IGnatius T Foobar writes on Slashdot:

“Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that “may have been used in crimes.” It basically bypasses all of the Windows security (decrypting passwords, etc.) in order to eliminate all that pesky privacy when the police have physical access to your computer. Just one more reason not to run Windows on your computer.”

Think of how easy then it would be for Microsoft to provide backdoor access into its programs for the American government, definitely in the case if the US gets its hands on a Chinese laptop, but even more scary for the Chinese government, over the Internet with various programs that Microsoft provides to the American government.

Think of how easy it is already for other software makers to put in hidden software through rootkits as Sony previously did. This would make it quite easy for keystroke logging, password retrieval, and other tracking systems in order to get information on other governments.

Then again, how many people are gullible in just clicking on a friend’s IM link that opens up an .exe file?

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Glenn Greenwald has another excellent post over at his blog on Salon.com about how our government is engaging in illegal wiretapping, even pre-9/11:

There are several vital points raised by the new revelations in The New York Times that “the N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before” and includes both pre-9/11 efforts to tap without warrants into the nation’s domestic communications network as well as the collection of vast telephone records of American citizens in the name of the War on Drugs. The Executive Branch and the largest telecommunications companies work in virtually complete secrecy — with no oversight and no notion of legal limits — to spy on Americans, on our own soil, at will.

What makes this all the worse is that the Senate Democrats are actually helping this White House continue those policies by promoting a bill that will give amnesty to the telecom industry for breaking the law, without even knowing what they did:

Yet look at the array of interests unanimously and obediently aligned in favor of this profoundly corrupt amnesty proposal. The leaders of both parties — including, especially, those on the Senate Intelligence Committees whose core function is to “assure that [intelligence] activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States” — are working to conceal and reward this lawbreaking. To the extent they’re even aware of any of this, our media stars almost unanimously propagandize for protecting telecom lawbreaking. And most strikingly of all, the political movement that spent decades telling Americans that they stood for limited government and the rule of law and against federal incursions into our lives — the right-wing “conservative” movement — has boisterously cheered on every one of these lawless expansions of the surveillance state, all because, for now, they are at its helm.

All I have to say is that if this bill passes with less than 60 votes and with no filibuster, I’m permanently not voting for any Senate Democrat until I see a repudiation of what is done.

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If you’re a big privacy fan and think the idea of actually saving your web search history is an anathema to your life style, then you may want to consider Ask.com’s Eraser:

AskEraser is a new privacy feature on the Ask site that provides searchers with unprecedented control over their search activity data. You can turn on AskEraser at any time and start searching Ask.com with the confidence that your search activity data will be completely deleted from Ask.com servers within a number of hours.

Since initially announcing the project earlier this year, we’ve been working hard to make sure that AskEraser hits on all key pieces of user data across all our servers and most importantly, is drop-dead simple for our users. We think we’ve come up with a clean and simple approach that truly puts the power in the hands of all users.

It’s a great feature that goes well for what I’d like out of my search engines personally, but then again, when I can still use the best search engine out there (Google), even though it’s still awful, with such programs as Stealther and AdBlockPlus, all in an effort to keep my data private, why would I use an inferior search engine?

That’s why I essentially disagree with Mr. Google Search Sucks’s opinion:

If you want to keep your information safe then I strongly recommend you start using Ask. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are not currently allowing for this feature. Lets see how quickly they will follow suit.

No, I think I will just find an add-on from other users who know what search engine is best and just protect my data instead. Yes, it’s a little more time-consuming on having to actually get off my butt to find a tool that does this, but I think very long-term, and long-term wise, I’d rather find what I’m looking for while protecting my data.

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Ran across an interesting mixture of social bookmarking site that brings together some of the most worthwhile sites on the net (in my opinion) called Doggdot.us:

why doggdot.us digg, slashdot, and del.icio.us/popular - this is a constant browsing cycle for me. So why not combine them into a unified format without all the extra chrome? We can eliminate dupes and add some extra niceities

(more…)

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If you ever need a clearer understanding of FISA, warrentless wiretapping, and how poorly the mainstream media understands it, go read the professional blog of Gleen Greenwald on Salon.com:

The only reason why Congress began considering amendments to FISA in the first place was because a FISA court earlier this year ruled that a warrant was required for foreign-to-foreign calls incidentally routed through the U.S. via fiber optics. Everyone — from Russ Feingold to the ACLU — agreed that FISA never intended to require warrants for foreign-to-foreign calls that have nothing to do with U.S. citizens, and thus, none of the bills being considered — including the bill passed by the House — requires warrants for such foreign-to-foreign calls.

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Over at Americablog, John Aravois noted that Facebook is taking things from external sites and putting them into your Facebook notification network:

From what we’ve been able to glean, Facebook automatically opts its users in to this privacy-violating pyramid scheme and the only way you can get out of it is by visiting every single one of Facebook’s corporate partners (whoever they are, we only know about Fandango at this point), and telling each and every one (if you can figure out where to tell them this) to stop publishing your private information on Facebook.

At first I wanted to laugh as usually this entailed the user of Facebook specifically having to add applications, widgets, etc. to opt in on their own accord (Anybody who’s big on privacy and the Internet, those of us who love Slashdot for example usually have an idea of what we’re opting in on). (more…)

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