December
30 DAWN Email
Come
see the ACLU Freedom Files, " Beyond the Patriot Act" - a recently
released Robert Greenwald film which details the abuses of the flawed
legislation which was hastily passed in the wake of 9/11. The
film is free and the public is welcome.
6:30- film
7:30 voter registration
training ( RSVP for this by Jan. 5th)
8:00- DAWN meeting
Glen Ellyn Public Library
related
article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051229/ap_on_hi_te/spy_agency_privacy
NSA Web
Site Places 'Cookies' on Computers
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet WriterThu Dec 29, 7:24 AM ET
The National Security Agency's Internet site has
been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing
activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.
These files, known as "cookies,"
disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made
inquiries this week, and agency officials acknowledged Wednesday they had made
a mistake. Nonetheless, the issue raises questions about privacy at a spy
agency already on the defensive amid reports of a secretive eavesdropping
program in the
"Considering the surveillance power the NSA
has, cookies are not exactly a major concern," said Ari
Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a
privacy advocacy group in
Until Tuesday, the NSA site created two cookie
files that do not expire until 2035 - likely beyond the life of any computer in
use today.
Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement
Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade.
Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically
deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use
shipped with persistent cookies already on.
"After being tipped to the issue, we
immediately disabled the cookies," he said.
Cookies are widely used at commercial Web sites and
can make Internet browsing more convenient by letting sites remember user
preferences. For instance, visitors would not have to repeatedly enter
passwords at sites that require them.
But privacy advocates complain that cookies can
also track Web surfing, even if no personal information is actually collected.
In a 2003 memo, the White House's Office of
Management and Budget prohibits federal agencies from using persistent cookies
- those that aren't automatically deleted rright away - unless there is a
"compelling need."
A senior official must sign off on any such use,
and an agency that uses them must disclose and detail their use in its privacy
policy.
Peter Swire, a
Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered
the NSA cookies, said mistakes happen, "but in any case, it's illegal. The
(guideline) doesn't say anything about doing it accidentally."
The Bush administration has come under fire
recently over reports it authorized NSA to secretly spy on e-mail and phone
calls without court orders.
Since The New York Times disclosed the domestic
spying program earlier this month, President Bush has stressed that his
executive order allowing the eavesdropping was limited to people with known
links to al-Qaida.
But on its Web site Friday, the Times reported that
the NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained broader
access to streams of domestic and international communications.
The NSA's cookie use is
unrelated, and Weber said it was strictly to improve the surfing experience
"and not to collect personal user data."
Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in
The government first issued strict rules on cookies
in 2000 after disclosures that the White House drug policy office had used the
technology to track computer users viewing its online anti-drug advertising.
Even a year later, a congressional study found 300 cookies still on the Web
sites of 23 agencies.
In 2002, the CIA removed cookies it had
inadvertently placed at one of its sites after Brandt called it to the agency's
attention.
Copyright © 2005 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News
report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the
prior written authority of The Associated Press.
|
Copyright © 2005
Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. |
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
From the
Phone giants mum on spying
In past, industry has cooperated with U.S.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Jon Van
Tribune staff reporter
December 29, 2005
In the days following revelations that the Bush
administration ordered the National Security Agency to spy on domestic
telephone and Internet communications without a court order, one involved party
has remained silent.
The nation's telephone giants--which control the data pipelines--have neither
commented on nor denied their reported participation, nor have they reacted to
the charge that they may have been complicit in violating privacy rights.
But historically the telecom companies have cooperated with the government on
wholesale wiretapping, and the Bush administration's anti-terrorism programs
appear to be no exception.
Without commenting directly on a classified topic, industry officials--when
asked--suggested that they would not stand in the way of a request for help.
"Our members have worked for years with law enforcement with an objective
to preserve lawfully authorized surveillance," said Tom Amontree, a spokesman for the US Telecom Association, the
industry group representing most phone companies. "We have no comment on
national security matters."
Added Eric Rabe, a spokesman for Verizon
Communications Inc., one of the nation's phone giants: "We typically make
law enforcement agencies get a court order. Our default is to cooperate, but we
don't feel we should appropriate customer information lightly. We try to make
sure what we do is in compliance with the law."
During the Cold War, telecom organizations freely cooperated with government
agencies regarding national security, and there seemed to be little worry about
whether the requests were accompanied by court orders, one expert said.
"In the 1960s, I worked for an international telex and telegram carrier in
their
"I asked about it once and was told we'd been making copies available to
the government since World War II.
"I think the practice only ended when people stopped sending
telegrams."
