The loose-knit hacking movement “Anonymous” claimed Sunday through Twitter that it had stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to the company’s clients. Anonymous members posted links to some of the information Sunday and more on Monday.
As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2011 and discussing where we are in the fight for a free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy.
The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples:
Government report concludes the government classified 77 million documents in 2010, a 40% increase on the year before. The number of people with security clearances exceeded 4.2. million, more people than the city of Los Angeles.
Government tells Air Force families, including their kids, it’s illegal to read WikiLeaks. The month before, the Air Force barred its service members fighting abroad from reading the New York Times—the country’s Paper of Record.
Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees were barred from reading the WikiLeaks Guantanamo files, despite their contents being plastered on the front page of the New York Times.
Article below, based on views of three or so retired senior military officers, two of them former Service TJAGs, takes an unfortunate tack on Manning's treachery. Their contention is that command and systemic failures set conditions for Manning to compromise documents. They assert that since he was “juniorest guy in the office,” everybody but him was responsible for what he did. I disagree. Responsibility for security is absolutely an individual one. Individuals sign general nondisclosure agreement SF-312 and other program-specific non-disclosure agreements as a priori conditions of access. Rules are stated up front. Personnel security clearances, training, and indoctrination are approaches used for our side. Gates, guards, guns, and all technical computer stuff are oriented against adversaries. Manning should have been able to work in a totally open storage area with hardcopy and softcopy documents of all classifications immediately at hand without anyone having to worry about him. Further, as we know, decision to commit treason is a profoundly individual one, often facilitated and rationalized by adversaries through considerations of sex, money, ideology, compromise, ego, excitement, etc. Individuals are supposed to individually withstand and deflect such adversary facilitations and inducements. So, in my mind, Manning is party at fault here. If justice system cannot generate a capital conviction for him, then he should go way of Jonathan Pollard, Israeli agent within NIS — life in prison, throw away key, No compassion on my part for either.
After 19 months in military prisons — much of the time in solitary confinement — Pfc. Bradley Manning finally emerged over the past week from the netherworld to which he has been confined since his arrest in the largest breach of classified information in U.S. history.
Seven days of hearings at Fort Meade, Md., produced what the prosecution called “overwhelming” evidence that the low-ranking Army intelligence analyst was the one who sent hundreds of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables to the transparency website WikiLeaks.
But the hearing also produced equally compelling evidence of the larger issue that is often overlooked in discussions of Manning’s alleged misdeeds: the systematic breakdown in security that enabled a low-ranking enlisted man to abscond with a staggering quantity of classified Pentagonand State Department documents.
What do you think of the following: YouTube has an “informal system” that allows companies with copyrights to automatically scan all uploads for potential violations. If the software detects the “possibility” of a violation (image, tune, trademark, etc.), it automatically tells YouTube to delete the content. This software is so automated, it can censor millions of uploads a day without human intervention.
Here's an example of how this censoring system was used to block speech that Universal music found objectionable:
A site called MegaUpload, a “large file” sharing service based in Hong Kong, is targeted by copyright holders, including Universal Music, for shutdown. They believe the site makes “copyright piracy” easier.
To fight back on the media front, MegaUpload, a popular (50 m users a day), pays $3 million to produce a music video that promotes the service. The video features big name musical talent.
MegaUpload posts the music video to YouTube to share it with a global audience.
Universal Music, uses special access it has the to the YouTube system (inappropriately named the “content management system”) that allows it to scan all videos posted to the service for potential uses of Universal musical content or the mention of or likenesses of artists it has under contract.
Universal Music identifies that several of its artists are in the MegaUpload video. It automatically signals YouTube to remove/take down the video. YouTube complies. It does so automatically and without verification that Universal even has a valid claim to the copyright. Why?
For South Korean, Chinese and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development — panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim’s train — attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites.
Phi Beta Iota: There is a huge disconnect between how the US secret intelligence community spends money, and what it produces. 4% “at best” of what a major commander needs to know, and nothing for everyone else. Until the secret world has leadership focused on requirements definition, collection management, holistic analytics, multinational information-sharing and sense-making, and direct constant support to decision-makers at all levels across all issue areas, it will continue to administer (not mange, not lead) the world's most expensive Potemkin Village.
If we accept this unnamed official's argument at face value, then why is this program, and those like it, classified at the special access compartmented level.
Could it be that the object of the excessive secrecy is keep the cost and some of the performance data from the American people so that they do not know where their tax dollars are going? Of course this obvious question was of little interest to the NYT.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. official says Iran will find it hard to exploit any data and technology aboard the captured CIA stealth drone because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory.
The official also said Saturday that despite Iran's latest claims to have hijacked the RQ-170 Sentinel and brought it down near the eastern Iranian city of Kashmar, the U.S. is convinced that the drone malfunctioned.
“The Iranians had nothing to do with it,” the official said.
Full Story Plus Past Posts on Drones Below the Line
In the words of Nova Spivack, we are approaching The Sharepocalypse. The real-time Web sounded like a great idea, but it has become impossible to manage. The success of social media has proven, ironically, to be its biggest challenge. The services we already use are getting busier, and whole new networks are popping up all the time. Email used to be the only problem. Today, the info streams are legion.
It's hard enough being a normal user, but some have millions of people tweeting at them! How are they supposed to process all those messages? In the Information Age, you'd think more data would be a good thing, but on the social Web, the opposite is true. But the aforementioned Nova Spivack – along with co-founder Dominiek ter Heide – has just unveiled Bottlenose, and it could be the tool that helps us avert The Sharepocalypse in the nick of time.
Phi Beta Iota: We are less enthusiastic. As one commentator notes, “Bottlenose is completely useless to you until you have an account at facebook/twitter/both. ” Until we achieve the open source tri-fecta (at least) most of this is as dumb as Google — math hacks on digital garbage.
