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Publicerad den 9 december 2013
A new Edward Snowden release sheds light on a spy agency obsessed with online video games and the possibility of terrorists using them to plan attacks. Also, a new report surfaced revealing the FBI has the capabilities to hack into computer cams and collect live images. RT's Sam Sacks examines both tactics and questions whether or not the NSA is using their resources effectively.***
http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/must-skakas-av-en-ny-porrskandal/
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Publicerad den 9 dec 2013
Abby Martin goes over the latest NSA
revelations which outline how the agency has spied on online gamers in
the World of Warcraft and Second Life, calling out how taxpayer dollars
are squandered in these fruitless counter terrorism efforts.***
NSA:s trollande agenter jagade terrorister i online-spelet "World of WarCraft"
-NSA seeks to ‘convert’ students into intelligence work-
SvaraRaderaDecember 10, 2013
The US National Security Agency has hundreds of teens and college students on its payroll, thanks to a recruiting effort aimed at wooing would-be writers and aspiring producers into the intelligence community.
In an effort to identify prospects for its college internship program and its “High School Work Study Program,” the agency places advertisements on employment websites each autumn and contacts campuses throughout the US.
NSA recruiters are seeking college upperclassmen with at least a 3.0 grade point average who are pursuing “writing, editing, journalism” or “television production, motion picture production, or 3-D animation,” among other fields, according to a report published in Salon on Tuesday.
Young men and women are tempted with a “competitive salary” and government-subsidized housing near the NSA headquarters at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Duties include spreading “accurate and timely information” regarding the NSA’s “missions and accomplishments.”
Potential employees must also be able “to be granted a security clearance,” a process the agency describes as “lengthy” on its website.
“The background investigation helps determine the applicant’s honesty, trustworthiness, reliability, discretion, and unquestioned loyalty to the United States,” the NSA’s hiring policy states.
“During the background investigation, previous and current employment, education and residence are verified, and interviews are conducted with knowledgeable sources such as friends, neighbors, supervisors, and co-workers. In addition, credit and police checks are conducted to ensure that the applicant meets the high personnel security standards for access to Sensitive Compartmented Information,” it continues. [...]
http://rt.com/usa/nsa-hiring-teenagers-college-students-024/
-‘We cannot trust them anymore’: Engineers abandon encryption chips after Snowden leaks-
SvaraRaderaRT December 10, 2013
The developers of the FreeBSD operating system say they no longer trust computer processor chips manufactured by two of the top tech companies — and cite National Security Agency secrets spilled by former contractor Edward Snowden as the reason why.
Journalist Richard Chirgwin of the UK IT website The Register reported on Monday this week that the developers of the free, Unix-like OS have abandoned faith in two random number generators — Intel’s “RDRAND” and Taiwanese company Via Technology's “Padlock”— after leaked NSA documents attributed to Mr. Snowden have suggested that the United States government and their allies at foreign intelligence agencies have compromised the security of major cryptographic tools.
Chirgwin was the first reporter to catch wind of the news that FreeBSD decided during a developer summit in Malta this past September to relinquish trust in those companies’ random number generators, or RNGs, and meeting minutes obtained by Dan Goodin of the website Ars Technica confirms that programmers became suspicious after leaked documents within the trove pilfered by Snowden accused the NSA of breaking widely-used encryption protocols.
FreeBSD has until now relied on a “random generator framework” within the OS, according to the notes spotted by Chirgwin, containing three RNGs: RDRAND, Padlock and another named Yarrow, designed in 1999 by security wiz Bruce Schneier, among others. Individually and in tandem, these generators rely on digital entropy to randomize a computer’s output, thus masking operations through multiple layers of encryption that were once thought largely impossible to crack. Recently leaked NSA documents, however, have suggested otherwise.
The OS is on the verge of releasing their latest version, FreeBSD 10, but any users that upgrade to that edition won’t be able to rely solely on Intel or Via’s RNGs anymore. [...]
http://rt.com/usa/snowden-leak-rng-randomness-019/
-Pirate Bay moves to Ascension Island following domain name seizure-
SvaraRaderaDecember 10
Under pressure once again from the entertainment industry, The Pirate Bay has upped sticks and moved to a new .AC domain, based on the isolated volcanic Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
The move comes after the website’s previous domain registry in Sint Maarten - a Dutch protectorate - was seized.
The Pirate Bay team said the website’s former .SX domain appears to have been seized overnight, TorrentFreak reported.
Operators quickly relocated to the piratebay.ac web address, which uses the Ascension Island’s country code top-level domain (ccTLD).
The Ascension Island domain is controlled by the UK. The Pirate Bay stressed that the island is not its final destination, adding that it will soon set sail for safer shores.
British authorities are not fans of The Pirate Bay; the website is routinely blocked by UK ISPs, according to the Inquirer, a European site for computer news.
TorrentFreak speculated that the domain seizure may be connected to the Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, which represents a number of copyright holders in the music, film, and gaming industries.
Last month, BREIN sent an email to The Pirate Bay’s founder, Fredrik Neij, telling him that the site infringes on the rights of copyright holders worldwide. The .SX domain name is controlled by the Netherlands, so BREIN has jurisdiction over it.
“We expressly point out that by registering domain names and using these and/or allowing these to be used by The Pirate Bay, you infringe on the rights of the Rights Owners. Therefore the Rights Owners hold you liable for the damages that they have suffered and will suffer from your actions,” the letter states.
The letter gave The Pirate Bay until November 22 to shut down its website, and threatened a 25,000 euro (US$34,400) per day fine if the site remained online.
It is not clear whether BREIN is behind the current domain seizure, or if a new court order has been issued.
“The AC domain is directly connected to the UK, so it’s just a quick stop there,” a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak. The next destination for the infamous torrent site is the Peruvian .PE registry, which will become its fifth domain name in 2013. Once based in Sweden but fearing seizure by Swedish authorities, the site moved to Greenland, then to Iceland, before acquiring its .SX domain.
http://rt.com/news/pirate-bay-ascension-island-027/
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY." --Goering at the Nuremberg Trials
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