The Bush administration has been responding to critics since Saturday's
disclosure that it directed the NSA to comb through huge volumes of telephone
and Internet communications without first seeking court orders. The New York
Times reported that since Sept. 11, 2001, unidentified American telecom
companies have helped the government gain "backdoor access" to
streams of communications flowing into and out of the U.S. in the search for terrorism
suspects.
A Bush spokesman, Trent Duffy, called the current use of wiretaps without the
usual court authorization limited.
Rabe, of Verizon, said it's
true that phone companies have always been willing to help government
inquiries, though times have changed.
In the Cold War era when there was great concern about Communists,
"probably a lot of things went on," Rabe
said, "but today we're more circumspect."
Last year when agents of the
He noted that no telecom companies have been named in disclosures about NSA
eavesdropping and declined to say if Verizon
cooperates with that program. Bob Dwyer, a spokesman for AT&T Inc., another
phone giant, said, "We don't comment on national security issues."
The question of what the telecom companies can help find is difficult to answer
because of the highly classified nature of the work. But experts say the
computer technology that enables eavesdropping on a national scale may well
generate enough data to overwhelm human agents.
"Their idea of finding a needle in a haystack seems to involve getting
more hay," said David Isenberg, a fellow at the
Isenberg said people who wish to evade government eavesdropping probably can do
so by encrypting their communications.
For example, calls made using Internet telephony from the European-based Skype service are all encrypted, Isenberg said.
While government agencies might decrypt targeted communications, it's not
possible to do this with the vast amounts of information apparently targeted by
the NSA, he said.
The decentralized nature of the Internet and the multiplicity of ways to
communicate further complicate the task of wholesale eavesdropping, said Daniel
Berninger, a communications analyst with Tier 1
Research.
By focusing on traffic that leaves the country, government agents can tap into
optical fiber lines that are buried on the oceans and on radio signals bounced
off satellites in space, Berninger said.
This provides some identifiable "choke points" where communications
enter and leave the country, he said, providing an easier task than trying to
randomly monitor domestic traffic that flows on the Internet in all directions
around the country, he said.
Tapping into modern communications lines will yield billions of packets of
voice and data all mixed together that is the electronic version of getting the
slivers of paper that come out of a shredder, Berninger
said.
While there is equipment available to put the signals back together as e-mail,
voice conversations, downloaded music and the like, "once you add
encryption to the mix, the game's over," said Berninger.
The technique used to monitor vast amounts of communications is data mining,
and sophisticated software programs are regularly used by private businesses as
well as government agencies.
Looking at data such as which phone numbers are called from which numbers can
provide a lot of useful information, said Paul Bradley, a consultant with
Apollo Data Technologies LLC, a Chicago-based data mining software firm.
"A lot of research has been done into social networking," said
Bradley. "When you use free instant messaging, the provider looks at who
chats with whom to reconstruct social networks. They collect a ton of
information. I'm sure government agencies do that."
SPSS Inc., a Chicago-based software pioneer in data mining, provides programs
to aid the Army in spotting hackers who are attempting to invade its computer
systems and to help Homeland Security protect the nation's borders.
Such software could determine when people use aliases by comparing several
different conversations and the patterns of name use within each, said Bill Haffey, technical director of SPSS' public sector products.
The system could even be programmed to send an agent an e-mail or call his cell
phone to inform him once it discovers aliases that interest him, he said. Even
if a security agency couldn't break an encryption used for messages, just
noting the pattern of encryption could provide useful information, Haffey said.
"There's no magic in any of this," said Jack Noonan, SPSS chief
executive. "Everything we do with technology, you could do with humans.
But sifting through billions of records could take all the humans in the world,
taking years.
"With this technology, you can do it quickly enough to make a
difference."
- - -
Tapping in by land, by sea and from space
One question arising from the recent revelation that the National Security
Agency monitored phone calls by U.S. citizens without court approval is whether
phone companies worked with the agency to monitor calls. Some ways the NSA
might have tapped into communications:
With help from phone companies:
TELEPHONE SWITCHES
One of the easiest ways to monitor phone conversations is to attach a
wiretapping device to a telephone switch, which is what phone companies use to
route calls. Calls can then be directly recorded and reviewed.
Without help from phone companies:
TRANSOCEANIC CABLES
Large fiber-optic cables laid across the ocean floor from the
SATELLITES
- Many communication signals travel across land by being relayed from stations
and towers. Because of the Earth's curvature, these signals may not all reach
the relay station and can end up in space, where government satellites can pick
them up.
- Signals from overseas, beamed toward the