Google Turns Government Stooge , Turns Over Confidential Wikileaks Reporter Info

Google Surrendered Private Data Of WikiLeaks Journalists To US Government

 

 

 

 

” Google handed over confidential data of WikiLeaks’ staff to the U.S. government, prompting the whistleblower organization to send a letter to both the search engine giant and the U.S. Department of Justice seeking an explanation.

  WikiLeaks announced on its website on Monday that its investigations editor Sarah Harrison, section editor Joseph Farrell, and senior journalist and spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson have received a notice that Google had handed over all their emails and metadata to the U.S. government, which has issued warrants alleging “conspiracy” and “espionage” against the journalists. The charges carry a prison sentence of up to 45 years.

“ The US government is claiming universal jurisdiction to apply the Espionage Act, general Conspiracy statute and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to journalists and publishers – a horrifying precedent for press freedoms around the world,” WikiLeaks said on its website.”

 

Read more at IBT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pirate Bay Refits For A Relaunch

Countdown Timer Hints At Pirate Bay Return

 

 

 

 

 

” The sunken Pirate Bay is undergoing salvage operations and could return to the waters of the internet late next week, if a new countdown timer on the original site is to be believed.

  The timer, which is counting down to zero, stands at just over 10 days and 11 hours – but does not state what will happen at the end of the period.

  At the bottom of the page a familiar Pirate Bay battleship logo sails towards a cartoon of an island harbour named “welcome home”. That could indicate a return to the internet for the self-proclaimed “galaxy’s most resilient BitTorrent site”. “

 

The Guardian has more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Are You Ready For State Control Of The Internet ? It’s Coming …

FCC Chair Has All But Confirmed He’ll Side With Obama On Net Neutrality

 

 

 

 

 

 

” President Obama’s top telecom regulator just issued his strongest hints yet about a pending plan to regulate Internet providers, and judging by reports from the room, he’s leaning hard toward the most aggressive proposal on the table.

  Speaking Wednesday at CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics show, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler took aim at several industry arguments against the use of Title II of the Communications Act to regulate broadband providers. That’s the legal tool that President Obama and many consumer groups say would prevent broadband providers from unfairly discriminating against some Web sites.

  Wheeler also appeared to backtrack on one of his previous net neutrality proposals, saying it didn’t go far enough in protecting consumers, according to tweets from the audience.

  Now, analysts and policy experts from both sides of the net neutrality debate largely agree that Wheeler will seek to apply Title II to Internet providers after all, more than a year after a federal court tossed out the FCC’s previous net neutrality rules.”

 

Washington Post

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hackers Publish Thousands Of Passwords/Credit Card Data From Amazon , Hulu , Xbox

Hackers Released An Enormous Cache Of 13,000 Passwords And Credit Cards

 

 

 

 

 

” On Friday, a group claiming affiliation with the loose hacker collective Anonymous released a document containing approximately 13,000 username-and-password combinations along with credit card numbers and expiration dates.

  The stolen personal information was released in a massive text file posted the document sharing site Ghostbin. The compromised sites run the gamut from pornography to gaming to online shopping. 

  Some of the most significant leaks came from online video gaming networks like Xbox Live, the Sony PlayStation Network, and Twitch.tv. There was information from accounts at Walmart, Amazon, and Hulu Plus, as well as keys to computer games like The Sims 3 and Dragon Age: Origins, and a whole lot of porn sites.

  Some Anonymous members have pushed back on the assertion that this leak had anything to do with the hacktivist group. Anonymous has no official leadership or centralized organizational structure; instead, it functions as a loose affiliation of computer hackers that join together in support of various causes, ranging from battles with the Church of Scientology to doxing members of the KKK. If hackers branding themselves as Anonymous carry out a particular action, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any of the same people who have carried out any other Anonymous-branded action.

  Judging from the document, the following sites were compromised or, at the very least, had some of their user data stolen—possibly through malware installed onto users’ personal devices or other nefarious methods.

