Can you name the "FBI Sensitive Informants working at the Berkmann Center for the Internet

[msfreeh]

Material posted here will require you to name FBI informants , name companies and people, did I mention devices , that allow your internet connection to be compromised.

Salt Lake city attorney Jesse Trentadue has worked
to expose the taxpayer funded FBI Sensitive Informant progran
google jesse trentadue fbi sensitive informant program

you do know what to do.

Can you identify the FBI Sensitive Informants
working at the Harvard Berkman Internet Center
see.
https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



also see

https://www.sohopelesslybroken.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/y ... it-def-con" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


August 1, 2014 | By Steve Bono and Adi Kamdar and Ranga Krishnan
Your Wireless Router Is Broken—Help Us Fix It At DEF CON

As part of our Open Wireless Movement, we set out to create router software that would make it easier for people to safely and smartly share part of their wireless network. Protecting hosts, so their security is not compromised because they offer open networks, is one of the goals of the router software we released. However, as research published by Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) and others has shown, almost every popular home router has serious security flaws.

In developing the router software, we realized that we also needed to tackle the more fundamental problem of home router security. Instead of just creating an open-wireless friendly router, why not work to improve router security while we're at it?

With this in mind, we're teaming up with ISE to host "SOHOpelessly Broken," a router hacking contest this year at DEF CON 22. Focusing on small office/home office (SOHO) equipment, this contest will reward the discovery of zero-day vulnerabilities in fully updated, popular off-the-shelf SOHO routers, as well as pit contestants against each other in a capture-the-flag style competition targeting routers with outdated, known-vulnerable firmware. (Naturally, all vulnerabilities discovered as part of the contest must be responsibly disclosed to the manufacturer.)

You can sign up to participate on the SOHOpelessly Broken website.

By joining, you'll also have a chance to hack away at our Open Wireless Router. It's looking more and more like our project will be the first home router and firmware—that we know of—to undergo regular, public, third-party security assessments. We also plan to be one of a few router firmwares to automatically self-update with new security patches, eliminating what has been a cumbersome and often-ignored process for consumers—largely at no fault of their own.

Your Router is Probably Insecure, which Can Cause Serious Harm

Last year, researchers at ISE found that a staggering 100% of SOHO routers they evaluated were vulnerable to remote attacks. And a recent study found that 80% of Amazon's top 25 best-selling SOHO wireless routers had security issues. Vulnerabilities revealed in these devices ranged from blatantly obvious issues to absurdly inappropriate back doors. The "moon worm" and several other notable exploits of SOHO routers demonstrate that these issues are not only interesting on a theoretical level, but are appearing in the wild and directly affecting consumers. In some cases, the vulnerabilities exploited were the very same that were discovered and reported months earlier—while the router manufacturer had issued a patch, the issues remained in some router models.

Compromising a router gives an attacker several options for exploitation. Most common are attacks on the domain name system (DNS) used to look up IP addresses. Attackers can point a DNS query to servers that are under their control, thereby redirecting the user to a malicious server, such as a fake banking webpage. The attacker can then steal valuable personal information and passwords. For example, a large-scale operation to steal banking credentials in this manner was identified in Poland this year.

Another use of compromised routers (e.g., through malware that functions like the "moon worm") is to make them part of the botnets that launch spam, phishing, account hijacking, identity theft, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. If we can make it harder for botnets, we can help improve security around the world.

Finally, with the continuing increase of internet connected equipment in homes, a compromised home router affords an attacker a strategic vantage point to launch attacks on targets such as home medical, home automation, or home security equipment.

We Can Build A Better Router

With our Open Wireless Router project and ISE's SOHOpelessly Broken hacking contest, we hope to further demonstrate how insecure these devices are, as well as show the consequences of leaving these security issues unmitigated by the manufacturer or unpatched by the consumer.

Without immediate and dramatic industry-wide improvement, vulnerable routers will remain a threat to individuals, small business, and large enterprises alike. These woefully insecure devices expose our persons and our companies, not just to an invasion of privacy, but to fraud, theft, loss of sensitive data, outages, and disruption of business. It has been over a year since ISE's important research was published, yet not enough has been done. We hope that by raising awareness through our contest and by providing an alternative through our Open Wireless Router, we will move the state of the art in wireless networking in the right direction.

[msfreeh]

Inside Defcon: What Happens at the Annual Hacker Convention
Comcast SportsNet Chicago-4 minutes ago
These hackers mingle with National Security Agents (NSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents and other government guys who listen to the ...


http://www.csnchicago.com/article/insid ... nvention-0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[msfreeh]

see link for full story



ISIL tweet for US could be Mossad, FBI creation: Paul Street
Sun Aug 17, 2014 4:20PM GMT
13
Related Interviews:

'ISIL backstabs backers to push goals'
‘Turkey helping ISIL gain independence’

Related Viewpoints:


http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/08/17 ... ossad-job/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


What lies behind Israel war on Gaza?

The threatening tweet by the ISIL militant group for the United States could be a creation by Israel’s spy agency of Mossad or the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, an American political commentator says.

“I don’t know if it’s authentic and I don’t think we have any way of knowing if it’s authentic,” Paul Street said in an interview with Press TV on Sunday.

[msfreeh]

The new FBI news affiliate Salon Magazine conviently forgets to tell you
the San Diego Sheriff took part in the coverup of Ruby Ridge and his best FBI buddy FBI supervisor Larry Potts has been linked to the creation of the Oklahoma City bombing.
But as a smart criminal justice consumer you already knew this, eh?
How did Bill Gore become Sheriff of San Diego?
see my post called FBI do not fly list

Nichols says bombing was FBI op | Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/.../ ... -op.html?p.." onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
Feb 22, 2007 - Trentadue claims his brother was killed during an interrogation by FBI agents ... Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and criticism for the ... Nichols claims that, in December 1992, McVeigh told him that "while he ...

couple of reads



Wednesday, Aug 20, 2014 07:43 AM EDT
Militarized cops’ scary new toys: The ugly next frontier in “crowd control”
The horror we saw in Ferguson may be just the start. Here's some other police gear our military is working on
Heather Digby Parton


Militarized cops' scary new toys: The ugly next frontier in "crowd control"Police form a line blocking traffic and access to Florissant Road in downtown Ferguson, Mo., Aug. 11, 2014.
Now that the sight of American police decked out as if they are replaying the events of Blackhawk Down has alerted the American public to the militarization of our police agencies, perhaps they will finally be receptive to the warnings that some of us have been making for years about the next generation of weapons that are being developed for “crowd control.” As we’ve seen over the past few days, regardless of whether it’s created for military purposes, this gear tends to eventually end up on the streets of the United States.

In Ferguson this week the police used one of these new weapons, the LRAD, also known as a sound cannon. These were developed fairly recently as an interdiction device to repel pirates or terrorists in the aftermath of the attack on the USS Cole. But their use as a weapon to disperse crowds quickly became obvious. In Ferguson it seems to have served mostly as a warning device, but it can cause substantial pain and hearing damage if it’s deployed with the intent to send crowds running in the opposite direction. It’s been used liberally by police departments for the past few years, even at such benign public gatherings as a sand castle competition in San Diego, California. The police chief (as it happens, the former FBI agent in charge at the Ruby Ridge standoff) explained that it was there in case they needed it.

