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Posts Tagged privacy
Silent Circle Moves To Switerland
From the Silent Circle Blog:
Switzerland – the land of Privacy, Neutrality and now Silent Circle (not to mention great cheese, chocolate and watches). We are very much an international firm. We have employees scattered among 9 countries, data centers in Canada and Switzerland, and we count customers from over 130 countries with a heavy concentration of Global 1000 enterprise customers outside of North America. We decided to move our Headquarters from the Caribbean island of Nevis to Switzerland and move a lot of our customer service, finance, sales and operations into this new large office.
It was very important for us to remain a “Global Neutral Privacy Providerâ€, as well as a political and religious agnostic company. Switzerland has the world’s most robust privacy laws, fantastic business and financial resources and an incredible business-friendly atmosphere. In addition to being the world’s center for Human Rights, Global freedom of speech and an innovative technology hub, Switzerland is our perfect home. This move was a logical an easy decision for us. With over 75% of our customer base outside of North America and our Joint Venture company Blackphone also headquartered in our joint new office space in Switzerland – it was a natural move.
We will continue to grow our North America office in Washington, DC as well as our London office, but most of our new growth will take place in our new headquarters. So, if you find yourself in Europe or close to Switzerland, we are only a short hop or train ride away – so please do stop into our new Headquarters office to say hi.
EFF Calls On Companies To Enhance Security
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
How to Protect Your Users from NSA Backdoors: An Open Letter to Technology Companies
As security researchers, technologists, and digital rights advocates, we are deeply concerned about collaboration between government agencies and technology companies in undermining users’ security. Among other examples, we are alarmed by recent allegations that RSA, Inc. accepted $10 million from NSA to keep a compromised algorithm in the default setting of a security product long after its faults were revealed. We believe that covert collusion with spy agencies poses a grave threat to users and must be mitigated with commitment to the following best practices to protect users from illegal surveillance: Read the rest of this entry »
You Can Have Privacy on the Net
Posted by Brian in Comms, Law, Threat Watch on 24/Feb/2014 08:49
Two members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation talk about how it is possible over at Slate:
Despite all of the awareness-raising around surveillance that has taken place over the last year, many individuals feel disempowered, helpless to fight back. Efforts such as the February 11 initiative the Day We Fight Back aim to empower individuals to lobby their representatives for better regulation of mass surveillance. But legislation and policy are only part of the solution. In order to successfully protect our privacy, we must take an approach that looks at the whole picture: our behavior, the potential risks we face in disclosing data, and the person or entity posing those risks, whether a government or company. And in order to successfully fight off the feeling of futility, we must understand the threats we face.
Privacy at the Olympics
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 7/Feb/2014 15:46
From Silent Circle:
Russian authorities have openly acknowledged that widespread monitoring of phone, Internet and other communications systems is in place during the games and have framed these measures as part of overall security preparedness. Safety and security aside, this degree of persistent surveillance creates severe risks for visitors worried about sensitive personal and business communications being compromised when they keep in touch with colleagues and others from Sochi. There have been a number of stories over the past week warning that visitors and athletes can expect to be hacked, noting “it isn’t a mater of ‘if,†but a matter of ‘when.’â€
Spy Apps For the Individual
Posted by Brian in Comms, News, Threat Watch on 6/Nov/2013 13:26
Obama Administration Sued By ACLU Over NSA Spying
From New York Times:
The lawsuit could set up an eventual Supreme Court test. It could also focus attention on this disclosure amid the larger heap of top secret surveillance matters revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who came forward Sunday to say he was their source.
Keeping The NSA Out of Your Life
The Washington Post has a list of some things you can do to increase your security and make it harder for the government to keep tabs on you.
If recentreports are to be believed, the National Security Agency has broad powers to capture private information about Americans. They know who we’re calling, they have access to our Gmail messages and AOL Instant Messenger chats, and it’s a safe bet that they have other interception capabilities that haven’t been publicly disclosed. Indeed, most mainstream communications technologies are vulnerable to government eavesdropping.
