March 29, 2012

New Counterorrism Guidelines Gives Authorities Vast Access to Private Info of Innocent Americans

March 25, 2012 | By Trevor Timm

On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signed expansive new guidelines for terrorism analysts, allowing the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) to mirror entire federal databases containing personal information and hold onto the information for an extended period of time—even if the person is not suspected of any involvement in terrorism. (Read the guidelines here ).

Despite the “terrorism” justification, the new rules affect every single American.  The agency now has free rein to, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage put it, “retrieve, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats ” and expands the amount of time the government can keep private information on innocent individuals by a factor of ten.

From the New York Times :

The guidelines will lengthen to five years — from 180 days — the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials said. The guidelines are also expected to result in the center making more copies of entire databases and “data mining them” using complex algorithms to search for patterns that could indicate a threat. (emphasis ours)

Journalist Marcy Wheeler summed the new guidelines up nicely saying, “So…the data the government keeps to track our travel, our taxes, our benefits, our identity? It just got transformed from bureaucratic data into national security intelligence.”

The administration claims that the changes in the rules for the NCTC—as well as for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which oversees the nation’s intelligence agencies—are in response to the government’s failure to connect the dots in the so-called “underwear bomber” case at the end of 2009, yet there was no explanation of how holding onto innocent Americans’ private data for five years would have stopped the bombing attempt.

Disturbingly, “oversight” for these expansive new guidelines is being directed by the DNI’s "Civil Liberties Protection Officer" Joel Alexander, who is so concerned about Americans’ privacy and civil liberties that he, as Marcy Wheeler notes, found no civil liberties concerns with the National Security Agency’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program when he reviewed it during President George W. Bush’s administration.

As other civil liberties organizations have noted, the new guidelines are reminiscent of the Orwellian-sounding “Total Information Awareness ” program George Bush tried but failed to get through Congress in 2003—again in the name of defending the nation from terrorists. The program, as the New York Times explained , sparked an “outcry” and partially shut down Congress because it “proposed fusing vast archives of electronic records — like travel records, credit card transactions, phone calls and more — and searching for patterns of a hidden terrorist cell.”

The New York Times reported , the new NCTC guidelines “are silent about the use of commercial data — like credit card and travel records — that may have been acquired by other agencies,” but information first obtained by private corporations has ended up in federal databases before. In one example, Wired Magazine found FBI databases contained “200 million records transferred from private data brokers like ChoicePoint, 55,000 entries on customers of Wyndham hotels, and numerous other travel and commercial records.” The FBI would be one of the agencies sharing intelligence with the NCTC.

Despite Congress’ utter rejection of the “Total Information Awareness” program (TIA) in 2003, this is the second time this month the administration has been accused of instituting the program piecemeal. In his detailed report on the NSA’s new “data center” in Utah, Wired Magazine’s James Bamford remarked that the new data storage complex is “the realization” of the TIA program, as it’s expected to store and catalog “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches.”

Unfortunately, the new NCTC guidelines are yet another example of the government using the word “terrorism” to infringe on the rights of innocent Americans. Aside from the NSA’s aforementioned warrantless wiretapping program, we have seen the Patriot Act overwhelmingly used in criminal investigations not involving terrorism, despite its original stated purpose. As PBS Frontline’s Azmat Khan noted in response to the new guidelines, investigative journalist Dana Priest has previously reported how “many states have yet to use their vast and growing anti-terror apparatus to capture any terrorists; instead the government has built a massive database that collects, stores and analyzes information on thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.” 

This problem has been well documented for years, yet Congress and both the Bush and Obama administrations have continued to use terrorism as a justification for expansive laws, and Americans’ constitutional rights have become collateral damage. 

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Graduated Response Deal Steamrollers On Towards July 1 Launch

March 21, 2012 | By Parker Higgins

Last week, RIAA CEO Cary Sherman confirmed that the country's largest ISPs will voluntarily roll out by July 1 a "graduated response" program aimed at discouraging unauthorized downloading. A Memorandum of Understanding published last summer outlines the program, which was developed without user feedback . Under the new system, a rightsholder accusing an ISP subscriber of infringment will trigger a series of ever-increasing consequences . The responses are graduated in the sense that they escalate after each accusation, beginning with steps aimed at educating users about copyright and culminating in the Orwellian-sounding "mitigation measures" — bandwidth throttling or account suspension.