Evidently, San Diego takes its sand castle competitions very seriously.


http://www.salon.com/2014/08/20/militar ... d_control/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

2nd read
http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/show ... p?t=167834" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Default Ruby Ridge: San Diego Sheriff Candidate approved "shoot on SIGHT"
"Four FBI agents, including the ex-head of the bureau's Seattle field office [[William Gore, APPOINTED San Diego Sheriff']], invoked their Fifth Amendment privileges against self-incrimination yesterday during Senate hearings into a shootout in northern Idaho that left three people dead....In a closed session, the four FBI agents, citing their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, refused to answer questions put to them by senators,

He said senior FBI official Larry Potts [above Gore in chain of command]....had approved an order under which FBI snipers were to shoot on sight any adult male seen with a weapon on the Weaver property.

....Richard Rodgers, head of the team. Rogers [below Gore in chain of command] helped formulate controversial "rules of engagement" for the siege that critics say amounted to a "shoot on sight" order for all armed adult males on the Weaver property.

FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi opened fire just a few hours after the rules of engagement were approved, wounding Randy Weaver and then killing his 43-year-old wife [head shot on mother holding her infant]...

....Justice Department probe of an alleged FBI cover-up of its conduct at Ruby Ridge...”

http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1995/9509200047.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


More: http://www.byington.org/Carl/ruby/ruby4h.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[msfreeh]

internet resource database

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=32101" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[msfreeh]

no cognitive infiltration at LDSFF. eh?

well maybe just a dight





Cognitive infiltration - RationalWiki
rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cognitive_infiltration
Mar 24, 2012 - Cognitive infiltration is a term coined by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule to refer to the use of government and third party "cognitive" ...



Coognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Paperback – September 1, 2010
by David Ray Griffin (Aut

[msfreeh]

see link for full story


http://www.networkworld.com/article/259 ... o-pcs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



The federal judiciary's rules committee backed the DOJ's search and seizure proposal which will expand the FBI's authority to remotely hack into PCs.






|Aug 25, 2014 10:28 AM

The feds need a search warrant before installing a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) on computers suspected of being used in crimes, but the government can keep the remote access operation a secret from their target for 30 days and sometimes even longer if a judge approves an extension. But the remote search and seizure warrant is limited to the geographical district where the judge issued it. The DOJ, which includes the FBI, the DEA and ATF, says it needs one warrant to work over many districts so it can better hunt down potential terrorists and criminals on the Internet. The Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure (pdf) has now backed the Justice Department’s proposed search and seizure changes that would give the FBI “wide latitude” to hack into people’s computers with surveillance software.

What type of information might the government be seeking after hacking into a PC? Last year, a FBI warrant sought permission to access the computer’s built-in webcam in order to take photos for 30 days, to grab search terms, email contents, documents and chat logs. The investigation was into bank fraud and the warrant was based on “the attempted transfer of money from a Texas bank account to a foreign bank, using an email address similar to that of the account owner's.” A Texas judge denied the FBI’s request for a Trojan horse warrant.
Related

DOJ asks for new authority to hack and search remote computers
Judge to Microsoft: Hand over cloud data no matter where in the world it is...
4th Amendment vs Virtual Force by Feds, Trojan Horse Warrants for Remote...

In the case of botnets, the proposal would allow the feds to use one warrant to send a RAT into thousands of computers without Americans’ consent or knowledge. The EFF previously warned the DOJ’s proposal “would dramatically expand the reach of federal prosecutors and investigators.”

One of the Committee’s changes deals with the authority to issue a warrant to use remote access even if the district where the media or information is unknown due to the use of anonymizing software and other similar tech. Rule 41 about “search and seizure” starts on page 338 (pdf); the red text, italicized here, indicates the proposed changes.

At the request of a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government:

(6) a magistrate judge with authority in any district where activities related to a crime may have occurred has authority to issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize or copy electronically stored information located within or outside that district if:

(A) the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technological means; or

(B) in an investigation of a violation of U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5), the media are protected computers that have been damaged without authorization and are located in five or more districts.

An example to describe 6B might be botnets; the changes would allow the feds to target multiple PCs in various geographical locations and districts with just one warrant. “In investigations of this nature, the amendment would eliminate the burden of attempting to secure multiple warrants in numerous districts, and allow a single judge to oversee the investigation,” the proposal states. In other words, during such a botnet investigation, the feds could use one warrant to justify remotely installing software on thousands of innocent citizens’ computers at the same time and without their knowledge.

When it comes to serving a copy of the warrant, proposed changes include:

For a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and seize or copy electronically stored information, the officer must make reasonable efforts to serve a copy of the warrant on the person whose property was searched or whose information was seized or copied. Service may be accomplished by any means, including electronic means, reasonably calculated to reach that person.

If the government uses zero-days to break into and search a computer, some civil liberties groups say such exploits might escape into the wild. Another potential problem is in limiting what the feds might snatch after hacking into a PC to grab an IP address.

Nathan Wessler, an ACLU attorney for the Speech, Privacy, and Tech

[msfreeh]

see link for full story

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140 ... yway.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




Champion Of The People: Verizon Complains Exigent Circumstances Order Inadequate For Info Requested; Hands Over Info Anyway
from the rolling-over-to-push-back dept

Given how often major telcos and wireless service providers have willingly provided intelligence and law enforcement agencies with way more than they've asked for, the following shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

The back story is this: In July 2008, an FBI agent had his gun and cellphone stolen from his "official" vehicle. The search for the missing items involved Verizon. In an application for a court order authorizing the release of cell site location info, it's noted that the service provider performed the most futile of gestures on behalf of itself. (Link to PDF.)

As part of its ongoing investigation, and in a further attempt to locate THE LOADED SERVICE WEAPON, shortly after 4:00 a.m. on Friday, July 24, 2008, the FBI requested on an emergency basis that the Carrier disclose the SUBJECT TOWER/SECTOR and MSC RECORDS generate between Thursday, July 24 2008 at 2:00 p.m. and Friday, July 25, 2008 at 4:00 a.m. The FBI did so on the theory that THE LOADED SERVICE WEAPON might well be in the same location as SUBJECT WIRELESS TELEPHONE with which it had been reported stolen on Nostrand Avenue.

Along with this request, the FBI submitted a written "Law Enforcement Exigent Circumstances Consent Form" filled out by Agent Julian, to whom the SUBJECT WIRELESS TELEPHONE belonged, authorizing the Carrier, among other things, to disclose the SUBJECT AND MSC RECORDS generated between Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. and Friday, July 25, 2008 at 4:00 a.m.

Although the Carrier agreed to, and did, provide the requested SUBJECT AND MSC RECORDS to the FBI on an emergency basis in light of the exigent circumstances, the Carrier informed the FBI that the "Law Enforcement Exigent Circumstances Consent Form" submitted by Agent Julian provided insufficient authority to release the requested information, and directed the FBI to seek a subsequent court order authorizing the release of the information.

It's something of an anomaly to see a major carrier stand up to the government, but Verizon certainly chooses its battles very weirdly. To begin with, the phone in question belonged to the person making the request. (More likely belonged to the FBI but was issued to Agent Julian.) That it would attempt to deny a subscriber access to his own records is bizarre, especially considering its open sharing of data on millions of people with the NSA and countless law enforcement agencies -- all of whom use the Third Party Doctrine as an all-access pass to as much info as possible.

