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NATO-affiliated group releases new guide for international cyber laws – The Hill

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellenceon Wednesday released its first major revision to its influential Tallinn Manual, the closest thing there is to a rulebook for nation-led cyber operations.

Like the original 2013 manual, the new version is the result of a study by NATO to gauge consensus opinions from international law experts on what types of cyber statecraft are acceptable.

Let me assure you, the manual will sit on the desk of every legal advisor in every ministry of defense and every ministry of foreign affairs in the entire world, Director and General Editor Michael Schmitt saidat a press briefing before its launch at the Atlantic Council headquarters in Washington.

Both manuals pull together law originally developed to cover fields ranging from armed conflicts to outer space to extrapolate the likely legal consequences for cyber operations. But while the first draft covered war-like cyber attacks between nations, the new draft adds legal analysis of peacetime operations.

The book compiles the expertise of dozens of international law experts who huddled to determine which issues had a clear legal consensus. Dozens more, including current government representatives, provided non-voting advice.

The Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence was founded by NATO nations to support the missions of the group and its member nations. It is not, however, a component of NATO.

The new book comes after a variety of new nation-led attacks begin to reshape how politicians view the prospect of cyber warfare.

Many U.S. lawmakers have argued that the breach at the Office of Personnel Management should be considered something beyond run-of-the-mill espionage. Espionage is considered legal by international law, but the immense scope of the breach has led some to wonder if the breach was a special circumstance beyond what was acceptable.

That is not correct as a matter of law, said Schmitt, who had personal information stolen in the breach.

Espionage is espionage is espionage. It doesnt matter if you steal one document or five million files. Espionage is not unlawful under international law.

But the experts could not reach a consensus on the Democratic National Committee breach that impacted last year's presidential race.

Espionage is often prosecuted as a violation of national laws. The authors agreed that if Russia in fact stole and distributed the files, it was definitely in violation of U.S. laws, and that if Russia coerced voters, it would be in violation of the international laws. But they differed on which jurisdiction the attacks would fall under.

The new manual, caution Vihul and Schmitt, is not legal doctrine, but instead an analysis of the legal standing of various activities under current laws. But they say it will work as a tool to guide nations on how solid their footing might be in the international community to make different arguments.

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Correction 2/9, 1:51 pm: The original version of the story did not properly differentiate NATO from the NATO Centre of Excellence.

NATO-affiliated group releases new guide for international cyber laws - The Hill

Russian foreign ministry says ready to cooperate with NATO in Afghanistan: TASS – Reuters

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

MOSCOW Moscow is ready to renew cooperation with the United States and other NATO powers to reach mutual goals in Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, a Russian Foreign Ministry official, said in an interview with the state TASS agency published on Thursday.

Kabulov said Russia was concerned about insurgents' activity in Afghanistan and it was not the best time for Washington to withdraw troops from there.

"The situation with security in this country is deteriorating, while Afghan national security forces are unable to stand against armed opposition due to a number of reasons," Kabulov said.

"In such circumstances a hasty departure of foreign military servicemen could have unpredictable consequences and destroy those minimal positive results that were achieved in recent years."

(Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

HOUSTON/CARACAS Venezuela's state-run oil company, PDVSA, has fallen months behind on shipments of crude and fuel under oil-for-loan deals with China and Russia, according to internal company documents reviewed by Reuters.

VILNIUS The Baltic states will press the United States and NATO to take additional security measures in the region ahead of a large Russian military exercise planned for September, Lithuania's president said on Thursday.

CHARTRES, France Chartres has in past decades been a bellwether for France's presidential elections, but ahead of this spring's poll the signal from this white-collar city appears to be blurred by a scandal that has fed into a wave of anti-establishment feeling.

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Russian foreign ministry says ready to cooperate with NATO in Afghanistan: TASS - Reuters

Ex-NSA Contractor Accused Of Taking Classified Information Is Indicted – NPR

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

A federal grand jury has indicted Harold Thomas Martin III, the former NSA private contractor who prosecutors say spent decades stealing national security secrets, on charges that could see him serve a lengthy prison term if he's convicted.

When federal prosecutors charged Martin, a 52-year-old U.S. Navy reservist, with using his Top Secret security clearance to amass a huge cache of paper and electronic documents, the Justice Department called the case "breathtaking in its longevity and scale."

