Microsoft

The Obama Administration is Trying to Cover up the VA Scandal by Issuing Subpoenas to Whistle-Blower Sites

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Screen Shot 2014-06-11 at 11.55.02 AMOne of the most significant realizations to emerge since the Edward Snowden revelations, is the understanding that we need more secure tools for would be whistle-blowers to more easily provide sensitive information in a secure and anonymous manner. As such, we have seen the deployment of encrypted drop boxes by several media outlets. I highlighted one of these a little over a year ago called Strongbox, which was a project announced by the New Yorker and was what Aaron Swartz was working on just before his death.

Recently, the Washington Post and the Guardian have released something similar called SecureDrop. The Washington Post described it as such:

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What’s in Your Xbox? A Lot of Surveillance Capabilities

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Attention all gamers.  There’s something you may want to be aware of before you plug in that new Xbox One.  Apparently, there are a lot of Big Brother features embedded into the system, so much so that that Germany’s privacy chief, Peter Schaar, is raising serious concerns. From Slate:

The complaint stems from the latest version of the motion-sensing Kinect technology. The Kinect device designed for the Xbox One can monitor users’ movements with a camera that sees in the dark, picks up voice commands with a microphone, and reads your heart rate using infrared cameras that track blood flow underneath the skin. Because the device is connected to the Internet, malicious hackers could potentially hijack the console and use it for spying.  In addition, Microsoft has filed a patent that suggests it is interested in using Kinect to count the number of people in a room in order to charge each person for providing pay-per-user content. The patent outlines how a camera could be used with face and gesture recognition as part of a Kinect-style system to enforce “age and identity restrictions” on certain kinds of content, effectively granting copyright holders virtual access to private dwellings, as Wired described it.

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An Open Letter to Skype

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I’ve known about security concerns related to Skype for quite some time, but I never really understood the details.  Thanks to this letter, signed by a large number of organizations and individuals, I now know quite a bit more.  For those as ignorant as me on this topic, here is some background:

In June 2008, Skype stated it could not eavesdrop on user conversations due to its peer-to-peer architecture and encryption techniques. Additionally, Skype claimed it was not required to comply with expanded CALEA rules on lawful interception as long as it was based in Europe. As a result of the service being acquired by Microsoft in 2011, it may now be required to comply with CALEA due to the company being headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Furthermore, as a US-based communication provider, Skype would therefore be required to comply with the secretive practice of National Security Letters.

Since Skype was acquired by Microsoft, both entities have refused to answer questions about exactly what kinds of user data can be intercepted, what user data is retained, or whether eavesdropping on Skype conversations may take place.  In 2012, the FBI stated that it had issued a warrant for chats going back to 2007, and that it had utilized those chats as evidence as the basis for criminal charges. This contradicts Skype’s own policy stating that chats are retained for a maximum of 30 days.

The letter begins as follows:

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