The Privacy Forum Community

Privacy with motorcycle helmets

2008-06-15T23:20:26Z

The most ancient and basic form of privacy is not being seen. It is for that reason that we
have shades or blinds on our windows. A way to prevent yourself from being seen while
transporting yourself around is with motorcycle helmets. One can wear a motorcycle
helmet when riding a motorcycle, moped, or even a bicycle.

I have learned some things about motorcycle helmets, which is why I am posting here.
There are various types of motorcycle helmets, which are 1. half-helmets, aka 'skull caps'
or 'shorties', which only cover the top part of the head, like bicycle helmets, 2. three-quarter
helmets, aka open face helmets, which cover the top and back of the head, 3. motocross
helmets, which cover the the whole head except for a visor, 4. full-face helmets, which cover
the entire head, including a visor.

Full-face helmets with visors are the ones that protect privacy, though motocross helmets
give a little protection. The visor is the important thing, the part which conceals one's face
from the potential sociopaths that roam the streets. Visors are also called 'shields'. Visors
are detachable. Visors can be detached by opening them all the way, then pushing tabs
near the attachment point.

Most new motorcycle helmets come with a clear visor, which gives no privacy protection.
Visors other than clear visors are usually sold separately from the helmet. A specific model
of visor is made for one or more specific models of helmet that are manufactured by the
same company. Not all helmet models have custom visors that are made for them.
Darkened visors are called 'smoke', and the ones that are dark enough to protect privacy
are called 'dark smoke'. There are also mirrored visors. Mirrored visors are especially useful
against sociopaths. Criminals often carry bright flashlights or use very bright headlights,
which they shine into people's faces so as to prevent the person they are pointing the light
at from seeing them, and to identify any possible witnesses that they might want to kill
later. A mirrored visor would reflect their lights back at them.

privacy_forum @ 2008-02-14T22:59:00

2008-02-15T06:58:54Z

A security flaw in the PayPal web site is being actively exploited by fraudsters to steal credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to PayPal users.
The scam works quite convincingly, by tricking users into accessing a URL hosted on the genuine PayPal web site. The URL uses SSL to encrypt information transmitted to and from the site, and a valid 256-bit SSL certificate is presented to confirm that the site does indeed belong to PayPal; however, some of the content on the page has been modified by the fraudsters via a cross-site scripting technique (XSS).

When the victim visits the page, they are presented with a message that has been 'injected' onto the genuine PayPal site that says, "Your account is currently disabled because we think it has been accessed by a third party. You will now be redirected to Resolution Center." After a short pause, the victim is then redirected to an external server, which presents a fake PayPal Member log-In page. At this crucial point, the victim may be off guard, as the paypal.com domain name and SSL certificate he saw previously are likely to make him realise he has visited the genuine PayPal web site – and why would he expect PayPal to redirect him to a fraudulent web site?

If the victim logs in via the fake login page, their PayPal username and password is transmitted to the fraudsters and they are subsequently presented with another page which requests them to enter further details to remove limits on the access of their account. Information requested includes social security number, credit card number, expiration date, card verification number and ATM PIN.

The server currently running the scam is hosted in Korea and is accessed via a hex-encoded IP address. To read more about these threats and to learn how to protect your self from threats, please visit softe.org and download free spyware virus removal tools. Including the free cookie destroyer and cleaners.

Google Privacy Tips

2007-12-20T17:15:35Z

Google has put together a series of videos discussing privacy issues related to its various products. How to unlist your phone number, how to take down an image from street view, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FCEE46AA997A23D9

Privacy essay by a Japanese snob

2007-12-15T15:36:12Z

Ok, here's my essay. I'm an English learner in Japan who's "a paranoid and proud." Please be nice in commenting on my essay.

Essay (Homework 5 for "English Program" class, Inter School Fukuoka, Japan)

Teacher's Name: Wendy Lotteria Burgerking. (Okay. Her real name is *el** McDonald.)

Title: Does your cellphone make you a Paparazzi or a Vigilante?

Takaaki Furukawa

Do you consider yourself a cellphone-using paparazzi spying on your kids, or a cellphone vigilante with a signal jammer^[1]? If you would rather be a mentally healthy person, I hope that your answer would be... "Neither."

As information technology become more advanced, the more threat to our privacy we have. Different people have different reactions to this. Most people seem to be in the middle-of-the-road attitude, being sufficiently careful but not becoming a paranoid or a luddite, or too naive a person either. But there exist some extremists who claim that information being collected by the government, parents, bosses or anyone with an authority, is an evil conspiracy. However, some of them tend to be also the positive activists who protect our privacy in this information/database age.