Here is an explanation of TOR, software that allows anonymous browsing on the internet:
Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance
Posted by Gary in Comms, Law, News, Threat Watch on 13/Jun/2013 14:46
The problem is that “good” people almost never see how fascist government actions will ever effect them. They just don’t think that way. They believe as long as they are law abiding, the government will never do them harm. But ask someone who lived with the Stazi (Ministry for State Security) in East Germany or the KGB (Committee for State Security) in the Soviet Union, watching their every move. They can tell you why you should be afraid, and there are plenty of them still around to talk to. If we don’t stop this now we will probably never again have the chance.
From: Wired
If the federal government can’t even count how many laws there are, what chance does an individual have of being certain that they are not acting in violation of one of them?
Anonymity Impossible?
Posted by Brian in Law, News, Threat Watch on 16/May/2013 08:00
MIT asks the question in an article about how much information individuals create about themselves.
Much of this data is invisible to people and seems impersonal. But it’s not. What modern data science is finding is that nearly any type of data can be used, much like a fingerprint, to identify the person who created it: your choice of movies on Netflix, the location signals emitted by your cell phone, even your pattern of walking as recorded by a surveillance camera. In effect, the more data there is, the less any of it can be said to be private, since the richness of that data makes pinpointing people “algorithmically possible,†says Princeton University computer scientist Arvind Narayanan.
4th Amendment Under Attack Yet Again
This stuff is serious. Maybe most of the “People” protected by the Constitution do not have enough imagination to see how terribly wrong this is going to go for all of us, and I mean ALL of us. Well, I can imagine it because I’ve worked for governments, I know what they are capable of, and I promise you it will not be good. To quote Bogey, “maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life”, if you can call existence in a police state a life. Think this is hyperbole? We’ll see.
I know first hand that getting warrants can be a pain in the ass, but too bad, its our job to defend and protect the constitution, not whine about how hard it is to do our jobs and still abide by the “current” law, or to look for shortcuts and ways to get around the only document that stands between freedom and totalitarianism.
But don’t worry, I’m clearly over reacting because if I wasn’t, those vigilant watchdogs of the Fourth Estate would surely mention the trampling of our fundamental freedoms in their newspapers, websites and TV news shows, wouldn’t they?
Here is the latest assault on our freedoms from the EFF
DOJ Official: Any Privacy Protection is Too Much Privacy Protection for Cell Phone Tracking
Jason Weinstein, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s criminal division, told a panel at the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee’s “State of the Mobile Net” conference yesterday that requiring a search warrant to obtain location tracking information from cell phones  would “cripple” prosecutors and law enforcement officials. We couldn’t disagree more.
For years, we’ve been arguing that cell phone location data should only be accessible to law enforcement with a search warrant. After all, as web enabled smart phones become more prevalent, this location data reveals an incredibly revealing portrait of your every move. As we’ve waged this legal battle, the government has naturally disagreed with us, claiming that the Stored Communications Act authorizes the disclosure of cell phone location data with a lesser showing than the probable cause requirement demanded by a search warrant. Read the rest of this entry »
LAPD Bails on Google Apps Because of Security & Privacy Concerns
Posted by Gary in Comms, News, Threat Watch on 16/Dec/2011 14:23
From: Cloudline
Microsoft’s Office 365 isn’t the only cloud service losing high-profile customers to security and privacy concerns. Google got a dose of the same medicine on Wednesday, with the LA Timesreporting that the LAPD is now backing out of its contract with Google so it can stick with its on-premises Novell platform for e-mail.
The LAPD and the city attorney’s office ultimately decided, some two years after deciding to move their e-mail systems to the cloud in order to save costs, that no cloud computing solution is really compatible with the federal security guidelines that the departments are required to follow.
“It will be difficult for law enforcement to move to a cloud solution until the [security requirements] and cloud are more in line with each other,†LAPD’s CIO told the LA Times.