FBI Appears To Have Collected Tormail's Entire Email Database... And It's Using It

from the collect-it-all dept

We've mentioned in the past that, for all the focus on the NSA lately, the FBI may be equally, if not more, worrisome for its willingness to collect tons of data on everyone and use it. Back in August, it became pretty clear that the FBI had compromised the Tor Browser Bundle, and had effectively taken over Freedom Hosting -- a popular hosting provider for dark web tor sites -- in order to push out malware that identified Tor users. A month later, it was confirmed that it was the FBI behind the effort, which led to the closing of Freedom Hosting.

Now there are new reports, suggesting that along with Freedom Hosting, the FBI was able to get the full database of emails on TorMail, a popular tor-based email service that used Freedom Hosting and was shut down at the same time Freedom Hosting went down. The reports point to a new lawsuit, in which the FBI was able to get a search warrant to search TorMail using its own copy of the database -- which it clearly had obtained at an earlier date. This basically means that the FBI has a pretty easy time searching all those emails if it needs to:

The tactic suggests the FBI is adapting to the age of big-data with an NSA-style collect-everything approach, gathering information into a virtual lock box, and leaving it there until it can obtain specific authority to tap it later. There’s no indication that the FBI searched the trove for incriminating evidence before getting a warrant. But now that it has a copy of TorMail’s servers, the bureau can execute endless search warrants on a mail service that once boasted of being immune to spying.

This again highlights one of the problems of the "collect it all" approach. Rather than merely targeting a specific individual or group, the FBI now has all of those emails sitting in a database. Even if it's getting a warrant to search, it's now searching its own database, rather than having to go out to get the information from others who might challenge the requests.

Filed Under: email, fbi, nsa, searches, surveillance, tor, tormail, warrants

Revenge Porn 'King' Hunter Moore Indicted & Arrested; May Actually Be A Legitimate Use Of CFAA

from the well-wouldn't-that-be-something dept

We've written about the issue of revenge porn sites and the so-called "king" of revenge porn, Hunter Moore, quite a few times. The issue is a tricky one because the whole concept of revenge porn -- people posting nude photos of others, complete with contact info, and frequently offering to take down the photos for money -- is unquestionably horrific. But... horrific issues can make for bad and overly broad laws. In fact, we've been quite concerned with attempts by some to craft laws against revenge porn that would upend basic established law concerning free speech and important internet safe harbors for service providers. Similarly, when revenge porn operators, like Kevin Bollaert, have been arrested, the charges against them have been problematic. Bad cases make for bad law, and since these sites are so morally repugnant, it's easy to understand why some would stretch the law to try to go after those responsible. But the end consequences of stretching the law could be disastrous for many.

So, with the news that Hunter Moore was indicted with a co-conspirator under the CFAA today, we feared the worst. After all, the CFAA is already a terribly drafted law, regularly twisted by the DOJ to go after people for ordinary computing activities. However, in looking over the details of the indictment, we can at least breathe an initial sigh of relief (well, and disgust at the two individuals), as it details what appears to be Moore's "co-conspirator" Charles Evens (also known as Gary) hacking into emails accounts to get access to nude photos, and then giving them to Moore. Moore gives Evens a bunch of money for this, at times calling him an employee, and urging him to break into more email accounts and to obtain more nude photos.

If proven true (and, admittedly, we're only seeing the DOJ's account here), this is the kind of thing that the CFAA was supposed to be used for. Any case involving the CFAA is always worrisome, given how widely the DOJ has abused it. And cases involving not just any "revenge porn" site, but the most famous one, IsAnyoneUp, and its founder Hunter Moore, are bound to be a risky proposition, since so much will focus on the emotional response to what an out-and-out jackass Moore is. But at first glance, this lawsuit looks like a much more legitimate application of the law. At the very least, hopefully, this suggests that existing laws can often be used legitimately against bad actors, without having to upend the basic legal framework of the internet.

Filed Under: cfaa, charles evens, email, hunter moore, revenge porn

Chicago Sandwich Shop Emails Employees On Dec. 23rd To Say Merry Christmas And You're All Fired

from the open-faced-club-scroogewich dept

Let me let you in on a little secret: I don't really like Christmas. Through some combination of those horrible lights, that torture referred to as Christmas music, my disliking of receiving gifts and the proximity to the far superior holiday known as Thanksgiving, December 25th just never gets my trousers off, so to speak. It's led to some of my friends joking that I'm a modern-day Scrooge, which my bank account confirms I am, in fact, not. Besides, it turns out the Chicago area has a much better approximation for Scrooge than I in whoever owns Snarf's Sandwiches on the near North Side.