Now I would like to talk about Big Parents^[2] eagerly and constantly monitoring their kids. What are their motivation anyway? Not many of them intentionally and convincedly wish to pry into their privacy. It is certain that (almost) all parents want their kids to be safe, and in order to assure their safety, they need to know, to some extent, what their kids are doing. That is for sure. But why do they crave for such an enormous amount of information on their kids? In my opinion, the reason is not so much that they love their kids, but rather than that, if something happens to their kids, the parents (THEY) can’t handle it, they think, or it seems to them. The paranoia comes from the parents’ insecurity, neither their love or authority. And the consequence of their insecurity is privacy-deprived innocent children. I think that kids above, say, the age of 7, at least, should have the right to keep things secret from their parents, especially when the parents aren’t good.

What about those people who want to shut the cellphone-chit-chat-girls up with a signal jammer on commuter train^[3]? The first thing I would like to mention is that different cultures have different policies on cellphone use in public place. Japan is one of the countries with the most strict policies regarding that issue; no talking on the cellphone is allowed on trains, buses etc. North America seems to have much looser policies. When I was in Oregon, people were talking on their mobile phones without any hesitation. In my opinion, people in the public place should at least turn down the volume of their voice, when they have to use a cellphone. That’s because those earthy, nosy, “he’s like, she’s like”-filled, incredibly secular chit-chat can interrupt thoughts of other people thinking about, for example, Predialectic Modern Theory and Subdeconstructivist Constructivism. So, in my opinion, everybody should have the right to use a cellphone jammer, anytime, anyplace in the world. But where does my extremist view come from? Probably from regrettable elitism, my chitchat-hating nature, and my trust on Henry David Thoreau-inspired individualism.

After all, the rise of new technologies are inevitable Nobody is capable of stopping them. But new technologies always bring up new issues, privacy issues being one of the most important example. The key question here is, “What kind of attitude toward this new technology do I want to have, and am I sure that that’s the right choice for me, and other people (e.g. my kids) as well?”

References:
[1] Cellphone vigilantes using signal jammers, Author Unknown, International Herald Tribune, Monday, Nov 5, 2007.
[2] "Surveillance society - Big Brother meets Big Parent, Ellen Goodman, Washington Post.
[3] Silencing the chatterbox, Matt Richtel, New York Times.

Article: MPAA University 'Toolkit' Raises Privacy Concerns

2007-11-25T15:00:37Z

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/11/mpaa_university_toolkit_opens_1.html

MPAA University 'Toolkit' Raises Privacy Concerns

The Motion Picture of Association of America is urging some of the nation's largest universities to deploy custom software designed to pinpoint students who may be using the schools' networks to illegally download pirated movies. A closer look at the MPAA's software, however, raises some serious privacy and security concerns for both the entertainment industry and the schools that choose to deploy the technology.

...

Using common Open Source software with xubuntu, apache, ntop, etc.

x-posted

RFID tags

2007-11-11T22:41:38Z

I am doing a project on RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. Actually its a debate, im fighting that yes it should be reinforced. anyway. I just wanted to see how others felt. Heres an article on them. Hopefully it works for everybody else.
Attention, Shoppers: You can now speed straight through checkout lines!

Identity theft

2007-11-04T22:14:55Z

Does anyone use or has anyone looked into services which monitor your credit for things that may effect your credit, abnormal charges and primarily identify theft? Yes I do realize these 3 can be independent or all tied together. I am looking for one which monitors all 3 major credit agencies and quality is more important than price. Any ideas? I figured those who are mindful of privacy are likely to have done research in preventing identity theft.

Intentional Backdoor in PGP Whole Disk Encryption

2007-10-04T19:42:01Z

http://securology.blogspot.com/2007/10/pgp-whole-disk-encryption-barely.html

There's a response from PGP in the comments.

PGP in the UK

2007-10-03T16:07:52Z

Now, in the UK, they can haul you off to jail if you refuse to decrypt your encrypted files for them (or provide the key).

