US plan calls for more scanning of private Web traffic, email
[Reuters.com]
Joseph Menn and Deborah Charles
Posted: March 21, 2013
The U.S. government is expanding a cybersecurity program that scans Internet traffic headed into and out of defense contractors to include far more of the country’s private, civilian-run infrastructure.
As a result, more private sector employees than ever before, including those at big banks, utilities and key transportation companies, will have their emails and Web surfing scanned as a precaution against cyber attacks.
Under last month’s White House executive order on cybersecurity, the scans will be driven by classified information provided by U.S. intelligence agencies — including data from the National Security Agency (NSA) — on new or especially serious espionage threats and other hacking attempts. U.S. spy chiefs said on March 12 that cyber attacks have supplanted terrorism as the top threat to the country.
The Department of Homeland Security will gather the secret data and pass it to a small group of telecommunication companies and cyber security providers that have employees holding security clearances, government and industry officials said. Those companies will then offer to process email and other Internet transmissions for critical infrastructure customers that choose to participate in the program.
DHS as the middleman
By using DHS as the middleman, the Obama administration hopes to bring the formidable overseas intelligence-gathering of the NSA closer to ordinary U.S. residents without triggering an outcry from privacy advocates who have long been leery of the spy agency’s eavesdropping.
The telecom companies will not report back to the government on what they see, except in aggregate statistics, a senior DHS official said in an interview granted on condition he not be identified.
“That allows us to provide more sensitive information,” the official said. “We will provide the information to the security service providers that they need to perform this function.” Procedures are to be established within six months of the order.
The administration is separately seeking legislation that would give incentives to private companies, including communications carriers, to disclose more to the government. NSA Director General Keith Alexander said last week that NSA did not want personal data but Internet service providers could inform the government about malicious software they find and the Internet Protocol addresses they were sent to and from.
“There is a way to do this that ensures civil liberties and privacy and does ensure the protection of the country,” Alexander told a congressional hearing.
Fears grow of destructive attack
In the past, Internet traffic-scanning efforts were mainly limited to government networks and Defense Department contractors, which have long been targets of foreign espionage.
But as fears grow of a destructive cyber attack on core, non-military assets, and more sweeping security legislation remained stalled, the Obama administration opted to widen the program.
Last month’s presidential order calls for commercial providers of “enhanced cybersecurity services” to extend their offerings to critical infrastructure companies. What constitutes critical infrastructure is still being refined, but it would include utilities, banks and transportation such as trains and highways.
Under the program, critical infrastructure companies will pay the providers, which will use the classified information to block attacks before they reach the customers. The classified information involves suspect Web addresses, strings of characters, email sender names and the like.
Not all the cybersecurity providers will be telecom companies, though AT&T is one. Raytheon said this month it had agreed with DHS to become a provider, and a spokesman said that customers could route their traffic to Raytheon after receiving it from their communications company.
As the new set-up takes shape, DHS officials and industry executives said some security equipment makers were working on hardware that could take classified rules about blocking traffic and act on them without the operator being able to reverse-engineer the codes. That way, people wouldn’t need a security clearance to use the equipment.
Civil liberties implications
The issue of scanning everything headed to a utility or a bank still has civil liberties implications, even if each company is a voluntary participant.
Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that the executive order did not weaken existing privacy laws, but any time a machine acting on classified information is processing private communications, it raises questions about the possibility of secret extra functions that are unlikely to be answered definitively.
“You have to wonder what else that box does,” Tien said.
One technique for examining email and other electronic packets en route, called deep packet inspection, has stirred controversy for years, and some cybersecurity providers said they would not be using that. In deep packet inspection, communication companies or others with network access can examine all the elements of a transmission, including the content of emails.
“The signatures provided by DHS do not require deep packet inspection,” said Steve Hawkins, vice president at Raytheon’s Intelligence and Information Systems division, referring further questions to DHS.
The DHS official said the government is still in conversations with the telecom operators on the issue.
The official said the government had no plans to roll out any such form of government-guided close examination of Internet traffic into the communications companies serving the general public.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
The Jobs Report Is Wrong
[BuzzFeed.com]
A BuzzFeed original analysis. posted on March 8, 2013 at 12:37pm EST
What headlines say about the monthly jobs numbers is actually no more accurate than chance.
Months in red are months where initial headlines said the jobs numbers fell short of economists’ expectations, but then the revised numbers actually exceeded expectations (or vice versa).
Economists’ expectations were drawn from a Bloomberg survey of economists, and jobs figures were gathered from BLS.gov. Final benchmark revisions for the previous March are released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in February of the following year.
