Entries Tagged "privacy"

Page 78 of 145

DHS Gets to Spy on Everyone

This Wall Street Journal investigative piece is a month old, but well worth reading. Basically, the Total Information Awareness program is back with a different name:

The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans “reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information” may be permanently retained.

Note that this is government data only, not commercial data. So while it includes “almost any government database, from financial forms submitted by people seeking federally backed mortgages to the health records of people who sought treatment at Veterans Administration hospitals” as well lots of commercial data, it’s data the corporations have already given to the government. It doesn’t include, for example, your detailed cell phone bills or your tweets.

See also this supplementary blog post to the article.

Posted on January 8, 2013 at 6:28 AM • View Comments

Squids on the Economist Cover

Four squids on the cover of this week’s Economist represent the four massive (and intrusive) data-driven Internet giants: Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

Interestingly, these are the same four companies I’ve been listing as the new corporate threat to the Internet.

The first of three pillars propping up this outside threat are big data collectors, which in addition to Apple and Google, Schneier identified as Amazon and Facebook. (Notice Microsoft didn’t make the cut.) The goal of their data collection is for marketers to be able to make snap decisions about the product tastes, credit worthiness, and employment suitability of millions of people. Often, this information is fed into systems maintained by governments.

Notice that Microsoft didn’t make the Economist’s cut either.

I gave that talk at the RSA Conference in February of this year. The link in the article is from another conference the week before, where I test-drove the talk.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Posted on December 7, 2012 at 4:04 PM • View Comments

Feudal Security

It’s a feudal world out there.

Some of us have pledged our allegiance to Google: We have Gmail accounts, we use Google Calendar and Google Docs, and we have Android phones. Others have pledged allegiance to Apple: We have Macintosh laptops, iPhones, and iPads; and we let iCloud automatically synchronize and back up everything. Still others of us let Microsoft do it all. Or we buy our music and e-books from Amazon, which keeps records of what we own and allows downloading to a Kindle, computer, or phone. Some of us have pretty much abandoned e-mail altogether … for Facebook.

These vendors are becoming our feudal lords, and we are becoming their vassals. We might refuse to pledge allegiance to all of them—or to a particular one we don’t like. Or we can spread our allegiance around. But either way, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to not pledge allegiance to at least one of them.

Feudalism provides security. Classical medieval feudalism depended on overlapping, complex, hierarchical relationships. There were oaths and obligations: a series of rights and privileges. A critical aspect of this system was protection: vassals would pledge their allegiance to a lord, and in return, that lord would protect them from harm.

Of course, I’m romanticizing here; European history was never this simple, and the description is based on stories of that time, but that’s the general model.

And it’s this model that’s starting to permeate computer security today.

I Pledge Allegiance to the United States of Convenience

Traditional computer security centered around users. Users had to purchase and install anti-virus software and firewalls, ensure their operating system and network were configured properly, update their software, and generally manage their own security.

This model is breaking, largely due to two developments:

  1. New Internet-enabled devices where the vendor maintains more control over the hardware and software than we do—like the iPhone and Kindle; and
  2. Services where the host maintains our data for us—like Flickr and Hotmail.

Now, we users must trust the security of these hardware manufacturers, software vendors, and cloud providers.

We choose to do it because of the convenience, redundancy, automation, and shareability. We like it when we can access our e-mail anywhere, from any computer. We like it when we can restore our contact lists after we’ve lost our phones. We want our calendar entries to automatically appear on all of our devices. These cloud storage sites do a better job of backing up our photos and files than we would manage by ourselves; Apple does a great job keeping malware out of its iPhone apps store.

In this new world of computing, we give up a certain amount of control, and in exchange we trust that our lords will both treat us well and protect us from harm. Not only will our software be continually updated with the newest and coolest functionality, but we trust it will happen without our being overtaxed by fees and required upgrades. We trust that our data and devices won’t be exposed to hackers, criminals, and malware. We trust that governments won’t be allowed to illegally spy on us.

Trust is our only option. In this system, we have no control over the security provided by our feudal lords. We don’t know what sort of security methods they’re using, or how they’re configured. We mostly can’t install our own security products on iPhones or Android phones; we certainly can’t install them on Facebook, Gmail, or Twitter. Sometimes we have control over whether or not to accept the automatically flagged updates—iPhone, for example—but we rarely know what they’re about or whether they’ll break anything else. (On the Kindle, we don’t even have that freedom.)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I’m not saying that feudal security is all bad. For the average user, giving up control is largely a good thing. These software vendors and cloud providers do a lot better job of security than the average computer user would. Automatic cloud backup saves a lot of data; automatic updates prevent a lot of malware. The network security at any of these providers is better than that of most home users.