Federal police will gain access to military spy satellites

2007-08-18T18:57:19Z

From politech_bot:

Federal police will gain access to military spy satellites

http://www.politechbot.com/2007/08/17/federal-police-will/

x-posted

Reminder - Computers, Freedom & Privacy 2007

2007-04-16T01:09:06Z

Debate the Future at the 17th annual Computers Freedom and Privacy
Conference, 1-4 May 2007 at the Hilton Bonaventure Hotel in
Montreal, Quebec. WWW.CFP2007.ORG

CFP is the conference where the inventors and innovators on the Internet
met the industry, the regulators, and the creative community to talk about
the new freedoms the net brought. Free speech, censorship, filtering
spam, crypto controls, business security, dataveillance, were all meat
for the all-night debates that took place at this annual gathering.

There has never been a greater need to talk about these issues. This
year's agenda is packed with plenaries and breakout sessions, and Birds
of a Feather sessions that look at all aspects of the growing threats
and opportunities for autonomy in cyberspace.

Featured Speakers

* Whitfield Diffie Sun Microsystems
* Ron Rivest MIT
* Simon Davies Privacy International
* Michael Geist University of Ottawa
* Bruce Schneier BT Counterpane
* Kim Cameron Microsoft

* 1 full day workshop * 8 half day tutorials * Topics include: * ID
Management * Digital Divide * Surveillance * Stalking * Wiretap * War
on drugs * Digital Millenium Copyright Act * Charter rights * RFIDs *
Spyware * No Fly lists * Traffic analysis * Airline Passenger Data *
Health Information * Censorship * Data Retention * Forensics * Security
Information Management

All this and lots more! Watch the program at www.cfp2007.org

Simultaneous Translation throughout plenary sessions

*Discounts for Students and ACM Members*

Stephanie Perrin
Chair CFP2007
forge@ca.inter.net

x-posted

(article): UNDER SURVEILLANCE - The End of Illegal Domestic Spying? Don't Count on It

2007-04-03T04:10:19Z

http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20070315surveillance_1.cfm

UNDER SURVEILLANCE - The End of Illegal Domestic Spying? Don't Count on It

By Joe W. Pitts | 03/15/2007

Americans of all persuasions were shocked by the revelations, first reported in the New York Times in December of 2005, that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop secretly for years on the calls and e-mails of American citizens, bypassing the warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment. The administration's decision, in January, to subject the NSA program to review by the special FISA court, supposedly ending the controversial warrantless surveillance, was reported as a stunning and welcome reversal.

Yet the surveillance program isn't the only thing now "warranted"; so is skepticism about the administration's change of heart. The superficial change-back to FISA control merely masks more deeply hidden examples of secrecy and deception in the concerted attack on American constitutional values. Whether manifest in the Scooter Libby verdict, the recent scandalous disclosures that National Security Letters (NSLs) have been deceptively and illegally used by the FBI to spy on unsuspecting Americans, or in these NSA programs, this attack on our constitutional core demands a vigorous response.

FISA VERSUS TSP—The administration has defended the NSA's so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) and its accompanying executive power-grab—like so many other radical moves—by reference to 9/11. The president and his advisers see the "long war on terror" as requiring a "new paradigm" free from traditional legal constraints. Justice Department lawyers have prepared memos—some still classified—rationalizing extraordinary and unprecedented claims that the president as commander-in-chief during this war could even, acting on his own wishes alone, ignore direct prohibitions in existing laws.

FISA is one such law. Enacted in 1978 after Watergate and the revelations that innocent Americans had been spied on for decades, the law represented a careful compromise. Balancing executive power to fight foreign spies and terrorists with legal limits calculated to protect Americans' privacy and liberty, the law created a secret FISA court to hear government requests for surveillance warrants, provided that FISA (along with Title III for ordinary criminal surveillance) would be the "exclusive means" for monitoring domestic electronic communications, and stipulated that warrantless domestic wiretapping would be considered a crime.

Ordinary criminal warrants require "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. But FISA warrants only require probable cause that the target is a foreign power or foreign agent. Gathering foreign intelligence doesn't require as high a standard as gathering it to criminally prosecute U.S. persons entitled to Fourth Amendment protections. The NSA's TSP operated on a third, still lower standard: merely an employee's "reasonable belief" that Al Qaeda, for example, was communicating with an associate inside the U.S. If these were in fact the only targets, either no warrant would be required (for the target outside the U.S.) or a FISA warrant would be readily obtainable from the extremely deferential FISA court (which has declined only about four of 20,000 government requests).

