Science Friday: Facial Recognition: Via NPR's Science Friday.

Photo management programs such as Picasa and iPhoto can pick out a snapshot of your cousin Dave from a stack of party pictures -- but what about more complex uses of facial recognition in less controlled situations? In this segment, we'll take a look at the state of the art in facial recognition, from 'Google Goggles' that give you additional information about things your cell phone camera sees, to security applications that scan faces at airports. How good is the technology, and how can it be employed while respecting privacy concerns? [ Read more ... ]

Me and the Christmas Underwear Bomber: Via Schneier on Security.

I spent a lot of yesterday giving press interviews. Nothing I haven’t said before, but it’s now national news and everyone wants to hear it.

These are the most interesting bits. Rachel Maddow interviewed me last night on her show. Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed me for the Atlantic website. And CNN.com published a rewrite of an older article of mine on terrorism and security.

I've started to call the bizarre new TSA rules "magical thinking": if we somehow protect against the specific tactic of the previous terrorist, we make ourselves safe from the next terrorist. [ Read more ... ]

Security boss calls for end to net anonymity: Via The Register(UK).

The CEO of Russia's No. 1 anti-virus package has said that the internet's biggest security vulnerability is anonymity, calling for mandatory internet passports that would work much like driver licenses do in the offline world.

The comments by Eugene Kaspersky, who is also the founder of Kaspersky Lab, came during an interview this week with Vivian Yeo of ZDNet Asia. In it, he proposed the formation of an internet police body that would require users everywhere to be uniquely identified.

"Everyone should and must have an identification, or internet passport," he was quoted as saying. "The internet was designed not for public use, but for American scientists and the US military. Then it was introduced to the public and it was wrong...to introduce it in the same way."

Kaspersky, whose comments are raising the eyebrows of some civil liberties advocates, went on to say such a system shouldn't be voluntary. [ Read more ... ]

Q&A: Worldwide surveillance and filtering: Via net-security.org .

The aim of the OpenNet Initiative is to investigate, expose and analyze Internet filtering and surveillance practices in a credible and non-partisan fashion.

Rafal Rohozinski is a founder and principal investigator of the Information Warfare Monitor and the OpenNet Initiative, where he directs a network of field-based staff in Asia, the CIS and Middle East. Rafal has 18 years of field-based experience working in an operational and advisory capacity in 37 countries. In 2005-2006, Rafal served as an embedded Chief Technical Advisor to the Palestinian Authority.

In this interview, Rafal discusses international surveillance and filtering issues.

Read Original Article:(Via net-security.org .)

Welcome to Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009, the 19th annual CFP conference.

June 1-4, 2009, Washington DC Marvin Center at George Washington University, Third Floor

Please join us online via video and twitter [ Read more ... ]

Obama's pretty words on secrecy and torture last night: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below - Update II)

At last night's presidential press conference, two rather good questions were asked about civil liberties and the rule of law:  one by Time's Michael Scherer regarding Obama's use of the state secrets privilege and the other by ABC News' Jake Tapper (I don't think it's coincidental that they are two of the journalists who (for better or worse) interact most extensively with and in the blogosphere; they're also, as a proud Joan Walsh pointed out, both former Salon reporters).  One measure of the quality of both questions is that both extracted meaningful and quite new statements from Obama on these critical questions -- statements which, unto themselves, are good enough but (as a borderline-psychic Attaturk impressively predicted I would say) are wildly inconsistent with the actions Obama has thus far taken.

Here's the exchange on the state secrets privilege: [ Read more ... ]

Microsoft Offers Secure Windows … But Only to the Government: Via Threat Level.

It’s the most secure distribution version of Windows XP ever produced by Microsoft: More than 600 settings are locked down tight, and critical security patches can be installed in an average of 72 hours instead of 57 days.  The only problem is, you have to join the Air Force to get it.

The Air Force persuaded Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to provide it with a secure Windows configuration that saved the service about $100 million in contract costs and countless hours of maintenance. At a congressional hearing this week on cybersecurity, Alan Paller, research director of the Sans Institute, shared the story as a template for how the government could use its massive purchasing power to get companies to produce more secure products. And those could eventually be available to the rest of us.

Security experts have been arguing for this “trickle-down” model for years.  But rather than wield its buying power for the greater good, the government has long wimped out and taken whatever vendors served them. If the Air Force case is a good judge, however, things might be changing.

Threat Level spoke with former CIO of the Air Force, John Gilligan, to get the details. [ Read more ... ]

U.N. torture official on America's legal obligations to impose accountability: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

After President Obama announced last week that he opposes prosecutions of CIA officials who tortured detainees in reliance on OLC memos purporting to legalize that conduct (a decision which is not Obama's to make), the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, announced that Obama's policy of immunizing CIA torturers violates international law and, specifically, the clear obligations of the U.S. under the Convention Against Torture (signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988).   [ Read more ... ]

Exclusive Interview: Google Chrome's Chromium Core Explored: Via Review Tom's Hardware.