Feudalism is good for the individual, for small startups, and for medium-sized businesses that can’t afford to hire their own in-house or specialized expertise. Being a vassal has its advantages, after all.

For large organizations, however, it’s more of a mixed bag. These organizations are used to trusting other companies with critical corporate functions: They’ve been outsourcing their payroll, tax preparation, and legal services for decades. But IT regulations often require audits. Our lords don’t allow vassals to audit them, even if those vassals are themselves large and powerful.

Yet feudal security isn’t without its risks.

Our lords can make mistakes with security, as recently happened with Apple, Facebook, and Photobucket. They can act arbitrarily and capriciously, as Amazon did when it cut off a Kindle user for living in the wrong country. They tether us like serfs; just try to take data from one digital lord to another.

Ultimately, they will always act in their own self-interest, as companies do when they mine our data in order to sell more advertising and make more money. These companies own us, so they can sell us off—again, like serfs—to rival lords…or turn us in to the authorities.

Historically, early feudal arrangements were ad hoc, and the more powerful party would often simply renege on his part of the bargain. Eventually, the arrangements were formalized and standardized: both parties had rights and privileges (things they could do) as well as protections (things they couldn’t do to each other).

Today’s internet feudalism, however, is ad hoc and one-sided. We give companies our data and trust them with our security, but we receive very few assurances of protection in return, and those companies have very few restrictions on what they can do.

This needs to change. There should be limitations on what cloud vendors can do with our data; rights, like the requirement that they delete our data when we want them to; and liabilities when vendors mishandle our data.

Like everything else in security, it’s a trade-off. We need to balance that trade-off. In Europe, it was the rise of the centralized state and the rule of law that undermined the ad hoc feudal system; it provided more security and stability for both lords and vassals. But these days, government has largely abdicated its role in cyberspace, and the result is a return to the feudal relationships of yore.

Perhaps instead of hoping that our Internet-era lords will be sufficiently clever and benevolent—or putting our faith in the Robin Hoods who block phone surveillance and circumvent DRM systems—it’s time we step in in our role as governments (both national and international) to create the regulatory environments that protect us vassals (and the lords as well). Otherwise, we really are just serfs.

A version of this essay was originally published on Wired.com.

Posted on December 3, 2012 at 7:24 AM • View Comments

IT for Oppression

I’ve been thinking a lot about how information technology, and the Internet in particular, is becoming a tool for oppressive governments. As Evgeny Morozov describes in his great book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, repressive regimes all over the world are using the Internet to more efficiently implement surveillance, censorship, and propaganda. And they’re getting really good at it.

For a lot of us who imagined that the Internet would spark an inevitable wave of Internet freedom, this has come as a bit of a surprise. But it turns out that information technology is not just a tool for freedom-fighting rebels under oppressive governments, it’s also a tool for those oppressive governments. Basically, IT magnifies power; the more power you have, the more it can be magnified in IT.

I think we got this wrong—anyone remember John Perry Barlow’s 1996 manifesto?—because, like most technologies, IT technologies are first used by the more agile individuals and groups outside the formal power structures. In the same way criminals can make use of a technological innovation faster than the police can, dissidents in countries all over the world were able to make use of Internet technologies faster than governments could. Unfortunately, and inevitably, governments have caught up.

This is the “security gap” I talk about in the closing chapters of Liars and Outliers.

I thought about all these things as I read this article on how the Syrian government hacked into the computers of dissidents:

The cyberwar in Syria began with a feint. On Feb. 8, 2011, just as the Arab Spring was reaching a crescendo, the government in Damascus suddenly reversed a long-standing ban on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the Arabic version of Wikipedia. It was an odd move for a regime known for heavy-handed censorship; before the uprising, police regularly arrested bloggers and raided Internet cafes. And it came at an odd time. Less than a month earlier demonstrators in Tunisia, organizing themselves using social networking services, forced their president to flee the country after 23 years in office. Protesters in Egypt used the same tools to stage protests that ultimately led to the end of Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. The outgoing regimes in both countries deployed riot police and thugs and tried desperately to block the websites and accounts affiliated with the revolutionaries. For a time, Egypt turned off the Internet altogether.