TSP clearly encompassed far more tenuous communications in the chain, raising questions of how deeply and for how long calls should be monitored: Even those receiving innocuous or mistaken calls? What about everyone subsequently called by, or calling, them? Embarrassing confusion about such standards appeared at one press conference when then-NSA director General Michael Hayden denied that the plain language of the Fourth Amendment includes the phrase "probable cause." He and other officials repeatedly claimed that mere "reasonableness" would suffice. But the Fourth Amendment does require a warrant for domestic surveillance, except in certain narrowly defined cases.

FANCY FOOTWORK—Instead of continuing to deny the existence of the TSP program or deny that it violated FISA, the president defended it, basically on two grounds. First, he argued it was necessary to protect the nation in time of war, and part of his "inherent authority" as commander-in-chief. The FISA court, he said, didn't have the speed and agility needed to spy on Al Qaeda, even though the judges regularly granted warrants at all hours and FISA itself allowed warrantless surveillance for 72 hours in emergencies. While the president may have some inherent authority for warrantless surveillance of enemies abroad, this doesn't excuse him from the requirement to obtain warrants for domestic surveillance.

Second, he claimed the TSP was allowed by Congress's Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) against those responsible for 9/11. Even conservative Republicans like Senators Lindsey Graham and Arlen Specter found this argument ludicrous. The AUMF doesn't mention surveillance, and no one in Congress intended such authorization. In fact, administration efforts to add language pertaining to surveillance inside the U.S. had been rejected. Moreover, FISA had been extensively amended (by the USA Patriot Act) without the extreme of allowing warrantless searches, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted he was told that Congress wouldn't allow such amendments. So how could Congress have intended the general AUMF language to override FISA's specific prohibition?

Leading constitutional scholars, unsurprisingly, rejected the administration's position and concluded that the program was illegal. Ruling last August in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the NSA, Michigan federal judge Anna Diggs Taylor held that the program violated FISA as well as the Constitution's First and Fourth Amendments, and the separation of powers, although a judicial panel said the program could continue while the government appealed.

It was shortly before the government's uphill appellate-court battle, and a day before Gonzalez testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, that, in the post-election environment, he announced that the TSP would be brought within FISA. The government now argues that this moots Judge Taylor's decision. For this and more than fifty other lawsuits challenging the surveillance, the government also urges dismissal on Catch-22 grounds: the "state secrets privilege" shields such programs, and since the surveillance is secret, the plaintiffs cannot demonstrate the harm that would confer standing to sue.

Open questions include (i) how the FISA court, previously viewed by the administration as too cumbersome, suddenly became agile enough; (ii) whether the FISA court will protect us, given that its legal standards suddenly allowed these "innovative and complex" orders, when the NSA's more relaxed standard previously didn't suffice; (iii) whether the still-secret warrants include constitutionally mandated, fact-based suspicion of individual circumstances or are blanket program-approvals of some kind; and (iv) why we should believe what the administration says now, since the program was masked in secrecy and deception before.

General Hayden and 9/11 Commission Vice Chair Lee Hamilton have both confirmed in Congressional testimony what Hamilton called the "astounding intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans that is routine today in government." Certainly, NSA technological power can hardly be overstated—and it is growing. Already possessing the most incredible information-gathering capabilities in the world, the NSA has recently complemented its global listening posts and satellites with new technologies, including speech recognition and translation. James Bamford, an eminent chronicler of the NSA (and a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit), writes that the NSA is "close to achieving" its "ultimate goal of intercepting and reviewing every syllable and murmur zapping into, out of, or through the United States."

THE PRIVATE SECTOR—Telecommunications companies like AT&T have long and profitably assisted the NSA, and as technology has shifted international communications to U.S. and rich-country hubs in ways that erode the foreign/domestic legal distinctions of FISA described above, they've helped the NSA exploit these trends. Litigation documents and media reports confirm that these companies have allowed the NSA to tap directly into not just undersea cables but also fiber optic cables that enable real-time back-door access to these blurred domestic and international phone, e-mail, VoIP, and instant-message communications. The companies involved have either issued denials—which may be lies that they see as justified for national security purposes—or non-committal statements that they comply with "the law" (presumably as interpreted by the Bush administration).

The companies have particularly assisted a distinct NSA program revealed shortly after the warrantless-eavesdropping TSP program was made public: datamining millions of intercepted American communications. Datamining is increasingly popular in government and business, involving automated review of significant quantities of data to discern patterns and predict and influence behavior. This datamining assumes that the patterns identified can highlight terrorist communications, as distinguished from ordinary communications, in addition to allowing more detailed searches within what one source described as "the largest database ever assembled in the world."