See, Snarf's thought it would be fun to wait until a couple of days before Christmas to let their employees at their sandwich shop know that, suprise, you're fired. Oh, and because assbaggery prefers its interactions impersonal, they informed their staff of this via a warm and fuzzy email.

1. Due to increased competition and losses, ownership has decided to consider remodeling and reconcepting the store at 600 West Chicago Ave.
2. The store is closing, effective tomorrow, December 23, 2013 for an unknown period of time for this remodeling and reconcepting.
3. All staff is terminated, effective Monday, December 23, 2013.
4. All staff may apply for unemployment, if eligible.
5. Return any keys and Company property to Will Ravert at 600 West Chicago Avenue on Monday, December 23, 2014 during normal business hours.
6. Payroll will be processed as usual this week and paid on Friday, December 27, 2013.
7. Keep an eye out for the grand opening of the new store.
8. Ownership appreciates your service and wish you well in your new endeavors.

Doug Besant Director of Operations

Bullet point number seven is by far my favorite. Nothing makes a Christmas firing more satisfying than telling the folks fired they should totally come check out the new sandwich shop staffed with all the folks that took their jobs once it reopens. Now, it's interesting that the firing comes just a few days after the staff joined other fast food workers in striking for higher wages, but Snarf's spokeswoman Jill Preston says that's just a happy coincidence.

“During the Christmas holiday we’re pretty slow,” she says. “The restaurant’s usually three quarters closed. This does happen to coincide, but this is something we’ve had planned for awhile.”

So Snarf's has been planning this for some time, huh? In that case, I guess it was just sadism and a hatred for the working stiff that led to management emailing everyone with one day's notice of their termination? At Christmas? Classy. And breaking up with your employees via email? Well that's just the dingle berry on top of the poop sundae for your workers.

“Three days before Christmas and not even a call,” [Employee] Rojas says. “It’s not fair that management and the corporation is treating [employees] this way.”

It looks like Scrooge is alive and well and running a small sandwich shop in Chicago. And somewhere, Tiny Tim just kicked the bucket out of sheer dispair. Happy holidays.

Filed Under: chicago, email, fired

UK Secure Email Provider Shut Down His Service In January To Prevent GCHQ From Obtaining Encryption Keys

from the the-fallout-before-the-fallout dept

Shutting down secure email services because of surveillance agency interference apparently isn't just a local phenomenon. Lavabit, Snowden's email provider, shut down earlier this year to prevent being forced by the NSA to sabotage its own encryption. Silent Circle, another secure communications service, shut down its email product only hours later (but not its main messaging product). Silent Circle hadn't yet been pressured by the government, but obviously felt it was only a matter of time.

International Business Times is reporting a similar incident occurred in the UK earlier this year.

PrivateSky was shut down at the beginning of the year after introducing a web-based version in beta and for Outlook and had "tens of thousands of heavily active users".

Brian Spector, CEO of CertiVox, told IT Security Guru: "Towards the end of 2012, we heard from the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC), a division of GCHQ and a liaison with the Home Office, [that] they wanted the keys to decrypt the customer data. We did it before Lavabit and Silent Circle and it was before Snowden happened.

Even before the leaks made the Five Eyes' covert surveillance programs public, PrivateSky got an inside peek at the intelligence community's thirst for data. Unfortunately for Spector and his company, complying with GCHQ's request would mean destroying the security it promised to its customers.

[W]e had the choice to make - either architect the world's most secure encryption system on the planet, so secure that CertiVox cannot see your data, or spend £500,000 building a backdoor into the system to mainline data to GCHQ so they can mainline it over to the NSA.

"It would be anti-ethical to the values and message we are selling our customers in the first place."

I suppose GCHQ is satisfied either way. While having the encryption key would have been nice, it's just as simple to gather up communications and metadata from less secure services -- services some of PrivateSky's customers would have resorted to instead. National intelligence agencies seem all too willing to deploy scorched earth policies that destroy companies that don't immediately cave in to their demands. And why not? It does no harm to the government to force secure services out of business. The users of these services have to go somewhere and many of the available options have been compromised already.

