Tag: 1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint

Fear Is The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel

Stingray is a product name for an IMSI-catcher popular amongst law enforcers. Despite the devices being trivial enough that anybody can build one for $1,500, law enforcers have been desperate to keep the devices a secret. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), for example, would rather throw out cases than disclose its Stingray usage.

Here in Minnesota law enforcers are also busy keeping tight wraps on Stingray usage:

A Fox 9 Investigation has revealed that tracking warrants for a surveillance device called StingRay have routinely been kept sealed, despite a law requiring them to become public with 90 days.

The StingRay device is used by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension about 60 times a year, said BCA Superintendent Drew Evans. Hennepin County Sheriff also had a StingRay, but a spokesperson said they discontinued it after using it only four times.

Why the secrecy? If you were expecting a detailed legal defense you’re going to be left wanting. The only defense law enforcers can muster is fear. Whenever a law enforcement department is pressed about the secrecy of Stingray devices they respond with the scariest case they can think of that involved the device

“This technology has been absolutely critical in locating some of Minnesota’s most violent criminals, more quickly than we ever were before,” Evans said.

Photo State of surveillance: StingRay warrants sealed despite changes in Minnesota law
Law enforcement used the technology last month when a disgruntled client allegedly gunned down a clerk at a St. Paul law firm and then went on the run. Police had the suspect’s cell phone and tracked him down.

[…]

“Just this week we were able to locate a level 3 sexual offender that was non-compliant, a suspect in a series of serial rapes, and a homicide suspect, this week alone,” he explained.

This usually satisfies journalists and the general public but shouldn’t. Whenever a law enforcer brings up a scary case where they used a Stingray device the immediate response should be, “So what?”

So what if the devices were used in secrecy to find a suspected murderer or a level three sex offender? Will these devices suddenly cease working if they’re subjected to the same oversight as any other law enforcement technology? Will they power off forever the minute a warrant is unsealed? No.

Law enforcers have no legal justification for keeping these devices secret, which is why they’re resorting to fear tactics. The question everybody should be asking is why they’re so desperate to keep these devices in the shadows. I theorize that there is a known weakness in the technology that would make them potentially inadmissible in court. What other reason could there be to go so far as to throw out individual cases rather than unseal warrants and release technical details about the devices? It’s not like the devices are a novel technology that nobody knows how to make or defend against.

The War Against Privacy

If you read the erroneously named Bill of Rights (which is really a list of privileges, most of which have been revoked) you might be left with the mistaken impression that you have a right to privacy against the State. From the National Security Administration’s (NSA) dragnet surveillance to local police departments using cell phone interceptors, the State has been very busy proving this wrong. Not to be outdone by the law enforcement branches, the courts have been working hard to erode your privacy as well. The most recent instance of this is a proposed procedural change:

The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure set the ground rules for federal criminal prosecutions. The rules cover everything from correcting clerical errors in a judgment to which holidays a court will be closed on—all the day-to-day procedural details that come with running a judicial system.

The key word here is “procedural.” By law, the rules and proposals are supposed to be procedural and must not change substantive rights.

[…]

But the amendment to Rule 41 isn’t procedural at all. It creates new avenues for government hacking that were never approved by Congress.

The proposal would grant a judge the ability to issue a warrant to remotely access, search, seize, or copy data when “the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technological means” or when the media are on protected computers that have been “damaged without authorization and are located in five or more districts.” It would grant this authority to any judge in any district where activities related to the crime may have occurred.

In layman’s terms the change will grant judges the ability to authorize law enforcers to hack into any computer using Tor, I2P, a virtual private network (VPN), or any other method of protecting one’s privacy (the wording is quite vague and a good lawyer could probably stretch it to include individuals using a public Wi-Fi access point in a restaurant). The point being made with this rule proposal is clear, the State doesn’t believe you have any right to protect your privacy.