As we said last year, this deal is tilted against subscribers . That's not surprising, given that no one solicited subscriber input in advance. In fact, some online commenters have expressed concern that the agreement runs afoul of antitrust law .

One key problem is the arrangement shifts the burden of proof: rather than accusers proving infringement before the graduated response process starts against a subscriber, the subscriber must disprove the accusation in order to call a halt to it. Worse, accused subscribers have to defend themselves on an uneven playing field. For example, they have only ten days to prepare a defense, and with only six pre-set options available. Of course, there's no assurance that those who review the cases are neutral, and the plan sorely lacks consequences for an accuser who makes mistaken or fraudulent claims.

There are still more problems. The plan calls for "education" after the first accusations, but based on the information now available on the website launched last year by the Center for Copyright Information (the entity charged with administering the system), it's likely to be both deceptive and scare-mongering. And the whole system lacks in transparency: while it includes some minimal reporting requirements, those reports need not be made public. 

The final rub: subscribers will doubtless be paying for their own "re-education," as ISPs pass on their portions of the administration costs in the form of higher fees.

What can users do at this point? In some cases, they can vote with their feet. This agreement is voluntary for now, and while the participating ISPs include many major companies — AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable — there are other options. Users lucky enough to have a choice of providers for their Internet service should consider switching to a service that opted not to "cooperate." For example, companies like Sonic and Cox Communications have a history of fighting for their users where they can, and are notably absent from this arrangement.

Otherwise, users have little choice for now but to watch their ISP roll out this new system against their interests, and maybe familiarize themselves with the six pre-approved responses available to them after an accusation. EFF will continue to follow developments in this agreement closely, and will be offering users a way to speak out against it soon. Stay tuned to updates about these actions on our EFFector mailing list , or by following EFF on Identi.ca or Twitter .

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March 21, 2012

Manually Create the “Volume Mixer” Shortcut

1. Right click on a empty area on desktop, and click on New and Shortcut.

2. Copy and paste the location below into the location area, and click on the Next button. (see screenshot below)

%windir%\System32\SndVol.exe -r 49490633

Volume Mixer Shortcut - Create-step1.jpg

3. Type Volume Mixer for the name, and click on the Finish button. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: You can name this anything you would like though.

Volume Mixer Shortcut - Create-step2.jpg

4. You can now Pin to Taskbar or Pin to Start Menu this shortcut, assign a keyboard shortcut to it, or move it where you like for easy use.

That's it,
Shawn

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March 20, 2012

Facebook’s (In)conspicuous Absence From the Do Not Track Discussions

On the heels of President Obama's recent introduction of a Privacy Bill of Rights, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), the latest self-regulatory organization for online advertising, agreed to support widespread implementation of Do Not Track (DNT) browser headers. This is a laudable step, and in the coming months the responsibilities for how websites respond to the signal will be articulated in multistakeholder meetings through the W3C's Tracking Protection Working Group . One conspicuous absence from the Do Not Track discussions is Facebook. As a company that tracks millions of users around the web, Facebook needs to follow in the footsteps of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and others by committing to respect user choice.

There is no denying Facebook's popularity in the online arena. It is consistently ranked in the top five websites visited in the world. In the month of December 2011 alone, users spent more than 9.7 billion minutes per day on Facebook on personal computers, while in the mobile sphere the Facebook app is one of the most downloaded applications across the smartphone ecosystem.1 Facebook is apt to translate this popularity into effective advertising, which is fundamental to its revenue stream. Facebook said as much in its IPO documents, where it stated: "We generate substantially all of our revenue from advertising and payment processing fees."2 Facebook also provided explicit figures. In 2011, they made $3.15 billion of $3.71 billion solely from advertising.3 In combination with Facebook's dominance in social media and its engagement with both Facebook and non-Facebook users outside of Facebook.com, Facebook's reliance on advertising as a major revenue stream is a reason that Facebook should be involved in current W3C discussions about the future of online advertising.

Facebook has a complex relationship with userssometimes it acts like a social network, but other times it acts more like an online tracking company. This tracking takes place without a user ever having to interact with the Facebook "like" or "social plugin" buttons: just seeing the "like" button is enough for Facebook to collect a record of your reading habits. It was third party tracking practices similar to this that inspired the Do Not Track movement. Like other companies that engage in cross-site tracking, Facebook needs to commit to respecting the Do Not Track header.