What makes this utterly ridiculous is the fact that Verizon handed over the information before complaining about the exigent circumstances order. As for why it asked that an official court order be acquired, one can only assume that news of the immunity granted by the 2008 FISA Amendments Act (enacted roughly two weeks earlier) hadn't reached these particular employees yet. In the unlikely event that Agent Julian brought a lawsuit against Verizon for revealing his cell site info to Agent Julian on the basis of an inadequate exigent circumstances request, the company would have been insulated.

And so, the court did order, with a straight face, that Verizon hand over the records it had already handed over, even though the request noted that these records had only allowed the FBI to recover the gun (and also noted that the FBI already had the info it was seeking). I's dotted and asses covered, everyone involved returned to the investigation already in progress, except for Verizon, which presumably filed the new paperwork demanding the information it had already turned over the FBI, with the old paperwork it had complied with, even though it belatedly felt that it probably shouldn't have.

The ultimate irony here is that Verizon will work harder to keep someone from accessing their own records than it will to prevent the government from accessing metadata from all of its subscribers.

[msfreeh]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... -tech-boom" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Chattanooga's Gig: how one city's super-fast internet is driving a tech boom


The city is one of the only places on Earth with internet as fast as 1 gigabit per second – about 50 times faster than the US average. Despite Big Cable’s attempt to block the Gig’s expansion plans, money keeps flowing into Chattanooga

US cable giants call on FCC to block Gig

tennessee broadband

[msfreeh]

couple of reads
see these links before reading story


http://www.google.com/#q=FBI+agent+hearn" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


also see.
http://m.utsandiego.com/news/2014/aug/3 ... nt-charge/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI in San Diego getting new chief

By Kristina Davis 05:20p.m. Aug 30, 2014

SAN DIEGO — The FBI in San Diego is getting new leadership.

Special Agent in Charge Daphne Hearn completed her last week as head of the office, retiring after a 23-year career.





Radio Host Pete Santilli Revealed as FBI Informant

By Susanne Posel – October 29, 2013


http://www.google.com/#q=FBI+informant+exposed" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



UPDATE: Presstorm Media has issued a threat to me regarding this article.

This person, who is a Pete Santilli sympathizer, claims to have documentation showing that Zeeda Andrews placed donation-funds into her “personal checking account”.

Presstorm Media is actually a hired gun.

While demanding a retraction, this person also issues a threat that by “10pm tonight to either fix the article with truthful info and PUBLICALLY REPREMAND susan for a complete and utter FALSE article or I will go public tomorrow…and rather loudly…with about a 3 million listener show to start.”

Presstorm Media said: “Data is wrong about santilli and I am about to launch a national campaign with documented truth which will smear your credibility from here to the ends of the earth. I would advise taking down the article about santilli and the FBI because I was beside zeeda andrews side and saw, took pics of and have video of zeeda putting the money from paypal…100% of it into her personal chwcking account. You have until 10pm tonight to either fix the article with truthful info and PUBLICLY REPREMAND susan for a complete and utter FALSE article or I will go public tomorrow…and rather loudly…with about a 3 million listener show to start.”

JPGGmail - Fix that article. Only warning





Pete Santilli, primary internet radio host on the Rense Network , has been exposed as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

In a fax dated the 28th of October, Santilli contacted the FBI Field Office in Sacramento, California for help in fear of becoming “the scapegoat” in what is entitled “Operation Outruck” (OOT).

Verification that Santilli sent the fax to the correct number can be found here .

A search of this operation turns up a document that was taken down from the internet. As of this writing, there is no information about OOT other than the mention in the fax from Santilli to the FBI.

According to Santilli, his contact at the FBI is Daphne Hearn .

Hearn was hand-picked by former director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, in 2012 to become the “special agent in charge” of the San Diego division of the FBI.

Hearn worked under operations for the FBI such as:

• Infiltrating the La Cosa Nostra families in Buffalo, New York
• Organized Crime Task Force out of Chicago division FBI office
• Managed national initiatives for the Organized Crime Section of the Criminal Investigative Division of the FBI headquarters
• Special Operations Group out of the Kansas City field office
• Oversight of the Heart of America Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (HARCFL), and the Cyber Crime Task Force (CCTF)
• Assistant chief of the International Operations Division (IOD)
• Special assistant to Mueller in daily operational and administrative oversight of the FBI

Hearn specialized in:

• Aviation
• Surveillance
• Technical assets
• Counter-intelligence
• Cyber activities for the FBI

In the fax, Santilli states that Hearn promised that with his participation in OOT, he would gain more viewership. However, Santilli asserts that because he is “being attacked on all fronts” he is demanding to know where his protection is?

Santilli goes on to admonish the FBI or leaving informants “out to burn” and that his computers have been hacked. He states that information has been “compromised” and he is not sure how many documents were syphoned out.

Santilli tells the FBI that he was supposed to have someone from their office “verify what has been compromised”; yet this has not occurred.

In the end, Santilli threatens the FBI: “And I assure you, if I get found out you get found out. I will use my show to broadcast MY version of everything, that you approached me and forced me into this position.”

The release of documents taken from Santilli’s computer was provided by Anonymous.

Here is a copy of the screenshot from Santilli’s computer that shows a successful transmission from Santilli to the FBI Field Office in Sacramento, California.

[Hosted by imgur.com]

Investigation into Santilli’s background provides insight into the criminal actives he has indulged in over his adulthood.

Aliases Santilli has used in the past: “Peter Thomas Santilli” and “Peter Sanilli”.

Santilli has worked for the Associated Press as a “business reporter”, holds a license in California to work as a guard and has had licenses to operate as law enforcement in California.

His criminal history includes “forcible entry” in 2001 wherein Santilli was jailed for 19 days while his bail was being posted by “relatives”.

Both Santilli and his father were involved in fraud with award in civil court of over $1,600 to Lease Pro, Inc.

In May of this year, Santilli attempted to gain notoriety for stating: “Hillary Clinton needs to be convicted. She needs to be tried, convicted and shot in the vagina. I want to pull the trigger.”

The full quote from the Pete Santilli show is: “I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don’t want her to die right away; I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say, on behalf of all Americans that you’ve killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS, the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama, Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario, because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all. On behalf of all of those people, I’m supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.”

Santilli also said: “Barack Obama needs to be tried, convicted, and shot for crimes against the United States of America. And if anybody has a problem with that, then you are an enemy of our state.”

It appears that this informant and provocateur was the actual “enemy” when he covertly co-opted the Trucker Shutdown America which was promptly renamed “Truckers Ride for the Constitution” by Santilli.

Once inside the operation, Santilli used bullying tactics to takeover control from the originator of the movement Zeeda Andrews.

As the scandals emerged, stories changed .

Santilli first claimed that the PayPal account he set up for Andrews to allow listeners to give donations for the truckers on their trip to DC was hacked into.

At this point, Andrews was locked out.

Turns out Andrews was shut out from accessing the website Santilli provided for Truckers Ride for the Constitution, as well as the Facebook page and Twitter account.

The story changed as Santilli then claimed that it was Obama-hackers, and members of alternative media who were exposing him that were to blame for money going missing from the PayPal donation account and ultimately Andrews fronted the bulk of attacks as Santilli claimed Andrews was a drug dealer.

Still the issue of missing money from the Trucker’s donation page is lost to the fodder and as of now remains unaccounted for.

[KMCopeland]

You haven't told us what to do. Turn off the computer?