We’re talking with Collin Jackson and Adam Barth to discuss the security features of Google Chrome. Both Collin and Adam are members of the Web Security Group at Stanford University. Collin is still finishing his PhD at Stanford, while Adam completed both his Masters Degree and a PhD at Stanford.  After completing his training at the Best School in the Bay Area, Adam spent some time as a post-doc at the second-rate public school across the bay (UC Berkeley). Both of them have worked at Google.  While there, they were the lead authors on an academic analysis of the security architecture of Chromium, the core upon which Google Chrome is built. [ Read more ... ]

Keith Olbermann on Obama and Wiretapping: Via EFF.org Updates.

Last night, Countdown With Keith Olbermann on MSNBC had excellent coverage of and commentary on the Obama DOJ's radical new arguments in Jewel v. NSA, the EFF's lawsuit against the NSA for illegal surveillance. Here are the videos: [ Read more ... ]

EFF's Kevin Bankston on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann": Via EFF.org Updates.

Wednesday evening, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston was a guest on Countdown With Keith Olbermann. He spoke about the Obama Justice Department's recent disappointing arguments in Jewel v NSA. [ Read more ... ]

Interview with Ben Wizner on State Secrets: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Last week, NationalJournal.com featured an interview about state secrets with ACLU National Security Project Staff Attorney Ben Wizner. Ben talks about the government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege in our extraoridinary rendition case, Mohamed v. Jeppesen. In the interview, Ben talks about why it’s crucial that judges are allowed to see the evidence the government claims is a state secret: [ Read more ... ]

New Podcast: CITP Conversations: Via Freedom to Tinker.

Over the last few months, as the pace of activity at CITP has increased, we've fielded a growing number of requests from points around the web, and around the world, for podcasts and other ways to "attend" our events virtually. We hear you, and we're working on it.

Today, I'm very pleased to announce a new CITP podcast, which will carry audio of some of our events as well as brief conversations recorded expressly for the podcast feed. [ Read more ... ]

Conversation: Filtering in Oz: Via Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy Podcast.

Tim Lee, a CITP Grad Student, joins David Robinson and Ed Felten to discuss Derek E. Bambauer’s ‘Filtering in Oz’ and Australia’s decision to implement ISP-level internet filtering and censorship, as well as the difficulties that have risen from the Australian government’s new policy.

Filtering in Oz: Australia’s Foray into Internet Censorship, by Derek E. Bambauer

Read Original Article (Via Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy Podcast.)

Additional Details on Choruss, Collective Licensing on Campus: Via EFF.org Updates.

EDUCAUSE, the nonprofit for information technology in higher education, has posted a one hour conversation with Jim Griffin, the head of Choruss (and member of EFF's advisory board), about the major label effort to create a voluntary collective license for music file-sharing on campus. [ Read more ... ]

Salon Radio: ACLU on Obama, Bagram and secrecy: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald

(updated below w/transcript)

Today on Salon Radio, I speak with two ACLU lawyers regarding recent controversial actions taken by the Obama administration: 

First, Jonathan Hafetz discusses Obama's embrace of Bush's position that detainees imprisoned by the U.S. in Bagram, Afghanistan have no rights of any kind to challenge their detention (we also discuss the March 23 deadline in the Al-Marri case for the Obama DOJ to tell the Supreme Court whether they will defend or abandon the radical Bush/Cheney claim that the President has the power to order legal residents inside the U.S. detained in a military brig as an "enemy combatant");

Second, Jameel Jaffer discusses the administration's refusal thus far to disclose a whole slew of Bush-era documents which it has long vowed it would disclose. [ Read more ... ]

At Sundance, a Chat With 'We Live in Public' Filmmaker Ondi Timoner : Via washingtonpost.com

PARK CITY, Utah -- After making $80 million in the dot-com boom of the '90s, Josh Harris found amusing ways to use his money. One was to create an experimental community in a Lower Manhattan bunker, where he gathered more than 100 artists to live under the scrutiny of 110 video cameras, 24 hours a day. This lasted a month before police and fire officials shut down the nascent group.

Harris then persuaded his girlfriend to live with him under similar circumstances: Their loft was rigged with 32 surveillance cameras and 60 microphones, and everything was streaming live on the Internet. They planned to conceive in public, and be the first couple to live their lives online. So, naturally, Harris would be in the audience when "We Live in Public" -- Ondi Timoner's documentary about Harris's social experiments -- premiered here at the Sundance Film Festival.

Right?

"No way," Harris said. "The whole thing creeps me out." [ Read more ... ]

Federal Breach Law? No Time Soon: Via CSO Online - Security and Risk

Despite the confusing patchwork of today's data breach disclosure laws, attorney Chris Wolf says don't hold your breath for a federal version.

Since California's historic 2003 passage of a data breach law, most other states in the U.S. have followed suit. 44 states now have laws that lay out requirements for companies in the event that sensitive information is compromised. Despite the groundswell of interest in the issue on the state level, there is currently no similar federal law. Chris Wolf, a Washington, D.C.- based attorney with Proskauer Rose LLP and chair of its privacy and security practice group, spoke with CSO about how long it may be until we see one.