Martin has been in custody since a search of his home in suburban Maryland turned up "six bankers boxes' worth of paper documents and 50,000 gigabytes of electronic materials," as NPR's Carrie Johnson reported.

As Carrie notes, the charges of "willful retention of national defense information" that Martin now faces come from a section of the Espionage Act.

Martin worked at the Pentagon and the NSA for the contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. The government says that from December 1993 through Aug. 27, 2016 the date of his arrest Martin worked for at least seven different private companies and was assigned as a contractor to work at "a number of government agencies."

If he's convicted, Martin could face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each of the 20 counts against him, according to the the U.S. Attorney's Office in Maryland. The defendant is slated to appear in federal court in Baltimore at 11 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

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Ex-NSA Contractor Accused Of Taking Classified Information Is Indicted - NPR

Confirmed: The NSA Got Hacked – The Atlantic

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

After a never-before-seen group announced it was in possession of a trove of malware developed by the elite hacking arm of the National Security Agency early this week, professional security researchers began working to try and determine whether the code the group released was truly developed by the NSA.

Working off of hints they found in the code, which was released by a group calling itself the Shadow Broker, researchers guessed it was authenticbut new documentation straight from the source appears to confirm the codes provenance.

According to NSA documents obtained by Edward Snowden and reviewed by The Intercept, several elements in the released code line up with details in the agencys own manuals and materials.

One manual, for example, instructs agents to use a specific 16-character string, ace02468bdf13579, to track a certain strain of government-developed malware as it makes its way through networks. That string shows up character-for-character in one of the leaked hacking tools, SECONDDATE.

The tool allows the NSA to execute man-in-the-middle attacks, which intercept traffic on a network as its traveling from its origin to its destination. The agency used it to redirect users who think theyre browsing safe websites to NSA-run servers that infect their computers with malwareand then back to their destination before they know what happened. In a slide deck, the NSA used cnn.com as an example of the sort of site it could exploit to deliver its malicious code.

The documents released by The Intercept reveal that SECONDDATE has been used to spy on systems in Pakistan and in Lebanon, where it gained access to data belonging to Hezbollah.

Its still not clear how the tools leaked from the NSA. Snowden speculated on Twitter that the tools could have been found on a server it used to infect a target, but former NSA staffers interviewed by Motherboard said the leak could be the work of a rogue insider, claiming that some of the files in the leak would never had made it to an outside server.

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Confirmed: The NSA Got Hacked - The Atlantic

Prosecutors to seek indictment against former NSA contractor as … – Washington Post

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Federal prosecutors in Baltimore are expected to seek an indictment as early as this week against a former National Security Agency contractor who is accused of carrying out the biggest theft of classified information in U.S. history.

The indictment against Harold T. Martin III is expected to contain charges of violating the Espionage Act by willfully retaining information that relates to the national defense, including classified data such as NSA hacking tools and operational plans against a known enemy of the United States, according to individuals familiar with the case.

Martin, 52, was arrested Aug. 29 at his home in Glen Burnie, Md., and he has been held in a detention facility since. A U.S. District Judge last fall declined Martins request to be released from jail pending an eventual trial or resolution of the case, ruling that he was a flight risk.

In a complaint unsealed in October, the government charged Martin with felony theft of government property and the unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, a misdemeanor. The prosecutors said then that they expected that the indictment would also include charges of violations of the Espionage Act, offenses that carry a prison term of up to 10 years for each count.

Such charges, prosecutors said, if run consecutively, could amount to a sentence as high as 30 years to life in prison.

The Justice Department declined to comment Monday.

In court hearings and filings, prosecutors have characterized Martins actions as highly damaging to national security. Over the course of 20 years working with various federal agencies, Martin took irreplaceable classified material on a breathtaking scale, said Zachary A. Myers, an assistant U.S. attorney with the District of Maryland, at a detention hearing in October.

Myers said Martin took many thousands of pages of classified material as well as 50terabytes of digital data, much of which has special handling caveats.

Martin previously worked in the Navy, leaving active duty in 1992 and then held a variety of tech jobs with government contractors. He worked at the NSA from 2012 to 2015, where he was an employee of the intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

For some portion of that time, Martin was in the NSAs elite hacker unit, Tailored Access Operations, which makes and deploys software used to penetrate foreign targets computer networks for foreign espionage purposes.