[msfreeh]

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/8.54.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The Risks Digest
Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems

ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator
Volume 8: Issue 54

[msfreeh]

2 reads



1


http://epic.org/epic/board/burnham/book.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Above the Law
Secret Deals, Political Fixes and Other Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice



"This book tells us that far too often the Justice Department represents not the people, but the politicians, corporations and other entrenched private interests. In Above the Law, David Burnham once again shows us why his investigative reporting is a national asset."

-- Seymour M. Hersh, Pulitzer Price winning investigative journalist

Myth: The Justice Department is a rational and evenhanded law enforcement mechanism.

Fact: The Justice Department is always political, steadily more powerful, sometimes corrupt and surprisingly ineffective.

The United States Justice Department -- which includes the FBI, the DEA, the INS and more than 100,000 employees -- functions as law enforcer, investigator and jailer of American citizens. The department's legal reach is vast, extending to social controversies of race, religion and economics as well as to thousands of criminal and civil laws, including espionage; mail fraud; corruption; racketeering; vote-fixing; pollution; computer crimes; adulterated food and drugs; price-fixing; tax fraud; gambling; forgery; and the sale, manufacture or possession of illicit drugs. The department then, and the attorney general, make decisions daily that affect every American citizen. But who monitors the Justice Department and its pervasive dealings?

In Above the Law, David Burnham reveals the chilling truth about this powerful arm of the government. Examining its records on such issues as drug enforcement, civil rights and national security, Burnham discovered that the agency runs virtually unpoliced, even after the BCCI scandal, the forcible abduction of Manuel Noriega and the disastrous mission at Waco. For the first time, David Burnham conducts a thorough investigation of the investigator, exposing the Justice Department as never before.

Read Above the Law and learn:

* How the FBI and the DEA have relentlessly expanded their electronic surveillance networks to encompass more and more average Americans -- rather than suspected criminals.

* How the war on drugs currently consumes more than half of the Justice Department's budget but remains a well-documented dud when it comes to reducing the use of illegal drugs.

* How and why FBI director Freeh, following a trail blazed by J. Edgar Hoover, directs a misleading national advertising blitz about the nation's crime problem.

* How the Justice Department has routinely failed to investigate the political allies of all presidents, including Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy and George Bush.

* How -- more than three hundred times a year -- teams of agents from the FBI's top secret Surreptitious entry Program go about the task of breaking into houses, offices and warehouses of selected targets, usually to plant hidden cameras and microphones.

* How the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department have been used to harass black politicians and aid white ones.

Selected Excerpts

Annotated Table of Contents


Chapter 5.KEEPING TRACK OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: THE UNBLINKING EYE AND GIANT EAR


Chapter 6.THE BIG, BAD, DUMB WAR ON DRUGS


Chapter 8.UNCIVIL WRONGS AND CIVIL RIGHTS


2


http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ... 06611.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

NICE Actimize Engages Former SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro and FBI Special Agent Gregory A. Coleman to Keynote 11th Annual Global Client Forum An information-packed, two-day agenda addresses financial crime and compliance challenges facing global financial institutions

NEW YORK, September 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

NICE Actimize, a NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) business and the largest and broadest provider of a single financial crime, risk and compliance software platform for the financial services industry, announces that Mary L. Schapiro, the only person to have served as both Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), will keynote its ENGAGE 2014 Client Forum, an exclusive gathering of executive leadership from the world's most prominent financial institutions. In its eleventh year, the ENGAGE Client Forum is an invitation-only event organized to foster idea-sharing among NICE Actimize clients and invited industry leaders. The event will take place in New York City on October 21-22.

In addition to Schapiro, FBI Special Agent Gregory A. Coleman - known for his role in leading the pursuit and criminal investigation into the dealings of the so-called "Wolf of Wall Street," Jordan Belfort - will talk about his work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and his pursuit of a range of financial fraudsters particularly focused on anti-money laundering related activities.

[msfreeh]

Did the FBI violate CFAA by hacking to find Silk Road's server?

http://www.computerworld.com/article/26 ... erver.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Did the FBI violate CFAA to takedown Silk Road Credit: FBI
Some security experts say the FBI's explanations for how it obtained the "leaked" IP address for Silk Road's misconfigured server are "impossible." And legally, the way the feds allegedly accomplished it was prosecuted as “hacking” by the DOJ in the past.


| Sep 10, 2014 8:30 AM PT

Phew! What is that awful smell? Some experts claim there is a stench coming from the 58-page DOJ brief that explains how the FBI found the real IP address of the online drug marketplace Silk Road and then located its alleged operator Ross Ulbricht. While the details might sound like a reasonable explanation to a jury of non-hackers, some security researchers say that technically the explanation “doesn’t make any sense.” And legally, the way the feds allegedly accomplished it was prosecuted as “hacking” by the DOJ in the past.

Ulbricht, aka Dread Pirate Roberts, previously claimed the FBI’s methods were unlawful, potentially aided by “non-national security criminal activity” collected by the NSA – which allegedly could use “illegal Tor-cracking techniques,” and should be “inadmissible in court under the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ doctrine;” in short, Ulbricht said the feds violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

[msfreeh]

* Sites Across The Internet "Slow Down" For Net Neutrality

All across the Web today, sites are simulating a slowdown
to protest the FCC's "Open Internet" proposal and call for
stronger protections for net neutrality. It's a digital day
of action on a massive scale, with support from digital
rights organizations like Fight For The Future, Demand
Progress, EFF and more, as well as Internet companies like
Etsy, reddit, Mozilla, and Netflix. People are calling the
FCC and leaving online comments in huge numbers: at points,
up to 1000 phone calls a minute. It's not too late to take
part--head to our site DearFCC.organd make sure your voice
gets heard!

Read more:
https://www.dearfcc.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
* Senators and Other Experts to Appeals Court: NSA's Phone
Records Program Is a Massive Invasion of Privacy

EFF and the rest of the legal team behind Smith v. Obama, a
challenge to the NSA's warrantless collection of phone
records, have received some high-profile support. Senators
Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, and Martin Heinrich--members of the
committee charged with overseeing the NSA--write that they
"have seen no evidence that the bulk collection of
Americans' phone records has provided any intelligence of
value that could not have been gathered through means that
caused far less harm to the privacy interests of millions
of Americans." This echoes statements made by numerous
officials, including President Obama himself, and it is
crucial to countering the arguments in this case about the
national security importance of the NSA's program.

Read more:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/s ... am-massive" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
* Militarization, Surveillance, and Profit: How Grassroots
Groups are Fighting Urban Shield

While all eyes are on the disturbing evidence of police
militarization in Ferguson, are you paying attention to
what's happening with law enforcement in your own back
yard? In the San Francisco Bay Area, the answer is yes. A
coalition of community groups came together to call
attention to Urban Shield, a four-day long "preparedness"
exercise for law enforcement and other agencies. The
reasons for protesting Urban Shield are clear: It is one of
the ways that local law enforcement gets access to, and
romanced by, military and surveillance technologies like
the ones we've seen turned against protesters in Ferguson,
as well as other communities across the country.

