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Sorm: Russia Intends To Monitor "All Communications" At Sochi Olympics
dryriver writes with this excerpt from The Guardian: "Athletes and spectators attending the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February will face some of the most invasive and systematic spying and surveillance in the history of the Games, documents shared with the Guardian show. Russia's powerful FSB security service plans to ensure that no communication by competitors or spectators goes unmonitored during the event, according to a dossier compiled by a team of Russian investigative journalists looking into preparations for the 2014 Games. The journalists ... found that major amendments have been made to telephone and Wi-Fi networks in the Black Sea resort to ensure extensive and all-permeating monitoring and filtering of all traffic, using Sorm, Russia's system for intercepting phone and internet communications. Ron Deibert, a professor at the University of Toronto and director of Citizen Lab, which co-operated with the Sochi research, describes the Sorm amendments as "Prism on steroids", referring to the programme used by the NSA in the US and revealed to the Guardian by the whistleblower Edward Snowden."
That's just what oppressive governments do. They have to monitor everything to stay in power.
Nothing can beat the NSA in the surveillance event competition!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Records break you!
This news doesn't come as a shock to me. Actually, I halfway respect the fact that they admit it flat out.
but in Soviet Russia, Olympics watch YOU!
It'll be hard for the US government to file a formal complaint without getting laughed at, as they've been doing the same (although not limited to Olympic Games) in their own country.
Just send lots of photos, png format of course, home attached to your emails. That way you can say anything you want by using undetectable steganography.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
"surveillance being subject to judicial and legislative oversight" I guess you missed all the leaks which revealed that oversight is utterly useless?
I suggest that some people need to grow up, and realise that the West is the absolute paragon of virtue compared to what Russia, China and Muslim countries are doing.
I suggest that some people need to wake up, and realise that while the West is currently the absolute paragon of virtue (compared to what Russia, China and Muslim countries are doing) we must not take that condition for granted.
FTFY.
I shudder to think what will happen to the world when the baton of world domination is handed to these despots.
Yep, me too. That's exactly the reason I don't want "the West" to become them.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Virtually everybody is too lazy to encrypt their communications.
Look at the USA/NSA debacle. The next day after the leaks, how many people started to encrypt their emails and texts? 99%? No. 50%? No. 1%? No. A tenth of a percent? Probably not even that many.
People don't care about guarding their privacy, so they won't do what you suggest. You can argue that this means they get what they deserve, and maybe that's true, but it's going to be true for virtually every single person there.
Face it, the IOC is perfectly OK with corruption, oppression, censorship, and spying, as long as committee members get their payoffs, a pleasant facade is maintained while cameras are rolling, and nobody but Jews get killed. Russia wishes they could have the all encompassing monitoring that Beijing had, but they just don't currently have the resources. Keeping the athletes in segregated housing simply makes it easier to ensure that every single area is bugged, and each and every person there that the participants can possibly come in contact with is engaged in intelligence collecting.
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
..but just couple of articles back there's an article of going for foreign soil and shooting guns. with russia you're pretty much free to do anything(few isolated incidents not counting) as long as you stay out of russia(or their oil drilling operations). I'm not aware of any cases of russians even asking extradition of hackers, dissidents or what have you. however usa does that regularly and not only asks other countries to do it - they and their ally have regularly gone abroad to outright kidnap (locally)illegally persons they for some reason or another want out of the picture. that's scary. I can stay out of russia easy and not sweat even if I fly over it.
I could even plan a hypothetical russian revolution plan without worrying about getting whacked! now if I did the same thing using some cloud service but only for USA instead of russia I would be risking a black ops visit or extradition to usa for threatening security in usa.
there's plenty of reasons to boycott sochi. but all that was lost already to olympic movement when china had their games. they only care about money and for most athletes making it to olympics is about money too - to keep a "pro" status they have to get there and pro status means having enough sponsorship(private or state) to keep competing on pro level. of course the right thing to do is to not watch the games.
a big thing about the leaks is that judical and legislative oversight.. is that it isn't. it's closed doors. there's TWO parallel processes - the old one that went through courts and ended up as evidence on regular cases and then there's the mystery NSA-secret court and secret oversight one - but why would there be a need for that ? and I don't know how really much more far reaching you can get than re-routing connections and inserting tagging via js holes to people who you don't know even where they're from. you really shouldn't use russia or china as the benchmarks for freedom! as soon as you do that you're thoroughly fucked!