Some U.S. officials said that Martin allegedly made off with more than 75percent of TAOs library of hacking tools an allegation which, if true, would be a stunning breach of security.

James Wyda, one of Martins defense attorneys, declined to comment.

His attorneys have previously portrayed him as a patriot who took material home to become better in his job, not to pass them to a foreign spy agency and betray his country. The desire to improve became a compulsion, Wyda argued at the detention hearing.

This is the behavior of a compulsive hoarder who could not stop gathering and possessing the documents he treasured, Wyda said.

Martins theft was discovered more than a year after another breach at TAO, in which a longtime employee was discovered to have taken without authorization significant quantities of the units hacking tools. The breach was not thought to be as serious as Martins, but it caused concern within the intelligence community.

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Prosecutors to seek indictment against former NSA contractor as ... - Washington Post

Report: NSA contractor allegedly stole armory of elite hacking tools … – CyberScoop

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Former NSA contractor Harold T. Martin III, who remains in jail awaiting a court case for allegedly carrying out the biggest theft of classified information in U.S. history, reportedly compromised more than 75percent of hacking tools that were stored in a secretive library used by the agencys elite hacking unit.

Federal prosecutors in Baltimore may seek an incitement against Martin as early as this week, according to The Washington Post. The incident is expected to contain charges of violating the Espionage Act.

Individuals familiar with the case told the Post that Martin willfully retained information pertaining to national security, which includes classified NSA data and operational plans. Violations of the Espionage Act can carry a prison term of up to 10 years for each count.

A criminal complaint unsealed by the court in October showed that government lawyers were originally seeking to charge Martin with felony theft of government property and the unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, which would result in a misdemeanor. Recent reports suggest a steeper penalty for Martin, who worked in the U.S. intelligence community for more than a decade as a defense contractor.

Zachary Myers, an assistant U.S. attorney with the District of Maryland, said during a detention hearing in October that Martin stole irreplaceable classified material on a breathtaking scale, roughly amounting to 50 terabytes worth of digital information.

Martins defense attorneys have consistently defended their client, describing him as a patriot that simply hoarded documents he deeply treasured. Martin, they say, acted on his own volition and was not acting on the instruction of a foreign power.

Last Fall, a U.S. District Judge declined Martins request to be released from jail pending an eventual trial or resolution of the case. At the time, the judge ruled that Martin posed a flight risk.

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Report: NSA contractor allegedly stole armory of elite hacking tools ... - CyberScoop

US indicts NSA contractor with taking top-secret information over 2 decades – Fresno Bee

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

US indicts NSA contractor with taking top-secret information over 2 decades
Fresno Bee
Investigators zeroed in on Martin exactly two weeks after a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers posted a batch of what it claimed were NSA hacking tools, a major embarrassment to the agency. How the Shadow Brokers obtained the tools is not clear.

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US indicts NSA contractor with taking top-secret information over 2 decades - Fresno Bee

Overnight Cybersecurity: Ex-NSA contractor indicted over alleged … – The Hill

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Welcome to OVERNIGHT CYBERSECURITY, your daily rundown of the biggest news in the world of hacking and data privacy. We're here to connect the dots as leaders in government, policy and industry try to counter the rise in cyber threats. What lies ahead for Congress, the administration and the latest company under siege? Whether you're a consumer, a techie or a D.C. lifer, we're here to give you ...

THE BIG STORIES:

--NSA CONTRACTOR INDICTED: A federal grand jury on Wednesday issued an indictment of a former National Security Agency contractor accused of stealing thousands of pages of classified documents. Herald Thomas Martin III, 52, was charged with 20 counts of "willful retention of national defense information," according to a statement released by the Justice Department shortly after the indictment was returned. Martin worked at the NSA between 2012 and 2015 while he was an employee at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. The indictment alleges that Martin had been stealing and maintaining mounds of highly classified information starting as early as 1996, until his arrest last August.