Read more:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/m ... ting-urban" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
: . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . :

EFF Updates

* Right to Know: The PACER Mess And How to Fix It
PACER is the government-run online system used by lawyers,
the press, and the public to access public federal court
records in the United States. Its administrators recently
announced that a huge number of documents from five federal
courts have been permanently removed from its database and
are no longer publicly viewable. For one circuit court,
only documents filed within the last 2.5 years are now
available; for two other circuit courts, documents now go
back only 4 years.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/r ... w-clean-it" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
* Magical Drug Wins EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month
Good news everyone! The Patent Office has granted a patent
on a cure for cancer. Last December, the Patent Office
issued Patent No. 8,609,158 on a "potent drug" that
"rebukes cancer, cancer cells, and kills cancer"--all with
a combination of "evening primrose oil, rice, sesame seeds,
green beans, coffee, meat, cheese, milk, green tea extract,
evening primrose seeds, and wine." Why would the examiner
issue the patent despite its clear infirmities? The answer
to that question reveals the fundamental imbalance at the
heart of the patent system.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/m ... tent-month" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
* In a Fair Use Victory, Fox News Fails to Suppress TVEyes'
Media Monitoring Service
A federal court has rejected Fox's effort to use copyright
and the largely moribund "hot news" doctrine to shut down
the video "clipping" service TVEyes. TVeyes creates a
searchable database of TV and radio station broadcasts,
which subscribers can search for portions of the original
broadcasts. The database enables research, commentary, ...

[msfreeh]

see link for full story



http://rt.com/usa/192612-anonymous-info ... ies-named/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



FBI informant organized Anonymous hackers’ attacks on government sites in 30 countries
Published time: October 02, 2014 17:08


Government websites in the UK, Australia and more than two dozen other countries were provided by an undercover FBI informant to a hacker involved with the group Anonymous as cybertargets to attack, according to previously unpublished documents.

The files — chat logs between a turncoat and hacktivist Jeremy Hammond that were used by US attorneys to prosecuted the latter for major intrusions committed by Anonymous and an offshoot, AntiSec — are under seal by order of a United States District Court judge and weren’t publicly available until The Daily Dot used them to report on Wednesday this week to show that the informant encouraged Hammond to hit foreign government targets.

Before American authorities arrested Hammond at his Chicago apartment in March 2012, law enforcement officials gathered the evidence they used against him with the help of a former fellow hacker within the online collective, Hector “Sabu” Monsegur. A months-long investigation led by the FBI and largely made possible due to Monsegur’s cooperation led to Hammond, now 29, pleading guilty to a multitude of computer crimes last year and receiving a 10-year prison sentence in return.



As RT reported previously, Hammond said publicly that Monsegur provided him with foreign targets to strike while speaking in court last year before being dished out a decade-long sentence by District Court Judge Loretta Preska.

“I broke into numerous websites he supplied, uploaded the stolen email accounts and databases onto Sabu’s FBI server, and handed over passwords and backdoors that enabled Sabu and, by extension, his FBI handlers, to control these targets,” Hammond said. Preska, who later sentenced Monsegur to time served, cut off Hammond, but not before the hacktivist began to name a handful of countries he claimed were supplied by the informant.

A joint probe launched earlier this year by the Dot and Motherboard has already raised questions concerning the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in cyberattacks waged by Anonymous at the behest of the FBI against the websites of companies and countries alike, but this week’s revelations made through leaked chat logs between the informant and hacktivist identify for the first time the names of foreign nations that were specifically supplied to Hammond by the FBI mole with the intent that he attack them.

In full, the websites supplied to Hammond by Monsegur to target included URLs pertaining to organizations affiliated with the governments of: Brazil; Netherlands; Belgium; Slovenia; United Kingdom; Australia; Papua New Guinea; Republic of Maldives; Philippines; Laos; Libya; Turkey; Sudan; India; Nigeria; Puerto Rico; Greece; Paraguay; Saint Lucia; Malaysia; South Africa; Yemen; Iran; Iraq; Saudi Arabia; Trinidad and Tobago; Lebanon; Kuwait; Albania; Bosnia and Herzegovina and Argentina.

Jeremy Hammond (AFP Photo / Chicago Police Department)

Jeremy Hammond (AFP Photo / Chicago Police Department)

“[D]id you hit those govs I gave you last night?” Monsegur asks Hammond in an excerpt from a leak chat log published by the Dot. Monsegur, who is Puerto Rican, then provided Hammond with targets specific to that territory and called it a “personal favor.” In another leaked log, Monsegur provides Hammond with a list of targets with .gov.br domains and says “hit these &!@$#%$ for our razilian squad.”

According to the Daily Dot, Monsegur told Hammond to strike targets in 30 countries. It is not immediately clear what sites were attacked and with what success, but previous reporting on leaked files concerning the Hammond case showed that hacktivists were successful in campaigns against Brazilian and Turkish websites with the assistance of the informant. An American firm, Stratfor, was also struck by Anonymous in 2012 in an operation that was orchestrated largely by Monsegur while working for the feds, and authorities did not make the company aware of the intrusion until later on.

Ahead of Monsegur’s sentencing hearing this year, attorneys for the informant said his cooperation “helped avoid over 300 intrusions” and, in aiding the FBI, “he strengthened the security of agencies such as the United States Congress, the United States Courts, other government agencies, as well as private companies.”

“He did not break the systems, he revealed vulnerabilities,” insisted lawyer Peggy Cross-Goldenberg. “These systems needed fixing anyway, regardless of his actions,”

Attorneys for Hammond, however, have raised questions of their own.

“Why was our government, which presumably controlled Mr. Monsegur during this period, using Jeremy Hammond to collect information regarding the vulnerabilities of foreign government websites and in some cases, disabling them,” Hammond’s attorneys wrote in December 2013. “This question is especially relevant today, amidst near daily public revelations about government’s efforts, worldwide, to monitor the communications of, and gather intelligence on, world leaders.”

Dell Cameron, the Daily Dot reporter who first published the list of countries sent to Hammond, told RT’s Andrew Blake that the FBI has been mostly unwilling to cooperate when it comes to weighing in with regards to the investigation into the Sabu files.



“We reached out to the FBI at the beginning of June to see if they’d be willing to discuss what this evidence says about their investigative procedures. They were very polite, seemed eager to help, and told us, in no equivocal terms, that they wouldn’t discuss the Hammond case,” he said.

“I’ve been told repeatedly that the information we’ve published suggests that Hammond was entrapped by law enforcement. That’s for legal experts to comment. Of course, he was eager to hack all of those targets and he’ll be the first to tell you,” Cameron continued. “However, the question of whether the FBI is in some way culpable for a string of international cyberattacks is not dependent on whether Hammond was entrapped. It depends on whether statements by the NY US Attorney’s office are true or not – that federal investigators were with Monsegur ‘around-the-clock,’ at his side, and were aware of his activities at all times.”

Mustafa Al-Bassam, a London student who participated in Anonymous-affiliated hacks with Monsegur in early 2011, told RT’s Blake that “Sabu has always been socially manipulative and therefore good at social engineering” and said “that's always been his biggest strength in the group.”

“The FBI simply capitalized on that skill to bu

[msfreeh]

https://au.finance.yahoo.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Twitter sues FBI, Justice Dept



October 7 2014




Twitter is suing the FBI and the US Department of Justice to be able to release more information about government surveillance of its users.

The social media company on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in a California federal court to publish its full "transparency report," which documents government requests for user information. Twitter Inc published a surveillance report in July but couldn't include the exact number of national security requests it received because internet companies are prohibited from disclosing that information, even if they didn't get any requests.

The San Francisco-based company said in a blog post that it believes it's entitled under the First Amendment to "respond to our users' concerns and to the statements of US government officials by providing information about the scope of US government surveillance".

