We are pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation is signing the Necessary and Proportionate Principles on the application of human rights to surveillance.

Privacy on the Internet is closely connected to our mission to disseminate free knowledge.[1] We strive to provide a platform for users from all over the world to exercise their free expression right to share and study educational content. There are circumstances when contributors need to remain anonymous when working on the Wikimedia projects. To that end, the projects allow people to edit under a pseudonym, without providing any personal information, and without even creating an account. We want community members to feel comfortable when working on the projects. And we strongly oppose mass surveillance by any government or entity.

Although the recent conversation about internet surveillance was spurred by the revelation of a US government program, PRISM, a report issued by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Opinion and Expression makes it clear that surveillance by governments is global, ubiquitous, and generally unchecked. The Necessary and Proportionate Principles are intended to provide a framework for human rights laws to address modern surveillance technologies.[2] They demand that governments respect international law and human rights by complying with basic principles such as:

The Necessary and Proportionate Principles project was led by several groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access, and Privacy International. The principles were developed through a consultation with civil society groups and international experts in communications surveillance law, policy, and technology. So far, the Principles have been advocated by over 400 organizations and many individuals. The signatories include Wikimedia Mexico and several Wikimedians. Today, we are proud to join their efforts.

Yana Welinder Legal Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation[3]

#NSA #Whistleblower Russ Tice - Where's the Pushback? ~ http://www.accuracy.org/nsa-veterans-and-whistleblowers-respond-to-obama-speech/&session_token=xGlED4uI7gabllRrP--CCc4fRCV8MTM5MjA4NzMwMEAxMzkyMDAwOTAw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Tice ----------------------------------------­------------------------------------ http://LeakSource.wordpress.com https://twitter.com/LeakSourceNews

Identifiable images of bystanders extracted from corneal reflections - @_@

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http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.po... Animated zoom on the cornea of a high-resolution photographic subject. The zoom begins with a passport photo-style framing of the subject, and ends with a full face close-up of a bystander captured in the subject's corneal reflection. Successive movie frames represent a linear magnification of 6%. Each frame was resized to 720 pixels wide x 540 pixels high using bicubic interpolation to reduce high spatial frequency noise. Contrast was enhanced separately for each frame using the Auto Contrast function in Adobe Photoshop to improve definition. The image sequence was then converted to movie format for viewing.

Silent Circle's thing has always been the promise of end-to-end secure communications, and that drive is apparently causing it to shut down the Silent Mail email service. Reasons cited in a blog post by CTO Jon Callas include the insecure nature of email protocols and preemptively avoiding the outside (read:FISA) pressures that prompted Lavabit to close its doors. Silent Circle says it hadn't received any "subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else". Still, CEO Michael Janke tells TechCrunch he believed the government would come knocking due to certain high profile users of the service. Its phone, video and text products remain operational and claim to be "secure as ever", if you're wondering.

It would appear as though the tinfoil hat-wearing were vindicated today, as news broke of the true scale of the U.S. government's surveillance of its citizens' online activities, conducted primarily through the NSA and seemingly beyond the realm of the law.

If the reports are to be believed, metadata about virtually every aspect of individuals' lives - phone records and geographic data, emails, web application login times and locations, credit card transactions - are being aggregated and subjected to 'big data' analysis.

The potential for abuse, especially in light of the recent IRS scandal and AP leak investigation, appears unlimited.

Knowing this, what steps can ordinary individuals take to safeguard themselves against the collection, and exposure, of such sensitive personal information?

I would start with greater adoption of PGP for emails, open source alternatives to web applications, and the use of VPNs. Are there any other (or better) steps that can be taken to minimize one's exposure to the surveillance dragnet?

source: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/37076/what-are-the-implications-of-nsa-surveillance-on-the-average-internet-user

Illustration: National Institutes of Health

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance.

“The Social Security number itself, it’s pretty ubiquitous in your life,” Calabrese said.

David Bier, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees with the ACLU’s fears.

“The most worrying aspect is that this creates a principle of permission basically to do certain activities and it can be used to restrict activities,” he said. “It’s like a national ID system without the card.”

For the moment, the debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee is focused on the parameters of legalization for unauthorized immigrants, a border fence and legal immigration in the future.

The committee is scheduled to resume debate on the package Tuesday.

