January 24, 2008

OPPOSE the Intel-passed S. 2248

The terrible Intelligence Committee-passed version of the FISA Amendments Act — S. 2248 — is back, and it's being debated on the Senate floor RIGHT NOW.

If you care about your civil liberties … your right not to be spied on without a warrant … and accountability for the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping and the telecommunications companies that helped carry it out, the time to act is now.

We're partnering with our allies at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to offer you a more creative way to tell your Senators to OPPOSE the Intel-passed S. 2248, which includes retroactive immunity for the telecom companies.

Check it out and please take part at http://www.StopTheSpying.org

Retroactive immunity for the telecom companies is really just a roundabout way of granting retroactive immunity to the Bush administration. It would effectively pull the plug on litigation that site cialis promises to shed light on the extent of the administration's lawbreaking, and it would set a dangerous precedent.

Over the next few days, People For, EFF and our friends will be lobbying intensely to stop any version of FISA reform legislation that grants retroactive telecom immunity. We can't fly you out to Washington to lobby your Senators directly, but we can take them your message, in your words, spoken in your voice or accompanied by your photo — hopefully this is the next best thing.

Got a webcam or a video camera? Got a regular camera or even just a camera on your cell phone? Then add to our efforts to use technology to bring constituent contact to the next level.

http://www.StopTheSpying.org

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Opposition to Telecom Immunity Swells

With Congress back in session and the Presidential election season in full swing, the fight to prevent the Administration from granting immunity to the telecoms for illegal spying is heating up once again. Activists and bloggers alike are keeping the heat on.

First, Credo Mobile (formerly Working Assets) urged its members to write to Senators Clinton, Obama and McCain, the three presidential candidates who are still in the Senate and who have said that they would oppose immunity. The results were tremendous: 67,000 emails were sent to the Senators.

Meanwhile, Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake has been urging folks to write to former Senator Edwards. Edwards can make telecom immunity a debate issue for the presidential candidates who still have a vote in Congress.

And of course, the amazing Glenn Greenwald continues to point out how Senator Harry Reid has the power to help stop the immunity train by supporting Senator Dodd and the handful of others who are willing to lay down on the tracks, but instead, Senator Reid seems to be shoveling in more coal.

Additionally, the Melman Group, a national polling organization commissioned by the ACLU, recently published a poll finding that 57 percent of likely voters opposed immunity for the telecommunications carriers that participated in the government's warrantless surveillance program, while only a third supported letting the telecoms off the hook.

For the Melman Group poll:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/strong-majority-voters-oppose-telecom-immunity

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/strong-majority-voters-oppose-telecom-immunityprescription cialis color=”#0000ff”>

For the complete post by EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt

Opsahl:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/strong-majority-voters-oppose-telecom-immunity

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/strong-majority-voters-oppose-telecom-immunity

For this complete post by EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/bloggers-and-others-push-presidential-candidates-immunity

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/bloggers-and-others-push-presidential-candidates-immunity

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Stop The Spying Update

The Senate has begun discussing telecom immunity and the FISA Amendments Act on the Senate floor, and by many indications a vote is imminent. Congress needs to hear from citizens like you on this issue!

It is likely that there will be several rounds of amendments and filibusters in the Senate. In addition, the House version of the surveillance bill does not include immunity for telecoms, setting the stage for an inevitable reconciliation of differences in the House and Senate bills if the Senate does pass retroactive immunity. Congressional champions that have so far remained resolute in rejecting telecom immunity to defend the rule of law and privacy rights need your support now more than ever!

So visit StopTheSpying.org now to speak out against telecom immunity!

http://www.stopthespying.org

http://www.stopthespying.org otc cialis

For the campaign's Flickr page featuring submitted photos:

http://flickr.com/photos/stopthespying

http://flickr.com/photos/stopthespying

http://flickr.com/photos/stopthespying

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January 17, 2008

How to manually open ports in Internet Connection Firewall in Windows XP

Article ID : 308127
Last Review : May 7, 2007
Revision : 3.3
This article was previously published under Q308127

INTRODUCTION

This article describes how to manually open ports in Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) in Windows XP.

MORE INFORMATION

Programs may require ports to be manually opened so that the programs work correctly when ICF is in use either on the local computer or on the gateway computer. You may have to manually open a port if there is a service that is running on a computer that has low price cialis ICF enabled that you want to make available to users on the Internet.

Note The actual port settings vary from program to program.

To manually open a port, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click My Network Places.
2. Under Network Tasks, click View Network Connections. (Or, right-click My Network Places on the desktop, and then click Properties.)
3. Right-click the connection that you use for the Internet, and then click Properties.
4. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Settings.

Note If the Settings button is unavailable, ICF is not enabled on this connection, and you do not have to open any ports (because they are all already open).

5. Click Add to open a new port.
6. In the Description box, type a friendly name. For example, type File Sharing : Port 445.
7. In the Name or IP address of the computer hosting this service on your network box, type 127.0.0.1.

Note You can specify the IP address of an internal computer. But you typically will use 127.0.0.1.

8. In the External port and Internal port boxes, type the port number. Generally, this number is the same.
9. Click either TCP or UDP, and then click OK.
10. Repeat steps 1 through 9 for each port that you want to open.

