Update: The War On Privacy Is Ongoing

Over the past few months, there has been many new events and revelations in the ongoing timline of the "War on Privacy" conducted by our Government, including the trial and conviction of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange running for Senator in Australia and new leaks and confirmations regarding the ongoing efforts of our government to conduct massive secret spying programs on it's own citizens.

The Federal Government is spending a ton of money to make sure they can read your e-mail, even if it's encrypted. In fact, they are working on getting to the bottom of the annoying encryption problem fouling up their massive data collection efforts. What good are entire server farms worth of data if you can't access it?

In the latest batch of documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, it's been revealed that the government is currently operating a 35,000-employee program which costs almost $11 billion dollars a year dedicated entirely to cracking common forms of cryptography for mass communication. In what has to be one of the biggest gatherings of brain power, this is an understandably important undertaking for the growing surveillance state.

Director of national intelligence James Clapper was revealed in a summary in one of the leaked documents to have stated that the government is investing in "groundbreaking crytanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit Internet traffic." Unfortunately, Mr. Clapper did not clarify what kind of Internet traffic, and what they are classifying "adversarial cryptography".

The current path our government is on in regards to domestic surveillance is unfortunately no longer a secret to anyone, with a flood of information coming out in the past few months about several formerly top secret NSA programs such as PRISM. Certain members of our government seem to feel that it is necessary for our security to violate privacy on a massive level. Ars Technica recently reported on the fears of the cryptography community, with the idea being espoused that common forms of cryptographic algorithms will be able to be broken. Several popular security commentators including Bruce Scheier have publically come out against this as being an unfeasible situation, even though it would still be technically possible. However, modern forms of encryption such as those formats using 256-bit keys are still considered impossible to break in our lifetimes. The problem is updating corporate and business infrastructure and educating admins as to what new security standards ought to be used.

The problem is in effect a question of urgency, and means. The government is in the process of harnessing their data collection and growing their initiatives on a massive scale. In a no longer secret intelligence budget leaked by Snowden to the Washington Post recently, it was revealed that our government spends over $52 billion dollars a year on surveillance and intelligence gathering, adding to prior revelations that the NSA bugged the headquarters of the European Union, and hacked into the video conferencing communications systems at UN Headquarters, both illegal acts under international law.

sources:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/feds-plow-10-billion-into-groundbreaking-crypto-cracking-program/

http://www.fastcompany.com/3016340/the-code-war/nsa-hacked-the-un-by-cracking-its-internal-video-conferencing-system

SOPA Defeated!!

Thanks to a resounding opposition to SOPA, The Internet once again revels in triumph and success as a free place to share unrestricted information.  SOPA was much like The Protect IP Act, which threatened web hosts by giving The United States' government the ability to blacklist websites, and effectively sensor the websites in question from other Americans browsing the web.  SOPA was heavily funded by major Hollywood companies, such as the RIAA and MPAA.  Around The Internet worldwide, protests began springing up against SOPA.  Several major websites are actively protesting it, millions have shared stories and spoken out against SOPA over Facebook and Twitter, and lastly there have even been formal petitions to stop SOPA.  Vice-President Joe Biden even makes some great points on Internet Freedom



Well my friends, all of your petitioning, protesting, and proclamations have actually made progress. On January 14th, The White House officially spoke out against SOPA, and this unjust legislation has been effectively put away.  Some highlights from the White House's address:

• While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.
• Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.  
• We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.
• The Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response.  
• We expect and encourage all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy.
• We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. 
• Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the values of free expression, privacy, security and innovation. 

So while SOPA has been defeated, don't sleep America, as new and old legislation will continue to be reworked to fight online piracy.  With that in mind, we must be ever vigilant about the laws our country is attempting to pass.  We now know, that with overwhelming support, that we can effect legislator, we can change how this country, and The Internet, is run.

Stanford's Online AI-Class; First Impressions

Monday, October 10th marked the start of ai-class.com.  A novel experiment by Stanford, this free online course attempts to teach over 150,000 people about artificial intelligence through a series of videos and quizzes.  At first I was skeptical, as I watch tons of great videos for the purpose of learning everyday, but to convey an entire college course through YouTube videos is a different story.  Although admittedly, I was presently suppressed with the first lesson.  It consisted of 13 videos ranging from 30seconds to 9minutes, each ending with a one question quiz, and the next video typically starting with the answer.  I thought the lessons were absolutely fabulous, moving slow with illustrations and step by step explanations.  If one needed extra help understanding a topic, all you have to do is use Google or Wikipedia and you are almost instantly caught up again.  My only complaint with the class thus far has been with the ability of their servers to handle the students.  Too often when I go to visit the page is it unavailable due to the sheer about of connections and work put upon their servers.  They have also been patching and updating their hardware, but this is almost an effort too late, as the classes have already started.  One has to try several times to make a successful connection to the website, and even then it is not parented you will complete your lesson.  Overall, it's a great course, although it defiantly was under prepared with handling the influx of students it received, something I thought Stanford would have anticipated and solved (they knew how many students registered before hand, they should have stress tested their servers prior to launch).  Hopefully it improves, I will be updating you in the future, but in the mean time feel free to discus the course in the comments.

