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The Internet Is Broken – Act Accordingly

Julian —  10. February 2014 — Leave a comment

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The Internet Is Broken – Act Accordingly (threatpost.com)

So when Raiu says he conducts his online activities under the assumption that his movements are being monitored by government hackers, it is not meant as a scare tactic. It is a simple statement of fact. “I operate under the principle that my computer is owned by at least three governments,” Raiu said during a presentation he gave to industry analysts at the company’s analyst summit here on Thursday.

and

But one of the things that the events of the last year have made clear is that the kind of paranoia and caution that Raiu and others who draw the attention of attackers employ as a matter of course should now be the default setting for the rest of us, as well. As researcher Claudio Guarnieri recently detailed, the Internet itself is compromised. Not this bit or that bit. The entire network. We now know that intelligence agencies have spent the last decade systematically penetrating virtually every portion of the Internet and are conducting surveillance and exploitation on a scale that a year ago would have seemed inconceivable to all but the most paranoid among us. Email? Broken. Mobile communications? Broken. Web traffic? Really broken. Crypto? So, so broken.

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In 1984, Vorsprung durch Technik
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LA Coffee

 Posted by Julian on 10. February 2014 In Pictures please, Travel
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4 Million To Get Off No Fly List

Julian —  7. February 2014 — 2 Comments

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FBI Checks Wrong Box, Places Student on No-Fly List (Wired)

The agent, Michael Kelly, based in San Jose, misunderstood the directions on the form and “erroneously nominated” Rahinah Ibrahim to the list in 2004, the judge wrote. “He checked the wrong boxes, filling out the form exactly the opposite way from the instructions on the form,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote today. The decision makes Ibrahim, 48, the first person to successfully challenge placement on a government watch list.

Much of the federal court trial, in which the woman sought only to clear her name, was conducted in secret after U.S. officials repeatedly invoked the state secrets privilege and sought to have the case dismissed. Attorneys working pro bono spent as much as $300,000 litigating the case and $3.8 million in attorney’s fees.

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In 1984, Travel
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UK Police Will have Full Access To Health Records Without Warrant

Julian —  7. February 2014 — Leave a comment

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Police will have ‘backdoor’ access to health records despite opt-out, says MP

The database that will store all of England’s health records has a series of “backdoors” that will allow police and government bodies to access people’s medical data.

David Davis MP, a former shadow home secretary, told the Guardian he has established that police will be able to access the health records of patients when investigating serious crimes even if they had opted out of the new database, which will hold the entire population’s medical data in a single repository for the first time from May.

In the past, Davis said, police would need to track down the GP who held a suspect’s records and go to court for a disclosure order. Now, they would be able to simply approach the new arms-length NHS information centre, which will hold the records. “The idea that police will be able to request information from a central database without a warrant totally undermines a long-held belief in the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship,” he said.

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In 1984
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US State Department Warns About Surveillance In Sochi

Julian —  7. February 2014 — 4 Comments

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Russia planning ‘near-total surveillance’ of visitors, athletes at Sochi Winter Olympics (The Telegraph)

Security measures at the Sochi winter Olympics will include such extensive electronic eavesdropping and surveillance that the US State Department has advised Americans headed to Russia to leave smart phones and laptops at home, an investigation has revealed.

Hahaha, that is hilarious.

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In 1984
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Fuck The EU

Julian —  7. February 2014 — 1 Comment

State Dept Official Caught on Tape: ‘Fuck the EU’ (Daily Beast)

In the wake of revelations the NSA spied on foreign officials, the State Department’s top official for Europe has been caught on tape planning a deal to end the Ukraine crisis and she had a message for her European counterparts – “Fuck the EU.”

A YouTube video uploaded by an anonymous user has publicly revealed a private conversation between Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. In the tape, the two officials discuss a plan to broker a deal between the Ukrainian government led by Viktor Yanukovich and the Ukrainian opposition, which is led in part by former boxer Vitali Klitschko.

In Misc
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How To Download Your Facebook Look Back Video

Julian —  4. February 2014 — 6 Comments

lookback

Facebook celebrates it’s 10th anniversary right now and they created a new feature called “A Look Back” that gives you a nice video of your activity on facebook in those 10 years. If you really like the video you can download it as an mp4 file in 5 very easy steps:

  1. Open Chrome browser and go to https://www.facebook.com/lookback
  2. Click the menu icon in upper right hand corner and select Tools > Javascript Console.
  3. Paste this code into the JavaScript Console and press “Enter” 
    var xLBD = {};
xLBD.c = function (){
xLBD.f = unescape(document.querySelector("[flashvars]").getAttribute("flashvars")).substring(7);
xLBD.f = JSON.parse(xLBD.f.substring(0, xLBD.f.lastIndexOf("}") + 1)).video_data[0].hd_src;
xLBD.a = "<div style='position:absolute;top:100px;height:300px;left:15%;background:#fff;border:10px solid #000;font-size:5em;padding:100px;'>Click <a download='lookback.mp4' href='"+xLBD.f+"'>here<\/a> to download your lookBack video.</div>";
document.body.innerHTML += xLBD.a;
}
if(document.readyState == "complete")
xLBD.c();
else window.onload = xLBD.c;
  4. Click the “click here” button in the pop up and the video will be loaded without the other page content
  5. Right click into the video and click “Save as” to download the video

Have fun.

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In Vorsprung durch Technik
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Footage released of Guardian editors destroying Snowden hard drives

Julian —  2. February 2014 — 2 Comments



Footage released of Guardian editors destroying Snowden hard drives

(…) Heywood, sent personally by David Cameron, told the editor to stop publishing articles based on leaked material from American’s National Security Agency and GCHQ. At one point Heywood said: “We can do this nicely or we can go to law”. He added: “A lot of people in government think you should be closed down.” (…)

In 1984
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“You only have to do a very few things right in your life, so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett

 Posted by Julian  on1. February 2014 In Smarty-Pants
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HSBC UK Imposes Restrictions On Large Cash Withdrawals

Julian —  30. January 2014 — 2 Comments

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HSBC imposes restrictions on large cash withdrawals (BBC):

(…) Stephen Cotton went to his local HSBC branch this month to withdraw £7,000 from his instant access savings account to pay back a loan from his mother. A year before, he had withdrawn a larger sum in cash from HSBC without a problem.

But this time it was different, as he told Money Box: “When we presented them with the withdrawal slip, they declined to give us the money because we could not provide them with a satisfactory explanation for what the money was for. They wanted a letter from the person involved.” (…)

Interesting, that you need a letter of a 3rd person, when you want to withdraw your own money from your own account. Sounds very logical to me.

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In 1984, Money Makes The World Go Round
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