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

--FBI NOT ANTICIPATING IMMEDIATE CHANGE ON ENCRYPTION: Donald TrumpDonald TrumpTrump is not the first president to criticize judiciary Trump to dine with Adelson at White House Election autopsy: Latinos favored Clinton more than exit polls showed MORE's White House has discussed encryption policy with the FBI, a bureau official indicated Wednesday. James Baker, the FBI's general counsel, said he is unaware of any planned changes on encryption policy under the new administration. "There have been some discussions, obviously, about this," he said at an encryption policy at an event in Washington, D.C. "It is a big topic and one that people have discussed," he continued. "I am not aware of any policy change or even a determination at this point in time, given how soon we are into the new administration."

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

--NATO'S NEW CYBER GUIDE: NATO on Wednesday released the first major revision to the Tallinn Manual, the closest thing there is to a rulebook for nation-led cyber operations. Like the original 2013 manual, the new version is the result of a study by NATO to gauge consensus opinions from international law experts on what types of cyber statecraft are acceptable. "Let me assure you, the manual will sit on the desk of every legal advisor in every ministry of defense and every ministry of foreign affairs in the entire world," Director and General Editor Michael Schmitt said at a press briefing before its launch at the Atlantic Council headquarters in Washington. Both manuals pull together law originally developed to cover fields ranging from armed conflicts to outer space to extrapolate the likely legal consequences for cyber operations. But while the first draft covered war-like cyber attacks between nations, the new draft adds legal analysis of peacetime operations.

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

A POLICY UPDATE:

--SENATORS MAKE PLAY ON RUSSIAN SANCTIONS: A bipartisan group of senators is moving to check President Trump on Russia by bolstering congressional oversight before he can lift sanctions.

Sens. Lindsey GrahamLindsey GrahamBannon and Priebus: The odd couple that holds Trump's keys to success GOP lawmakers urge Trump to get tough on Russia Overnight Cybersecurity: Ex-NSA contractor indicted over alleged theft | NATO's new cyber guide | Senators move to limit Trump on Russia MORE (R-S.C.), Ben CardinBen CardinSenate Foreign Relations takes hard line on Russia Corker, Cardin slam Trump's Russia comments Overnight Cybersecurity: Ex-NSA contractor indicted over alleged theft | NATO's new cyber guide | Senators move to limit Trump on Russia MORE (D-Md.), Marco RubioMarco RubioWhite House: Trump not open to 'Gang of Eight' immigration bill Corker, Cardin slam Trump's Russia comments Will Trump shift on entitlements? MORE (R-Fla.), Sherrod BrownSherrod BrownGOP states move to block sanctuary cities after Trump order Overnight Cybersecurity: Ex-NSA contractor indicted over alleged theft | NATO's new cyber guide | Senators move to limit Trump on Russia Overnight Defense: McCain, Spicer spar over Yemen raid | Senate bill would limit Trump on Russia sanctions | Trump cozies up to military MORE (D-Ohio), John McCainJohn McCainMeghan McCain defends father: 'How dare anyone question the honor of my father' Bannon and Priebus: The odd couple that holds Trump's keys to success The Hill's 12:30 Report MORE (R-Ariz.) and Claire McCaskillClaire McCaskillOvernight Cybersecurity: Ex-NSA contractor indicted over alleged theft | NATO's new cyber guide | Senators move to limit Trump on Russia Overnight Defense: McCain, Spicer spar over Yemen raid | Senate bill would limit Trump on Russia sanctions | Trump cozies up to military Senators move to limit Trump on Russia sanctions MORE (D-Mo.) introduced legislation Wednesday setting up a period of congressional oversight before Trump could roll back financial penalties.

The legislation, known as the Russia Sanctions Review Act, would require Trump to notify Congress before he lifts sanctions tied to the invasion of Ukraine or Russia's meddling in the White House race.

"To provide relief at this time would send the wrong signal to Russia and our allies who face Russian oppression. Sanctions relief must be earned, not given," said Graham, a frequent GOP critic of the president.

To read the rest of our piece,click here

A LIGHTER CLICK:

--FAR MORE THAN YOU COULD EVER WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ALUMINUM CANS. A palate cleansinginformational videofor stressful times. (Via Boing Boing)

A REPORT IN FOCUS:

--ENCRYPTION CHALLENGES FOR FBI 'MANAGEABLE': The challenges that data encryption pose for law enforcement are manageable, according to a new analysis by a Washington, D.C., think tank, to be released later Thursday.

