India to Monitor Google and Skype – WSJ.com.

As an extension of their policy of pushing for access to encrypted communications on RIM BlackBerry devices, they are now demanding access to data from both Google and Skype. India is demanding that Skype and Google install servers within India so the government can access the information on Indian users.

Obviously bad guys can trivially bypass this through the use of VPNs and by taking care to use servers located outside of India. The real impact will be to open all legitimate Internet users to universal surveillance.

RIM sidesteps BlackBerry ban in India | Signal Strength – CNET News.

According to the CNET article, the Indian government is going to put off shutting down BlackBerrys in their country while they study a RIM proposal to allow government monitoring of the communications.

Thanks to David Brin for linking to this article in reason.com about the debate over arresting people for recording active duty police officers. In general the specific law being broken is about making audio recordings without the concent of all parties.

As a privacy advocate, I find this situation puts me in an uncomfortable situation. On the one hand there is concern about the privacy interests of the police officers. On the other hand, this is one of the only ways of demonstrating police abuse or other bad actions. It also acts to balance the playing field where the police are already routinely recording most interactions through the use of dashboard cameras.

The origin of the term surveilance is the latin from sur- “over” + veiller “to watch,”. It implies that surveillance is about being watched by those in power (above).

Sousveillance is a term that has been coined recently to describe participant recording, or recording from “below”. That feels like a very different thing that should be fine as long as it is not hidden. Especially in circumstances where there is not a clear expectation of privacy.

I guess my solution to the conundrum would be to state that there should be no expectation of privacy on the part of authorities from recording when they are exercising those authorities. The citizens being interacted with would have a possible privacy expectation with respect to recording third parties however.

I am very interested in feedback and other thoughts on this one.

In a recent post on Privacy Digest, and an article in the NYTimes, there is a discussion of some major and well known vulnerabilities in the global public key infrastructure (PKI) and some examples of exploitations of that vulnerability.

The issue is with the proliferation of certificate authorities on the Internet, and the low level of oversight on their policies.

Using the web as an example, here is how it works. Embedded in every browser is a list of “certificate authorities”. These are companies that are deemed trustworthy to issue and sign website certificates. Website certificates are what allows websites to be authenticated by your browser and enables SSL based secure connections (e.g. to your bank).

These certificate authorities may also be able to delegate their certificate signing authorities to other secondary certificate authority organizations. The list of primary certificate authorities in your browser is long (I count 43 in my copy of Firefox), and who knows how many secondary certificate authorities may be out there. These certificate authorities exist all over the world, and any of them can issue a certificate that your browser will accept as valid.

A malevolent certificate authority could issue certificates to allow them to impersonate any secure website.

The articles talk specifically about a secondary certificate authority called Etisalat, located in the UAE. They created a certificate which allowed them to sign code which would be accepted as valid and authorized by BlackBerry cell phones. They then created and distributed software to about 100,000 users which enabled government surveillance of the devices. RIM, the maker of BlackBerry, was able to detect and patch this introduced back door.

Etisalat could create certificates to allow the UAE to intercept and read all secure web traffic traveling over networks within that country.

It is likely that there are many other certificate authorities that are similarly willing to compromise the security of the PKI for various ends. To date, no action has been taken against Etisalat. The EFF is calling for Verizon to revoke Etisalat’s ability to issue certificates (Verizon is the primary authority that delegated to Etisalat as the secondary).

There has been a lot of media coverage of the threats of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to shut down BlackBerry connectivity in their countries unless RIM (the maker of BlackBerry) introduces a back door so they can monitor communications.

I have been following this story closely, but wanted to wait until I had all the facts before blogging about it. At this point I don’t think I am going to get the whole story. The statements I am seeing are absolutely contradictory and the whole thing is getting really fishy.

UAE/SA say that they need to be able to access BlackBerry communications, but they can’t.

RIM says that their technology makes interception impossible because the communications are encrypted end to end between the BES server (located at the users place of business) and the handset. RIM claims not to have access to the decryption keys.

Third parties claim that RIM has arrangements with other countries (including the US and Russia) which allows such access.

RIM responds that this is false and that they don’t have this ability.

It looks like RIM and UAE/SA will come to an agreement while both continue to claim that they have not compromised their positions.