This should come as no surprise to anybody though. The State has long held that your right to privacy stops where its nosiness begins. You’re not allowed to legally possess funds the State isn’t aware of (financial reporting laws exist to enforce this), manufacture and sell firearms the State isn’t aware of, or be a human being the State isn’t aware of (registering newborn children for Social Security and requiring anybody entering or leaving the country to provide notice and receive approval from the State).

On Edward Snowden

With the Edward Snowden movie coming out the conversation regarding his motives has been rekindled. I see a lot of people referring to him as a traitor because he didn’t go through proper channels to stop the National Security Agency’s (NSA) indiscriminate violation of our privacy.

What may people seem to have forgotten is that we already know what happens when whistleblowers go through proper channels. William Binney did exactly that. He went to his superiors and eventually went so far as to try to get the Senate involved.

What did he get for his efforts? A lot of stonewalling with a great big side of nothing. Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. He did get to experience seeing armed federal agents threaten his family at gunpoint and then being kidnapped by them.

Repeating the same thing over and expecting different results is often referred to as a sign of insanity. Knowing what happened to Binney what other recourse did Snowden have? Should he have just shut his mouth? If so, what recourse do the people have against an overreaching government?

The history of the NSA and its whistleblowers needs more consideration when considering Snowden’s actions.

Government Oversight

Every time the government initiates another secret program some boot licking apologist excuses it as necessary to fight the enemies of America. After all, our wise benefactors put safety measure in place so these secret programs aren’t abused!

Except those safety measures don’t stop anything:

The secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court did not deny a single government request in 2015 for electronic surveillance orders granted for foreign intelligence purposes, continuing a longstanding trend, a Justice Department document showed.

The court received 1,457 requests last year on behalf of the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for authority to intercept communications, including email and phone calls, according to a Justice Department memo sent to leaders of relevant congressional committees on Friday and seen by Reuters. The court did not reject any of the applications in whole or in part, the memo showed.

1,457 requests and not a single denial? Either the National Security Agency (NSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) are exceedingly cautious in with their requests or the court serves as a rubber stamp, not a check against abuse. Considering the history of both agencies I think it’s pretty safe to say the court is just a rubber stamp.

This is when some boot licker will tell me, “You don’t know that for sure, Chris!” And they’re right, which is the problem with secret programs. Everything takes place behind an iron curtain so the public has no way to verify if the program is being abused. What we do know is the lack of transparency creates an environment for abuse so even if a secret program isn’t currently being abused it will attract people who wish to abuse it.

Having Your Surveillance Cake And Eating It Too

At one point it wasn’t uncommon for employers to issue company devices to employees. Things have changed however and now it is common for employers to expect employees to use their personal devices for work. It seems like a win-win since employees don’t have to carry two cell phones or use whatever shitty devices their company issues and employers safe money on having to buy devices. However, it leads to an interesting situation. What happens when the employer wants to surveil an employee’s personal device? That’s the battle currently being waged by Minnesota’s state colleges and their employees:

Two faculty unions are up in arms over a new rule that would allow Minnesota’s state colleges and universities to inspect employee-owned cellphones and mobile devices if they’re used for work.

The unions say the rule, which is set to take effect on Friday, would violate the privacy of thousands of faculty members, many of whom use their own cellphones and computers to do their jobs.

“[It’s] a free pass to go on a fishing expedition,” said Kevin Lindstrom, president of the Minnesota State College Faculty.

But college officials say they have an obligation under state law to protect any “government data” that may be on such devices, and that as public employees, faculty members could be disciplined if they refuse to comply.

If the universities have such a legal obligation then they damn well should be issuing devices. Data is at the mercy of the security measures implemented on whatever devices it is copied to. When businesses allow employees to use personal devices for work any data that ends up on those devices is secured primarily by whatever measure the employee has put into place. While you can require certain security measures such as mandating a lock screen password on the employee’s phone, employees are still generally free to install any application, visit any website, and add any personal accounts to the device. All of those things can compromise proprietary company data.