The US government has been able to access phone networks and high-speed internet traffic for years to catch suspected criminals and terrorists. The FBI also started pushing technology companies like Google, Skype and others to guarantee access to their data streams and grab emails, video chats, pictures and more. It recently emerged that Yahoo was threatened with a daily fine of $US250,000 ($A270,490) by the US government if it didn't comply with demands to give up information on its users. A secret 2007 lawsuit and subsequent appeal was ultimately unsuccessful, the company in September said after a federal judge ordered some material about the court challenge to be unsealed.

Technology companies say they turn over information only if required by court order, and in the interest of transparency with their customers, want to share information about the government's activities.

"Our ability to speak has been restricted by laws that prohibit and even criminalise a service provider like us from disclosing the exact number of national security letters ('NSLs') and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ('FISA') court orders received - even if that number is zero," Ben Lee, Twitter's vice president of legal, wrote in a blog post.

In January, the Justice Department and five leading internet companies including Google Inc, Facebook Inc, Yahoo Inc, and LinkedIn Corp, agreed to a compromise that would allow the firms to reveal how often they are ordered to turn over information about their customers in national security investigations.

DOJ spokeswoman Emily Pierce said in an email on Tuesday that the agency worked collaboratively with those companies "to allow them to provide broad information on government requests while also protecting national security". The Federal Bureau of Investigation referred requests for comment to the Justice Department's response.

But Twitter's lawsuit pushes further - for example, it wants to be able to disclose what types of information the government did or didn't ask for.

"We hope that other technology companies will now follow Twitter's lead," said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement.

"Technology compa

[msfreeh]

see link for full story


Chat logs reveal FBI informant’s role in hacking of Sun newspaper
US agency faces questions after records show Lulzsec leader, who was informant at time, helped attack that closed UK sites


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014 ... -chat-logs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Tuesday 14 October 2014 05.00 EDT

The FBI is facing questions over its role in a 2011 hacking attack on Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper in the UK after the publication of chat logs showed that a man acting as an agency informant played a substantial role in the operation.

In July 2011, a group of hackers known as Lulzsec – an offshoot of Anonymous – posted a fake story about the death of Murdoch, penetrated several News International (now News UK) corporate sites, and claimed to have obtained gigabytes of material from the company’s servers.
The Sun website after it was targeted by computer hackers, visitors to the website were redirected to a hoax story about Rupert Murdoch's suicide The Sun website after it was targeted by computer hackers, visitors to the website were redirected to a hoax story about Rupert Murdoch’s suicide. Photograph: PA

The attack was so successful that the publisher took down the websites of the Sun and the Times while technicians worked out the scale of the hack.
Advertisement

Unsealed documents obtained by Motherboard, the technology channel operated by Vice, and seen by the Guardian, show Hector Xavier Monsegur – known widely online as “Sabu” and frequently referred to as the leader of Lulzsec – played an active role in the operation.

The chat records show Monsegur encouraging others to break further into News International systems, claiming to have sources at the Sun, and even apparently helping to break staff’s passwords and to source files for stealing.

Monsegur was, however, at that time operating under the direction of the FBI, who had arrested him weeks earlier and cut a deal that kept him free if he helped to track down and secure the convictions of others in the group.

The close involvement of an FBI asset working under extraordinarily close supervision in a hacking attack on a media outlet ultimately owned by a US-listed company is set to raise further questions about the agency’s approach to tackling online crime.

Monsegur, who faced a maximum of 124 years in prison, was released earlier this year in exchange for his “extraordinary” cooperation with the FBI. Monsegur, who is currently on a 12-month supervised release programme, is believed to have cooperated with authorities because of his role as sole carer for two young relatives. He has had no contact with the media since his release.
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The chat logs, which are more than 380 pages long, show the Lulzsec group working together over several days to hack into the Sun, talking in the relaxed (and often misspelled) manner of online conversations.

The chat, in a private channel aptly named “#sunnydays”, jumped between talking through reasons to attack the newspaper, what to do when in, and technical advice on how to operate the hacks.

“what up gentlemen,” said Sabu, opening the channel’s conversation, “lets do this.”

Some members of the group had already secured limited access to servers owned by the Sun. Sabu immediately encouraged them to go further, and obtain email records.

“good work on owning sun honestly speaking this is going to be good $#!%,” he wrote. “I want their mailspools … @#$%! the rest”

Sabu goaded the others on, telling them the Sun was planning to fabricate a story saying Lulzsec had tried and failed to hack the newspaper – a claim likely to enrage the group – and saying there were likely to be internal communications to confirm his claim.

At the time, others in the channel were focusing on merely embarrassing the Sun by running a false news story – which they did – or replacing home pages with pictures of internet memes, such as Nyan cat.

After some login details were shared, Sabu claimed to be looking around in the server, cautioning the others to “do this carefully”, and helping them try to “root” – gain total access to – another server.

Later, another hacker obtained encrypted login details of multiple News International staff, but was unable to decrypt them and thus obtain the usernames and passwords. Sabu offered to assist at this point, and later provided the password details.

The logs also show Sabu on multiple occasions offering detailed technical help to find additional records on different servers, breaking in to new servers, or obtaining more files – which could easily have included those belonging to journalists at either the Sun or Times.

At various stages in the course of the conversation, Sabu claimed to have obtained mail records from HSBC bank, and details on the Qatari royal family.

The logs even show Sabu celebrating with the other hackers – whose names are redacted – when CNN read out messages released by the group when the websites were taken down to handle the hack. “THE GUY JUST SAID WE HAVE JOY WE HAVE FUN WE HAVE MESSED UP MURDOCHS SUN,” he posted.

Less than 10 days after the attack on the Sun, several members of Lulzsec were arrested, and later convicted, for activities in the group. They included British citizens Jake Davis (known online as “Topiary”) and then-16-year-old schoolboy Mustafa Al-Bassam (“Tflow”).

The Sun, which is challenging the UK government over police accessing the phone records of one of its reporters, declined to comment on the apparent FBI involvement in attacks on its servers.

The FBI had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.

[msfreeh]

Samsung mobile devices approved to handle classified docs

By Greg Otto · Thursday, October 23, 2014 · 5:28 pm



http://fedscoop.com/samsung-knox-nsa/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[msfreeh]

see link for full story


http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014 ... -warrants/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




LAW & DISORDER / CIVILIZATION & DISCONTENTS
FBI cut hotel Internet access, sent agents to “fix” it without warrants
Alleged online gambling ring broken up after agents posed as the cable guy.
- Oct 29 2014, 10:10am EDT
When the FBI applied for warrants this summer to raid three $25,000-per-night villas at Caesar's Palace Hotel and Casino, it omitted some key investigatory details that eventually resulted in the arrest of eight individuals, including an alleged leader of a well-known Chinese crime syndicate, defense lawyers maintained in Las Vegas federal court documents late Tuesday.

The authorities built, in part, a case for a search warrant (PDF) by turning off Internet access in three villas shared by the eight individuals arrested. At various points, an agent of the FBI and a Nevada gaming official posed as the cable guy, secretly filming while gathering evidence of what they allege was a bookmaking ring where "hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal bets" on World Cup soccer were taking place.

"If this Court authorizes this duplicity, the government will be free to employ similar schemes in virtually every context to enter the homes of perfectly innocent people. Agents will frequently have no incentive to follow the warrant procedure required by the Constitution," defense lawyers wrote the Las Vegas federal magistrate presiding over the prosecution.

A hearing is set for December, and the defense will argue for a dismissal of the charges.

