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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden argues that Russia's decision to outlaw VPNs is a "tragedy of policy".

Edward Snowden has laid into the Russian government for banning the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and other tools that people can use to circumvent censorship and surveillance.

Russian president Vladimir Putin signed the law on Sunday, prompting a Twitter tirade from Snowden, the US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower who has been sheltering in Moscow since 2013.

Snowden called the decision a "tragedy of policy" that would make Russia "both less safe and less free". He also linked the government's move to China's crackdown on VPN technology, which led Apple to pull dozens of VPN apps from its Chinese App Store over the weekend.

"Whether enacted by China, Russia, or anyone else, we must be clear this is not a reasonable 'regulation,' but a violation of human rights," Snowden wrote, arguing that: "If the next generation is to enjoy the online liberties ours did, innocuous traffic must become truly indistinguishable from the sensitive."

He also appeared to urge tech industry workers to push back against the anti-VPN trend.

Linking Russia's move to China's crackdown on VPN technology, Snowden urged tech workers to be vigilant.

Snowden is these days the president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. In line with his 2013 decision to expose the NSA's mass-surveillance activities, he has long been an advocate of individuals being able to protect their communications and online activities.

However, he has previously warned against people relying too much on VPNs, because their operators may be vulnerable to hacks or subpoenas that could expose users.

The former NSA contractor originally fled from the US to Hong Kong, where he famously started working with newspapers to expose the agency's activities.

Then, while apparently trying to fly to Latin America, Snowden found himself stranded at a Moscow airport because the US had cancelled his passport. The Russians granted him asylum, which was extended for "a couple more years" in January this year.

During his stay there, Snowden has occasionally voiced strong criticism of Russia's surveillance policies.

In mid-2016, when the Russian government introduced a data-retention law and forced communications providers to help decrypt people's messages, the American said the legislation was "an unworkable, unjustifiable violation of rights that should never have been signed".

In 2014, he also denounced the so-called Blogger's Law, which imposed restrictions on what bloggers can write.

The latest law, banning VPNs, will come into effect in November this year. It is mainly intended to stop Russians viewing websites that are on the official state blacklist.

Continued here:
NSA whistleblower Snowden: VPN ban makes Russia 'less safe and less free' - ZDNet

Data privacyregulationin the U.S. hasbeen a thorny issuewith provisions such as the National Security Letters (NSLs) allowing unfettered access to law enforcement agencies into citizens communications.

The power endowed on the government by laws such as the Stored Communications Act has madeaccessing citizens email and other communications fairly easy in the post-2001 period for agencies such as the CIA and the FBI.

Read: Was My Samsung TV Hacked?: How To Tell If Your Smart TV Was Compromised By CIA Weeping Angel Hack

However, it might not remain so thanks to the efforts of tech companies and senators.

While tech companies such as Microsoft are wooing Congress to pass stricter privacy regulations, many senators have introduced bills such as the Email Privacy Act, amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the International Communications Privacy Act, with the common goal of imposing strict regulations on access to privatecommunications.

Apple had also taken a stand by refusing to provide the government a master key to iPhones following the San Bernardino shootings in 2015.

The battle between privacy and security has been waged for long, and citizens privacy rights have been sacrificed at the altar of national security. Agencies such as NSA and CIA have even peered into communications illegally, using tools such as the Weeping Angel hack to listen to people using smart TVs.

The root of all privacy battles is the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, an outdated statute that bypassed warrants for lookinginto citizens communications.

The amended Electronic Communications Privacy Act would require law enforcement officials to obtain warrants for accessing remotely stored emails and communications which are more than 180 days old.

The bill would also require the authorities to obtain warrants for accessing location data. More importantly it would impose restrictions on gag orders, which prohibit companies from making the governments requests for access to users data public.

Americans dont believe the federal government should have warrantless access to their emails just because they are 180 days old. They dont believe the government should be able to always know where you are just because you are carrying a cell phone. It is long past time that Congress updated our federal laws to better protect Americans privacy, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) stated in an open letter published on his website Thursday.