 

• Amazon
• Walmart
• PlayStation Network
• Xbox Live
• Twitch.tv
• Origin.com
• Hulu Plus
• Dell
• Brazzers
• lKnowThatGirl
• Mofos
• DigitalPlayground
• Wicked
• Twistys
• Fantyasyhd
• Puremature
• Tiny4k
• MotherFuckerXxx
• Playboy
• CastingCouchX
• BangBros
• POVD
• BabesNetwork
• ArtisticAddiction
• X-art
• Shutterstock
• Platinumclub.com
• AprilJordan.com
• DareDorm
• PrettyPetites
• NaughtyAmerica
• PornAccess
• RookieBabe
• GFMembersPass
• HungarianHoneys
• PleaseBangMyWife “

 

Daily Dot has more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Christmas Day DDoS Attacks Still Affecting Online Game Bigs Xbox & Playstation

PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Offline Due To Attacks

 

 

 

 

 

 

” If all you want for Christmas is some online video gaming, you may feel like you got coal in your stocking.

  Online game networks Xbox Live and PlayStation Network were knocked offline much of Christmas Day in an apparent DDos (distributed denial of service) attack.

  Taking credit for the takedown: a group called Lizard Squad, which previously claimed credit for August attacks on the PlayStation Network and online games World of Warcraft and League of Legends. “

 

USA Today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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North Korean Internet Goes Down For Nine Hours … Hackers Suspected

North Korea Internet Access ‘Totally Down’

 

 

 

 

 

” North Korea experienced sweeping and progressively worse Internet outages extending into Monday, with one computer expert saying the country’s online access is “totally down.” The White House and the State Department declined to say whether the U.S. government was responsible.

  President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. government expected to respond to the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., which he described as an expensive act of “cyber vandalism” that he blamed on North Korea. Obama did not say how the U.S. might respond, and it was not immediately clear if the Internet connectivity problems represented the retribution. The U.S. government regards its offensive cyber operations as highly classified.”

 

Read more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Garage-Built Drone Can Hack Your Wifi And Cell Calls

Spy Drone Hacks WiFi Networks, Listens To Calls

 

 

 

 

” It’s small. It’s bright yellow, and it’s capable of cracking Wi-Fi passwords, eavesdropping on your cell phone calls and reading your text messages. It’s an unmanned spy drone and it just landed in Washington, D.C.

  Long-time friends and former Air Force buddies, Mike Tassey and Rich Perkins, describe their state-of-the-art cyber drone as hard to take down, hard to see and virtually hard to detect.”

 

 

 

 

” They built it in a garage, using off the shelf electronics to prove a drone can be used to launch cyber-attacks.

  It needs a human for take-off and landing but once airborne, it can fly any pre-programmed route posing as a cell phone tower and tricking wireless cell phones.

” We passed telephone calls, hacked into networks, cracked the encryption on Wi-Fi access points all of that sort of evilness is possible,” said Tassey.”

 

 

Read more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Swedish Cops Shut Down Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay Raided By Police, Site Down

 

 

 

 

 

” Swedish police have reportedly raided The Pirate Bay. The portal has been down for several hours. The site has long hidden behind the relatively lax laws of Sweden, but it appears it’s exhausted the leniency.

  The embattled torrent tracker went down this morning, and Swedish Police confirmed to TorrentFreak that some servers were seized in connection with a broad intellectual property operation of some kind.

  There has been a crackdown on a server room in Greater Stockholm. This is in connection with violations of copyright law,” read a statement from Paul Pintér, police national coordinator for IP enforcement.

According to Metro in Sweden (bastardized translation by Google):

  The effort was initiated by Frederick Ingblad, one of Sweden’s special prosecutors file sharing. He confirms that the raid took place in the Stockholm area, on Tuesday morning, without specifying the site further.

