Salon.com > Spying

Dutch police may get right to hack into computers

Thu, 02 May 2013 19:23:00 +0000

The Dutch government has proposed a bill that would give police far-reaching powers to fight cybercrime, while creating a dangerous precedent for police hacking codified into law. Via the BBC:

Under a new bill, investigators would be able to hack into computers, install spyware, read emails and destroy files.

They could also break into servers located abroad, if they were being used to block services.

Critics say the proposed measures are unnecessary and could set a dangerous precedent for people living under oppressive governments.

Use of the powers would be subject to the approval of a judge, the government stresses.

The bill would also make it a crime for a suspect to refuse to decipher encrypted files during a police investigation.

IRS may be reading emails without a warrant

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:49:00 +0000

In order to catch instances of criminal tax evasion the IRS may be violating the Fourth Amendment, the ACLU reported Wednesday. The civil liberties group obtained documents via FOIA that suggest that the IRS is reading Americans' emails without warrants, although the agency remains cagey about its surveillance practices. Via the ACLU:

Last year, the ACLU sent a FOIA request to the IRS seeking records regarding whether it gets a warrant before reading people’s email, text messages and other private electronic communications. The IRS has now responded by sending us 247 pages of records describing the policies and practices of its criminal investigative arm when seeking the contents of emails and other electronic communications.

So does the IRS always get a warrant? Unfortunately, while the documents we have obtained do not answer this question point blank, they suggest otherwise. This question is too important for the IRS not to be completely forthright with the American public. The IRS should tell the public whether it always gets a warrant to access email and other private communications in the course of criminal investigations. And if the agency does not get a warrant, it should change its policy to always require one.

DHS had policy of daily spying on activists

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:38:00 +0000

Department of Homeland Security documents obtained recently by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund reveal that the agency, founded for combating terrorism, has a policy of spying daily on peaceful activists and protesters in the United States.

The heavily redacted 252 pages of documents add to findings already made by the PCJF about coordination and intelligence monitoring by the DHS, the FBI, the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies and the private sector of Occupy and related protests.

"Taken together, the two sets of documents paint a disturbing picture of federal law enforcement agencies using their vast power in a systematic effort to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations. The federal agencies’ actions were not because Occupy represented a 'terrorist threat' or a 'criminal threat' but rather because it posed a significant grassroots political challenge to the status quo,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF.

FBI pursues greater real-time Gmail spying powers

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:32:00 +0000

The FBI is seeking to expand its spying powers when it comes to real-time communications. According to Ryan Gallagher at Slate the agency has made it a "top priority" this year to gain the the ability to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage. The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and telecom companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks. But, as Gallagher notes, "it doesn’t cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers like Skype." The FBI has thus a difficult time expanding its vast surveillance dragnet to monitoring Gmail, Google Voice and Dropbox in real time. Gallagher writes that the agency hopes to change this in 2013:

DoJ backs rewriting of law that lets police read emails

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

The Justice Department said on Tuesday that it supports rewriting 26-year-old legislation that has allowed US law enforcement officials to read a person's emails without a search warrant so long as the email is older than six months or already opened.

The law has long been criticized by privacy advocates as a loophole when it comes to protecting Americans from government snooping.

"There is no principled basis to treat email less than 180 days old differently than email more than 180 days old," Elana Tyrangiel, acting assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy, told a House judiciary subcommittee. She also said emails deserve the same legal protections whether they have been opened or not.

Tyrangiel's testimony gives Congress a starting point as it begins to review a complicated 1986 law known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

Written at a time before the internet was popularized and before many Americans used Yahoo or Google servers to store their emails indefinitely, the law allows federal authorities to obtain a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor – not a judge – to access electronic messages older than 180 days.

Surveillance software used to spy on activists around the world

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:35:00 +0000

FinSpy, a surveillance tool designed to enable law enforcement to monitor computers in criminal investigations, is being used by governments around the world to spy on activist activity, a new report from Citizen Lab revealed Wednesday.

The U.K.-based Gamma Group markets and sells the software to law enforcement ostensibly with the sole purpose of lawfully monitoring the computers of criminals -- including pedophile rings, human traffickers and organized crime syndicates. The tool has, as Citizen Lab found, been put to broader and more nefarious uses by governments in countries including Bahrain, Ethiopia and Vietnam with "strong indications of politically-motivated targeting."

Harvard administration spied on staff emails

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:20:00 +0000

Following leaks to the media on student cheating scandal at Harvard, the university administration spied on staff emails in an attempt to locate the source of the leak. Faculty members have reacted with fury since this privacy invasion was revealed this weekend.