The research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which was shared with The Hill, found no instances in which encryption played a "determinative role" in recent major terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States.

The think tank also concluded that encryption does not play a major role in terrorists' efforts to recruit followers over the internet.

The report comes at a moment of heightened concern over cybersecurity and a debate about encryption and federal authorities' access to secured communications.

To read the rest of our piece,click here.

WHO'S IN THE SPOTLIGHT:

--EVERYBODY: Here are16 people to watch in tech, including a bunch of cybersecurity folk.

NSA Executive Explains Logistics of Possible Cyber Command Split – MeriTalk (blog)

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

If the National Security Agency and Cyber Command were to split, NSA Executive Director Corin Stone explained thatany disagreements between the agencies would be decided by the secretary of defense and the director of national intelligence, to ensure fair judgment.

There have been conflicting opinions on the decision on whether to split the NSA from U.S. Cyber Command, which have traditionally operated as separate agencies under a dual-hat system with the same head. Stone said that Cyber Command is tasked with protecting Department of Defense networks, and the NSA conducts foreign signals intelligence and protects other national security systems, which are already separate jobs.

If the dual hat splits, it wont make a huge difference, frankly, Stone said in the Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast last week.

Stewart Baker, former National Security Agency general counsel and partner at Steptoe & Johnson, questioned what would happen if the two agencies disagreed on a course of action. For example, how would the situation be resolved if Cyber Command wanted to take down an enemys network but the NSA wanted it to remain open because it was collecting useful intelligence information from the network.

It makes it more sensible to have a civilian head, Baker said, referring to the current head of both the NSA and Cyber Command, Adm. Michael Rogers.

Baker said that it would be unfair if the military branch, Cyber Command, received more authority from a leader with a military background.

Stone said that this wouldnt be the case because in the event of a disagreement between the different agencies, the two would voice their reasoning to the secretary of defense and the director of national intelligence, who would then make a decision together.

The NSA is also trying to monitor what information goes in and out of the agency without alienating employees.

The NSA has suffered from security leaks due to employeesEdward Snowden and Harold Martin, which has forced the agency to focus more on what data is leaving Fort Meade. The NSA has also had to consider intimidating its trustworthy employees during the dip in morale following these security leaks.

Its about defeating the enemy and making sure were not doing anything to enable [them], Stone said.

Snowden and Martin, both NSA contractors, were charged with stealing classified government information. Stone said that monitoring the movement of information has become more difficult with the use of flash drives and other technology that makes data mobile.

Any leaks, any unauthorized disclosures has an impact on morale, Stone said. Weve got a dedicated workforce. Theyre extremely sophisticated technical experts working very long hours on tough, tough problems, sometimes for years at a time and when someone is a peer or a colleague or someone they knew or someone they didnt know decides to break trust with the U.S. government, with the American people, and with their peers and colleagues, thats something that does deal a blow to morale.

Stone said that there has to be some layer of trust between the agency and employees because carrying flash drives has become commonplace and the agency cant inspect every one. Stone also said that the employees at NSA especially care about protecting citizen information.

The NSA is also working to increase transparency following these leaks by encouraging employees to discuss its mission with the public to be less of a mystery. This method also helps with hostile audiences, according to Baker.

If somebody is standing there and theyre talking like you, and they sound like you, and theyre just an ordinary person like you, its hard to hate them, Stewart said.

The NSAs current organizational system, which was revamped in 2016 under the name NSA21, integrates offensive and defensive cyber operations. Stone said that she believes that the focus on each side is balanced and allows the agency to tackle threats faster.

We have already seen more agility based on that integration, Stone said.

NSA has updated its goals in other ways, including fostering creativity and providing more support to its personnel throughout their careers. Stone said that the NSA has been supporting its employees by focusing on diversity efforts.

The NSA runs free GenCyber camps for students from elementary through high school to learn about cybersecurity. The NSA has also been reaching out to students at Historically Black Colleges, such as Morgan State University and Howard University, to consider careers at the agency.

Stewart said that the NSA already has some level of diversity because of the many different military and civilian backgrounds of its employees. Stone said there was more that could be done, but agreed in that respect.

We do have a level of diversity thats extraordinary, Stone said.