– There were a number of police officers and Digital forensics there.This took place during the morning and until the afternoon. And there were several servers and computers seized, but I would not say exactly how many, says Fredrik Ingblad.

  So while we don’t have a definite confirmation, it’s probably fair to draw a line between the intellectual property operation and the outage. TorrentFreak notes that several other trackers like EZTV are down. The Pirate Bay forum at Suprbay.org is also down.

  Earlier this year it was reported that The Pirate Bay set up a network of virtual servers to keep the tracker up and running in the case of a raid but that obviously didn’t work. “

Gizmodo has the story

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Conservatives Enter The Cyber-Fray With 7 Million Strong “Digital Army”

Facebook Army To Police GOP Candidates

 

 

 

” The digital army sprung to life with a click of a mouse in a nondescript office park in Alexandria. Less than 10 miles away, at the White House, the phones began to light up. One call came into the switchboard and then another. Thousands of people flooded the phone lines.

  It was early August 2014, and the callers were conservatives lambasting President Obama for promising what they described as “executive amnesty.” The deluge of angry activists was not the work of a heavily coordinated national campaign, a pricey phone-banking operation, or really an exhaustive effort of any kind.  

  It resulted from a single post on Facebook.

  The volume of calls was so high that, within hours, the White House complained it was a “security issue,” according to an email from the phone vendor hired to connect callers to the switchboard. More than 9,000 calls had been made before they pulled the plug. At the headquarters of ForAmerica, the conservative group that had launched the telephone broadside, the White House’s reaction was seen more as victory than defeat.

” We got our point across,” said David Bozell, ForAmerica’s executive director.

  In the last four years, ForAmerica has quietly amassed what it likes to call a “digital army” on Facebook—a force that that now numbers more than 7 million. The group’s spectacular growth can be explained in part by the paid acquisition of its members through targeted advertising. But thanks to a daily stream of savvy and snackable red-meat messaging, these mercenaries have become loyal conservative digital soldiers whose engagement is attracting new recruits. These days, a routine post on ForAmerica’s page reaches more than 2 million people, achieves more than 100,000 “likes,” and has tens of thousands of people repost and comment. “

National Journal

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Net Neutrality: John Oliver Explains It Best

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver: Net Neutrality

 

 

 

     We’ve run this video before but now that the FCC’s attempt to regulate the internet have been brought back to the public’s attention we thought that Mr Oliver’s take on the cronyism and statism that is represented by the Obama administration’s plans to make the internet a “public utility” deserve further prominence . 

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Nearly 2/3’s Oppose FCC Internet Regulation

61% Oppose Federal Regulation Of The Internet

 

 

 

 

” Americans really like the online service they currently have and strongly oppose so-called “net neutrality” efforts that would allow the federal government to regulate the Internet.

  The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 26% of American Adults agree the Federal Communications Commission should regulate the Internet like it does radio and television. Sixty-one percent (61%) disagree and think the Internet should remain open without regulation and censorship. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.  (To see survey question wording, click here.)

  Only 19% believe more government regulation is the best way to protect those who use the Internet. Fifty-six percent (56%) feel more free market competition is the best protection. Twenty-five percent (25%) are undecided.

  Most Americans have opposed increased government regulation of the Internet since December 2010 when some members of the FCC began pushing “net neutrality” efforts to stop some companies from offering higher downloading speeds to preferred customers.

  Seventy-six percent (76%) of Americans who regularly go online rate the quality of their Internet service as good or excellent. Only five percent (5%) consider their service poor.

  Americans remain suspicious of the motives of those who want government regulation of the Internet. Sixty-eight percent (68%) are concerned that if the FCC does gain regulatory control over the Internet, it will lead to government efforts to control online content or promote a political agenda, with 44% who are Very Concerned. Twenty-seven percent (27%) don’t share this concern about possible government abuse, but that includes only eight percent (8%) who are Not At All Concerned. “

 

 

   With over three quarters of customers being perfectly happy with their internet service is it any wonder that the people are suspicious of the State’s motives in attempting to fix something that is not broken ?