The battle for control of cyberspace is turning nasty, with young hackers, pirates and activists facing long prison sentences. We report from the frontline

*          *          *

....Back in January, the young tech entrepreneur Aaron Swartz killed himself. His body was found in his Brooklyn apartment. He was facing prison for downloading a mass of copyright-protected academic journals belonging to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was hardly the crime of the century, and he'd probably have got not much more than a warning had federal prosecutors not intervened. But they did. They announced their intention to send him to jail for up to 35 years. It was like drawing battle lines between the old world that valued copyright protection and privacy of information, and the new world that valued the opposite. Swartz, who had suffered from depression for years, hanged himself. He was 26. He left behind him, among other innovations, Reddit, the open-source social media site, which he co-owned....

Thanx @PamelaDrew ~ 'Whistleblowers fight fear to expose world's dark secrets' 

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RT talks to the Director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, Gavin MacFadyen, about the difficulties whistleblowers face when trying to promote transparency.

Anonymous is planning a global protest tomorrow.

In a campaign called Operation Big Brother, the Worldwide Day Of Protest Against Surveillance appears to be plotting action from citizens in over a dozen countries in an organized effort against government use of surveillance systems such as Europe's INDECT and America's Trapwire.

Using a Google Map to pull in and track protesters by location, Operation Big Brother is supposed to visibly demonstrate what's going on during the protest. Yet little is known about how it will be implemented other than the suggestion, "IRL protest (...) unofficial information and defacing." News of the protest is being shared on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Pastebin, while opt-in protest locations are being tracked with a Google Map. The protest was announced in August after a WikiLeaks leak of private intelligence firm Stratfor's documents revealed the global use and implementation of American surveillance system Trapwire. It was first tacked onto a pre-existing European anti-government-surveillance protest, Stop INDECT. But now on its Operation Big Brother Twitter feed and ancillary online outlets, Anonymous is hinting at bigger plans. Information about the protest is being shared by Operation Big Brother (@OpBigBrother) and there is a #OpBigBrother Worldwide call to protest against Surveillance SystemsFacebook Event Page. Both Trapwire and INDECT combine various intelligent surveillance technologies with tracking and location data, individual profile histories from various sources (data mining and social media), and image data analysis (such as facial recognition -- Trapwire's video component) to monitor people.

Anonymous has released a new video describing its intent behind the protest.

The video voiceover states:

Trapwire is used by private entities, the U.S. government, "and its allies overseas." In mid-August when the Google Map and Operation Big Brother became public there was only a small cluster of pins indicating participants for the October 20 protest only in Europe. Now, people in dozens of cities in 15 countries around the globe have joined the protest against government use of the surveillance technologies on citizens. Countries include Germany, the U.K., the United States, Australia, Russia, Philippines, Venezuela, and Pakistan.

Trapwire and INDECT's opponents believe that the surveillance systems to be direct threats to privacy and certain civil freedoms and that their implementation could constitute human rights violations.

The ACLU this summer called Trapwire "deeply problematic" and elaborated on the term "the surveillance-industrial complex," saying:

Just this week, the ACLU commented on San Francisco law enforcement using a subpoena to get location information on a suspect via the city's public transit Clipper Card database. Chris Conley, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said, "As with all location information, Clipper cards can tell quite a bit about a person -- it could show that a person got off BART at a rally." California Watch wrote:

Regardless of the outcome of tomorrow's planned protest, the push by Anonymous shows a keen and persistent interest in pushing back the reach of surveillance technologies.

This article is also available in: Deutsch: CleanIT – Pläne zur Überwachung des Internets im großen Stil

A leaked document from the CleanIT project shows just how far internal discussions in that initiative have drifted away from its publicly stated aims, as well as the most fundamental legal rules that underpin European democracy and the rule of law.

The European Commission-funded CleanIT project claims that it wants to fight terrorism through voluntary self-regulatory measures that defends the rule of law.

The initial meetings of the initiative, with their directionless and ill-informed discussions about doing “something” to solve unidentified online “terrorist” problems were mainly attended by filtering companies, who saw an interesting business opportunity. Their work has paid off, with numerous proposals for filtering by companies and governments, proposals for liability in case sufficiently intrusive filtering is not used, and calls for increased funding by governments of new filtering technologies.

The leaked document contradicts a letter sent from CleanIT Coordinator But Klaasen to Dutch NGO Bits of Freedom in April of this year, which explained that the project would first identify problems before making policy proposals. The promise to defend the rule of law has been abandoned. There appears never to have been a plan to identify a specific problem to be solved – instead the initiative has become little more than a protection racket (use filtering or be held liable for terrorist offences) for the online security industry.