And you forgot the biggest difference to russian spying vs. american spying if one is from neither of the countries! american spying is targeting among other people me, whilst russian spying is targeting (mainly) russians and foreigners _on_russian_soil_ - in their country, according to their laws. they don't publicly pretend that they don't need to follow our laws while doing operations in our country but the leaders of the american intelligence apparatus have made time and time again comments that they don't need to give jack shit about our laws.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...gnupg? ...tor? ...ssl+pfs? ...ssh? ...ipsec? ...openvpn? ...voip? .....<insert your favorite encryption/privacy tool here>?
Block everything? That would probably kick up more dust than the anti-gay legislation.
Love over Gold.
You risk extradition but at least you will be alive, unlike Litvinenko or Markov -- the Russians just don't bother with formal prosecution.
1) surveillance being subject to judicial and legislative oversight
You mean the secret surveillance conducted by a secret agency under secret orders with secret legal justification, "overseen" by a secret rubber stamp court with secret findings? Exactly how do you propose oversight works when there is no accountability to the electorate whatsoever?
2) not being anywhere near as far-reaching as SORM or the Chinese systems,
Got proof to back that up? I didn't think so.
3) anybody being hauled away in the dead of night for offending the sensibilities of anybody in power.
So you are claiming the US government has never engaged in extraordinary rendition and does not operate a prison camp without any due process?
I suggest that some people need to grow up, and realise that the West is the absolute paragon of virtue compared to what Russia, China and Muslim countries are doing.
Not it the last 10 years, particularly in the US. The US has engaged in kidnapping, torture, secret and illegal surveillance, political assassinations, gag orders without any warrant or due process, and started two unjustified wars which are still going on over a decade later, and you want to claim that we are a "paragon of virtue"? Maybe we are better but it certainly isn't by much these days. Hell we had a president who was awarded the Nobel peace prize and used the opportunity to argue why war is sometimes necessary. Talk about hypocritical.
I guess you missed all the leaks which revealed that oversight worked?
I'm amazed at how little snooping of American citizens were going on. There was a number in the press that about 50,000 emails of US citizens were mistakenly collected.
I have 50,000 unread emails in my inbox alone.
So, the NSA's surveillance program is robust enough that, out of 300 million people, they had an oversight margin-of-error of 1 person.
That's it.
This is how a proper government surveillance programs are SUPPOSED to work - filled with both technical and legal checks and balances.
And remember, government surveillance is a good thing. We need to make sure libertarians understand that. Government surveillance enables a stronger government, which is always a good, since a big government is better than a small government.
NOBODY wants a small government. A small government results in Somalia. Everybody wants a strong, socialist government, instead.
A strong, socialist government produces much better results, resulting in a stronger, richer population.
Just look at how Reaganomics destroyed America. It is these Republican principles that caused such economic disparity in America, because they weakened government.
We need to make sure we undo all the work that the Reagan Republicans did.
What "oversight" prevented snowden from reaching far beyond his granted permissions?
"LOVEINT" ...
Are you fucking serious? Protip: being dropped on your head shouldn't be habit forming. Get help.
You risk extradition but at least you will be alive
Unless you end up on the list of the Dronemaster General.
Two wrongs doesn't make a right. So in terms of growing up, the "they also did it" excuse is as mature as a six-year old who gets caught red-handed, and tries to justify his wrong-doing because the other kids also stole from the cookie-jar.
Regarding perspective, I think it would help if more people would read Bruce Schneier's "Beyond Fear". There he gives a very straight forward, for they layman, introduction to analysing risks and appropriate security measure response. In that light, it becomes clear that neither NSA's nor FSB's programs have anything to do with mitigating risks. It's not even about the pretence and security theatre any more (after all NSA's programs were mostly secret).
It's pure corruption based cocaine induced money-making and dick-swinging: "Look, our data center has a gazillion coca-bytes!"; "We'll monitor you so thoroughly, we'll know when your wife is PMS'ing"; "I want a Star Trek Command Center! Wabu-wabu!!!" See Keith Alexander's ego trip for the last one - talk about being out of touch and lacking perspective.
You have to work to get there, it isn't bestowed freely.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
What the US has done should be judged against rights and laws, not the practices of other countries who may or may not be worse violators in similar respects.