   Along with the potential State boot on the neck of political speech and corporate cronyism that “net neutrality” represents there is the issue of taxation to consider as well .

 

Read it all at Rasmussen Reports

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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iOS Users Beware: Masque Attacks Can Substitute Malicious Apps For Real Ones

Masque Attack: All Your iOS Apps Belong To Us

 

 

 

 

 

 

” In July 2014, FireEye mobile security researchers have discovered that an iOS app installed using enterprise/ad-hoc provisioning could replace another genuine app installed through the App Store, as long as both apps used the same bundle identifier. This in-house app may display an arbitrary title (like “New Flappy Bird”) that lures the user to install it, but the app can replace another genuine app after installation. All apps can be replaced except iOS preinstalled apps, such as Mobile Safari. This vulnerability exists because iOS doesn’t enforce matching certificates for apps with the same bundle identifier. We verified this vulnerability on iOS 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 8.0, 8.1 and 8.1.1 beta, for both jailbroken and non-jailbroken devices. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability both through wireless networks and USB. We named this attack “Masque Attack,” and have created a demo video here: ” (see above)

” We have notified Apple about this vulnerability on July 26. Recently Claud Xiao discovered the “WireLurker” malware. After looking into WireLurker, we found that it started to utilize a limited form of Masque Attacks to attack iOS devices through USB. Masque Attacks can pose much bigger threats than WireLurker. Masque Attacks can replace authentic apps,such as banking and email apps, using attacker’s malware through the Internet. That means the attacker can steal user’s banking credentials by replacing an authentic banking app with an malware that has identical UI. Surprisingly, the malware can even access the original app’s local data, which wasn’t removed when the original app was replaced. These data may contain cached emails, or even login-tokens which the malware can use to log into the user’s account directly.

  We have seen proofs that this issue started to circulate. In this situation, we consider it urgent to let the public know, since there could be existing attacks that haven’t been found by security vendors. We are also sharing mitigation measures to help iOS users better protect themselves.

Security Impacts

  By leveraging Masque Attack, an attacker can lure a victim to install an app with a deceiving name crafted by the attacker (like “New Angry Bird”), and the iOS system will use it to replace a legitimate app with the same bundle identifier. Masque Attack couldn’t replace Apple’s own platform apps such as Mobile Safari, but it can replace apps installed from app store. Masque Attack has severe security consequences:

1. Attackers could mimic the original app’s login interface to steal the victim’s login credentials. We have confirmed this through multiple email and banking apps, where the malware uses a UI identical to the original app to trick the user into entering real login credentials and upload them to a remote server.
2. We also found that data under the original app’s directory, such as local data caches, remained in the malware local directory after the original app was replaced. The malware can steal these sensitive data. We have confirmed this attack with email apps where the malware can steal local caches of important emails and upload them to remote server.
3. The MDM interface couldn’t distinguish the malware from the original app, because they used the same bundle identifier. Currently there is no MDM API to get the certificate information for each app. Thus, it is difficult for MDM to detect such attacks.
4. As mentioned in our Virus Bulletin 2014 paper “Apple without a shell – iOS under targeted attack”, apps distributed using enterprise provisioning profiles (which we call “EnPublic apps”) aren’t subjected to Apple’s review process. Therefore, the attacker can leverage iOS private APIs for powerful attacks such as background monitoring (CVE-2014-1276) and mimic iCloud’s UI to steal the user’s Apple ID and password.
5. The attacker can also use Masque Attacks to bypass the normal app sandbox and then get root privileges by attacking known iOS vulnerabilities, such as the ones used by the Pangu team. “

 

Read more on how to protect yourself from this latest iPhone privacy threat .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Obama On The Internet: We Must Regulate It For It To Be Free

Obama: Government Should Regulate Internet To Keep It Free

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

” So President Obama has announced that the Internet should be regulated as a public utility. He’s asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reclassify internet service providers (ISPs) from “information services” under Title I as telecommunications providers under Title II regulatory guidelines. (See here for background on the distinction.)

