “is confidential and should be restricted to those persons who are participating in the investigation.”

However, as the OIG report found, there are numerous problems with the way the USPS has been running the mail covers program. For starters, the USPS has a mail cover app that apparently doesn’t work very well and is blamed for the agency continuing to capture information from the mail of 928 targets even after the surveillance period was supposed to have ended. The USPS also appears to have started mail cover surveillance on targets without sufficient justification from law enforcement as to why it was needed, and some USPS employees didn’t even keep the written justification on file like they were supposed to. And in a further failure of duty, several mail covers weren’t started on time. Perhaps most troubling of all, the USPS doesn’t appear to have been accurately reporting the total number of mail covers in its official records provided to the Times under Freedom of Information Act requests, which show only 100,000 total requests for mail surveillance between 2001 and 2012 (an average of 8,000 a year, way fewer than the 49,000 mail covers acknowledged in the OIG report). The USPS said it agreed with the findings of the OIG report and would work to implement changes, but for an agency already struggling with how to move into the future, the findings are hardly good news.

Previously on Shhh-cretly, we reported how the FBI could legally impersonate someone’s identity to create a phony Facebook account in that person’s name without that person’s knowledge in order to reach out to suspected criminals – and separately the NSA also disguised itself as Facebook servers in order to gain access to the computers of intelligence targets.

Well the buck doesn’t stop there. It turned out that the FBI, in the spirits of catching suspects, was also involved in planting fake news stories: The editor of The Seattle Times found out only last week that the FBI made a mock-up of the publication’s website in 2007 in order to spread spyware onto the computer of a suspect.

The FBI is reportedly defending its right to rely on such tactics to prevent “possible act of violence” – and let’s not forget FBI director James Comey is not impressed with Apple and Google phones being “too secure” and he’s been busy making his rounds pressurizing the Congress to force Apple and Google to do away with their new default smartphone encryption so that the bureau can access those devices, in the namesake of law enforcement of course.

Or do you think the bureau has gone well overboard and beyond its restraints?