13,753 Government Requests for Google E-Mail Data in 2012, Most Without a Warrant
[CNSNews.com]
Posted: February 23, 2013
By Matt Cover
Federal law says that opened email stored remotely – not on a computer’s hard drive – can be accessed without a warrant. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – American government agencies – state, local, and federal — made a record 13,753 requests to read emails or gather other information sent through Google’s Gmail and other services in 2012, more than half without warrants, according to statistics released by Google.
The total number of users about whom government agencies wanted information also set a record at 31,072, up from 23,300 in 2011, the first year Google began reporting the data. The discrepancy comes because government agencies request information on multiple users or accounts at the same time.
Most of these 13,753 requests, 6,542 of 8,438 in the latter half of 2012 alone, were done without a search warrant, Google data show. Google did not make available any detailed data prior to June 2012, nor did it make available which requests came from the federal government and which came from state or local law enforcement agencies, when asked by CNSNews.com.
Google spokesman Chris Gaither said the company only started tracking which type of legal authority – subpoena, court order, or search warrant – was used in the latter half of 2012. Google issues biannual reports on the requests for user data it receives from government agencies from around the world, including ones in the U.S.
Apple Founder Steve Jobs Dead at 56
[BigGovernment.com]
Posted Oct 5th 2011 at 4:39 pm
by Publius
CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) – Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO who invented and masterfully marketed ever-sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology, from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, has died. He was 56.
Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause.
“We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today,” the company said in a brief statement.
“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve”
Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January—his third since his health problems began—before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Jobs became Apple’s chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.
The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest version of the iPhone, just one in a procession of devices that shaped technology and society while Jobs was running the company.
Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Only Exxon Mobil, which makes it money extracting and refining oil instead of ideas, is worth more.
AT&T, Google and the Obama Administration
BigGovernment.com
Posted Sep 2nd 2011 at 1:29 pm
It’s funny what a million dollars in political contributions, support for the right candidate and a liberal meme can buy you in Washington these days. For Google, it is buying them a free pass as they amass growing power in Washington and the marketplace.
AT&T, while unionized, does not have the same liberal bent as Google. They are more a traditional Beltway player. Open Secrets.org describes their strategy as “Although the company has historically favored Republicans in its political giving, people and political action committees associated with AT&T have as of late generally split their contributions between Democrats and the GOP.”
Recently both Google and AT&T made strategic acquisitions. How they were treated by the politicized Department of Justice makes an interesting statement.
Space Junk Problem Is More Threatening Than Ever, Report Warns
FoxNews.com – Space.com
By Clara Moskowitz
Published September 01, 2011
ESA – This graphic depicts the trackable object, satellites and space junk, in orbit around Earth.
There is so much junk in space that collisions could start to increase exponentially, leading to a continuously growing pile of rubble in orbit, a new report warns.
The independent report, released today (Sept. 1), surveyed NASA’s work to meet the threat of space debris. It was sponsored by NASA, and conducted by the National Research Council, a nonprofit science policy organization.
A New Front in the Google Wars?
BigGovernment.com
Posted Aug 11th 2011 at 5:06 pm
by Mike Flynn
I’m told the below ad is going wide tomorrow. That in itself is interesting. Google is already a power-house on the Internet and, in recent years, has become inextricably intertwined with the Obama Administration. They collect and retain silly-amounts of data on all of us. We know they leverage this data for ad sales, but what else could or would they use this data for?
Lemonade from FairSearch.org on Vimeo.
I have no idea who is actually behind this ad. But, considering that Google is apparently moving into almost everyone’s on-line business, there is no doubt a long line of possible suspects.
More interesting to me has been recent fall-out to a series of articles published at BigGovernment.com that have been critical of Google. Each of the articles has been based on very tangible problems with Google’s business practices. So far, so normal on how we criticize government, corporations or special interests. But, we’ve experienced serious push-back from many of our colleagues in the blogsphere. My hunch is that they are worried that any criticism of Google could negatively impact their results on search engines. Google might be leveraging their market-dominant position to cool criticism.
Which, in itself, is a different, and possibly more important, story. As they say, stay tuned.
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Google’s Investment in Politics Starts to Pay Dividends
BigGovernment.com
Posted Apr 11th 2011 at 2:02 pm
Google’s growing influence with government is beginning to pay dividends for the company while leaving consumers and taxpayers on the short end of the stick.
Since donating over $1 million to the president’s campaign and building its online presence and fund raising base, the company has reaped continued returns on their investment, so much so, that Google’s former CEO is rumored to be on the shortlist to be the nation’s new Secretary of Commerce.
In order to pad its bottom line, Google made a conscious effort to grow its influence in Washington by hiring insiders and placing Google executives in the Administration. In a short period of time, Google has been rewarded with over 25 contracts with government agencies including the NASA, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency.