The moral of this story is that you should not trust security you can not fully analyze yourself. Anonymizer Universal uses strongly encrypted L2TP VPN technology to secure your information so even if your telecommunications provider is cooperating with surveillance they still can’t read the contents of your messages.

Unfortunately Anonymizer Universal does not support BlackBerry yet, but iPhone, Windows, and Mac users are protected.

In an interesting CNET article Google CEO Schmidt talks about how new technologies are going to impact society. One of his comments really struck me. Schmidt said that the only way to handle the new technologies is “much greater transparency and no anonymity.”

I have not seen the arguments and evidence behind such a bold claim. I would have argued exactly the opposite. We need MORE anonymity for users and more transparency and accountability from data collectors like Google.

In April, Apple Ditched Google And Skyhook In Favor Of Its Own Location Databases:

This article reports on Apple’s admission that they are building their own location database to replace Skyhook (which is a WiFi location database).

Many of us are now walking around with devices that monitor our environments and report back to the mother ship about them (even if done anonymously).

UK ISP TalkTalk Monitoring its Customers Online Activity Without Consent − ISPreview UK:

Here we go again with an ISP monitoring users without consent and collecting information about their activities.

In this case the ISP claims to be doing so as part of a project to improve some future security and parental control services. They say that they are not capturing any data about which users visit what sites, but obviously the capability is there. The ISP did not announce this to their customers and only admitted it after it had been discovered and exposed.

Whether the ISP later decided to start capturing that information, the government makes them start capturing it, or a hacker get in to trick the system in to capturing, there is a real likelihood that users of the TalkTalk broadband service in the UK will have their activities captured.

Once again, this shows that you can’t trust your Internet providers. Their business is not privacy and their interests do not run parallel to your privacy interests. Only tools which encrypt your Internet activity, like Anonymizer Universal, can protect you against this kind of surveillance by your ISP.

Privacy Digest reports on a new White House proposal to extend the powers of FBI “national security letters” to include gathering of “electronic communication transactional records”. While this may appear to be a small change, the potential impact is huge.

These records include all the header information from emails: To:, From:, Time, and often Subject:.

It may also include a list of the full URLs that you visit.

While it does not include the contents of the messages, this level of detail is often more than enough to discover social networks, relationships, intentions, plans, political affiliations, and more.

The real problem is that there are no checks and balances on national security letters. They are issued by FBI offices on their own authority without review by a judge. Historically, self restraint in the face of this kind of power has never worked well. While judges approve the vast majority of subpoenas and search warrants in a timely manor, they can reject egregious cases and the mere fact of their review causes law enforcement to be more restrained in their use.

From the Privacy Digest article:

The use of the national security letters to obtain personal data on Americans has prompted concern. The Justice Department issued 192,500 national security letters from 2003 to 2006, according to a 2008 inspector general report, which did not indicate how many were demands for Internet records. A 2007 IG report found numerous possible violations of FBI regulations, including the issuance of NSLs without having an approved investigation to justify the request. In two cases, the report found, agents used NSLs to request content information “not permitted by the [surveillance] statute.”

The European Parliament appears to be trying to create a regulation to require search engine companies to retain total information about their user’s searches for a period of years. If you are in the EU area, I strongly encourage you to reach out to fight this.

Declaration29: “A group of members of European Parliament is collecting signatures for a Written Declaration that reads: ‘The European Parliament [...] Asks the Council and the Commission to implement Directive 2006/24/EC and extend it to search engines in order to tackle online child pornography and sex offending rapidly and effectively’.

The Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC requires that details on every telephone call, text message, e-mail and Internet connection be recorded for months, for the entire population, in the absence of any suspicion. As to what is wrong with data retention please refer to DRletter. The Written Declaration even wants to extend data retention to search engines, meaning that your search terms could be tracked for months back.

The proposed declaration has been signed by 371 MEPs (list of names here) – and thus reached the 368 members needed to pass it. Many MEPs signed because of the title of the document (‘setting up a European early warning system (EWS) for paedophiles and sex offenders’), not knowing that they are endorsing blanket data retention as well. More than 30 MEPs decided to withdraw their signature, one even on the day of adoption.”