Spector hasn't completely given up on the thought of offering a secure email service. He says PrivateSky is still up and running but is currently only used internally by CertiVox. But he does have a plan for another secure email offering based on the internal PrivateSky service.

He said that from the technology it has implemented a split of the root key in the M-Pin technology so it has one half and the user has the other.

"So as far as I know we are the first to do that so if the NSA or GCHQ says 'hand it over' we can comply as they cannot do anything with it until they have the other half, where the customer has control of it."

This could throw up some obstacles for intelligence agencies, the sort of thing they do everything in their power to avoid. The path of least resistance is also the one most frequently traveled. These agencies hate being told "no" almost as much as they hate being inconvenienced. PrivateSky's split key will do both. It should be interesting to see GCHQ's response if Spector takes the service live again.

Filed Under: email, encryption, gchq, secure email, shutting down, surveillance
Companies: certivox, lavabit, silent circle

Tell The Government That It Needs To Get A Warrant If It Wants To Read Your Email

from the they're-not-getting-the-message dept

While there's been so much attention lately on the NSA's surveillance tactics and its legality, for years there's been a separate issue that we've been covering: the outdated ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) rules (written in the '80s) that cover law enforcement's ability to get access to your data, such as emails. The laws make almost no sense today, as they were written in a time when the internet was much more limited. The idea of everyone storing pretty much all of their information and communications online wasn't even a concept at the time -- and that creates bizarre and nonsensical rules, like arguing that emails that have been on a server for more than 180 days are considered "abandoned" and no warrant is needed to view them.

There's a simple way to fix all this: reform ECPA to protect private data and say that law enforcement needs to get a warrant to view that information. This is not a difficult requirement, and yet law enforcement has been fighting hard against it for quite some time. Back in September, we noted that if Congress really wants to protect online privacy, beyond just the NSA stuff a good first start would be comprehensive ECPA reform.

To that end, someone recently created a "We The People" petition on the White House website asking for ECPA reform, with a key message: the government should get a warrant.

Americans are deeply concerned about NSA surveillance.

But the NSA’s not the only problem. An outdated law says the IRS and hundreds of other agencies can read our communications without a warrant.

That law, known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), was written over 25 years ago, before the services we use today even existed.

Right now, several bills in Congress would fix this by updating ECPA to require a warrant, but regulatory bodies are blocking reform in order to gain new powers of warrantless access.

We call on the Obama Administration to support ECPA reform and to reject any special rules that would force online service providers to disclose our email without a warrant.

While many are (perhaps reasonably) skeptical about the "We the People" petitions, they have been shown to be effective tools in getting the White House to take a position on important issues. And, while the DOJ is against this kind of ECPA reform, that's not to say that others in the White House couldn't be convinced to go the other way if they really believe there are enough people in support of such a program. So, check out the petition and let the White House know that it should fix the law so that if law enforcement wants your data, it needs to get a warrant.

Filed Under: ecpa, ecpa reform, email, petitions, warrants, we the people, white house

Declassified Opinion On Bulk Email Collection Details More Abuse By The NSA

from the and-yet-the-program-received-a-green-light dept

As more NSA-related documents are forced out into the public eye, the narrative contained within the court opinions is at odds with the NSA's continuous declarations that utmost care has been taken to prevent violating the privacy of Americans.

A previous release detailed how FISC Judge Reggie Walton nearly shuttered the Section 215 program in 2009 due to widespread abuse by NSA analysts. The evidence uncovered by internal audits and the agency's own admissions led Walton to issue this damning statement:

The minimization procedures… have been so frequently and systemically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall BR regime has never functioned effectively.

The NSA's bulk internet metadata program (Stellar Wind) was also suspended for several months due to numerous violations. Judge John Bates, taking over for Kollar-Kotelly (who issued the opinion granting the NSA permission to collect internet metadata on Americans by using a very generous reading of the pen register statute), makes it clear he's wholly unimpressed with the agency's trustworthiness.

Although the specific terms of authorization under those orders varied over time, there were important constants. Notably, each order limited the authorized acquisition to [redacted] categories of metadata. As detailed herein, the government acknowledges that NSA exceeded the scope of authorized acquisition continuously during the more than [redacted] years of acquisition under these orders.

Although all dates are redacted, the opinion does cite Judge Walton's 2009 findings (in reference to the Section 215 program). The authorization of the email metadata collection seems to have been granted in 2005 (at least in terms of targeting Americans), suggesting that we're looking at close to another half-decade of abuse by the agency in this program -- abuse that saw this program temporarily suspended as well.

