permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 10:38 PM, Carolyn Anderson <cschampagne@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I have wanted to find this kind of simple way to stay secure,


I am as confused as anyone about why we need to be concerned about our
online privacy
and ultimately our security. I wonder even more when I see these articles
popping up at the
quality site Hacker News:
"Philip Giraldi, Former CIA Officer: "Americas Deep State is Completely
Corrupt, Existing to Sell out the Public Interest, and Including Both Major
Political Parties as well as Government Officials"
"The concept of “deep state” has recently become fashionable to a certain
extent, <....> For those who believe in the existence of the deep state,
there are a number of institutional as well as extralegal relationships
that might suggest its presence."
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/deep-state-america/
Former Head of DHS Warns Americans About the Horrors of Govt-Mandated
Crypto Backdoors
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/3-reasons-government-mandated-crypto-backdoors-destroy-information-security/
Of course many article like this that you see are often exaggerated,
misleading and inaccurate in addition to being sensational (the clickbait
part)
"Last week a surprising actor joined the discussion
<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/even-former-heads-of-nsa-dhs-think-crypto-backdoors-are-stupid/>
on the government’s push to mandate “backdoors” to encrypted personal
devices. Michael Chertoff, former head of Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS),
said, “…*it’s a mistake to require companies that are making hardware and
software to build a duplicate key or a backdoor*…”

He even defended the notion of a free society by saying “…*we do not
historically organize our society to make it maximally easy for law
enforcement, even with court orders, to get information.*”

Chertoff works for the tech industry and was being paid to voice their
opinion, so his conviction is suspect, especially considering his prior
role in dismantling human rights as DHS head.

At the least, he helped bring attention to this issue of grave importance.
As companies like Apple and Google are providing encryption to customers to
protect their privacy, thanks to the Snowden revelations, government
believes they should have complete access to our private data through
mandated cryptographic backdoors.

FBI director James Comey had all sorts of doomsday prophecies and Orwellian
warnings, saying
<http://thefreethoughtproject.com/apple-google-cop-proofed-device-police-state-throwing-temper-tantrum/>
“*encryption threatens to lead all of us to a very dark place*” and “*Justice
may be denied because of a locked phone or an encrypted hard drive.*”

While government attempts to scare us into submission, every computer
expert that has commented publicly says that mandating this kind of access
would perilously weaken information security.

In a letter to the White House, about 140 tech companies, civil liberties
and privacy activists stated
<http://phys.org/news/2015-05-tech-firms-activists-encryption.html>:

“*Encryption protects billions of people every day against countless
threats—be they street criminals trying to steal our phones and laptops,
computer criminals trying to defraud us, corporate spies trying to obtain
our companies’ most valuable trade secrets, repressive governments trying
to stifle dissent, or foreign intelligence agencies trying to compromise
our and our allies’ most sensitive national security secrets.*”

The letter was endorsed by Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo.

Experts in cryptography, information and security are countering the
government’s appeal to fear with sound rationale.

A report by MIT security experts, alongside other leading researchers in
the US and UK, describes how government access would “*pose far more grave
security risks, imperil innovation on which the world’s economies depend,
and raise more thorny policy issues than we could have imagined when the
Internet was in its infancy.*”

The authors state three reasons why “exceptional access” would imperil
personal data."

<>

Also there is talk about defeating air gap (isolated computer lacking
wireless or cable connection to a network or another computer) protection
measures which depends on their implanting malware on the targeted
computer. I think it involves using something like the microphone found in
most laptops.
-- 
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/