Read: Are Smart Home Devices Safe? Indoor Mapping Data Collection Poses Privacy Risk

The endeavor has been praised by privacy activists such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

National security concerns which were raised post 9/11 have highly endangered user privacy. With changing technology and improved means of communication, the ambit of government surveillance has also expanded.

While Europe has already begun a clampdown on privacy violations, the U.S. is yet to do so. Butif tech companies and the Senate sustain their efforts to guard user privacy, chances are we might be able to achieve the delicate balance between privacy and security in the near future.

See the original post:
Privacy Regulations May Improve As Senators, Companies Try To Curtail NSA-Style Snooping - International Business Times

Investigators believe the ShadowBrokers leaks were from a National Security Agency insider, thewebsite CyberScoop reports.

Since August of last year, the ShadowBrokers have leaked files apparently stolen from the NSA, primarily source code for NSA hacking tools along with some additional files.

One set of files leaked by the group contained tools to hack into the Windows operating system. Those tools were eventually used in the devastating international ransomware attacks known as WannaCry and NotPetya.

WannaCry infected between hundreds of thousands and millions of systems, causing such damage to the United Kingdoms hospitals that some patients were turned away. NotPetya caused significant damage to a major Russian energy firm and the U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Merck.

Citing multiple sources familiar with the investigation, CyberScoop reports that ex-NSA employees have been contacted by investigators concerning how the ShadowBreakers obtained their cache of files.

The report claims that the leadingtheory is that an inside actor was at the helm but that other theories are still in the mix, including a foreign hacker.

Sources also told CyberScoop that the investigation "goes beyond" Harold Martin, the NSA contractor arrested for hoarding classified documents at his home last year.

The ShadowBrokers claim to have leaked files to raise interest for a planned sale of the remaining cache of documents. Currently, the group is offering a subscription, leak-of-the-month service.

Continue reading here:
ShadowBrokers leak probe looking at NSA insiders: report - The Hill

Updated August 01, 2017 07:34:44

The Federal Government's bid to force tech companies to reveal terrorists' secret conversations could be unachievable, according to the former deputy director of the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Chris Inglis had a 28-year career with the NSA and now advises private companies on how to detect Edward Snowden-style leakers within their ranks.

He told the ABC the Turnbull Government's bid to access encrypted messages sent by terrorists and other criminals is to be admired, but the technology may prove problematic.

"I don't know how feasible it is to achieve the kind of access the Government might want to have under the rule of law, the technology is tough to get exactly right," Mr Inglis told the ABC.

"But the Government is honour-bound to try to pursue both the defence of individual rights and collective security."

Encrypted messages affect close to 90 per cent of ASIO's priority cases and the laws would be modelled on Britain's Investigative Powers Act, which obliges companies to cooperate.

Technology experts, like adjust professor at the Centre for Internet Safety Professor Nigel Phair, have questioned how these laws would really work.

"From a technical perspective we are looking at very high-end computing power that makes it really, really difficult to decrypt a message on the fly, it's just not a simple process," he said.

Facebook has already indicated it will resist the Government's laws, saying weakening encryption for intelligence agencies would mean weakening it for everyone.

"Because of the way end-to-end encryption works, we can't read the contents of individual encrypted messages," a spokesman said.

But Mr Inglis said technology companies would not need to create a so-called backdoor to messages, but rather allow intelligence agencies to exploit vulnerabilities.

The NSA was criticised in May after it was revealed it knew about a vulnerability in Microsoft's system, but exploited it rather than reporting it to the company.

"Here's the dirty little secret: most of these devices already have what might be technically described as a backdoor their update mechanisms, their patch mechanisms," he said.

"My read on what you are trying to do is to put that issue on the table and say, 'we are not going to create backdoors, but we are going to try and use the capabilities that already exist'."

Mr Inglis said the Australian Government was pushing for legal powers the US Government had not called for.