The courts have thrown up their hands and stated PUBLICLY that they can no longer reign this in. So much for judicial oversight. The NSA blatantly lied to Congress and has faced no consequences for it. So much for legislative oversight.
As for 2 or three, you maintain that it's fine to beat someone into a coma and as long as someone somewhere was killed outright the coma victim and family have no right to complain?
Sorry, I would prefer not to set the bar as low as Russia or China. Not the worst is not much of an aspiration.
3) anybody being hauled away in the dead of night for offending the sensibilities of anybody in power.
Sure about that?
Terrance Yeakey
There's more than that. Just building the infrastructure that can be abused later is not a light step to take.
Oh they will only use it for terrorism...until they take down Silk Road. And after that...?
With hundreds of agents having access and the ability to listen in on phone calls without warrants or detection (the warrant is apparently on the honor system) it will be abused to spy on political opponents to counteract and discredit, and there goes freedom.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Yes. But most people are too stupid. They only care about being entertained.
Panem et circensem.
As the Romans said.
Bread and games.
To keep the plebs happy and docile.
Wow. You miss a lot of things that are happening in the world. Russia is very active both overtly and covertly in many parts of the world. Just exactly who do you think is propping up Assad? Who has been messing around in Georgia, Chechnya, the international portion of the Arctic?
Maybe they don't have quite the reach that the US does. That's not be design - they basically can't afford all the stuff we can. If they could, they would.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
China and Russia both have a huge history of insane lack of regard for human rights. The Muslim states, with one or two exceptions, have been driven back into the dark ages by lack of education and fanatical, twisted versions of their religion. Russia remains so broken that crime seems to be the major industry with getting drunk as the national activity. The Muslim states are pretty much lost to civilization or even hope of civilization. China has put away much of their negative behavior and is advancing in many ways.
Ever consider that maybe Edward Snowden is a double agent, planted by the NSA to infiltrate the Russian security service and spill their most secret documents to the web? Me neither.
Your post reminds me of a comic strip of Bush and Cheney at Gitmo, with the punchline of "Certified not as bad as an actual Soviet GULAG".
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
NBC will use this to say why can't have it shown live even if it's not delaying the broadcast
we monitor you!
The notion of human rights seems quite foreign to Russia's leaders today. This follows the incredible state-sponsored persecution of LGBT people, which taps into (and caters to) the already fairly widespread homophobia in large parts of the population.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/opinion/russias-anti-gay-crackdown.html?_r=0
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
Is this some sort of 'Hey we can do this even better !' or what exactly could be the point of - besides fighting, err, terrorism of course - spying on everyone at the olympics ? Don't get me wrong, I still wish that there wouldn't this sort of spying on harmless people, but what exactly could be gained from it ?
Well, if history taught us anything, then that Rome didn't outlast that phase of its existence for more than a few hundred years before the barbarians steamrolled all over them.
And given the speed of development these days, I'd be surprised if this goes on another decade or two before the steamroller comes down on us.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just because the "western" lethal injection is less painful than the "muslim" stoning doesn't mean that I'd really like to get either.
Yes, there are places that are worse than what we have here. But when did "being better" become "being less awful"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In what way is this related in any way to corruption? The IOC did not go forward in time, read this news, and then go back and approve Russia. I have no doubt that payoffs happen, and as demonstrated by the China games' focus on minimizing pollution to be just under the obviousness threshold, the facade has to be maintained even when the problem is well known. But how is this one of those "face it" times that demonstrates whatever point you failed to make?
On the international stage, if we limit the selection committee to only those places where there is no corruption or oppression, there would be no Olympics - because every country is seen as corrupt in some fashion to at least a few other countries. So everyone is off the list.
Not sure what your point is re: keeping athletes in segregated housing. Almost like only athletes could be suspect, and anyone who wants to talk to them would go to athlete housing, and they can't leave at all, which is clearly not true.
If you take this at face value "will face some of the most invasive and systematic spying and surveillance in the history of the Games" as well as the "all communications" part of the article's headline, your comment about the Russian vs. Chinese resources falls apart.
No, the browser in the Tor Bundle used to have NoScript enabled by default. They sometime since then changed it to be disabled by default. Last I checked it's still disabled by default.
