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EUCourtOfJustice Says Data Retention Not Cool
by grarpamp 23 Dec '16

23 Dec '16

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=186492&doclang=EN The European Union’s top court has severely undermined the British government’s mass surveillance powers in a new ruling that could rein in police and spy agency investigations. In a judgment handed down in Luxembourg on Wednesday, the European Court of Justice declared that the “general and indiscriminate retention” of data about people’s communications and locations was inconsistent with privacy rights. The court stated that the “highly invasive” bulk storage of private data “exceeds the limits of what is strictly necessary and cannot be considered to be justified, within a democratic society.” Camilla Graham Wood, legal officer with the London-based group Privacy International, hailed the ruling as a victory for civil liberties advocates. “Today’s judgment is a major blow against mass surveillance and an important day for privacy,” she said. “It makes clear that blanket and indiscriminate retention of our digital histories — who we interact with, when and how and where – can be a very intrusive form of surveillance that needs strict safeguards against abuse and mission creep.” The European court’s panel of 15 judges acknowledged in their ruling that “modern investigative techniques” were necessary to combat organized crime and terrorism, but said that this cannot justify “the general and indiscriminate retention of all traffic and location data.” Instead, the judges stated, it is acceptable for governments to engage in the “targeted retention” of data in cases involving serious crime, permitting that persons affected by any surveillance are notified after investigations are completed, and that access to the data is overseen by a judicial authority or an independent administrative authority. The case was originally brought in December 2014 by two British members of parliament, who challenged the legality of the U.K. government’s Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, which forced telecommunications companies to store records on their customers’ communication for 12 months. That law has since been replaced by the Investigatory Powers Act, which was recently approved by the British parliament and is expected soon to come into force. Though the U.K. voted to leave the European Union earlier this year, Wednesday’s decision remains — at least in the short term — highly significant, and will prove to be a severe headache for British government officials. The ruling will now be forwarded to the U.K.’s Court of Appeal, where judges there will consider how to apply it in the context of national law. It may result in the government being forced to make changes to controversial sections of the Investigatory Powers Act, which enable police and spy agencies to access vast amounts of data on people’s internet browsing, instant messages, emails, phone calls, and social media conversations. “This is the first serious post-referendum test for our government’s commitment to protecting human rights and the rule of law,” said Martha Spurrier, director of U.K. human rights group Liberty. “The U.K. may have voted to leave the EU — but we didn’t vote to abandon our rights and freedoms.” She added: “Today’s judgment upholds the rights of ordinary British people not to have their personal lives spied on without good reason or an independent warrant. The government must now make urgent changes to the Investigatory Powers Act to comply with this.” A spokesperson for the British government’s Home Office said in a statement: “We are disappointed with the judgment from the European court of justice and will be considering its potential implications. The government will be putting forward robust arguments to the court of appeal about the strength of our existing regime for communications data retention and access.”

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What is the importance of antimatter?
by Georgi Guninski 23 Dec '16

23 Dec '16

What is the importance of antimatter? As is known, I don't understand physics. The front page of wikipedia links to new results in antimatter related to antihydrogen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihydrogen What is the importance of antimatter not counting nukes? Why antimatter is accepted by the standard model in physics, but anti-time and anti-space appear to be considered cranky topic? Could it be currently we don't have measuring devices and enough precision to detect anti-time and anti-space and the imaginary (in the complex sense) stuff from the square root of negative real in the Lorentz transformations, closely related to relativity?

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Value of bitcoins in circulation hits record high of $14bn
by grarpamp 23 Dec '16

23 Dec '16

Price per coin at $875 as cryptocurrency’s value doubles in a year, with experts linking it to depreciation of Chinese yuan The total value of all bitcoins in circulation hit a record high above $14bn (£11bn) on Thursday, as the web-based digital currency jumped 5% to its highest levels in three years after more than doubling in price this year. The price of one bitcoin reached $875 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, its strongest level since January 2014, putting the cryptocurrency on track for its best daily performance in six months. That compared with levels around $435 at the start of the year, with many experts linking bitcoin’s rise with the steady depreciation of the Chinese yuan, which has slid almost 7% in 2016. Is bitcoin the answer if traditional investments are letting you down? Data shows the majority of bitcoin trading is done in China, so any increase in demand from there tends to have a significant impact on the price. The web-based bitcoin currency can move money across the globe quickly and anonymously with no need for a central authority. That makes it attractive to those wanting to get around capital controls, such as China’s. The currency is still some way off the peaks it scaled in late 2013, when it traded as high as $1,163 on the Bitstamp exchange. But because more bitcoins continue to be added to the system, currently at a rate of 12.5 every 10 minutes, its total value – or “market cap” – on Thursday surpassed the 2013 peak of $14.01bn. That puts its total value at about the same as that of an average FTSE 100 company. Charles Hayter, the founder of data analysis website CryptoCompare, said bitcoin had been helped higher by demonetisation in India, and by global political uncertainty. “If that trend continues, bitcoin is a good thematic play on the fracturing of our global norms as a flight to safety,” he said.