Such datamining recalls the discredited Total Information Awareness (TIA) program run by former Iran-contra felon John Poindexter, which Congress defunded after a public outcry, but aspects of which quietly migrated to other agencies, including the NSA. The administration has also lobbied Internet companies and Congress to require data retention to identify who uploads information, to help garner intelligence or prosecute for illegal content. House Republicans introduced a bill in February that would mandate such retention.

Datamining's typical approach—analyzing vast quantities of information instead of targeting based on individualized suspicion—may be fine when used by private companies such as Amazon.com to predict, for example, that a book will interest you based on your purchasing patterns. It is more problematic when secretly used to stigmatize you, deny you benefits or services, criminalize you by taking your actions out of context, or when combined with other databases to constitute what is effectively an intrusive warrantless search.

A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service recently noted datamining's limitations in counter-terrorism, including issues such as data quality, mission creep (e.g., from counter-terrorism to tax collection or fighting crime generally), human errors in interpretation, terrorist-incident data sets too small to be useful as valid predictive models, false positives, and privacy concerns. Some commentators, including Judge Richard Posner, insist that automated sifting of data cannot, by definition, invade liberty, since it means that "most data is not read by an intelligence officer." Others realize that such vast dragnets can be an instrument of social control that seriously infringes on both privacy and other liberties precisely because people are never quite sure the extent to which they're being monitored.

There are now reportedly over 200 datamining programs scattered throughout U.S. government agencies. Although Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has repeatedly introduced legislation requiring public reporting of these programs, along with their effectiveness, privacy impact, and ways individuals can be informed and opt out, the bills have not yet passed. These continuing datamining programs raise many issues, not the least of which are the missing independent checks-and-balances and the seemingly reversed presumption of innocence, which auger a serious loss of privacy and control over our own intimate information.

TIME FOR GRASSROOTS ACTION—The perils presented by the president's surveillance programs pale in comparison with the broader threat from his theory of unlimited power, which assaults the rule of law itself (as evident in everything from his "signing statements," by means of which he reserves the right to ignore laws he dislikes; to his detention policies; to the suspension of habeas corpus; and threats to prosecute the free press for reporting on all of these programs). Stephen Colbert recently joked that in a war without limits, the president's power should be unlimited. But the rest of us should be concerned that it's already unlimited if the president can ignore laws like FISA that were passed to stop precisely these sorts of abuses historically arising from unchecked power.

The president's latest move toward complying with FISA is simply one of unilateral discretion that could be revoked at any time; he maintains that he can still depart from FISA at will. As the Supreme Court has previously written, "Fourth Amendment freedoms cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances may be conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch."

In short, the reversal is deceptive, of a piece with related deceptions that undergird the administration's imperial ambitions. Among the many presidential lies are Bush's claims that the TSP surveillance: always involved a court order; targeted only international subjects; only related to Al Qaeda and its affiliates; meant that Democrats didn't want to know if Al Qaeda was calling; prevented attacks like the ridiculous "Brooklyn blowtorch" scheme of Iyman Faris; would have prevented the human errors that failed to stop the 9/11 attacks, by identifying hijackers like Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi (whom officials knew were in the U.S. and had monitored but failed to arrest); was necessary and effective (despite thousands of TSP false leads protested by the FBI suggesting the contrary); and has now been terminated, when, as we've seen, it continues in secret under unclear FISA court authority and the datamining programs that persist unhindered.

Excesses like the TSP surveillance not only betray our values, but tend to produce negative practical consequences: insecurity and fear rather than security. Those who ask what harm this can cause if you're innocent might want to recall the many innocent people whose privacy and free expression have already been violated: the U.S. citizens and foreigners rounded up and mistreated after 9/11; those wrongly locked up in Guantánamo Bay and a network of secret detention facilities; the peace activists who have been harassed, spied on, and blocked by "no-fly" lists; and America's general slide toward being one of those fearful surveillance societies we've always thought could not be more different from us. Though terrorists plot to instill such fear, Abraham Lincoln was right to say that only we can destroy ourselves.

The new Congress has thus far not lived up to its promise to address these and other civil liberties and human rights violations and, where necessary, reassert the rule of law. It took grassroots pressure to defeat the president's attempt to legalize these programs during the recent lame-duck session, and it will take grassroots pressure on the new Congress to achieve real reform. Congress must call immediate and comprehensive hearings both to stop this illicit surveillance and to hold accountable those who have ordered it.