Despite these almost-concurrent (and lengthy) episodes of abuse, the government not only sought reinstatement of the program, but also an expansion.

The current application relies on this prior framework, but also seeks to expand authorization in ways that test the limits of what the applicable FISA provisions will bear. It also raises issues that are closely related to serious compliance problems that have characterized the government's implementation of prior FISC orders.

The court points out in a footnote that the oversight it's supposed to provide (and that its defenders constantly point to) is severely hampered by the government itself.

The government argued that "FISA prohibits the Court from engaging in any substantive review of this certification," and that "the Court's exclusive function" was "to verify that it contains the words required" by the statute.

The court wasn't impressed by this argument (but ultimately decided in favor of the government anyway) but it's telling that the government would choose to read the Act as supportive of thwarting oversight.

Even when the government itself is presenting its case, it still can't find a way to make the violations appear minimal.

As described by the government, the unauthorized collection resulted from failures to [redacted] in the manner required… By the government's account, the lack of required [redacted] did not result from technical difficulty or malfunction, but rather from a failure of "those NSA officials who understood in detail the requirements of the [redacted] Opinion… to communicate those requirements effectively…"

The government assessed the violations to have been caused by "poor management, lack of involvement by compliance officials, and lack of internal verification procedures -- not by bad faith."

The scenario painted by the government is one of minimal care being taken with the dragnet's data collection. It appears no one can be bothered to do the job right, even when entrusted with data of millions of Americans. This would be one thing if the agency was tiny and not tasked with national security. It's quite another when the agency declares that national security trumps privacy concerns and then half-asses its way through each workday. You don't need "bad faith" when you've got lousy management and zero interest in fixing the problem.

The court also notes that the surveillance programs (both the phone and internet metadata) were prone to overcollection. A few heavily-redacted paragraphs leaves just enough substance to indicate the size of the problem.

Notwithstanding this and many similar prior representations, there in fact had been systemic overcollection since [redacted]...

The government later advised that this continuous overcollection acquired metadata obtained at many other types of data" and that "[v]irtually every record" generated by this program included some data that had not been authorized for collection…

The government has provided no comprehensive explanation of how so substantial an overcollection occurred, only the conclusion [lengthy redaction]... The government has said nothing about how the systemic overcollection was permitted to continue [lengthy redaction].

However, given the duration of this problem, the oversight measures ostensibly taken since-to detect overcollection, and the extraordinary fact that NSA's end-to-end review overlooked unauthorized acquisitions that were documented in virtually every record of what was acquired, it must be added that those responsible for conducting oversight at NSA failed to do so effectively.

The conclusions are ugly but are ultimately of little consequence. The program was reinstated. There's a long discussion about the terminology being used in these court orders (along with some talk about whether a URL is "content" or "data," p. 32-33) and several fully-redacted pages presumably detailing the metadata the NSA is authorized to collect (p. 35-52). The government's discussion on what is or isn't content (according to the NSA dictionary) contains another long stretch of uninformative blackness that spans from page 57 to page 70.

When we finally arrive at the government's request to expand the authorization of its highly-modified "pen register," we get some indication of exactly how much more metadata the agency was looking to grab.

The current application, in comparison with prior dockets, seeks authority to acquire a much larger volume of metadata at a greatly expanded range of facilities," while also modifying -- and in some ways relaxing -- the rules governing the handling of metadata. In the foreseeable future, NSA does not expect to implement the full scope of the requested authorization because of processing limitations. [redacted] Response at 1. Even so, NSA projects the creation of [redacted] metadata records per day during the period of the requested order, compared with the norm under prior orders of approximately [redacted] records per day. Id. That is roughly an 11- to 24-fold increase in volume.

Despite the leap in volume and the stated misgivings about the NSA's ability to do its job properly, the court granted both the expansion and continuation of the program. The court asked for a few minimal concessions (limited to two "hops," RAS [reasonable articulable suspicion) searches only, an expiration date on stored data [180 days for Americans, one year for the rest of the world], additional reporting from the NSA), but other than that, allowed the bastardization of the pen register statute to sail through. About the only roadblock erected is the declaration that the previously unauthorized collections summarized early in the opinion were effectively off limits to NSA analysts, thanks to wording contained in the FISA Act itself.