CSO: 44 states now have individual breach laws on the books, but we currently have no federal law. Will we see one soon?
Chris Wolf: I don't think you will see a federal law come out of the next session of Congress. I would be very surprised of that happened given the nation's current priorities and given the difficulties Congress has had considering bills for a federal breach law in the past. A lot of businesses want to have a very high threshold for notification that gives them a lot of discretion on when to notify. And many consumer groups think too much discretion will mean not enough notice is given to consumers. So you have that tension and this battle and, as a result, the issue is deadlocked. [ Read more ... ]

Slashdot | Interview With an Adware Author - Via Slashdot:

rye writes in to recommend a Sherri Davidoff interview with Matt Knox, a talented Ruby instructor and coder, who talks about his early days designing and writing adware for Direct Revenue. (Direct Revenue was sued by Eliot Spitzer in 2006 for surreptitiously installing adware on millions of computers.) "So we've progressed now from having just a Registry key entry, to having an executable, to having a randomly-named executable, to having an executable which is shuffled around a little bit on each machine, to one that's encrypted — really more just obfuscated — to an executable that doesn't even run as an executable. It runs merely as a series of threads. ... There was one further step that we were going to take but didn't end up doing, and that is we were going to get rid of threads entirely, and just use interrupt handlers. It turns out that in Windows, you can get access to the interrupt handler pretty easily. ... It amounted to a distributed code war on a 4-10 million-node network."

(Read Original Article - Via Slashdot .)

Larry Lessig on The Colbert Report - Via EFF.org Updates:

Last night, Larry Lessig, a close ally and former board member of EFF, chatted with Stephen Colbert about Lessig's new book Remix, and how America's broken copyright laws are criminalizing our kids: [ Read more ... ]

Rove's IT Guru Warned of Sabotage Before Fatal Plane Crash; Was Set to Testify: Via t r u t h o u t | by: Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

Mike Connell, Karl Rove's chief IT consultant who, was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio, died in a plane crash last Friday. Mike Connell, the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove, reportedly asked for protective custody from the government before he died.

    Amy Goodman: A top Republican internet strategist who was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio has died in a plane crash. Mike Connell was the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove and created websites for the Bush and McCain electoral campaigns. He also set up the official Ohio state election website reporting the 2004 presidential election returns.

    Connell was reportedly an experienced pilot. He died instantly Friday night when his private plane crashed in a residential neighborhood near Akron, Ohio. [ Read more ... ]

Editorial - The World According to Cheney: Via NYTimes.com

Vice President Dick Cheney has a parting message for Americans: They should quit whining about all the things he and President Bush did to undermine the rule of law, erode the balance of powers between the White House and Congress, abuse prisoners and spy illegally on Americans. After all, he said, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln did worse than that.

So Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush managed to stop short of repeating two of the most outrageous abuses of power in American history — Roosevelt’s decision to force Japanese-Americans into camps and Lincoln’s declaration of martial law to silence his critics? That’s not exactly a lofty standard of behavior.

Then again, it must be exhausting to rewrite history as much as Mr. Cheney has done in a series of exit interviews where he has made those comments. It seems as if everything went just great in the Bush years. [ Read more ... ]

Security Flaws In Aussie Net Filter Exposed: Via Slashdot

Faldo writes "There's a three part interview with a computer security expert on BanThisURL that goes into the flaws in the Aussie net filtering scheme. In addition to SSH tunnels and proxies, more worrying problems like trojaning the boxes to set up man in the middle attacks (which the interviewee has done in his lab), cross site scripting and the Australian blacklist leaking are all discussed. Worrying and relevant, especially since Thailand's blacklist has just been leaked."

Read Original Article ( Via Slashdot. )

Cheney says top congressional Democrats complicit in spying: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald

(updated below - Update II)

Dick Cheney's interview yesterday with Fox's Chris Wallace was filled with significant claims, but certainly among the most significant was his detailed narration of how the administration, and Cheney personally, told numerous Democratic Congressional leaders -- repeatedly and in detail -- about the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.  And, according to Cheney, every one of those Democrats -- every last one -- not only urged its continuation, but insisted that it be kept secret:  [ Read more ... ]

First Interview with the NSA Whistleblower: Via Electronic Frontier Foundation Updates

Over the weekend, Newsweek revealed Thomas M. Tamm as the man who first blew the whistle on the Bush Administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program. Last night, Mr. Tamm gave his first public interview on The Rachel Maddow Show:

Privacy info. This embed will serve content from msn.com.

I remember when I was figuring out that something was going on extra-judicially, I looked at the NSA websites, and they proudly talked about the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution: the right of the people to be secure in their persons and their places. That's part of the reason we fought the Revolutionary War.

And then... we learned that the only way we can be kept safe is for the government to break our laws? I just disagree with that. I think we are stronger and better as a nation when we follow the Constitution, when we follow the statutes, and when we follow the rule of law. [ Read more ... ]

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