Syria, however, seemed to be taking the opposite tack. Just as protesters were casting about for the means with which to organize and broadcast their messages, the government appeared to be handing them the keys.

[…]

The first documented attack in the Syrian cyberwar took place in early May 2011, some two months after the start of the uprising. It was a clumsy one. Users who tried to access Facebook in Syria were presented with a fake security certificate that triggered a warning on most browsers. People who ignored it and logged in would be giving up their user name and password, and with them, their private messages and contacts.

I dislike this being called a “cyberwar,” but that’s my only complaint with the article.

There are no easy solutions here, especially because technologies that defend against one of those three things—surveillance, censorship, and propaganda—often make one of the others easier. But this is an important problem to solve if we want the Internet to be a vehicle of freedom and not control.

EDITED TO ADD (12/13): This is a good 90-minute talk about how governments have tried to block Tor.

Posted on November 30, 2012 at 5:23 AM • View Comments

E-Mail Security in the Wake of Petraeus

I’ve been reading lots of articles discussing how little e-mail and Internet privacy we actually have in the U.S. This is a good one to start with:

The FBI obliged—apparently obtaining subpoenas for Internet Protocol logs, which allowed them to connect the sender’s anonymous Google Mail account to others accessed from the same computers, accounts that belonged to Petraeus biographer Paula Broadwell. The bureau could then subpoena guest records from hotels, tracking the WiFi networks, and confirm that they matched Broadwell’s travel history. None of this would have required judicial approval—let alone a Fourth Amendment search warrant based on probable cause.

While we don’t know the investigators’ other methods, the FBI has an impressive arsenal of tools to track Broadwell’s digital footprints—all without a warrant. On a mere showing of “relevance,” they can obtain a court order for cell phone location records, providing a detailed history of her movements, as well as all people she called. Little wonder that law enforcement requests to cell providers have exploded—with a staggering 1.3 million demands for user data just last year, according to major carriers.

An order under this same weak standard could reveal all her e-mail correspondents and Web surfing activity. With the rapid decline of data storage costs, an ever larger treasure trove is routinely retained for ever longer time periods by phone and Internet companies.

Had the FBI chosen to pursue this investigation as a counterintelligence inquiry rather than a cyberstalking case, much of that data could have been obtained without even a subpoena. National Security Letters, secret tools for obtaining sensitive financial and telecommunications records, require only the say-so of an FBI field office chief.

And:

While the details of this investigation that have leaked thus far provide us all a fascinating glimpse into the usually sensitive methods used by FBI agents, this should also serve as a warning, by demonstrating the extent to which the government can pierce the veil of communications anonymity without ever having to obtain a search warrant or other court order from a neutral judge.

The guest lists from hotels, IP login records, as well as the creative request to email providers for “information about other accounts that have logged in from this IP address” are all forms of data that the government can obtain with a subpoena. There is no independent review, no check against abuse, and further, the target of the subpoena will often never learn that the government obtained data (unless charges are filed, or, as in this particular case, government officials eagerly leak details of the investigation to the press). Unfortunately, our existing surveillance laws really only protect the “what” being communicated; the government’s powers to determine “who” communicated remain largely unchecked.

This is good, too.

The EFF tries to explain the relevant laws. Summary: they’re confusing, and they don’t protect us very much.

My favorite quote is from the New York Times:

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said the chain of unexpected disclosures was not unusual in computer-centric cases.

“It’s a particular problem with cyberinvestigations ­—they rapidly become open-ended because there’s such a huge quantity of information available and it’s so easily searchable,” he said, adding, “If the C.I.A. director can get caught, it’s pretty much open season on everyone else.”

And a day later:

“If the director of central intelligence isn’t able to successfully keep his emails private, what chance do I have?” said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-liberties advocacy group.

In more words:

But there’s another, more important lesson to be gleaned from this tale of a biographer run amok. Broadwell’s debacle confirms something that some privacy experts have been warning about for years: Government surveillance of ordinary citizens is now cheaper and easier than ever before. Without needing to go before a judge, the government can gather vast amounts of information about us with minimal expenditure of manpower. We used to be able to count on a certain amount of privacy protection simply because invading our privacy was hard work. That is no longer the case. Our always-on, Internet-connected, cellphone-enabled lives are an open door to Big Brother.