By issuing centrally managed devices, the universities could restrict what applications are installed, what webpages devices are willing to visit, and what accounts can be added.

There is also the issue of property rights. What right does an employer have to surveil employee devices? If so, how far does that power extend? Does an employer has the right to surveil an employee’s home if they work form home or ever take work home? Does an employer have the right to surveil an employee’s vehicle if they use that vehicle to drive to work or travel for work? When employers purchase and issue devices these questions go away because the issued devices are the employer’s property to do with as they please.

If an employer wants to surveil employee devices then they should issue devices. If an employer is unwilling to issue devices then they should accept the fact they can’t surveil employee devices. If an employer is under a legal obligation to protect data then it needs to issue devices.

For Statists The Only Response Is Attacking Individual Freedom

When a problem, perceived or real, arises there is only one response for statists: attacking individual freedom. As I noted last week, the knowledge that the Paris attackers used burner phones instead of encrypted communications would likely inspire useless legislation aimed at prohibiting burner phones. Jackie Speier seems hellbent on proving me right because she has introduced legislation to do exactly that:

Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a Democrat representing California’s 14th district, has introduced a the “Closing the Pre-Paid Mobile Device Security Gap Act of 2016,” or HR 4886, which will require people who purchase a prepaid device to provide proper identification.

“This bill would close one of the most significant gaps in our ability to track and prevent acts of terror, drug trafficking, and modern-day slavery,” Speier said in a blog post. “The ‘burner phone’ loophole is an egregious gap in our legal framework that allows actors like the 9/11 hijackers and the Times Square bomber to evade law enforcement while they plot to take innocent lives. The Paris attackers also used ‘burner phones.’ As we’ve seen so vividly over the past few days, we cannot afford to take these kinds of risks. It’s time to close this ‘burner phone’ loophole for good.”

Regardless of Speier’s claims, burner phones are not a significant gap in the State’s ability to prevent acts of terror, drug trafficking, or modern-day slavery. Setting aside the fact that most acts of terror, negative aspects of drug trafficking, and modern-day slavery are created by the State, we’re still left having to accept the fact that pervasive communication technology has rendered any ability to control communications practically impossible.

Burner phones are just one method of communicating in a way that’s difficult to surveil. The same effect can be achieved with cloned subscriber identity module (SIM) cards. Furthermore, registrations are easy to bypass. The firearm community is well aware of the term straw purchase. It’s a term that describes having somebody who isn’t prohibited from purchasing firearms to purchase one for somebody who is prohibited. By having somebody else purchase a phone for you you can avoid having that phone tied to your person. Getting somebody to purchase a cell phone for you would be even easier than a firearm since few people see a cell phone as a destructive device. There is also the fact that burner phones from overseas can be smuggled into the country and sold for cash.

Legislation aimed at prohibiting something only accomplish one thing: creating a black market. Not a single piece of legislation aimed at prohibiting something has been successful. This bill will be no different.

Paranoia I Appreciate

My first Apple product was a PowerBook G4 that I purchased back in college. At the time I was looking for a laptop that could run a Unix operating system. Back then (as is still the case today albeit to a lesser extent) running Linux on a laptop meant you had to usually give up sleep mode, Wi-Fi, the additional function buttons most manufacturers added on their keyboards, and a slew of power management features that made the already pathetic battery life even worse. Since OS X was (and still is) Unix based and didn’t involved the headaches of trying to get Linux to run on a laptop the PowerBook fit my needs perfectly.

Fast forward to today. Between then and now I’ve lost confidence in a lot of companies whose products I used to love. Apple on the other hand has continued to impress me. In recent times my preference for Apple products has been influenced in part by the fact that it doesn’t rely on selling my personal information to make money and displays a healthy level of paranoia:

Apple has begun designing its own servers partly because of suspicions that hardware is being intercepted before it gets delivered to Apple, according to a report yesterday from The Information.