  This is all being done in the name of “Net Neutrality,” keeping the Internet free and open, prohibiting “fast lanes” for certain services and sites, making sure no legal content is blocked, and all other horribles that…have failed to materialize in the absence of increased federal regulation.

  Reason contributor and Clemson University economic historian Thomas W. Hazlett defines Net Neutrality as “a set of rules…regulating the business model of your local ISP.” The definition gets to the heart of the matter. There are specific interests who are doing well by the current system—Netflix, for instance—and they want to maintain the status quo. That’s understandable but the idea that the government will do a good job of regulating the Internet (whether by blanket decrees or on a case-by-case basis) is unconvincing, to say the least. The most likely outcome is that regulators will freeze in place today’s business models, thereby slowing innovation and change. “

 

   More on this latest example of Orwellian State-Speak so commonly spewed by the current administration can be found here . Obama’s line is sure to be a classic right up there with “if you like your doctor…” and “we must pass the bill to see what’s in it . ” .

 One is forced to ask , are the progressives so dense as to be blissfully unaware of the ignorance of their statements , or are they inveterate liars ? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Insecam Website Is Streaming Thousands Of Private Security Camera Feeds , Is Yours One ?

A Creepy Website Is Streaming From 73,000 Private Security Cameras

 

 

” It shouldn’t be so easy to peer into a stranger’s bedroom, much less hundreds of strangers’ bedrooms. But a website has collected the streaming footage from over 73,000 IP cameras whose owners haven’t changed their default passwords. Is this about highlighting an important security problem, or profiting off creepy voyeurism—or both?

  Insecam claims to feature feeds from IP cameras all over the world, including 11,000 in the U.S. alone. A quick browse will pull up parking lots and stores but also living rooms and bedrooms. “This site has been designed in order to show the importance of the security settings,” the site’s about page says. But it’s also clearly running and profiting off ads. “

Gizmodo has more

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Anonabox Offers Portable , Complete On-Line Privacy Just By Plugging It In … Anywhere You Go

With This Tiny Box, You Can Anonymize Everything You Do Online

 

 

 

 

 

 

” No tool in existence protects your anonymity on the Web better than the software Tor, which encrypts Internet traffic and bounces it through random computers around the world. But for guarding anything other than Web browsing, Tor has required a mixture of finicky technical setup and software tweaks. Now routing all your traffic through Tor may be as simple as putting a portable hardware condom on your ethernet cable.

  Today a group of privacy-focused developers plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign for Anonabox. The $45 open-source router automatically directs all data that connects to it by ethernet or Wifi through the Tor network, hiding the user’s IP address and skirting censorship. It’s also small enough to hide two in a pack of cigarettes. Anonabox’s tiny size means users can carry the device with them anywhere, plugging it into an office ethernet cable to do sensitive work or in a cybercafe in China to evade the Great Firewall. The result, if Anonabox fulfills its security promises, is that it could become significantly easier to anonymize all your traffic with Tor—not just Web browsing, but email, instant messaging, filesharing and all the other miscellaneous digital exhaust that your computer leaves behind online. “

 

Wired has more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Beware Of Windows 10: It’s Keylogger Spy Software Tracks Everything You Do

Windows 10 Preview Has A Keylogger To Watch Your Every Move

 

 

 

” This week Microsoft announced the next version of its Operating system, dubbed WIndows 10, providing Windows 10 Technical Preview release under its “Insider Program” in order to collect feedback from users and help shape the final version of the operating system, but something really went WRONG!