Via the New York Times:

Last fall, the administrators searched the e-mails of 16 resident deans, trying to determine who had leaked an internal memo about how the deans should advise students who stood accused of cheating. But most of those deans were not told that their accounts had been searched until the past few days, after The Boston Globe, which first reported the searches, began to inquire about them.

Rather than the searches being kept secret from the resident deans, “they should’ve been asked openly,” said Richard Thomas, a professor of classics. “This is not a good outcome"... On his blog, which is closely followed by many people at Harvard, Dr. Lewis called the administration’s handling of the search “dishonorable,” and, like some of his colleagues, said the episode would prompt him to do less of his communication through his Harvard e-mail account, and more through a private account.

Anonymous group claims to show BofA monitored hackers, activists

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:10:00 +0000

An Anonymous group, identifying itself as Par:AnoIA (aka Anonymous Intelligence Agency) has released 14 Gigabytes of data, code and software that it claims shows how Bank of America employed security firms to monitor hackers and activists.

In a Wednesday press release, Par:AnoIA stated that the data "shows that Bank of America and others are contracting other companies to spy and collect information on private citizens." The release also notes, however, that the "overall quality of the research is poor and potentially false."

The data was not obtained through any hack, but was "stored on a misconfigured server and basically open for grabs."

Leaked documents reveal that TEKSystems assembled reports on both Occupy Wall Street online activity and hackers throughout 2012. But the hackers group called such "intelligence" "sloppy, random and valueless":

Civil rights lawyers sue NYPD over spying on Muslims

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:12:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — The New York Police Department's focus on Muslims has renewed the political surveillance of the 1960s and '70s that was banned under a landmark legal ruling, according to a new court filing by civil rights lawyers. They are seeking an injunction against further surveillance of Muslims without evidence of crimes and a new court-appointed auditor to oversee police activities.

Describing continuing surveillance of Muslims as "widespread and intense," the civil rights lawyers complained that the NYPD has monitored public places where Muslims eat, shop and worship and has kept records and notes about police observations despite any evidence of unlawful or terror-related activities. The lawyers said the NYPD's actions violate rules, known as the Handschu guidelines, that a court had imposed as part of a 1985 landmark settlement with the NYPD to a lawsuit they filed.

"There is substantial persuasive evidence that the defendants are conducting investigations into organizations and individuals associated with the Muslim faith and the Muslim community in New York, and have been doing so for years, using intrusive methods, without a reasonable indication of unlawful activity, or a criminal predicate of any sort," the lawyers wrote in a motion to be filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. They said the NYPD's actions were so "flagrant and persistent" that an auditor should be appointed.

After NYT attack, U.S. considers action against Chinese hacking

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:44:00 +0000

Following revelations by the New York Times this week that Chinese hackers -- believed to be connected to the military -- infiltrated the newspaper's computer system, the U.S. government is considering taking action.

Salon noted Thursday that a cyber-security firm discovered that hackers had used a common tactic known as spearsphishing to spy on the computers of Times reporters investigating the vast personal wealth of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Other news outlets, including the AP, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, reported that they too had been targeted by Chinese hackers and, as the Guardian noted Friday, experts believe that the Chinese government routinely employs a "vast army of hackers" to carry out covert spying campaigns.

The Obama administration is considering more assertive action against this cyber-threat. According to the AP, "cyber-security experts said the U.S. government is eyeing more pointed diplomatic and trade measures." Via the AP:

Feinstein defends domestic surveillance program

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:05:00 +0000

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wanted the answer to a basic question on Thursday: How many Americans does the United States government currently spy on?

The question arose ahead of a vote over reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a 1978 law permitting the government to spy on correspondence between Americans and foreign individuals. Wyden, leading the charge to challenge the reauthorization, argues that the "Senate cannot say that we passed the smell test with respect to vigorous oversight if we don't have some sense of how many Americans … are being swept up under the legislation."

A number of FISA provisions passed in recent years are set to expire at the end of this year, and as Politico reported, "[Wyden] has placed a hold on the bill as he seeks information from the federal authorities, who have told Wyden in the past that they can’t deliver that data [on how many Americans are caught up in the surveillance dragnet]. And Wyden said this week that he’ll maintain that hold unless the Senate allows a vote on his amendments to introduce new legal checks and transparency rules to the law."

Telecom firms to keep immunity in government spying

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 17:46:00 +0000

The Supreme Court Justices announced Tuesday that they would not review a law that gives telecommunications companies legal immunity for helping the government with email and telephone eavesdropping.

Civil liberties groups and privacy groups have challenged the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which allows the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and emails without a probable-cause warrant and offers immunity from liability to the telecoms firms who aid in this eavesdropping. Under the act in 2009, a federal judge ruled on behalf of phone companies, including AT&T and Verizon, and against the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who had charged the companies with the illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.