Don't be evil!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
In Russia, showing them how to get it done.
In Soviet Russia, State watches you!
Err... what changed?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
IOU one "insightful" mod.
#DeleteChrome
Sat phones
> I suggest that some people need to grow up, and realise that the West is the absolute paragon of virtue compared to what Russia, China and Muslim countries are doing.
> I shudder to think what will happen to the world when the baton of world domination is handed to these despots. I know the techno-libertarian crowd will be celebrating.
That Russia is, as you put it, "the Devil Incarnate" and America opposes Russia in certain areas does not make America "the absolute paragon of virtue compared" (and you might want to think what "absolute" and "compared" mean).
Instead, let's look at it this way: does the average Russian/American have any reason or want to harm the average American/Russian? No?
Maybe the Good/Evil split should be viewed along different lines: does the average American/Russian have their lives made any harder by the American/Russian government, to the benefit of that government? Really? Well, maybe the American/Russian people might be viewing the government the way you think one "country" views another.
The Right Honorable Judge Rubberstamp and Diane Fiendstein don't really count as "oversight".
Not nearly as VISIBLE as SORM or the Chinese systems -- but that's just a political thing. The Russians and Chinese want the plebes to know they're being watched.
How would I know?
Somethingawful event: See who can send the internet monitors screaming from the room the fastest.
Cryptographers event: See who can code the best covert channel that the monitors won't notice.
Piracy event: See who can distribute footage of the events without the Olympics Committee noticing.
Sports? We don't need no steenkin sports! (Except maybe for the piracy event.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
True enough and good points.
However I contend that politics is not, or perhaps should not be, about comparison shopping. One might propose politics as being a bit more than just being the pursuit of the possible but rather the betterment of the commonweal.
A few years back I had recourse to read both what the U.S. and the UN had to say of torture. They were pretty close, btw. Both had exceptions granted to law-enforcement being allowed to applying measures necessary to obtain compliance. This is the loophole. The main criterion, if memory serves, is that no lasting damage be done.
You're certainly welcome to look up the stuff, and I suggest anyone do so. It's informative.
So you are claiming the US government has never engaged in extraordinary rendition and does not operate a prison camp without any due process
Both of which require a much higher threshold than what is considered worthy of action in Russia or China. In China, it merely requires the uttering of an unharmonious joke against a public official. In Russia, it only requires that you publish something unsavory enough to offend the government.
In the US, you actually have to be a threat to human life - instead of a journalist, a politician, or an ordinary citizen that said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I think your answer is here:
Anwar al Awlaki's son hoped 'to attain martyrdom as my father attained it'
Anwar al Awlaki's son said he hoped "to attain martyrdom as my father attained it" just hours before he was killed in a US Predator airstrike in Yemen in mid-October, according to a journalist who sympathizes with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Abdul Rahman al Awlaki, Anwar's 16-year-old son and an American citizen, made the statement to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's emir of the city of Azzam in Shabwa province. Azzan is one of several Yemeni cities currently under AQAP control.
Abdul Rahman was killed in a Predator strike in Shabwa province on Oct. 14. The strike targeted Ibrahim al Bana, AQAP's media emir.
So, you are quite wrong in multiple aspects. If you think that a 16 year old with a bomb vest or AK is less dangerous than an 18 year old, you would be mistaken again.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/02/03/2244204/satellite-phone-encryption-cracked
I have to return some videotapes...
You just disappear.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/in-salt-lake-city-for-the-2002-olympics-the-nsa-may-have-read-your-texts/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130821/00421524264/nsa-fbi-spied-all-emails-salt-lake-city-before-after-olympics.shtml
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/08/nsa-olympics-spying-salt-lake-city/
"nobody agreed that we would trade off our fundamental civil rights for the government to come in and spy on us"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Re http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10266957/Saudis-offer-Russia-secret-oil-deal-if-it-drops-Syria.html
AL-CIAda: the freedom fighters that just keep on helping, generation after generation.
“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,”
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There is a difference between US and Russia surveillance: contrarily to the former, the later never claimed to be the land of freedom. Russians are slowly leaning to democracy, but it is not surprising the journey is long, if you considered they only had the Czar and the communist regime before.