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NSA Executive Explains Logistics of Possible Cyber Command Split - MeriTalk (blog)

Judge sides with Microsoft, allows gag order challenge to advance – Ars Technica

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Enlarge / Brad Smith, Microsoft's top lawyer (left), seen here speaking with CEO Satya Nadella on November 30, 2016.

Jason Redmond / Getty Images News

Microsoft'scase has drawn support from a number of major tech companies, including Apple, Twitter, Google, and Snapchat, among others.

The lawsuit first began nearly a year ago.Microsoft sued, arguing that when the government presents it with legal demands for user data held in online storage, those court orders often come with a gag order that has no end date. Because Microsoft is effectively forbidden from alerting its customers, even well after the fact, that such a data handover took place, the company alleged that its customers' First and Fourth Amendment rights are consistently violated.

In earlier court filings, Microsoft argued that in data or document handover situations prior to cloud storage, the "government had to give notice when it sought private information and communications, except in the rarest of circumstances." Effectively, the companyclaimed, this means the government expanded its ability to conduct "secret investigations."

But in a Wednesday ruling, Judge Robart found largely in Microsofts favor.

"In at least some circumstances, however, the Governments interest in keeping investigations secret dissipates after an investigation concludes and at that point, First Amendment rights may outweigh the Government interest in secrecy," he wrote.

The judge only allowed the Fourth Amendment question to be dropped, citing 9th Circuit and Supreme Court precedent, but he left the door open for the issueto be brought back on appeal if needed.

Robart continued:

Some of Microsofts customers will be practically unable to vindicate their own Fourth Amendment rights.

This conundrum, however, is not unique to this case; it is also true of the victim of an unreasonable search in a strangers home. See Alderman, 394 U.S. at 134. The source of the courts conclusion is thus the product of established and binding precedent, which precludes the court from allowing Microsoft to vindicate Fourth Amendment rights that belong to its customers. This court cannot faithfully reconcile the broad language of those cases and Microsofts theory of Fourth Amendment standing on the facts of this case; that task is more properly left to higher courts.

In a statement sent to Ars, Brad Smith, Microsofts general counsel, said, "Were pleased this ruling enables our case to move forward toward a reasonable solution that works for law enforcement and ensures secrecy is used only when necessary."

In a short e-mail, DOJ spokesman Peter Carr told Ars, "We are reviewing the opinion and will decline to comment further at this time."

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Judge sides with Microsoft, allows gag order challenge to advance - Ars Technica

Legislative Roundup: Second Amendment bills heard in committee – The Durango Herald

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

DENVER A host of bills aiming to expand Second Amendment rights were heard Wednesday by the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs committee.

Included were House bills 1036, which would remove the prohibition on carrying a concealed firearm on school campuses; 1037, which would allow business owners and employees to use deadly force on intruders; and 1097, which would repeal the limitations on magazine capacity in Colorado.

The hearing for H.B. 1036 lasted more than four hours before Democrats killed the bill on a party-line vote, 6-3.

Senate Minority Leader Patrick Neville, R-Franktown, argued the bill would have sent a clear message to criminals that schools are not gun-free zones that could be targeted.

The purpose is to say were going to do more than put up flashy signs, Neville said.

Rep. Jovan Melton, D-Aurora, said the bill would have allowed individuals who were not held to the same level of training as law enforcement to carry firearms on school grounds, and would have disrupted schools being a safe place for students.

If you come from a neighborhood like I came from, often the classroom is the only safe place for a student to get away from a gun because when theyre out on the street, theyre constantly facing threats that just happen within their neighborhoods, Melton said.

The death of H.B. 1036 by the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee likely was a preview of what will happen when other Second Amendment bills passed by the Senate make it to the Democrat-majority House.

In other House action on Wednesday, 23 bills were heard in committees, including:

Senate Joint Memorial 1, which would ask Congress to re-evaluate how wildfire suppression is funded through public land managers, was passed by the House Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources Committee, 13-0.The memorial is being put forward because of the practice of fire transfers that often take funds from mitigation efforts to pay for firefighting. As a memorial, the bill has no power but represents an effort to keep the issue on the minds of congressional representatives.