Joe W. "Chip" Pitts is a lecturer at the Stanford Law School and a volunteer leader with Amnesty International, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and the ACLU. He has written for the Washington Spectator in the past, on the erosion of civil-liberties protections since 9/11.

x-posted

Swedish Integrity Committee report

2007-03-30T09:47:37Z

Cross-posted to big_brother, privacy_forum.

Yesterday, the Swedish parliament’s Committee on the Protection of Personal Integrity presented an initial report on how personal privacy and civil liberties have been ignored in the legislative process in recent years. I believe their conclusions can be applied to many other countries. I’ve posted a rough translation of the press release on my LJ.

washingtonpost.com: My National Security Letter Gag Order

2007-03-25T18:39:54Z

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032201882.html?sub=AR

My National Security Letter Gag Order

Friday, March 23, 2007; Page A17

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

Found via this thread & comments over on jwz

x-posted

Stasi 2.0

2007-02-09T16:32:02Z

Cross-posted to ahruman, big_brother, privacy_forum. This may not seem like such a big deal from, say, a US perspective – but sit back and consider what that means.

For a couple of years now, the current and previous Swedish administrations have been trying to pass a law which would allow the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets Radioanstalt, FRA), Sweden’s foreign signal intelligence organisation, tap into electronic communications passing the Swedish border. The full scope is not immediately obvious, or rather, is deliberately obfuscated; the majority of e-mail and a significant proporiton of phone traffic within the country passes the border twice or more.

The proposal has been sharply criticised by the Security Police and the regular police, while a former East German minister who had been responsible for the Stasi said that it would have been the tool of his dreams. Despite this, an attempt was made to pass this law in 2005, but was withdrawn because it unfortunately received too much public attention.

Wait, let me say that again. The proposal was withdrawn, according to the minister responsible, because it received too much public attention!

The process of reintroducing the proposal started this last Christmas holiday. Today, a very slightly updated proposal passed review by the Council on Legislation, a judicial preview board consisting of Supreme Court judges. The modification consists of a politically-appointed board which must approve application of this law on a case-by-case basis. East Germany had that, too. Even Bush has to go to a court these days.

The Pirate Party is in the process of arranging demonstrations, and is contacting other parties and youth leagues.

If you are in Sweden, please get informed, and get involved. If you know anyone in Sweden, or any activists or bloggers interested in civil liberties issues, please pass this on. Democracy is dying.

This would be funny if it weren't so creepy

2007-01-11T17:24:52Z

This is an actual British government poster outside a London Metro station:

Canadian coins bugged, U.S. security agency says

2007-01-11T17:00:19Z

According to this article, "Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence." Apparently, RFID transmitters have been found in Canadian coins. The article speculates that the bugged coins may have been given to defense-industry personnel so that their movements could be tracked at a conference hosted in Canada.

Hidden Camera Exposes Illegal Search by Police

2007-01-07T03:06:28Z

Officer Blatantly Disregards 4th Amendment

This article is about a police search of a man's vehicle when he was pulled over in Texas. The man in the article keeps a camera on his dash to record his encounters with the police, and portions of the video are included in the article.

If you haven't done anything wrong ...

2006-05-23T00:12:30Z

_{(From tmcm. X-posted.)}

The Eternal Value of Privacy

2006-05-21T04:06:38Z

By Bruce Schneier, Wired, 18 May 06

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Neo-TIA possibly being used to identify leakers

2006-05-15T18:31:48Z

Link: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/federal_source_.html

Excerpt: "A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers [reporters] call in an effort to root out confidential sources."

Q. What could a discarded airline boarding pass tell an identity fraudster about you?

2006-05-03T22:00:50Z

A. Way too much

Data Brokers Selling Your Info to Gov't Agencies

2006-05-03T16:04:27Z

News.com article: GAO Report on government agencies bypassing federal privacy standards by buying personal info from private data brokers

Products of Privacy

2006-04-29T14:24:46Z

This product is a must for privacy fetishists, pranksters and stalkers.

With this Prepaid calling card one can:

Change one's caller ID (Caller ID Spoofing)

Change one's Voice (Voice Changer)

Record one's calls (Call Recording)

And yes caller id spoofing means you can choose your caller ID you can for example call your boss with the caller ID of his boss and tell him that he is fired.
Although one should probably think about weather this priceless joke is worth being jobless.

For more information look at: http://spoofcard.com/

TIA lives on

2006-04-28T19:45:02Z

Technology behind the Pentagon's controversial data-mining project has been acquired by NSA, and is probably in use.