... when some foreign visitor sends a strongly encrypted message they the Russian authorities find difficult or impossible to decrypt. If this were a typical Russian citizen, this would probably merit a visit from some representative of the authorities who will persuade you that the encryption is a bad idea based on bad consequences if you don't. In the case of the international attendees, one assumes the Russians will not able to do this quite so casually. But they will probably be pretty obsessed with those visitors...
Both of which require a much higher threshold than what is considered worthy of action in Russia or China.
Way to set the bar low. So because they are engaged in completely reprehensible conduct that means it is somehow ok for the US to engage is conduct that is just mostly reprehensible? Sorry but I expect MUCH more from our leaders than to be just a little bit better than a repressive dictatorship.
In the US, you actually have to be a threat to human life - instead of a journalist, a politician, or an ordinary citizen that said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
No you do not have to be an actual threat to anyone. You just have to be perceived as a threat by one of the various homeland security agencies regardless of the validity of that perception. There are countless examples of people being jailed for jokes, harmless tweets, and the like. Journalists have been jailed for reporting on government malfeasance. Hell, in the 1940s we wrongly imprisoned thousands of completely innocent US citizens of japanese descent because of the mere fact that they were of Japanese descent. Furthermore tell that to the hundreds of innocent people who ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Over 600 people have been released from there without any charge and never should have been there in the first place. Most who remain are there admittedly because there is insufficient admissible evidence to convict them of any crime. That is NOT how a country that follows rule of law should behave.
Completely agree with the parent. Most people here haven't been keeping track of the bigger picture.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10266957/Saudis-offer-Russia-secret-oil-deal-if-it-drops-Syria.html
The Saudis tried to blackmail Putin into dropping their support of Syria, first offering them a secret oil deal, and then threatening to cause a terrorist attack during the Olympic games in Russia. Putin refused.
The Roman empire lasted close to a thousand years not a few hundred. And after Rome fell the world rapidly descended into that period lovingly referred to as the "Dark Ages".
The dark ages are due to the Catholic church. There was nothing "dark" in the East of Europe after the fall of Rome. We did great in fact...
Why did we need someone to throw himself over the coals and run away to seek asylum and cause international incidents to find out about this stuff happening in the US, but in Russia, it gets announced through media outlets and Olympic fever.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Religion was only a part of the reason for decline. Not every single province or country experienced the same amount or type of decline but the majority did. The Roman empire administered a huge amount of territory that provided a measure of stability across the board. At it's high point one quarter of the world population fell under Roman control. A lot of people relied on that administrative and trading framework to prosper. During it's conquests the Romans helped spread a common language along with providing a measure of modern civilization for that time period. Corruption and civil wars also contributed to Rome's fall. After Rome fell feudalism, religion, and just plain survival for some became the driving factors of the day. Towards the very end the "Black Death" was the final straw because it hit populations already weakened by Rome's fall.
In total, yes. What I talked about was the end of the Empire, the time past 100BC, when "panem et circenses" became the corner stone of the domestic policy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Bread and Circuses" can often bring stability.
It's only a stopgag, not a solution. Sadly, it's often mistaken for one.
Bread and games is sedating the population, it makes them happy and distracts them from the underlying problem, but the problem itself remains. Unless you're willing to solve that, don't expect "bread and games" to solve it for you.
There are two ways this can bite you in the rear. First, the obvious one, that the population will remember, with a vengeance, their problems when you should for some reason be unable to provide more bread and games. And now YOU are the bad guy. Because you promised them food and entertainment and you failed to deliver, so they have to face ugly reality again. And no matter who is actually responsible for their problems (likely, they themselves) since YOU failed and they can only see it because of your failure, YOU are responsible for it in their eyes.
To make matters worse, and that's what actually fell Empires in the past, a complacent population is also an idle one. An attitude of "we're number 1" is almost instantly followed by "then why try harder?" Once you're at the point where you sedate your population with games and food, and keep them occupied by getting them worked up over non-issues so they can't concentrate on matters of importance (religion and religious topics, from abortion to homosexuality, work like a charm there), it doesn't take long until another civilization catches up, overtakes and takes over.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The people fumbling for power are different factions of the same powerful class.
USians still believe those people represent them...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
President-Prime Minister-President
Opposition: in jail or in exile, some of them murdered in suspicious circumstances.
But whatever you say buddy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Snowden handed the Ruskies the NSA docs showing how to monitor all electronics. Should be simple to implement.