Here is the beginning of Unit 2. If you aren't registered you can follow along on YouTube!

Free Learning Online!

Recently, I have found a number of amazing resources for learning online.  Academic Earth, is a fantastic website that gives awesome speech from renowned professors all over the world.  AE offers courses on all subjects in easy to digest videos, making it easy to watch, learn, and understand.  Stanford's Engineering Everywhere is also offering top notch courses in computer science and mathematics. I have personally enrolled in the AI courses, and am excited to begin watching the videos and then attempting some assignments.  You can also find a very eclectic collection of subjects and schools over at LifeHacker's Technophilia, which has everything from history to foreign languages. If video's aren't your thing, you can always check out Wikiversity, which is Wikipedia's take on open source education.  Although, Wikiversity may not have the depth of Standford's courses it certainly has the breadth, offering courses from gastronomy all the way to oncology.  But going back to the computer subjects, if you want to learn how to program there is no better place than Google Code University.  At GCU, you can learn C++, Java, Javascript, and Python!  All great languages which can help teach the concepts of computer science, such as object oriented, abstraction, and design styles.  They offer also courses on computer security, but if you really want to learn information security, I suggest the best: SecurityTube.  SecurityTube offers the best videos and lectures from professionals in the hacker field and at security conferences.  SecurityTube also offers certifications as well, so you can actually get something to show from all this e-learning.  Until next time Internet, educate yourself! We have a long, hard road ahead of us, and I want everyone on the top of their game!  We must all be well educated and critical of our world if we hope to survive and continue bettering our situation.

Watch it on Academic Earth

Threats to Grass Roots Reporting: Astroturfing and Plagiarism

One of the greatest threats to any grass roots system is the falsification of perspective.  This means falsifying the authenticity, integrity, or credibility of a news-article, blog-post, or even status-update.  Many examples of this exist on The Internet, which shatter the fundamental ethics of journalism, such as truthfulness, objectivity, and accuracy.  I am speaking of plagiarism and astroturfing, which both drastically threaten independent news and blogging.  Plagiarism involves an individual copying a greater[or any] work, with the intent of deceiving readers into believing it is an original work of their own;  whereas astroturfing is a larger entity posing as individual perspectives, with the intent of deceiving readers into believing these are stand alone entities. Both jeopardize legitimate blogging, press, and personal value.  As defenders of grass roots, decentralized technologies, and individual rights we must call out these impostors and fakes whenever possible!

Astroturfing largely damages the value of true public opinion as it bolsters biased perspectives through falsifying grass root claims.  A great example of this is The News Hawks Review, a fake news web site that is paid to wright positive reviews of topics.  The LA times even called out a public water service for paying the Hawks Review for SEO (search engine optimization).  This is a disgusting act, as it attributes fake accolades to the public service as well as profit from reporting biased news.  As news reporters and defenders of the net, we must all call out such atrocities in public forum, such as Internet defender Michelle Marie did.

Plagiarism also destroys the value of independent news and blogs. Take for example this man, Mukesh Saini, a self asserted security professional, who had been plagiarizing and disseminating "his" writings around private security groups. The blog, security-of-cyberspace, mysteriously started up on September 7th and had since then published 54 professional articles in less than 10 day.  Many of the posts on this blog heavily plagiarized entire articles without giving credit to the original sources. He has since gone back and linked each article and given credit to each individual writer, after I had called him out in a closed professional forum.  This is exactly what we must do as a society in this age of over-information, call out the fakes! We must deroot these phony actors, and have them give real credit where it is due.

A Decentralized Solution to Certificate Authorities: Moxie Marlinspike's Convegence.io

By now, I hope most people understand that certificate authorities are not invulnerable to hacks, and putting full trust in any single source is just poor faith.  This point is only amplified when we invest full trust in multiple stand-alone authorities, such as the situation we have today. If any single one of our trusted authorities fails,then we the end users are left vulnerable. Moxie Marlinspike sums the whole situation up rather nicely in this video:

At the end of the video, Moxie announces Convergence.  Converge is a new FireFox add-on, that runs in the background, and verifies the CA's result through multiple physical channels.  This provides a decentralized perspective to aid in authentication confirmation.   Convergence was built on a white-paper entitled, Perspectives.  His solution at convergence.io also takes care of several information leaks that existed in the original Perspectives implementation.  I highly suggest user's instal this FireFox add-on!  It has several verification options which provides a huge amount trust agility, allowing user's to set their level of paranoia.  It still has some problems, but Moxie is also accepting code reviews and donations.  The point is: We need more technologies like Convergence, which harness the decentralized strength of the Internet, and protect all individual users!

Americans Elect 2012

www.AmericansElect.org could change the way we vote in America. This novel concept asks the Internet, what are the issues you care about? It allows nominations of any applicable person to the ballet of President of the United States. The person with the most votes will be featured on ballots across America, as an actual candidate for presidency. This gives the people the power to disrupt to the two party system, and potentially set a new precedent in voting. I urge you to check out the website, and give change a chance.