We're still in the dark as to what specifically the NSA was authorized to collect under the heading of "metadata" in this program. The information we do have has come from Snowden's document leaks, not from the DNI's "magnanimous" compelled response to court orders. Considering so much of this info is already out in the open, you would think the ODNI would have applied the black pen a little less heavily.

What we have learned is that the FISA courts have been delivered report after report of abuse by the NSA and has, with rare exceptions, allowed the agency to continue its collections uninterrupted. The "rubber stamp" may be able to craft 100+ page opinions filled with sincere discussions of the program's merits and the NSA's seeming inability to not exceed its authority, but when it's all said and done, the court allows the collections to proceed.

Filed Under: abuse, colleen kollar-kotelly, email, john bates, metadata, nsa, section 215, stellar wind, surveillance

Declassified Opinion Shows The NSA Exploited Pen Register Statutes To Collect Internet Metadata On Millions Of Americans

from the the-box-has-no-edges... dept

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has just released a very large set of declassified documents, covering a variety of topics. (Just a friendly reminder: these documents are being released because of a court order, not because the ODNI loves transparency, no matter how it's phrased at I CON THE RECORD.) Of particular interest is one that appears to be the original court opinion that gave the NSA permission to collect bulk internet metadata on Americans, better known as the Stellar Wind program, which ran for a decade before being shut down in 2011.

Orin Kerr, writing for (watch your step) the Lawfare blog, breaks down the questionable arguments the government presented and the leaps the presiding judge (Colleen Kollar-Kotelly) made to grant this request.

To begin with, the government presents this collection as nothing more than a modern-day pen register. As Kerr explains, the privacy bar for pen registers is set incredibly low.

The federal pen register authorities use a mere certification standard. Under the national security version of the pen register statute, the FISC is required to approve an application for pen register surveillance whenever the Attorney General (or an attorney he designates) certifies under oath “that the information likely to be obtained” from the monitoring “is relevant to an ongoing investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities,” 50 U.S.C. 1842(c)(2). As long as the government has issued its certification, and the judge concludes that the government’s application falls within the statute, “the judge shall enter an ex parte order.” 50 U.S.C. 1842(d)(1). The government doesn’t have to say why it thinks the standard has been satisfied; it just certifies under oath that it does. And the judge has no authority to look behind the government’s assertion to see if its factual basis is strong, weak, or completely absurd. See generally In re Application of the United States, 846 F.Supp. 1555 (M.D. Fla. 1994). The judge’s only role is making sure the government checked the box and made the required certification under oath.

There's a reason why the bar is set so low. It's inherently limited.

The pen register authority permits monitoring of a suspect’s non-content metadata unprotected by the Fourth Amendment for a window of time, investigative steps outside the Fourth Amendment than are akin to tailing a suspect in public or obtaining a mail cover to monitor the outside of their mail.

So, all a judge is looking for is a box ticked by a US Attorney. If that's present, then the pen register collection can proceed. But this is a surveillance method that is targeted at one particular suspect. It's not used to collect data on multiple persons at one time. Certainly multiple pen registers can be obtained in order to collect multiple sets of metadata, but each request is singular. Or was, until the NSA decided to extrapolate the singular pen register into a bulk collections program.

[I]t wanted an order forcing a provider to record and disclose Internet metadata in real time on an ongoing basis for potentially tens of millions of customers, all with a single order obtained with no judicial review based on a mere certification by the Attorney General.

The government took this low bar and convinced a judge that there was technically no difference between collecting metadata on ONE person and collecting metadata on millions. It wasn't just the government doing the rhetorical legwork. Kerr points out that the presiding judge ignored several statutory clues within the pen register law that indicated it was never meant to be used for bulk, untargeted collections.

The statute authorizes the judge to issue an order requiring the installation of “a” pen register to monitor “the person who is the subject of the investigation.” 50 U.S.C. 1842(d)(1)-(2). This is written in the singular, suggesting that each pen register requires a subject.

Furthermore, she buys into the government's arguments that the ends justify the means.

She then concludes that the bulk collection is reasonable in a Fourth Amendment sense — not that the Fourth Amendment applies, as this is just metadata, but rather in the policy sense that the program represents a sensible balance between security and privacy along the lines of that required under Fourth Amendment reasonableness precedents. The application is thus granted because, all things considered, the program does seem to be a pretty good way to find terrorists. See pages 49-54.