“Inside Microsoft’s Insider Program you’ll get all the latest Windows preview builds as soon as they’re available. In return, we want to know what you think. You’ll get an easy-to-use app to give us your feedback, which will help guide us along the way.” Microsoft website reads.

  Well, how many of you actually read the “Terms of Service” and “Privacy Policy” documents before downloading the Preview release of Windows 10? I guess none of you, because most computer users have habit of ignoring that lengthy paragraphs and simply click “I Agree” and then “next“, which is not at all a good practise.”

” Do you really know what permissions you have granted to Microsoft by installing Free Windows 10 Technical Preview edition? Of Course, YOU DON’T. Well, guess what, you’ve all but signed away your soul .

 

  If you are unaware of Microsoft’s privacy policy, so now you should pay attention to what the policy says. Microsoft is watching your every move on the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview, Thanks to portions of Microsoft’s privacy policy, which indicates that the technology giant is using keylogger to collect and use users’ data in a variety of astounding ways without the user being aware.”

Hacker News has all the details

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The Great Firewall Of China: A List Of Websites Banned In “The People’s Republic”

Here’s Every Major Website Censored By China’s Great Firewall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

” It’s hardly a surprise that as mobs of Hong Kongers take to the street to protest the Chinese government, China has banned Instagram to stop people from sharing photos of the melee.

  In fact, what would be surprising is if the country didn’t put the country behind its Great Firewall, considering that the Chinese government blocks nearly every American website of note.

  Started in 2003 and known as the “Golden Shield Project,” the Great Firewall uses a number of censorship methods to keep the Chinese populace from seeing content. There are a handful of exceptions, including Bing and other Microsoft-based sites—Microsoft has an office there—and Amazon, which plays a key role in China’s online retail market.

  There isn’t an official count made public, but the massive activist project Greatfire.org keeps track of reportedly unavailable sites. “We started monitoring about 100 sites in 2011,” the site’s Charlie Smith told the Daily Dot. “You can see we are up to 140,000 urls, of which 44,000 are blocked.”

  Here are some of the big ones. You may notice a pattern: No Google, no social networking, no user-submitted content, no news, and no porn. Is there anything else even on the Internet?

 

• Adult Friend Finder
• Archive.org
• The Blaze
• Blogger
• Blogspot
• Bloomberg
• Change.org
• Dailymotion
• Dropbox
• DuckDuckGo
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Hard Sex Tube
• Instagram
• Hootsuite
• Le Monde
• Liveleak
• Macy’s
• Netflix
• New York Times
• Pastebin
• Pornhub
• Redtube
• Shutterstock
• Slideshare
• Soundcloud
• Tube8
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• Vine
• Wall Street Journal
• Wordpress
• Xhamster
• YouPorn
• YouTube
• More than 1,000 Wikipedia pages
• More than 2,000 search results on Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like microblogging site.
• Google (Including .com, .br, .ca, .pl, .tr, .sa, .ar, .eg, .pk, .se, .dz, .za, .at, .ve, .vn, .co, .pt, .dz, .ae, .ph, .pe, .ie, .sg, .bd, .fi, .kr, .hu, .il, .rs, .lt, .hr, .ly, .de, .uk, .in, .tw, .es, .fr, .gl, .ru, .it, .id, .ng, .th, .mx, .ro, .jp, .sk, .au, .cl, .kz, .ua, .no, .my, .dk, .nz, .az, .be, .ch, .nl, .bg, .ec, .lk, and .hk domains.) “

 

 

Reprinted from The Daily Dot . Visit them for more great stories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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New Encryption Software On Smartphones “Concerns” FBI

FBI Not Happy With Apple & Google’s Encryption Policy

 

 

 

 

” Users might have praised the technology companies for efforts to encrypt their latest devices that would prevent law enforcement agencies’ hands on users’ private data, but the FBI is not at all happy with Apple and Google right now.

 

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation director, James Comey, said Thursday he was “very concerned” over Apple and Google using stronger or full encryption in their Smartphones and Tablets that makes it impossible for law enforcement to collar criminals.