For additional information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

283673 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283673/) How to enable or disable the Personal Firewall feature in Windows XP
307554 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307554/) Programs require manual port configurations with Internet Connection Firewall


APPLIES TO
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2002
Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
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January 3, 2008

FBI turns to broad new wiretap method

By Declan McCullagh, News.com

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Published on ZDNet News: Jan 30, 2007

 

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

 

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

 

Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible.

 

Call it the vacuum-cleaner approach. It's employed when police have obtained a court order and an Internet service provider can't "isolate the particular person or IP address" because of technical constraints, says Paul Ohm, a former trial attorney at the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. (An Internet Protocol address is a series of digits that can identify an individual computer.)

 

That kind of full-pipe surveillance can record all Internet traffic, including Web browsing–or, optionally, only certain subsets such as all e-mail messages flowing through the network.

 

Interception typically takes place inside an Internet provider's network at the junction point of a router or network switch.

 

The technique came to light at the Search & Seizure in the Digital Age symposium held at Stanford University's law school on Friday. Ohm, who is now a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Richard Downing, a CCIPS assistant deputy chief, discussed it during the symposium.

 

In a telephone conversation afterward, Ohm said that full-pipe recording has become federal agents' default method for Internet surveillance. "You collect wherever you can on the (network) segment," he said. "If it happens to be the segment that has a lot of IP addresses, you don't throw away the other IP addresses. You do that after the fact."

 

related blog

DOJ takes issue with wiretapping story

Justice Department

spokesman responds

to CNET News.com report.

 

"You intercept first and you use whatever filtering, data mining to get at the information about the person you're trying to monitor," he added.

 

On Monday, a Justice Department representative would not immediately answer questions about this kind of surveillance technique. (Late Tuesday, the Justice Department responded with a statement taking issue with this description of the FBI's surveillance practices.)

 

"What they're doing is even worse than Carnivore," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who attended the Stanford event. "What they're doing is intercepting everyone and then choosing their targets."

 

When the FBI announced two years ago it had abandoned Carnivore, news reports said that the bureau would increasingly rely on Internet providers to conduct the surveillance and reimburse them for costs. While Carnivore was the subject of congressional scrutiny and outside audits, the FBI's current Internet eavesdropping techniques have received little attention.

 

Carnivore apparently did not perform full-pipe recording. A technical report (PDF: "Independent Technical Review of the Carnivore System") from December 2000 prepared for the Justice Department said that Carnivore "accumulates no data other than that which passes its filters" and that it saves packets "for later analysis only after they are positively linked by the filter settings to a target."

 

One reason why the full-pipe technique raises novel legal questions is that under federal law, the FBI must perform what's called "minimization."

 

Federal law says that agents must "minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception" and keep the supervising judge informed of what's happening.

 

Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations.

 

"The question that's interesting…is whether this is illegal, whether it's constitutional. Is Congress even aware they're doing this?"

–Paul Ohm, law professor

University of Colorado at Boulder

 

Prosecutors routinely hold presurveillance "minimization meetings" with investigators to discuss ground rules. Common investigatory rules permit agents to listen in on a phone call for two minutes at a time, with at least one minute elapsing between the spot-monitoring sessions.

 

That section of federal law mentions only real-time interception–and does not explicitly authorize the creation of a database with information on thousands of innocent targets.

 

But a nearby sentence adds: "In the event the intercepted communication is in a code or foreign language, and an expert in that foreign language or code is not reasonably available during the interception period, minimization may be accomplished as soon as practicable after such interception."

 

Downing, the assistant deputy chief at the Justice Department's computer crime section, pointed to that language on Friday. Because digital communications amount to a foreign language or code, he said, federal agents are legally permitted to record everything and sort through it later. (Downing stressed that he was not speaking on behalf of the Justice Department.)

 

"Take a look at the legislative history from the mid '90s," Downing said. "It's pretty clear from that that Congress very much intended it to apply to electronic types of wiretapping."

 

EFF's Bankston disagrees. He said that the FBI is "collecting and apparently storing indefinitely the communications of thousands–if not hundreds of thousands–of innocent Americans in violation of the Wiretap Act and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution."

 

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., said a reasonable approach would be to require that federal agents only receive information that's explicitly permitted by the court order. "The obligation should be on both the (Internet provider) and the government to make sure that only the information responsive to the warrant is disclosed to the government," he said.

 

Courts have been wrestling with minimization requirements for over a generation. In a 1978 Supreme Court decision, Scott v. United States, the justices upheld police wiretaps of people suspected of selling illegal drugs.

 

But in his majority opinion, Justice William Rehnquist said that broad monitoring to nab one suspect might go too far. "If the agents are permitted to tap a public telephone because one individual is thought to be placing bets over the phone, substantial doubts as to minimization may arise if the agents listen to every call which goes out over that phone regardless of who places the call," he wrote.

 

Another unanswered question is whether a database of recorded Internet communications can legally be mined for information about unrelated criminal offenses such as drug use, copyright infringement or tax crimes. One 1978 case, U.S. v. Pine, said that investigators could continue to listen in on a telephone line when other illegal activities–not specified in the original wiretap order–were being discussed. Those discussions could then be used against a defendant in a criminal prosecution.

 

Ohm, the former Justice Department attorney who presented a paper on the Fourth Amendment, said he has doubts about the constitutionality of full-pipe recording. "The question that's interesting, although I don't know whether it's so clear, is whether this is illegal, whether it's constitutional," he said. "Is Congress even aware they're doing this? I don't know the answers."

 

Pasted from <http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6154457.html?tag=nl.e550>

 

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