Facebook's interaction with users is further complicated by Instant Personalization , a system that allows non-Facebook sites to embed interactive Facebook widgets and conversations. Instant Personalization inherently requires tracking. When an individual has "instant personalization" enabled in her Facebook settings and then sets the Do Not Track header, we recommend that Facebook clarify whether or not she is agreeing to opt back in to being tracked while using instant personalization. This could be done with an interstitial explaining the tracking inherent to instant personalization and asking her whether, given her preference to not be tracked, she would still like to see and use instant personalization widgets. This type of transparent privacy control can ensure that Facebook users better understand how Facebook collects data on them. These complications are all reasons for Facebook to further engage in Do Not Track discussions and the Do Not Track mechanism.

It's clear that Facebook wants to be a part of the conversation around advertising and privacy. According to AdAge , when the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act (PDF) was introduced last year, Facebook sent an “army of lawyers” to Washington to convince Senators Kerry and McCain to carve out exceptions to their privacy bill so that Facebook could track its users via social widgets on other sites (dubbed the "Facebook loophole" ). Facebook currently retains two lobbying firms, and it nearly quadrupled its lobbying budget last year to $1.35 million.4 The best Internet policy arises from collaborative efforts with users, advocacy groups, and other technology companiesnot backroom deals on Capitol Hill. This is especially true when many policymakers and the public are watching online advertisers closely to see if they can improve their poor track record when it comes to self-regulation.

Currently, the W3C's Tracking Protection Working Group involves stakeholders that include privacy organizations, tracking companies, the DAA, and academics to refine what Do Not Track means and how it is implemented. Facebook's prominence in the online advertising world, its reliance on advertising as a revenue model, and its activity in Washington make it clear that Facebook should be more involved in the negotiations on advertisers' responsibilities to respect Do Not Track.

After a privacy agreement was reached with the FTC in November 2011, Mark Zuckerburg wrote : "I'm committed to making Facebook the leader in transparency and control around privacy." Do Not Track is the next step for users to control how they can be tracked and what data can be collected. It's time Facebook engage with the larger Internet community and respect the rights of users who opt out of tracking.

  • 1. Data found in Facebook's IPO documents. Documents can be found here .
  • 2. Ibid.
  • 3. Ibid.
  • 4. Data courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets. Facebook's lobbying stats can be found here .

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March 17, 2012

Got Windows 64-bit and want the latest Firefox? Try Waterfox 11 instead

Hot on the heels of the slightly delayed official unveiling of Firefox 11 FINAL comes  Waterfox 11.0 , an optimized build of the Firefox source code for Windows 64-bit users.

Waterfox 11.0 contains exactly the same updates as Firefox 11 (see below), plus one major change of its own, a switch from AMD’s Core Math Library (ACML) to the AMD LibM library, which is optimized for 64-bit processors.

Aside from the change to AMD LibM library, Waterfox 11.0 has also been compiled with a new set of flags from the original Firefox 11.0 source code, which should help improve performance further. Other changes, as expected, simply mirror what are already present in Firefox 11.

These include limited support for importing data from Google Chrome, the ability to synchronize add-ons via Firefox Sync, updated support for various HTML5 and CSS standards and redesigned media controls for HTML5 video. Waterfox 11 also includes the two enhancements for developers: a CSS Style Inspector and Tilt (3D) view for HTML pages.

64-bit users wishing to switch to Waterfox 11.0 will need to install 64-bit versions of JavaAdobe Flash Player and, if required,  Microsoft Silverlight .

Note that Waterfox uses exactly the same preferences and user files as Firefox, which makes switching painless on the one hand, but does mean you should uninstall the program with care should you wish to revert back to the 32-bit version of Firefox: make sure you deselect any option to delete your personal preferences and files before proceeding to remove the program.

Waterfox 11.0 is a free download for PCs running 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista and 7. Other users looking for a version of Firefox that has been optimized for speed and performance should check out  Pale Moon 9.2 instead. Although not as updated as frequently as Firefox itself, Pale Moon’s developer has  hinted that a new build based on Firefox 11 may surface this month.

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