  According to Comey, the Silicon Valley tech giants are “marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves above the law.”

“There will come a day – well it comes every day in this business – when it will matter a great, great deal to the lives of people of all kinds that we be able to with judicial authorization gain access to a kidnapper’s or a terrorist or a criminal’s device,” Comey told reporters.

“I just want to make sure we have a good conversation in this country before that day comes. I’d hate to have people look at me and say, ‘Well how come you can’t save this kid,’ ‘How come you can’t do this thing.’” “

Hacker News

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Check Your Online Security With “Have I Been Pwned?”

How To Find Out If You’ve Been Hacked In Under A Minute

 

 

 

 

 

” If it feels like the Internet is plagued by seemingly constant cybersecurity breaches, sometimes the best thing you can do is find out if your usernames and passwords are already owned by an enterprising criminal.

  The search engine Have I been pwned? (HIBP) is one of your best free and easy bets to find out if your sensitive information is floating out in cyberspace for all to see. There are other worthwhile options but HIBP’s new real-time monitoring tool separates it from the pack. 

  HIBP, which has provided easy access to stolen user credentials from newsworthy security breaches since last year, just introduced a major new feature that gives it access to about 175 million vulnerable accounts—a number that will keep growing rapidly—and alerts your within a minute to possible problems.

  Now, with the new feature, scores of smaller breaches are documented and made easy for anyone to search.”

 

Read more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Facebook Is The NSA’s Best Friend

Facebook Poses A Threat To Every American

 

 

 

 

 

” Participation on Facebook could prove very dangerous to your future well-being. There is a reason that Facebook is aligned with both the CIA and the NSA. I have several credible sources tell me that all data posted on Facebook goes into series of cataloged files which culminates with each person being assigned a “Threat Matrix Score”. The mere existence of a Threat Matrix Score should send chills up and the collective spines of every American.

  When, not if, martial law comes to America, this Threat Matrix Score, of which Facebook data is used to help compile an “enemies of the state” list, your future longevity could be seriously imperiled. It is too late for people like Steve Quayle, Doug and Joe Hagmann, John B. Wells and myself to avoid being placed on this list. However, it is not too late for the average American to limit their exposure by NOT posting and participating on Facebook. Facebook participation should come with a black box warning:

“ WARNING: The views expressed on Facebook can and will be used against you. Participation in Facebook could prove detrimental to the length of your life. All political dissident views are immediately reported to the CIA and the NSA. Risk of repeated exposure on Facebook could result in you and your family being hauled out of their homes at 3AM, separated from your family and sent to a re-education camp”. “

 

 

 

Read the rest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Investors: Tech Giants Ignoring Online Privacy Threat … At Their Peril

Tech Chiefs In Plea Over Privacy Damage

 

 

 

 

 

” The US tech industry has failed to appreciate the mounting global concern over its record on online privacy and security and must act fast to prevent deeper damage to its image, Silicon Valley’s top executives and investors have conceded.

  The self-criticism, much of it aimed at consumer internet companies such as Google and Facebook, comes as some of the tech sector’s best-known names have been battered by a backlash over revelations of widespread US internet surveillance and concerns about their growing business and cultural dominance.

  Peter Thiel, a prominent start-up investor and Facebook director, said: “Silicon Valley is quite oblivious to the degree to which this crescendo of concern is building up in Europe. It’s an extremely important thing and Silicon Valley is underestimating it badly.

  Jim Breyer, an early investor and former board member of Facebook, said: “The US government and [tech] companies will have to step up significantly if they want to regain the world’s trust.”

 

Financial Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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How The Feds Turned Yahoo Against It’s Users

U.S. Threatened Massive Fine To Force Yahoo To Release Data

 

 

 

 

 

” The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand to hand over user communications — a request the company believed was unconstitutional — according to court documents unsealed Thursday that illuminate how federal officials forced American tech companies to participate in the National Security Agency’s controversial PRISM program.