One of the accused defendants is Paul Phua, charged under the name Wei Seng Phua. The government alleges that the 50-year-old Malaysian man is a "high-ranking member" (PDF) of the 14K Triad specializing in loan sharking, illegal gambling, prostitution, and drug trafficking.

The investigation began this summer when the defendants started requesting a substantial amount of electronic equipment and Internet connections from Caesars Palace staff, the government said. A technician was suspicious and alerted casino security that a bookmaking operation might be underway, the government said in court papers. Nowhere in the search warrant request, however, did the authorities mention that they saw supposed wagering on computers after posing as technicians who in reality briefly disconnected the Internet.

The search warrant that led to the arrests would not have been issued had the judge been told the truth, the defense said in court papers. Evidence of what the defense called an unlawful "scheme" against its clients was produced (PDF) by the government in the pre-trial discovery process, the defense lawyers wrote (PDF):

The notion that an individual “consents” to such searches—so that the government is free to ignore the Fourth Amendment’s explicit warrant requirement—is, in a word, absurd. Our lives cannot be private—and our personal relationships intimate—if each physical connection that links our homes to the outside world doubles as a ready-made excuse for the government to conduct a secret, suspicionless, warrantless search. Only a few remote log cabins lack any Internet, electric, gas, water, cable, or telephone service

[msfreeh]

kind of gutsy
pretending you are the good guys

FBI talks about compute crimes

Thursday, November 6th, 2014
Issue 45, Volume 18.
http://www.thevillagenews.com/story/81760/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



The Fallbrook Citizens’ Crime Prevention Committee hosted a presentation on international and domestic computer hacking, fraud, and security breaches at Fallbrook Library on Oct. 28. FBI agent James Duczakowski and FBI computer specialist Darren Bennett conducted the meeting.

The purpose for the session was to cover ways that individuals and businesses can keep ahead of international computer criminals. To begin, Duczakowski explained how fraud works online.

"Fraud is basically when someone misrepresents himself or herself for money, and is driven by greed," said Duczakowski. "They might not be stealing money, but fraud is definitely

[msfreeh]

see link for full story
http://rt.com/news/203575-aaron-swartz- ... hackathon/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



​Internet hacktivists hold global ‘hackathon’ in honor of Aaron Swartz’s birthday


Published time: November 08, 2014 21:55
Online hacktivists are holding a “hackathon” spanning two days to honor the would-have-been birthday of dead computer programmer and hacktivist Aaron Swartz.

The hackathon will be a global phenomenon, spanning 11 cities including Berlin, Boston, New York, Buenos Aires and Oxford, according to its affiliated website. However, its main location will be in San Francisco where programmers, developers, artists, researchers, and activists gather together, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This year’s hackathon theme is “setting the record straight,” it announced. The day will feature seven speakers sharing recent developments in many Aaron-related projects and issues. On Saturday, a film is being shown – “the Internet’s Own Boy” – documenting his life.

A hackathon is an event in which computer programmers come together for a shared purpose to engage in intensive collaboration on software projects.

The hackathon will start Saturday and Sunday at 11am in the Great Room of the Internet Archive. Anything created in the time span will be considered completely open source.


“We’re excited that SecureDrop is one of the many projects being hacked on over the weekend. SecureDrop is an open-source whistleblower submission system managed by Freedom of the Press Foundation that media organizations use to securely accept documents from anonymous sources. The project was originally coded by Aaron,” the EFF website announced.

Swartz was a 26 year-old information transparency activist, who took his own life nearly two years ago, having faced a standoff with the government.

When he was just 14, tech prodigy Swartz helped launch the first RSS feeds. By the time he turned 19, his company had merged with Reddit, which would become one of the most popular websites in the world.

But instead of living a happy life of a Silicon Valley genius, Swartz went on to champion a free internet, becoming a political activist calling for others to join.

Swartz drew the FBI’s attention in 2008, when he downloaded and released about 2.7 million federal court documents from a restricted service. The government did not press charges because the documents were, in fact, public.

He was arrested in 2011, for downloading academic articles from a subscription-based research website JSTOR – at his university – with the intention of making them available to the public. Although, none of what he downloaded was classified, prosecutors wanted to put him in jail for 35 years.

[msfreeh]

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/co ... ule-change" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sunday, 09 November 2014
FBI Covertly Requests Backdoor Access to Electronic Data Through Procedural Rule Change



FBI Covertly Requests Backdoor Access to Electronic Data Through Procedural Rule Change
It should come as no surprise that the FBI is trying to backdoor its way into greater computer surveillance power.

The Obama Justice Department has asked that a committee be empaneled to amend Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (FRCP).

Section (b) of that provision begins:



Authority to Issue a Warrant. At the request of a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government:

(1) a magistrate judge with authority in the district — or if none is reasonably available, a judge of a state court of record in the district — has authority to issue a warrant to search for and seize a person or property located within the district;

(2) a magistrate judge with authority in the district has authority to issue a warrant for a person or property outside the district if the person or property is located within the district when the warrant is issued but might move or be moved outside the district before the warrant is executed....

In plain terms, judges can only issue search warrants within the districts where they have jurisdiction. The FBI wants this restriction removed.

Specifically, the FBI wants a judge to be able to issue an electronic surveillance warrant authorizing the feds to search the contents of a computer, regardless of where that computer is physically located.

According to documents obtained by The New American, the FBI’s proposal would amend Rule 41 by adding the following language:

a magistrate judge with authority in any district where activities related to a crime may have occurred has authority to issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize electronically stored information located within or outside that district.

And:

For a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and seize electronically stored information, the officer must make reasonable efforts to serve a copy on the person whose property was searched or whose information was seized. Service may be accomplished by any means, including [reliable]* electronic means, reasonably calculated to reach that person [ALT: any person whose information was seized or whose property was searched].** [Upon request of the government, the magistrate may delay notice as provided in Rule 41(f)(3).]

As the National Journal explains:

Law-enforcement investigators are seeking the additional powers to better track and investigate criminals who use technology to conceal their identity and location, a practice that has become more common and sophisticated in recent years. Intelligence analysts, when given a warrant, can infiltrate computer networks and covertly install malicious software, or malware, that gives them the ability to control the targeted device and download its contents.

Something interesting about the National Journal’s summary of the FBI’s request is its use of the word “criminal” to describe the owner of the computer that the government wants to track and tap.

In the United States, a person is not a “criminal” until he has been subject to the due process of law, specifically: a charge of committing a crime, a hearing by an impartial tribunal on the merit of those charges, an opportunity for the accused to answer those charges, and finally, conviction of having the committing the crime.

Due process as a check on monarchical power was included in the Magna Carta of 1215. This list of grievances and demands codified the king’s obligation to obey written laws or be punished by his subjects. Article 39 of the Magna Carta says: “No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed] or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Over the years, the Magna Carta was occasionally revised and amended. In 1354, the phrase “due process of law” appeared for the first time. The Magna Carta as amended in 1354 says: “No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.”

This fundamental restraint on the royal presumption of the power to lop off heads on command was incorporated by our Founders in the Bill of Rights, particularly in the Fifth Amendment that says in relevant part: “No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

That is the first of two constitutional objections to the FBI’s secret plan to use a committee decision to bypass not only the Constitution, but also the exclusive legislative authority that that document grants to Congress.