“Apple has long suspected that servers it ordered from the traditional supply chain were intercepted during shipping, with additional chips and firmware added to them by unknown third parties in order to make them vulnerable to infiltration, according to a person familiar with the matter,” the report said. “At one point, Apple even assigned people to take photographs of motherboards and annotate the function of each chip, explaining why it was supposed to be there. Building its own servers with motherboards it designed would be the most surefire way for Apple to prevent unauthorized snooping via extra chips.”

Anybody who has been paying attention the the leaks released by Edward Snowden knows that concerns about surveillance hardware being added to off-the-shelf products isn’t unfounded. In fact some companies such as Cisco have taken measure to mitigate such threats.

Apple has a lot of hardware manufacturing capacity and it appears that the company will be using it to further protect itself against surveillance by manufacturing its own servers.

This is a level of paranoia I can appreciate. Years ago I brought a lot of my infrastructure in house. My e-mail, calendar and contact syncing, and even this website are all being hosted on servers running in my dwelling. Although part of the reason I did this was for the experience another reason was to guard against certain forms of surveillance. National Security Letters (NSL), for example, require service providers to surrender customer information to the State and legally prohibit them from informing the targeted customer. Since my servers are sitting in my dwelling any NSL would necessarily require me to inform myself of receiving it.

How The State Makes Us Less Secure Part MLVI

Statists often claim that the State is necessary for the common defense. If this were the case I would expect it to do what it can to make everybody safer. Instead it does the opposite. In its pursuit of power the State continues to take actions that make everybody under its rule less safe.

The latest chapter in this ongoing saga revolves around the iPhone of Syed Farook. After trying to get a court to force Apple to write a custom firmware for Farook’s iPhone that would allow the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to brute force the passcode, the agency postponed the hearing because it claimed to have found another method to get the data it wants. That method appears to be an exploit of some sort but the Justice Department has classified the matter so we may never know:

A new method to crack open locked iPhones is so promising that US government officials have classified it, the Guardian has learned.

The Justice Department made headlines on Monday when it postponed a federal court hearing in California. It had been due to confront Apple over an order that would have forced it to write software that would make it easier for investigators to guess the passcode for an iPhone used by San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook.

The government now says it may have figured out a way to get into the phone without Apple’s help. But it wants that discovery to remain secret, in an effort to prevent criminals, security researchers and even Apple itself from reengineering smartphones so that the tactic would no longer work.

By classifying this method the Justice Department is putting, at minimum, every iPhone 5C user running the same firmware as Farook’s phone at risk. But the exploit likely reaches further and may even put every user of every iOS device at risk.

Since Farook’s iPhone is in the State’s possession there is no risk of its firmware being upgraded. That being the case, there’s no reason for the Justice Department not to disclose the vulnerability its exploiting. Even if the exploit is disclosed the agency will still be able to use it to gain access to the data on Farook’s phone (assuming the exploit works as implied). But disclosing it would allow Apple to patch it so it couldn’t be used against the millions of innocent people using iOS devices.

There is a conflict of interest inherent in statism. The State is supposed to provide for the common defense of those within its territory. At the same time it’s charged with investigating crimes and dispensing justice. In order to fulfill the latter goal it must be able to gain access to whatever information it deems pertinent to an investigation. Ensuring that access is available conflicts with providing for a common defense since an effective defense against foreign aggressors, especially as it relates to protecting data, is also an effective defense against the State.

When Your Radical Goals Become Self-Defeating

From yesteryear’s anti-war movement to today’s social justice movement, college campuses have served as some of the biggest hot zones for social upheaval. Today’s upheaval, just like yesteryear’s, is being played out by conservatives who want things to remain as they are, radicals who want to change things, and everybody caught between them.