This argument has been used more than once by the government to defend the NSA's collections. The government extrapolates from the fact that if something isn't a violation of civil liberties for one person (i.e., bulk records collections) than it's not a violation when the program collects records on millions. The courts have backed this up: rights do not spring into existence ex nihilo.

The government used this argument to address Basaaly Moalin's claims that records obtained under the Section 215 program violated his constitutional rights. In the most basic terms, it claimed that if an intelligence (or law enforcement) agency can surveil one person without violating their Fourth Amendment rights (using bulk records, etc.), it can do it to everyone. (Perversely, it then spins around and claims this is why no one has standing to sue the government over these untargeted collections.)

So, the expansion of the previously targeted pen register program into a bulk internet metadata collection relied on the same basic argument. Even if the statute is written in a way that specifies singular targeting, the government would argue that the statute is equally applicable to collecting data on millions of people -- all of it needing no more authority than a signature of a United States Attorney.

All things considered, it's rather surprising the Stellar Wind program was shut down. The NSA certainly has shown no desire to eliminate a program, even if it produces large amounts of nearly-useless data. More than likely, the program was just supplanted by a better dragnet. Right about the time Stellar Wind shut down, a rules change to the Section 702 collections program gave the NSA "permission" (via a new loophole) to target Americans directly.

Also of note: while there's no date on this document (redacted, of course), the internal citations [Lamie V. United States Trustee, 124 S. Ct. 1023, 1030 (2004), p. 7; Engine Mfrs. Ass'n v. South Coast Air Quality Mqmt. Dist., 124 S. Ct. 1756, 1761 (2004), p. 14] suggest this opinion was the end result of another post facto search for permission by the NSA. The program supposedly began in 2001, but the court doesn't actually address the collection until 2004, at the earliest. This may be the point that the NSA first sought to collect metadata on Americans, with all previous collections being foreign only — but without further documentation (and factoring in the agency's tendency to collect first, seek approval later), there's no way to tell if the NSA was collecting internet metadata without even the barest minimum of legal approval previous to this opinion.

Filed Under: colleen kollar-kotelly, email, fisa court, fisc, internet, metadata, pen register

FBI Uses Invitation To Investigate One Email As An Excuse To Dig Through Multiple Email Accounts

from the thanks-for-the-'help,'-G-men! dept

As we just recently covered, the FBI's enthusiasm for starting investigations far outweighs its interest in ensuring they are justifiable. A site owner who forwarded an email containing a threat to hack his site was misinterpreted by an FBI agent to be a threat against the agency, kicking off (at least) six years of monitoring. Even as evidence failed to pile up, the investigation went continued unabated, ultimately costing the site owners' a chunk of income as donors scattered when news of the investigation became public.

Here's yet another example of the FBI's mentality at work -- seizing on anything as an excuse to dig into personal information. This particular person was Jill Kelley who, because of the FBI's actions, became part of the national sideshow involving General Petraeus' affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. On the advice of military officials, Kelley reported the suspected cyberstalking of her and her husband to the FBI. Apparently, the FBI felt this gave it free rein to invade Kelley's privacy.

We authorized the FBI to look at one threatening email we received, and only that email, so that the FBI could identify the stalker. However, the FBI ignored our request and violated our trust by unlawfully searching our private emails and turning us into the targets of an intrusive investigation without any just cause—all the while without informing us that they had identified the email stalker as Paula Broadwell, who was having an affair with Mr. Petraeus.

It looks as if the FBI is way too willing to extend itself permissions that haven't been specifically granted. Maybe the investigating agents felt Kelley meant to give the agency carte blanche access to her and her husband's email accounts, but was unable to articulate her desire to have her privacy violated thanks to the stress she was under. Or something.

All of this and yet the FBI didn't feel compelled to apprise Kelley of the outcome of its intrusive investigation. (In the end, charges were dropped.) Rather, it opted to leak her information to the press and misconstrue the contents of certain emails it had obtained without permission, leaving she and her husband to deal with the resulting fallout (rumors of an affair, media campouts in Kelley's yard).

The resulting investigation by the military cleared her (and the general she was linked to by the FBI's perusal of her emails) of any impropriety but the damage was already done. The agency's decision to exceed its authorization has managed to turn another person into an advocate against its excesses.

It appears from the NSA's leaks that the government may be trying to collect everything about everyone and everywhere—including America's closest friends and allies—with or without the knowledge of the White House. Unaccountable individuals given free rein to invade people's privacy—and a government that maintains the tools that permit them to do so—are a prescription for a privacy disaster.