Fortunately, there are those who are working to thwart the Obama administration’s plan to deny due process and to grant the government greater (unconstitutional) access to computers and other electronic devices. Last Wednesday, witnesses testified in opposition to the scheme at a hearing conducted by the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules, a group of legal experts tasked with considering proposals for changing the federal rules of criminal procedure. As quoted in the National Journal piece:

"I empathize that it is very hard to get a legislative change," said Amie Stepanovich, senior policy counsel with Access, a digital-freedom group. "However, when you have us resorting to Congress to get increased privacy protections, we would also like to see the government turn to Congress to get increased surveillance authority.”

Stepanovich also warned that the rule change could be applied to large computer networks, such as botnets, and breach the privacy of all users communicating via that network. While botnets, which can sometimes involve millions of computers, are often viewed as sinister, not all of them are, Stepanovich said.

Others noted that the amendment could have dramatic and unintended consequences on foreign relations. Surveillance orders granted for computers located in another country or where the location is unknown would lack the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizures, said Ahmed Ghappour, a computer law professor at the University of California's Hastings college of law.

"It's like turning on a switch, but instead of turning on a faucet, it's like turning on a fire hose," Ghappour, added, noting that the rule change could usher in unprecedented powers to spy on foreign computer networks.

It is likely that the impetus for this increased pressure to pry into the electronic “papers and effects” of suspected criminals was the move by tech giants — particularly Google and Apple — to protect the data stored on customers’ devices from the prying eyes of the agents of the federal surveillance state.

At a conference on counterterrorism held in New York City last Monday, dire

[msfreeh]

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/co ... ule-change

Sunday, 09 November 2014
FBI Covertly Requests Backdoor Access to Electronic Data Through Procedural Rule Change



FBI Covertly Requests Backdoor Access to Electronic Data Through Procedural Rule Change
It should come as no surprise that the FBI is trying to backdoor its way into greater computer surveillance power.

The Obama Justice Department has asked that a committee be empaneled to amend Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (FRCP).

Section (b) of that provision begins:



Authority to Issue a Warrant. At the request of a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government:

(1) a magistrate judge with authority in the district — or if none is reasonably available, a judge of a state court of record in the district — has authority to issue a warrant to search for and seize a person or property located within the district;

(2) a magistrate judge with authority in the district has authority to issue a warrant for a person or property outside the district if the person or property is located within the district when the warrant is issued but might move or be moved outside the district before the warrant is executed....

In plain terms, judges can only issue search warrants within the districts where they have jurisdiction. The FBI wants this restriction removed.

Specifically, the FBI wants a judge to be able to issue an electronic surveillance warrant authorizing the feds to search the contents of a computer, regardless of where that computer is physically located.

According to documents obtained by The New American, the FBI’s proposal would amend Rule 41 by adding the following language:

a magistrate judge with authority in any district where activities related to a crime may have occurred has authority to issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize electronically stored information located within or outside that district.

And:

For a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and seize electronically stored information, the officer must make reasonable efforts to serve a copy on the person whose property was searched or whose information was seized. Service may be accomplished by any means, including [reliable]* electronic means, reasonably calculated to reach that person [ALT: any person whose information was seized or whose property was searched].** [Upon request of the government, the magistrate may delay notice as provided in Rule 41(f)(3).]

As the National Journal explains:

Law-enforcement investigators are seeking the additional powers to better track and investigate criminals who use technology to conceal their identity and location, a practice that has become more common and sophisticated in recent years. Intelligence analysts, when given a warrant, can infiltrate computer networks and covertly install malicious software, or malware, that gives them the ability to control the targeted device and download its contents.

Something interesting about the National Journal’s summary of the FBI’s request is its use of the word “criminal” to describe the owner of the computer that the government wants to track and tap.

In the United States, a person is not a “criminal” until he has been subject to the due process of law, specifically: a charge of committing a crime, a hearing by an impartial tribunal on the merit of those charges, an opportunity for the accused to answer those charges, and finally, conviction of having the committing the crime.

Due process as a check on monarchical power was included in the Magna Carta of 1215. This list of grievances and demands codified the king’s obligation to obey written laws or be punished by his subjects. Article 39 of the Magna Carta says: “No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed] or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Over the years, the Magna Carta was occasionally revised and amended. In 1354, the phrase “due process of law” appeared for the first time. The Magna Carta as amended in 1354 says: “No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.”

This fundamental restraint on the royal presumption of the power to lop off heads on command was incorporated by our Founders in the Bill of Rights, particularly in the Fifth Amendment that says in relevant part: “No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

That is the first of two constitutional objections to the FBI’s secret plan to use a committee decision to bypass not only the Constitution, but also the exclusive legislative authority that that document grants to Congress.

Fortunately, there are those who are working to thwart the Obama administration’s plan to deny due process and to grant the government greater (unconstitutional) access to computers and other electronic devices. Last Wednesday, witnesses testified in opposition to the scheme at a hearing conducted by the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules, a group of legal experts tasked with considering proposals for changing the federal rules of criminal procedure. As quoted in the National Journal piece:

"I empathize that it is very hard to get a legislative change," said Amie Stepanovich, senior policy counsel with Access, a digital-freedom group. "However, when you have us resorting to Congress to get increased privacy protections, we would also like to see the government turn to Congress to get increased surveillance authority.”

Stepanovich also warned that the rule change could be applied to large computer networks, such as botnets, and breach the privacy of all users communicating via that network. While botnets, which can sometimes involve millions of computers, are often viewed as sinister, not all of them are, Stepanovich said.

Others noted that the amendment could have dramatic and unintended consequences on foreign relations. Surveillance orders granted for computers located in another country or where the location is unknown would lack the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizures, said Ahmed Ghappour, a computer law professor at the University of California's Hastings college of law.

"It's like turning on a switch, but instead of turning on a faucet, it's like turning on a fire hose," Ghappour, added, noting that the rule change could usher in unprecedented powers to spy on foreign computer networks.

It is likely that the impetus for this increased pressure to pry into the electronic “papers and effects” of suspected criminals was the move by tech giants — particularly Google and Apple — to protect the data stored on customers’ devices from the prying eyes of the agents of the federal surveillance state.

At a conference on counterterrorism held in New York City last Monday, dire

Berlin’s digital exiles: where tech activists go to escape the NSA
With its strict privacy laws, Germany is the refuge of choice for those hounded by the security services. Carole Cadwalladr visits Berlin to meet Laura Poitras, the director of Edward Snowden film Citizenfour, and a growing community of surveillance refuseniks


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Sunday 9 November 2014 04.00 EST

It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest thing, Laura Poitras tells me. “Not knowing whether I’m in a private place or not.” Not knowing if someone’s watching or not. Though she’s under surveillance, she knows that. It makes working as a journalist “hard but not impossible”. It’s on a personal level that it’s harder to process. “I try not to let it get inside my head, but… I still am not sure that my home is private. And if I really want to make sure I’m having a private conversation or something, I’ll go outside.”

Poitras’s documentary about Edward Snowden, Citizenfour, has just been released in cinemas. She was, for a time, the only person in the world who was in contact with Snowden, the only one who knew of his existence. Before she got Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian on board, it was just her – talking, electronically, to the man she knew only as “Citizenfour”. Even months on, when I ask her if the memory of that time lives with her still, she hesitates and takes a deep breath: “It was really very scary for a number of months. I was very aware that the risks were really high and that something bad could happen. I had this kind of responsibility to not @#$%! up, in terms of source protection, communication, security and all those things, I really had to be super careful in all sorts of ways.”

[msfreeh]

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