Both extremes have an unfortunate habit of becoming extremely authoritarian. For the radicals this authoritarianism can quickly become self-defeating though:

At Western Washington University, a public institution with roughly 15,000 students, a group of leftist activists calling itself the Student Assembly for Power and Liberation has issued a sweeping list of demands that would radically reshape its school.

[…]

The petition goes on to call for $45,000 annually to compensate “students and faculty doing de-colonial work on campus” and the creation of a 15-member student panel, dubbed the Office for Social Transformation, “to monitor, document, and archive all racist, anti-black, transphobic, cissexist, misogynistic, ablest, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, anti-semitic, and otherwise oppressive behavior.” This panel would have the power to investigate and discipline students and faculty members and to fire even tenured faculty members.

Surveillance always favors those already in power. Conservatives, as proponents of the current system, favor the current individuals in power. That means any surveillance system will necessarily favor conservatives.

Herein lies the moment when radicalism can become self-defeating. Surveillance sounds like a very attractive tool to both sides because it allows them to identify and take out their opposition. Given an excuse the established power will gladly implement a surveillance system. By demanding such a surveillance system the radicals are giving the conservatives a convenient excuse to implement a surveillance system while justifying it as a compromise. Once implemented though the surveillance system remains in their control and they can use it to identify and take out radicals.

The current social justice movement isn’t unique in this. Many radical movements throughout history have provided the rope needed to hang them with to their conservative opposition. If you’re a radical any authoritarian system will be used against you so don’t volunteer your support for its implementation.

Giving Children A Taste Of The Police State While They’re Young

It’s true, the United States is a police state. But even Uncle Sam has nothing compared to his dear old mum. While the United States is still fighting terror by having the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) radicalize adults with lukewarm intelligence the United Kingdom (UK) has already moved on from such trivial matters and is now dealing with the threat of radicalized four year-olds:

Staff at a nursery school threatened to refer a four-year-old boy to a de-radicalisation programme after he drew pictures which they thought showed his father making a “cooker bomb”, according to the child’s mother.

The child’s drawing actually depicted his father cutting a cucumber with a knife, his mother says, but staff misheard his explanation and thought it referred to a type of improvised explosive device.

On Friday the boy’s mother showed the Guardian video footage of her son in which he is playing happily on the floor of his home, and is shown a cucumber and asked what it is. “A cuker-bum,” he says, before going back to his toys.

The footage was taken by the mother at the family home in Luton after the nursery discussed referring the child to a de-radicalisation programme out of concerns that pictures drawn by him referred to explosions and an improvised explosive device known as a “cooker bomb”.

How brainwashed by propaganda does a nursery school staff have to be to assume a four year-old is saying “cooker bomb” when they say “cuker-bum”? At that age children are still working out how to pronounce words. Hell, at that age I will still trying to figure out why “very” wasn’t pronounced “berry”. The fact that these mouth breathers are so fucking terrified that they immediately assume a child failing to pronounce a word correctly is related to a terror plot should disqualify them from working with children.

What was especially egregious was the nursery school staff’s statement to the mother:

In between the odd tear and laugh of disbelief, the mother spoke about the experience, which she said had left her shaken and upset, and involved her being told at one point: “Your children might not be taken off you … you can prove yourself innocent.”

Emphasis mine. Prove her innocence? That’s not how things are supposed to work. The fact that the nursery school staff believes a person must prove their innocence instead of the State proving guilt demonstrates just how fucked the UK is.

One of the biggest problems facing The United States and many European countries is the rampant number of quislings. You know the type. The jackass neighbor who calls the police because you have a fire pit going in your backyard and they know you didn’t get a permit. The car mechanic who calls the police because they found a dime bag of weed in your car while they were fixing it. The nosy neighborhood watcher who calls in your car because it was parked on the street for over 24 hours. Because of these worthless busybodies the State is well informed of its laws being broken and can enforce them. Without them the State would have a much harder time enforcing its laws because it wouldn’t know about the violations.