The proposals urge Internet companies to ban unwelcome activity through their terms of service, but advise that these “should not be very detailed”. This already widespread approach results, for example, in Microsoft (as a wholly typical example of current industry practice) having terms of service that would ban pictures of the always trouserless Donald Duck as potential pornography (“depicts nudity of any sort ... in non-human forms such as cartoons”). The leaked paper also contradicts the assertion in the letter that the project “does not aim to restrict behaviour that is not forbidden by law” - the whole point of prohibiting content in terms of service that is theoretically prohibited by law, is to permit extra-judicial vigilantism by private companies, otherwise the democratically justified law would be enough. Worse, the only way for a company to be sure of banning everything that is banned by law, is to use terms that are more broad, less well defined and less predictable than real law.

Moving still further into the realm of the absurd, the leaked document proposes the use of terms of service to remove content “which is fully legal”... although this is up to the “ethical or business” priorities of the company in question what they remove. In other words, if Donald Duck is displeasing to the police, they would welcome, but don't explicitly demand, ISPs banning his behaviour in their terms of service. Cooperative ISPs would then be rewarded by being prioritised in state-funded calls for tender.

CleanIT (terrorism), financed by DG Home Affairs of the European Commission is duplicating much of the work of the CEO Coalition (child protection), which is financed by DG Communications Networks of the European Commission. Both are, independently and without coordination, developing policies on issues such as reporting buttons and flagging of possibly illegal material. Both CleanIT and the CEO Coalition are duplicating each other's work on creating “voluntary” rules for notification and removal of possibly illegal content and are jointly duplicating the evidence-based policy work being done by DG Internal Market of the European Commission, which recently completed a consultation on this subject. Both have also been discussing upload filtering, to monitor all content being put online by European citizens.

CleanIT wants binding engagements from internet companies to carry out surveillance, to block and to filter (albeit only at “end user” - meaning local network - level). It wants a network of trusted online informants and, contrary to everything that they have ever said, they also want new, stricter legislation from Member States.

Unsurprisingly, in EDRi's discussions with both law enforcement agencies and industry about CleanIT, the word that appears with most frequency is “incompetence”.

The document linked below is distributed to participants on a “need to know” basis – we are sharing the document because citizens need to know what is being proposed.

Key measures being proposed:

If Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is able to pass his amendement, e-mail and other electronic communication will have stronger privacy protection.

A former marine is being detained indefinitely for posting politically controversial Facebook posts pre-crime surveillance flagged as ‘terroristic in nature’

While being blacked out by the corporate media altogether blogs and the alternative media are in a uproar over the arrest of a former marine Brandon Raub whose attorney has announced is now being detained indefinitely – Yes, the NDAA indefinite detention nightmare resurfaces wearing a new mask.

Raub, who served 2 tours of duty in our illegal overseas wars, has posted a series of messages  considered politically controversial but are nothing more than what tens of thousands Americans post across the internet on a daily basis.

Raub is now being defended by the Rutherford Institute, Civil and Human Rights organization, who says the sole reason for his unconstitutional detention is the federal government has determined his posts are ‘terroristic in nature’.

The controversy started when Raub, who served two tour of duties in our overseas wars, was flagged by pre-crime surveillance for his posts which rail against the corruption of our government by the military industrial complex, the need to take the government back from the bankers, ending the federal reserve, messages denouncing the sacrifice of American lives to fight a war based on lies, and some less popular conspiracy theories such as the 911 attacks being perpetrated by government intelligence agencies and Al-Qaeda being controlled by the CIA.

While these truly are controversial political topics, there is nothing about the posts that are terroristic, to the contrary those with such opinions merely view themselves as patriots seeking to promote liberty over the interests of tyranny.

Make no mistake about what is really happening here – Obama has been ordered in three separate federal court rulings  that he can not subject US citizens to unconstitutional indefinite military detention as was authorized by the NDAA with the latest ruling outright telling Obama he is in contempt of court if anyone is still be detained for after he defied the court’s ruling on the order.

The arrest of Raub is just nothing more than that the  government adapting to the ruling that they can not use the indefinite military detention silence journalists and political dissidents.

Now the feds are throwing this tactic at the wall to see if it sticks as an alternative means of indefinite detention to silence dissent and if it does it will have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech.

This sends a clear single to those who wish to speak out against the government in public forums.

It clearly communicates that those who chose to criticize the government in public will be have to fear federal agents storming their home and committing them to a psychiatric ward to be detained indefinitely until the are cured of their  ‘psychological problem’ of questioning the government, which is  ‘terroristic in nature’ under the rules of the new world order.