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"right" vs permission, to immigrate - "Japan: No Muslims, no terrorists"
by Hashist 23 Dec '16

23 Dec '16

> Cecilia Tanaka: > in my country, we [are] 'racist' Onli rasict iz yu An doze whu ack raice Othurist slym

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US Congress Classified Report On Snowden
by grarpamp 23 Dec '16

23 Dec '16

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/12/22/2040202/congressional-report-claims… http://intelligence.house.gov/UploadedFiles/HPSCI_Snowden_Review_Declassifi… http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-12-22/in-declassified-edward-snowd… https://tcf.org/content/commentary/house-intelligence-committees-terrible-h… https://twitter.com/Snowden Edward Snowden has been in contact with Russian intelligence officials since arriving in Russia in 2013, according to a new report from Congress. "Since Snowden's arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services," the 33-page report, issued Thursday by the bipartisan House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked volumes of information on American intelligence and surveillance operations to the media, settled in Moscow after initially traveling to Hong Kong following his 2013 public disclosure of classified information. The Russian government granted asylum to Snowden shortly thereafter. Large portions of the pertinent section, entitled "foreign influence," are redacted, but one paragraph reveals the Russian link, saying that Frants Klintsevich, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament's defense and security committee, "publicly conceded that 'Snowden did share intelligence' with his government." Snowden immediately took to Twitter following the report's release to dispute the accusations, writing "they claim without evidence that I'm in cahoots with the Russians." The report cites classified material in the section linking Snowden to Russian intelligence. The investigation also noted that Snowden left encrypted hard drives containing classified information in Hong Kong and that the CIA had refused to grant Snowden access to sensitive information years before he began working with the NSA, documenting numerous issues that Snowden had with supervisors and co-wokers during his various jobs in the intelligence community.

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Re: [Cryptography] Photojournalists & filmmakers want cameras, to be encrypted
by grarpamp 22 Dec '16

22 Dec '16

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 11:57 AM, Joshua Marpet <joshua.marpet(a)guardedrisk.com> wrote: > I'm possibly being naive, but I don't see encryption (past hashing) as > needed. tell me where I'm wrong? Encryption _options_ are definitely *required*. You don't want to turn it on, fine, don't. Some will ship that way. Some other user does, fine, they will. Some will ship that way. And if people are that dense as to their need and use case, consider all the millions of everyday completely legal non journo, innocent, camera users who do stuff like... use it as a photocopier / scanner / fax for their bank docs etc take pics / vids of their families / vacations / drunk aunt donna their contacts and message streams their bedroom escapades whatever ... and are even just slightly aware of privacy, or even if not who would simply just freak out and think about it for years if something as simple as lose / stolen their camera / sdcard / phone. For people to sit here and argue that strong crypto *options* aren't useful... these people need to [have their heads] be examined.

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NIST Wants PQC Code From You
by grarpamp 22 Dec '16

22 Dec '16

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2016/12/nist-asks-public-help-future-… https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/20/2016-30615/announcing-… http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/post-quantum-crypto/minimum-accept-reqs.html

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Fwd: [tor-talk] 33c3 and tor?
by grarpamp 22 Dec '16

22 Dec '16

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sebastian Hahn <mail(a)sebastianhahn.net> Date: Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 8:40 AM Subject: Re: [tor-talk] 33c3 and tor? To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org Hi, > On 20 Dec 2016, at 14:37, fatal <fatal(a)mailbox.org> wrote: > an early version of the fahrplan for 33c3 is released¹ (btw. also the > 33c3 app on f-droid is already available). > > I couldn't find any talks from the tor-project yet, but maybe I've > overlooked them? Will there be any? > > And will there be a tor relay operators meetup? > > Thanks > > f. > > ¹ https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2016/Fahrplan/ CCC has opted not to accept any talks by Tor this year, but there will be Tor people there. Someone might organize a relay operators meetup. Cheers Sebastian -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk

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Govt: Our Cameras In Your House Are Reasonable Thus Legal
by grarpamp 22 Dec '16

22 Dec '16

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-nsa-fourth-amendment-analysis-idUSK… Yahoo Inc's secret scanning of customer emails at the behest of a U.S. spy agency is part of a growing push by officials to loosen constitutional protections Americans have against arbitrary governmental searches, according to legal documents and people briefed on closed court hearings. The order on Yahoo from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) last year resulted from the government's drive to change decades of interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment right of people to be secure against "unreasonable searches and seizures," intelligence officials and others familiar with the strategy told Reuters. The unifying idea, they said, is to move the focus of U.S. courts away from what makes something a distinct search and toward what is "reasonable" overall. The basis of the argument for change is that people are making much more digital data available about themselves to businesses, and that data can contain clues that would lead to authorities disrupting attacks in the United States or on U.S. interests abroad. While it might technically count as a search if an automated program trawls through all the data, the thinking goes, there is no unreasonable harm unless a human being looks at the result of that search and orders more intrusive measures or an arrest, which even then could be reasonable. Civil liberties groups and some other legal experts said the attempt to expand the ability of law enforcement agencies and intelligence services to sift through vast amounts of online data, in some cases without a court order, was in conflict with the Fourth Amendment because many innocent messages are included in the initial sweep. But the general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Robert Litt, said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday that the legal interpretation needed to be adjusted because of technological changes.

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Anonimity at last!
by juan 22 Dec '16

22 Dec '16

https://theintercept.com/securedrop/ "...go to a public wifi network, such as at a coffee shop that you don’t normally frequent, and follow them from there. Or connect to a VPN. Download and install the Tor Browser " Yep. That's it boys and girls. Easy as cake.

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