Hope, Change, and “Invest”
Townhall.com
January 27, 2011
Ann Coulter
Email Ann Coulter | Columnist’s Archive
I missed the middle section of Obama’s State of the Union address when I took a break to read “War and Peace,” but I gather he never got around to what I was hoping he’d say, which is: “What was I thinking?”
The national debt is $14 trillion, the Democrats won’t stop spending, and President Nero gave us a long gaseous speech about his Stradivarius.
I feel so Southern whenever I watch a Democrat give a State of the Union address — and not just because it makes me want to secede. Consternating the rest of the family, my Kentucky mother always talked back to the TV. I do it only when a Democrat is giving a speech.
And if liberals didn’t like Samuel Alito mouthing the words “not true,” they should be really happy I wasn’t in the House chamber Tuesday night.
All I kept hearing was, “Ann pays more.” That’s all I ever hear when Democrats start in with all that “investing.”
Hey FCC: Approve the Comcast-NBC Merger, Already
BigGovernment.com
Posted Jan 14th 2011 at 9:45 am
by Seton Motley
Comcast and NBC-Universal (NBCU) have been waiting to merge for, well, ever. Or at least it seems that way.
Mergers of this sort are supposed to be approved within 180 days of applying to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Justice Department for permission. (As offensive as that may sound – two companies reaching mutually agreeable business terms having to then play Mother May I with the government – that is the way it currently goes.)
Those 180 days expired sometime around Thanksgiving. Yet here we are halfway through January – and Comcast and NBCU are still awaiting the FCC’s blessing. The delay is just another example of the incredible and incredibly damaging sway Media Marxist and Leftist grievance groups have with the current Commission.
The delay has dangled Comcast-NBCU like a piñata, allowing these PIGs (“Public Interest” Groups) to beat shakedown concessions out of them and feed at the trough into which they fall.
We previously pointed out that a racial grievance group – the National Coalition of African-Owned Media (NCAOM) – is demanding that Comcast set aside 50 channels (10% of its capacity) for exclusively African American owners.
In June 2010, California Democrat Representative Maxine Waters and others were obnoxiously voicing their disapproval of the merger. (Yes, the same Maxine Waters who said she wanted to nationalize the entire oil industry.) (more…)
Internet Voting Arrives . . . But Is It Secret and Safe?
FoxNews.com
By Ed Barnes
Published November 01, 2010
On Tuesday, for the first time, voters in 33 states will be able to vote using some aspect of the Internet. But no matter the outcome, experts say no one will be certain those votes haven’t been tampered with.
“We are still a decade away from being sure that Internet voting is secure and not subject to manipulation,” said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president of the Overseas Vote Foundation, which helps servicemen and Americans living abroad to vote in elections using the Internet.
She said she supports delivering ballots via the Web to overseas voters, but she adds that no voting system has proven safe enough to collect ballots that way.
Her position got a major boost earlier this month when Washington, D.C., conducted a pilot project to test its new electronic voting system for the collection of overseas and military absentee ballots. The system was opened to the public to test how secure and usable it was.
Within 36 hours, a team of University of Michigan computer students and teachers had taken it over. They changed votes, “elected” a Star wars robot chairman of the City Council, and installed the school’s fight song, “Hail to the Victors,” which would play 15 seconds after someone voted.
“Without the hacking of the District of Columbia system we would never have known how vulnerable Internet voting systems are,” said John Bonifaz, legal director of Voter Action.
“It showed that it wasn’t just a domestic problem of vote security but a matter of national security,” he said, referring to a second problem the U. of Michigan hackers discovered as they took over the system.
According to J. Alex Halderman, the professor of electrical engineering and computer science who led the hacking effort, they weren’t alone inside the system. They tracked two other computers trying to hack in — one that originated in China and another in Iran.
“Internet voting is a crazily insecure and unreliable system that most rational computer scientists think is an absurd way to vote,” Boniface said.
GOV2.0: Answer Obama Directly
BigGovernment.com
Posted Sep 27th 2010 at 4:31 pm
The challenge for the Tea Party movement is to identify specifically: What would you do?” the president said. “It’s not enough to say ‘get control of spending.’ I think it’s important for you to say, ‘I’m willing to cut veterans’ benefits,’ or ‘I’m willing to cut Medicare or Social Security or ‘I’m willing to see taxes go up.’
Ahem, can we please stop letting Obama get away with this false choice?
Can we please just start saying, “I’m willing to cut Public Employee Compensation (PCE) at the Federal, State, and Local level by 25%.”