Decorated Marine Committed to Psych Ward for Facebook Post

A decorated marine has been committed to a psych ward following a Facebook post questioning why Americans lives are being sacrificed to fight a war based on lies.

Most of the time, when we post on Facebook, we don’t expect to be dragged from our house in nothing but a pair of shorts, summarily arrested and then placed in the psych ward. But that is exactly what happened to Brandon J Raub

Despite the fact that the arrest was videotaped (above) Raub has been charged with assaulting and officer and resisting arrest. Raub is to appear before a judge on Monday and has told family members that he has not been told what the charges are. Raub refused the proferred drugs at the psychiatric hospital where he is being held.

What caused all of the hullabaloo? This very patriotic post made on Facebook on Friday, November 11, 2011 at 9:00am:

[...]

Read The Rest…

Here’s the press release from The Rutherfored Institute announcing Raub is being detained indefinitely.

On The Front Lines

#Anonymous - Fighting #Trapwire ~ #ProTips #Surveillance #OpBigBrother

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Anonymous presents a number of ways to combat facial recognition from security cameras. While the Government seems hellbent on watching our every move, we are not helpless. Stand up and fight back! For those who prefer a less passive method, I present: Guide to Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) destruction. http://www.schnews.org.uk/diyguide/guidetoclosedcircuittelevisioncctvdestruct... TRANSCRIPT: Greetings citizens of the United States. Many of you have heard the recent stories about Trapwire. Constant video surveillance is an issue we presently face. However, there are a number of ways that you can combat this surveillance. Wearing a mask is a common way to keep your identity hidden. However, a mask does not protect against biometric authentication. In addition, this can also cause problems depending where you want to go. Another way to avoid facial recognition is to tilt your head more than 15 degrees to the side. Due to limits in their programming, they will not be able to detect that a face is present. though There are very obvious cons to doing this. Using a similar method, you can distort your face through elaborate makeup. This method also takes advantage of software limits as the computer will not be able to detect a face. But these are tiresome ways that tend to draw attention to yourself. Surely there are better solutions to avoid being added to a database. Did you know that a laser pointer can disable surveillance cameras? A tripod and a scope will help ensure it remains pointed at the camera. But we do have one last way to combat this surveillance. This method requires a little bit of work though. With nothing more than a hat, some infrared LEDs, some wiring, and a 9 Volt battery, you can create a device to render yourself invisible. It guarantees complete anonymity to cameras while appearing perfectly normal to the rest of the world. While the government may be hell bent on watching us at every moment of every day, we are not helpless. There are always ways of fighting back. Let's remind them that 1984 was not an instruction manual. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not Forgive. We do not Forget. Expect us. Follow Us: facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Crypt0nymous twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Crypt0nymous blog: http://crypt0nymous.tumblr.com/ YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Crypt0nymous

Also.. Here's the original:

For years Anonymous worked hard to protect our world and its peoples. NOW LISTEN CAREFULLY, This is an ALERT ABOUT SURVEILLANCE. Privacy of the people all over the world is suffering more and more outrages. We should not tolerate it. Cameras are everywhere even in our sky, and robots are used to gather and treat information collected through Internet spying. If Governments and corporations reach their goal to use network surveillance technologies to take control of our world, they will clear Freedom from both the real life and the Internet. That means Anonymous won’t be able to continue helping humanity. They plan to destroy each form of protest including Anonymous. That means that Anonymous members will be tracked and neutralized if we do not unite against surveillance. The population is not ready to understand and help us, we need to join the biggest fight ever seen on Anonymous era and use every means necessary to expose truth. Let the HIVE begins the strongest online and offline worldwide protest ever seen in the history of humanity. They showed they had no limits, we will show our power goes well beyond. Worldwide governments, evil corporations time of summations is over. We are Anonymous, we are not numbers, united as one, divided by zero. Wordwide union will shutdown BigBrother. That fight will lead us to triumph or to perish. This is a time trial. WE ACT OR WE FALL. We are Anonymous, We are Legion We do not forgive We do not forget Expect us ! ============================================================ Join us on irc.anonops.pro/6697 SSL chan #OpBigBrother PAD : https://pad.riseup.net/p/MMhJshLWd6AV DEFACEMENT MATERIAL : xxxxx ============================================================ PRIORITY IN HACKING ACTIONS : 1- LEAKS 2- DEFACEMENT 3- IF NOR DATABASES ACCESS NOR DEFACEMENT IS POSSIBLE : DDOS ————————————————————————————————————————­­-