  The documents, roughly 1,500 pages worth, outline a secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by Yahoo to resist the government’s demands. The company’s loss required Yahoo to become one of the first to begin providing information to PRISM, a program that gave the NSA extensive access to records of online com­munications by users of Yahoo and other U.S.-based technology firms.”

 

This is the power of Leviathan … we’ve been warned

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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TechDirt Offers A Primer On Net Neutrality

Everything You’ve Wanted To Know About Net Neutrality But Were Afraid To Ask

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

” Okay, ever since our big Net Neutrality Crowdfunding, we’ve had some new readers who aren’t as familiar with the details and issues — yet we’ve been mostly writing as if everyone is informed of the basics. So, we figured it only made sense to take a step back and do a bit of an explainer about net neutrality.

What is net neutrality?

  This is not an easy answer, actually, which, at times, is a part of the problem. The phrase, first coined by law professor Tim Wu, referred originally to the concept of the end-to-end principle of the internet, in that anyone online could request a webpage or information from any online service, and the internet access provider (usually called internet service providers or ISPs) in the middle would deliver that information. At the time, the ISPs were starting to make noises about how they wanted to “charge” service providers to reach end users, effectively setting up toll booths on the internet. This kicked off in earnest in October of 2005, when SBC (which became AT&T) CEO Ed Whitacre declared that internet companies were using “his pipes for free.”

  The phrase has been warped and twisted in various directions over the years, but the simplest way to think about it is basically whether or not your ISP — the company you pay for your internet access (usually cable, DSL or fiber, but also wireless, satellite and a few others) — can pick winners and losers by requiring certain companies to pay the ISP more just to be available to you (or available to you in a “better” way). John Oliver probably summarized it best by arguing that it’s about “preventing cable company fuckery” (though, to be clear, it goes beyond just cable companies).

  The internet access providers claim that service providers, like Netflix and Google, are getting a “free ride” on their network, since those services are popular with their users, and they’d like to get those (very successful) companies to pay.

Wait, so internet companies don’t pay for bandwidth?

  They absolutely do pay for their bandwidth. And here’s the tricky part of this whole thing. Everyone already pays for their own bandwidth. You pay your access provider, and the big internet companies pay for their bandwidth as well. And what you pay for is your ability to reach all those sites on the internet. What the internet access providers are trying to do is to get everyone to pay twice. That is, you pay for your bandwidth, and then they want, say, Netflix, to pay again for the bandwidth you already paid for, so that Netflix can reach you. This is under the false belief that when you buy internet service from your internet access provider, you haven’t bought with it the ability to reach sites on the internet. The big telcos and cable companies want to pretend you’ve only bought access to the edge of their network, and then internet sites should have to pay extra to become available to you. In fact, they’ve been rather explicit about this. Back in 2006, AT&T’s Ed Whitacre stated it clearly: “I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network – obviously not the piece for the customer to the network, which has already been paid for by the customer in internet access fees, but for accessing the so-called internet cloud.” In short, the broadband players would like to believe that when you pay your bandwidth, you’re only paying from your access point to their router. It’s a ridiculous view of the world, somewhat akin to pretending the earth is still flat and at the center of the universe, but in this case, the broadband players pretend that they’re at the center of the universe.”

 

Read the whole thing at TechDirt and arm yourselves with the facts .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Save The Internet … And Our Freedom … Sign The Petition TODAY !!!

Dear Mr. Chairman,Don’t Break The Internet!

 

 

 

 

 

 Click pic to go to the petition

 

 

 

” ALLOWING THE GOVERNMENT TO RUN THE INTERNET LIKE A UTILITY OPENS THE DOOR TO ABUSE. WE NEED YOUR VOICE NOW TO OPPOSE TITLE II — PROTECT AN OPEN INTERNET! “

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