"We have not had as rich a debate as what I sense is going on in Australia," he said.

"The Government by and large has not stepped in and directed that we are either going to seek a solution, we are still trying to find a voluntary way forward."

When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the legislation, he noted strong libertarian tendencies of US-based technology companies.

Mr Inglis said Australia was "in the middle of the pack" when it came to cyber security planning.

"You are currently working through how to balance individual privacy the defence of liberty as well as we would say in the states and the pursuit of collective security," he said.

"No-one is exempt from the threats that are traversing across the cyber space at this moment in time."

Topics: science-and-technology, defence-and-national-security, security-intelligence, information-and-communication, turnbull-malcolm, government-and-politics, australia, united-states

First posted August 01, 2017 04:44:23

Read more:
Ex-NSA boss questions encrypted message access laws proposed by Malcolm Turnbull - ABC Online

The founders of the online news publication that will help in the defense of a Fort Gordon contractor accused of leaking a classified document were among the first to report on the National Security Agency surveillance of citizens in other countries and at home in 2013, using thousands of documents leaked by a former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden.

While the document published by The Intercept which the government says came from NSA contract employee Reality Leigh Winner of Augusta is still considered classified by prosecutors, it allegedly concerns the NSA analysis of Russias efforts to infiltrate a voting software company and infect computers used by state election officials. The Intercept published a story based on the analysis, and Winner was arrested June 3.

According to The Intercepts site, journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill founded the online publication dedicated to fearless, adversarial journalism. EBays founder Pierre Omidyar provided the funding in 2013 for First Look Media in 2013, a non-profit, which launched The Intercept.

The Intercept has an average of 5 million visitors a month, said Vivian Siu, director of communications for First Look.

The online publication has a lot of readers in and outside of the U. S., said Rick Edmonds, media business analysis with the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalism. The Intercept began as a site for leaked documents but has expanded into other areas, Edmonds said. Non-profit, online publications are definitely a growing part of journalism and investigative reporting, he said.

The non-profit, online publication ProPublica has been publishing significant investigative work, Edmonds noted. There is also the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that won a Pulitzer Prize for the Panama Papers investigation into the finances of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which led to his resignation Friday. The new form of journalism has a significant presence, Edmonds said.

I believe that great journalism boils down to a few key principles, Scahill wrote in an article asking for readers support for investigative journalism. Hold those in power accountable, regardless of their political or corporate affiliations; give voice to the voiceless; provide people with information they can use to make informed decisions; be transparent with your readers about how you know what you know; (and) make sure your facts are straight.

Scahill won a George Polk Award for his reporting in war zones and for his 2008 report about Blackwater, the private armed security force. Greenwald is a journalist and attorney who wrote four New York Times best-sellers on politics and law. He also wrote No Place to Hide about the U.S. surveillance and his experience in reporting on the Snowden documents. In 2013 he was awarded a George Polk award and several others for his reporting on the Snowden documents.

Poitras was also awarded a George Polk award and shared the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service with The New York Times. Poitras left The Intercept for Field of Vision, which is also part of First Look Media. She was awarded an Academy Award for best documentary in 2015.

The Intercept has won a number of national journalism awards. It focuses on national security, politics, civil liberties, the environment, international affairs, technology, criminal justice, the media and more, according to its website. And it seeks whistleblowers, providing an email site and online drop box.

In Winners case, the Press Freedom Defense Fund of the First Look Media is giving $50,000 in matching funds to Stand with Reality, a fundraising campaign. First Looks attorney Baruch Weiss, a former U.S. attorney with experience in NSA investigations, will support Winners local defense team.

Winner is in custody without bond. She has pleaded not guilty to one count of willful retention and transmission of national defense information.

Reach Sandy Hodson at sandy.hodson@augustachronicle.com or (706) 823-3226

Excerpt from:
Online site backing defense of accused NSA leaker founded to promote fearless journalism - The Augusta Chronicle