Twitter users seek privacy in WikiLeaks case

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (AFP) – Lawyers for three Twitter users asked a US judge to overturn a court order directing the microblogging site to disclose clients' data to US authorities for a probe into WikiLeaks.
The order calling on Twitter to release data about the accounts of Icelandic lawmaker Birgitta Jonsdottir, US computer researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch volunteer for WikiLeaks, was handed down in December by Judge Theresa Buchanan.

Buchanan, who also heard Tuesday's challenge, ordered Twitter in December to hand over to the US government information on the three subscribers and any other clients linked to WikiLeaks, the organization led by Julian Assange that last year released a slew of US diplomatic cables.

Among the information Twitter was ordered to give to the government were Internet Protocol addresses and the names and addresses of "tweet" recipients.

The December court order was sealed -- or secret -- until last week, when the details were made public to allow Jonsdottir, Appelbaum and Gonggrijp the right to reply.

In a tweet sent to AFP, Jonsdottir said she was determined to fight for her right and the right of "other social media users" to privacy.

"I don't have much choice, do I -- nor other social media users," she said when asked if she would hand over her Twitter account details to the US authorities.

"That's why this has to be fought and discussed."

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SCIE

The powerful law firm at the center of the WikiLeaks plot

One of the big outstanding questions in the story of the plot to undermine WikiLeaks and Salon's Glenn Greenwald, as well as a separate plan to discredit critics of the Chamber of Commerce, is the nature of the role played by the large international law firm Hunton & Williams.

Hunton, which brags it employs 1,000 lawyers in 18 offices on three continents, has worked for both the Chamber and Bank of America. The company is nervous because WikiLeaks is reportedly planning to release internal bank documents, and Bank of America apparently connected with Hunton to help respond to the crisis.

Hunton attorneys in turn had a series of e-mail communications -- since hacked by WikiLeaks supporters and published online -- with a trio of technology firms that proposed various schemes to attack WikiLeaks, Greenwald and critics of the Chamber. (One typical idea was to provide labor activists with false documents in order to discredit them.)

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House Extends Key Patriot Act Provisions

Here are the expiring provisions the House adopted:

• The “roving wiretap” provision allows the FBI to obtain wiretaps from a secret intelligence court, known as the FISA court (for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), without identifying the target or what method of communication is to be tapped.

• The “lone wolf” measure allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but the Obama administration said it wanted to retain the authority to do so.

• The “business records” provision allows FISA court warrants for any type of record, from banking to library to medical, without the government having to declare that the information sought is connected to a terrorism or espionage investigation.

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SCIE

Confidential Communique: Secure Client Information Exchange

Confidential Communique: Secure Client Information Exchange: "It is not Email.
S.C.I.E. is for secure high level executive communications, that must forever remain confidential.
The cells and the..."

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Anonymous Hacks Security Firm Investigating It; Releases E-mail

A U.S. security firm that claimed to have uncovered the real identity of Anonymous members responsible for a recent spate of web site attacks became a victim of Anonymous itself, when members of the online vigilante group breached the company’s network and stole more than 60,000 internal e-mails.

The group posted the e-mail spool Sunday on the Pirate Bay torrent site for anyone to download and sift through.

HBGary Federal, which does classified work for the U.S. federal government among other security work, claimed it had been working with the FBI to unmask hackers behind recent denial-of-service attacks against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard and Amazon. Members of Anonymous — a loosely structured group of internet troublemakers — had organized the mass attacks after the companies suspended accounts used by WikiLeaks to receive donations and host documents. More recently, members of the group directed denial-of-service attacks against government web sites in Tunisia and Egypt.

Last month, the FBI announced it had executed more than 40 search warrants against people suspected of participating in the WikiLeaks-related attacks. British police also arrested five men in relation to the attacks.

The hack against HBGary Federal occurred after the Financial Times published a story on Saturday quoting Aaron Barr, CEO of the company. Barr said his company’s researchers had uncovered clues to the real identities of top members of Anonymous by monitoring chat rooms and Facebook groups they frequented. Barr identified a co-founder of the group, who goes by the name Q, and said he planned to give some of the information to the FBI. He also planned to present his findings at a security conference in San Francisco next week.

On Sunday, Anonymous ridiculed the company’s research skills and the accuracy of its data in a press release posted at Daily Kos, mocking the company’s “infiltration of our entirely secret IRC server anonops.ru and in particular our ultra-classified channels #opegypt, #optunisia, and, of course, #reporters, which itself is the most secret of all.”

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Pakistan to cut BB services for foreign missions-sources

Pakistani authorities have asked mobile telephone operators to stop BlackBerry services to foreign missions in the country amid concern about the security of the communications, industry sources said on Monday.
Two industry officials confirmed that the regulator, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), had asked them to stop all Blackberry services to foreign missions.

"I can confirm that PTA has asked us to stop all BlackBerry services to foreign embassies and high commissions," a senior official at a mobile company, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
Another industry official at another mobile company also confirmed receiving the instructions.

"There are some other issues as well, mostly relating to BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server), which we are trying to resolve in consultation with the PTA," he said.

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SURPRISE! Leaked Emails Show Fox News' Exec's Attempt To Link Obama Campaign To Marxism

Media Matters has uncovered even more internal Fox emails revealing a purported network-wide campaign to link Barack Obama to "Marxists" and "socialism" during his 2008 presidential race.

October of 2008 was a busy month for Fox News exec Bill Sammon, now the managing editor of Fox's Washington, D.C., bureau.

Media Matters has cataloged the multiple appearances he made on Fox News trying to tie Obama to socialism -- but more troublesome perhaps are his Fox News internal emails that continue to be leaked (some former co-worker has it in for him!).

For example, on October 27, 2008, Sammon sent an email to his Fox News colleagues with the subject heading "fyi: Obama's references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists in his autobiography, 'Dreams from My Father.' Plus a couple of his many self-described 'racial obsessions'..."

The body of the email contained the references -- and, unfortunately for Sammon, there weren't too many. His email only mentioned five somewhat tenuous references from Obama's book, e.g.:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-obama-marxism-bias-2011-2#ixzz1CvKqfqVT

The Hushmail Myth

According to their website:

Hushmail is the most secure web-based free email service in the world. Since 1999, millions of people and thousands of businesses have trusted Hushmail to safeguard their secrets.

Hushmail looks and feels just like any other web-mail site, but adds strong encryption to your emails to protect your secrets from prying eyes.

It sounds Great; until you get to the Hushmail terms of service and the disclaimer.

"Hush does not guarantee that the uses of its Service, or the materials provided within the Service, are accurate, without error, or reliable"

https://www.hushmail.com/terms/business/

It sounds like they do not even guarantee their encryption.

Then there is the other problem:

Encrypted E-Mail Company Hushmail Spills to Feds

Hushmail, a longtime provider of encrypted web-based email, markets itself by saying that "not even a Hushmail employee with access to our servers can read your encrypted e-mail, since each message is uniquely encoded before it leaves your computer."

But it turns out that statement seems not to apply to individuals targeted by government agencies that are able to convince a Canadian court to serve a court order on the company
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/

As we state: Email is not for secure confidential business communications.