With all the current economic, political, social and diplomatic issues facing the country, it is understandable that many Americans seem relatively unconcerned about intrusions on individual privacy. They shouldn't be. The unauthorized search of my family's emails was triggered when we appealed to law enforcement for protection. But who knows what else might set off governmental invasion of privacy—politics or some other improper motivation might suffice. If this could happen to us, it could happen to you.

Not only does this sort of behavior chill speech and make a mockery of the Fourth Amendment, it also makes the country -- and its citizens -- less safe. If people have to think twice before asking law enforcement or investigative agencies to look into possible criminal activity out of fear of having their own personal information sifted through or subjected to months of intrusive surveillance, they may opt to ignore the problem or take matters into their own hands. Either outcome is undesirable.

The NSA has made many placating statements about how it's limited by its authorizations, rather than its capabilities. These have never been particularly reassuring, and are even less so now, as its investigative counterpart appears more than willing to twist requests for help into invitations to snoop.

Filed Under: david patreaus, doj, email, fbi, investigations, jill kelley, paula broadwell

Lavabit To Release Code As Open Source, As It Creates Dark Mail Alliance To Create Even More Secure Email

from the it's-needed dept

This whole morning, while all these stories of the NSA hacking directly into Google and Yahoo's network have been popping up, I've been at the Inbox Love conference, all about the future of email. The "keynote" that just concluded, was Ladar Levison from Lavabit (with an assist from Mike Janke from Silent Circle), talking about the just announced Dark Mail Alliance, between Lavabit and Silent Circle -- the other "security" focused communications company who shut down its email offering after Lavabit was forced to shut down. Levison joked that they went with "Dark Mail" because "Black Mail" might have negative connotations. Perhaps just as interesting, Levison is going to be releasing the Lavabit source code (and doing a Kickstarter project to support this), with the hope that many others can set up their own secure email using Lavabit's code, combined with the new Dark Mail Alliance secure technology which will be available next year.

As noted, the Alliance is working on trying to create truly secure and surveillance-proof email. Of course, nothing is ever 100% surveillance proof -- and both members of the alliance have previously claimed that it was almost impossible to do surveillance-proof email. However, they're claiming they've had a "breakthrough" that will help.

The newly developed technology has been designed to look just like ordinary email, with an interface that includes all the usual folders—inbox, sent mail, and drafts. But where it differs is that it will automatically deploy peer-to-peer encryption, so that users of the Dark Mail technology will be able to communicate securely. The encryption, based on a Silent Circle instant messaging protocol called SCIMP, will apply to both content and metadata of the message and attachments. And the secret keys generated to encrypt the communications will be ephemeral, meaning they are deleted after each exchange of messages.

For the NSA and similar surveillance agencies across the world, it will sound like a nightmare. The technology will thwart attempts to sift emails directly from Internet cables as part of so-called “upstream” collection programs and limit the ability to collect messages directly from Internet companies through court orders. Covertly monitoring encrypted Dark Mail emails would likely have to be done by deploying Trojan spyware on a targeted user. If every email provider in the world adopted this technology for all their users, it would render dragnet interception of email messages and email metadata virtually impossible.

Importantly, they're not asking everyone to just trust them to be secure -- even though both companies have the right pedigree to deserve some level of trust. Instead, they're going to release the source code for public scrutiny and audits, and they're hoping that other email providers will join the alliance.

At the conference, Levison recounted much of what's happened over the last few months (with quite a bit of humor), joking about how he tried to be "nice" in giving the feds Lavabit's private keys printed out, by noting that he included line numbers to help (leaving unsaid that this would make OCR'ing the keys even more difficult). He also admitted that giving them the paper version was really just a way to buy time to shut down Lavabit.

Janke came up on stage to talk about the importance of changing the 40-year-old architecture of email, because it's just not designed for secure communications. The hope is that as many other email providers as possible will join the Alliance and that this new setup becomes the de facto standard for end-to-end secure email, which is where Levison's open sourcing of his code gets more interesting. In theory, if it all works out, it could be a lot easier for lots of companies to set up their own "dark mail" email providers.

Either way, I would imagine that this development can't make the NSA all that happy.

Filed Under: dark mail, dark mail alliance, email, ladar levison, mark janke, nsa, nsa surveillance, open source, security, surveillance
Companies: dark mail alliance, lavabit, silent circle