Remember that this problem is bigger than Petraeus. The FBI goes after electronic records all the time:

In Google’s semi-annual transparency report released Tuesday, the company stated that it received 20,938 requests from governments around the world for its users’ private data in the first six months of 2012. Nearly 8,000 of those requests came from the U.S. government, and 7,172 of them were fulfilled to some degree, an increase of 26% from the prior six months, according to Google’s stats.

So what’s the answer? Would they have been safe if they’d used Tor or a regular old VPN? Silent Circle? Something else? This article attempts to give advice; this is the article’s most important caveat:

DON’T MESS UP It is hard to pull off one of these steps, let alone all of them all the time. It takes just one mistake ­—forgetting to use Tor, leaving your encryption keys where someone can find them, connecting to an airport Wi-Fi just once ­—to ruin you.

“Robust tools for privacy and anonymity exist, but they are not integrated in a way that makes them easy to use,” Mr. Blaze warned. “We’ve all made the mistake of accidentally hitting ‘Reply All.’ Well, if you’re trying to hide your e-mails or account or I.P. address, there are a thousand other mistakes you can make.”

In the end, Mr. Kaminsky noted, if the F.B.I. is after your e-mails, it will find a way to read them. In that case, any attempt to stand in its way may just lull you into a false sense of security.

Some people think that if something is difficult to do, “it has security benefits, but that’s all fake—everything is logged,” said Mr. Kaminsky. “The reality is if you don’t want something to show up on the front page of The New York Times, then don’t say it.”

The real answer is to rein in the FBI, of course:

If we don’t take steps to rein in the burgeoning surveillance state now, there’s no guarantee we’ll even be aware of the ways in which control is exercised through this information architecture. We will all remain exposed but the extent of our exposure, and the potential damage done to democracy, is likely to remain invisible.

More here:

“Hopefully this [case] will be a wake-up call for Congress that the Stored Communications Act is old and busted,” Mr Fakhoury says.

I don’t see any chance of that happening anytime soon.

EDITED TO ADD (12/12): E-mail security might not have mattered.

Posted on November 19, 2012 at 12:40 PM • View Comments

Protecting (and Collecting) the DNA of World Leaders

There’s a lot of hype and hyperbole in this story, but here’s the interesting bit:

According to Ronald Kessler, the author of the 2009 book In the President’s Secret Service, Navy stewards gather bedsheets, drinking glasses, and other objects the president has touched­they are later sanitized or destroyed­in an effort to keep would be malefactors from obtaining his genetic material. (The Secret Service would neither confirm nor deny this practice, nor would it comment on any other aspect of this article.) And according to a 2010 release of secret cables by WikiLeaks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directed our embassies to surreptitiously collect DNA samples from foreign heads of state and senior United Nations officials. Clearly, the U.S. sees strategic advantage in knowing the specific biology of world leaders; it would be surprising if other nations didn’t feel the same.

The rest of the article is about individually targeted bioweapons.

Posted on October 29, 2012 at 1:53 PM • View Comments

Genetic Privacy

New report from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

It’s called “Privacy and Progress in Whole Genome Sequencing.” The Commission described the rapid advances underway in the field of genome sequencing, but also noted growing concerns about privacy and security. The report lists twelve recommendations to improve current practices and to help safeguard privacy and security, including using deidentification wherever possible.

Here are four news articles.

Posted on October 17, 2012 at 6:23 AM • View Comments

Apple Turns on iPhone Tracking in iOS6

This is important:

Previously, Apple had all but disabled tracking of iPhone users by advertisers when it stopped app developers from utilizing Apple mobile device data via UDID, the unique, permanent, non-deletable serial number that previously identified every Apple device.

For the last few months, iPhone users have enjoyed an unusual environment in which advertisers have been largely unable to track and target them in any meaningful way.

In iOS 6, however, tracking is most definitely back on, and it’s more effective than ever, multiple mobile advertising executives familiar with IFA tell us. (Note that Apple doesn’t mention IFA in its iOS 6 launch page).

EDITED TO ADD (10/15): Apple has provided a way to opt out of the targeted ads and also to disable the location information being sent.

Posted on October 15, 2012 at 1:21 PM • View Comments

1 … 76 77 78 79 80 … 145

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.