Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
"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
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.
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.
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.
Simple. When your device downloads any data over the network it will be infected with malware and all the encryption in the world is useless if your machine is compromised. Later, when you return home, your machine makes you into a Russian Spy.
I mean, that's how the NSA gets around Tor...
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.
. When your device downloads any data over the network it will be infected with malware and all the encryption in the world is useless
The NSA attack depended on people being dumb enough to run the javascript in the attack payload. If you're dumb enough to do that, you deserve what you get. Furthermore, it used an exploit targeting the Windows version of Firefox.
You seem somewhat confused. "Downloading data over the network" doesn't automatically infect your machine with malware unless your download app is buggy, or you go running scripts or executables that you downloaded. You have to be pretty damned ignorant to do that in a situation where you are trying to preserve your security and privacy from organizations like the FSB or NSA.
Sandbox your browser in a VM, don't use Windows, don't run scripts served to you by random pages you have no reason to trust, and that will improve your security by about 99.99%. Yes, I know, it isn't 100%, and therefore a bunch of slashdotters will say, "but it's useless, because it's not absolutely PERFECT", but in fact the NSAs attack you allude to and virtually every other malware distribution mechanism would not succeed.
If you go running malware payloads, you will get infected: news at 11.
NBC will use this to say why can't have it shown live even if it's not delaying the broadcast
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.
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
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.
BULLSHIT!
you could not be more wrong. little subtle things like getting on the no-fly list (and not being able to confirm it or get off of it) is one example. there are others which neither you nor I am aware of but I fully believe exist, given the current climate of the US gov.
you don't have to be kidnapped at 3am. there are other ways to ruin your life if you piss off someone high enough up in the food chain.
you can find it hard to get a job. you can be on a 'no hire list'. you can find your taxes are 'extra well reviewed' and are on the audit list more than you think would be reasonable. you can be wiretapped and monitored more closely. many things can happen that is way short of being 'taken in the night'.
wake up! we are slowly cooking the frog, here. you need to get out of the storyland fable that you were taught as a kid and realize what our country has slowly become.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."