Can we please just start saying, “Mr. President, HOW DARE YOU give us a false choice of new taxes and cuts in services?”
25% cuts in PCE are not draconian; they are common sense:
- We get rid of the least productive 10-25% in every department, like businesses do when times are tough.
- We increase the hours worked by Public Employees (by 10%) to match the private sector.
- We outsource responsibly to private sector companies that are chomping at the bit to replace fat bloated government.
With 25% cuts in PCE, the savings are close to $300B annually, and that’s AFTER we spend $100B letting private companies bid to replace the services currently provided by public employees.
Social Networking’s Big Fat Failed Week
FoxNews.com
Published September 24, 2010
A familiar site for many Twitter users: the site’s so called “Fail Whale,” posted when there is a service disruption or the site is over capacity.
Facebook and Twitter residents were thrown back into the dark ages before social networking this week, when hackers and server flaws made several popular sites unavailable.
A glitch on Facebook broke “Like” buttons across the Internet, meaning people couldn’t brag about their latest harvest in Farmville, share their love for obscure bands, or say happy birthday to distant acquaintances. The service disruption came on the heels of a virus that swept through Twitter earlier this week, making the site temporarily a very hazardous place to visit.
Poll: Majority Oppose Net Neutrality Adoption
BigGovernment.com
Posted Sep 24th 2010 at 6:51 am
A new survey released Thursday revealed a majority of Americans oppose the Federal Communications Commissions proposed overhaul of the nation’s broadband regulatory regime.
The poll, conducted by Hart Research Associates, found that a full 75% of Americans nationwide believe the internet is “working well.” The survey also found that 55% of respondents believe that the government should have no hand in regulating the internet.
But for senior FCC brass, the heartburn does not end there: The poll of 800 likely voters found that a plurality of respondents conceded having voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, signaling to Mr. Obama’s White House that it may yet be losing Independent voters on another regulatory issue.
Has HDTV Code Been Cracked?
FoxNews.com
By Blake Snow
Published September 14, 2010
Samsung
Intel is investigating reports that the main copy protection on HDTV broadcasts has been cracked. Will broadcasters wave the white flag or fight to shore up content-protection?
Much to the chagrin of the entertainment industry, the encryption that protects most high-definition video content may have just been cracked.
Intel Corp. officials confirmed Tuesday to FoxNews.com an investigation into a security breach, possibly a fundamental compromise of High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) — the digital rights management software that governs every device that plays high-def content.
HDCP is the main means of encoding and protecting HDTV broadcasts, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes and more, and reports Tuesday suggested that a hole in the security scheme had been uncovered. Representatives from Intel, which invented the specification, acknowledged that they were investigating the security breach.
“We’re familiar with the rumors that are out there on the alleged HDCP compromise and are currently investigating it,” Intel officials told Fox News. “We have so far been unable to verify. So at this point, any alleged hack is speculative and rumor.”
Stephen Balogh, a business development manager at Intel and president of Digital Content Protection LLC — the group that oversees licensing of the HDCP specification — confirmed that the group is investigating the breach. Were the hack eventually verified, “it would represent a free-for-all on a ton of content currently protected by HDCP,” wrote one technology enthusiast website.
Most commonly found in Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, and many high-definition displays, HDCP prevents the copying of audio and video content as it travels across the cables that connect HD devices. It’s required to send a video across the thin, flat HDMI cables that link most new flat-panel TV to gaming systems, Blu-ray players, or whatever.
According to computing experts, the hack unlocks protected content by providing a “master key,” which could be used to strip that encryption from, say, the link between your cable box and your DVR. Without those restrictions, a nefarious user could make unlimited copies — rendering the copy-protection software useless.
The potential for such a hack has been theorized for years; in 2001, researchers warned of a possible loophole in HDCP, possibly similar to what was used in this hack.
HDCP has been used by Apple’s iTunes for nearly two years, said tech-news site Betanews. Since some purchased movies will not playback on incompatible displays, however, the protection software has proved frustrating for some law-abiding consumers.
But even if the HDCP crack were authenticated, it would hardly signal the end of digital rights management or the philosophy behind it. After all, HDCP is just one of many such solutions — albeit the most popular one. That didn’t stop content pirates and others who share media illegally from thrilling at the news on message boards and forums. If the security were broken, the quality of illegal movie and TV downloads might have just gotten a whole lot better, they reasoned.
Not all technology enthusiasts were giddy about the news, however. One comment on the popular blog Engadget summed up the other side of the story.
“Stupid pirates celebrate when something like this happens, and then whine when the effects of this involve stronger DRM protection, and higher DVD and movie ticket prices. How about instead of breaking the law, you go buy and support the millions of employees who work hard to create this stuff?”
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