Senate Bill 27, which would raise the penalty for texting while driving, was passed 4-1 in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs committee and referred to the Finance Committee. The bill would make the initial penalty $300 and 5 points against a drivers record, and $750 and 6 points on subsequent offenses.Lperkins@durangoherald.com

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Legislative Roundup: Second Amendment bills heard in committee - The Durango Herald

Connecticut Moves to Restrict the Second Amendment to Rich People – National Review

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

In Connecticut, Governor Malloy is moving to increase the cost of a firearms permit. The New Haven Register reports:

Gun owners will see huge increases in permit fees that would raise millions of dollars to help the state combat its two-year, $3.6 billion deficit.

As part of his budget, Malloy is proposing to increase the state portion of the pistol permit fee from $70 to $300. He also is proposing the cost of the initial 5-year pistol permit fee from $140 to $370.

The increase in fees for gun owners will bring in another $9 million to the state annually, according to the governors budget estimates.

Additionally, Malloy is proposing to increase background check fees from its current $50 to $75.

If he is successful, that will set the cost of a first-time gun permit at $445, and the cost of renewal at $300.

Although I strongly disagree with it, I understand the intellectual case in favor of pistol permits per se especially in states such as Connecticut, where a permit acts as a one-time permission slip to do everything associated with guns (buy, own, carry, etc.). In the view of the gun-control movement, the permitting system serves to weed out those who are disqualified from ownership, as well as to ensure that the police know who is carrying and who is not. Because the system is open to abuse, leads to situations such as Carol Bownes, and seems to have no positive effect in comparison with similar states that dont issue permits (see Vermont and Maine), I strongly oppose it. But I can at least acknowledge the argument. Guns are dangerous weapons. Its not inherently unreasonable to want some regulation, nor, if a permitting system is to exist, to ask users to cover their costs.

I cannot, however, understand the argument in favor of high fees for pistol permits.If the case for permits is to distinguish between the law-abiding and the criminal, the case for high fees is to distinguish between the rich and the poor. In and of itself, that is disgusting. But applied to a constitutionally enumerated right that has been routinely recognized as such by the Supreme Court? Thats pitchfork time. And to come from the Democratic party, which views itself as being on the side of the poor, and which is institutionally opposed to voter identification laws on the grounds that one should not have to pay or be inconvenienced in order to vote? Thats just too much. (Why isnt this a poll tax or Jim Crow? And you cant answer, because I choose not to accept that the Second Amendment exists.)I understand that Governor Malloy doesnt like guns. But I also dont care. The law is the law. He doesnt get to edit the Bill of Rights.

The best case that can be made is that Malloy is trying to balance the budget on the backs of those whose behavior he dislikes. In a vacuum, this would be unpleasant. But when the behavior in question is legally protected, it is an outrage. Make no mistake: This isnt about covering user costs;its not about safety; and its not about Newtown. Its about astate government being willing to restrict a core individual rightbecause it happens to dislike its scope. I can only hope that the state Senate now split evenly between Democrats and Republicans puts the kibosh on the idea post haste.

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Connecticut Moves to Restrict the Second Amendment to Rich People - National Review

Community Associations and the Second Amendment – Lexology (registration)

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees individuals the right to keep and bear arms. The Florida constitution contains a similar guarantee. With few exceptions, Florida law allows licensed individuals to carry concealed firearms in most public locations. Based on these constitutional and statutory rights under U.S. and Florida law, many owners residing in community associations believe that they also have the right to conceal-carry firearms when on their communitys common elements. In the absence of a provision in the community associations governing documents, owners may exercise their lawful right to carry concealed firearms on common elements. However, who prevails when an owners constitutional and statutory rights conflict with a community associations attempts to regulate the carrying and use of firearms on its common elements?

Generally, a community associations power to regulate use of common element property may be exercised so long as the exercise is reasonable, is not violative of any constitutional restrictions, and does not exceed any specific limitations set out in the statute or the condominium documents. Juno by the Sea North Condominium Assn (The Towers), Inc. v. Manfredonia, 397 So.2d 297, at 302 (Fla. 4th DCA 1981). Given the commonplace nature of limitations on firearms imposed in other places either by private property owners or state and federal law (schools, churches, bars, etc.), a Court would likely determine that limitations on concealed-carry of firearms on a community associations common elements is reasonable. In GeorgiaCarry.Org, Inc. v. Georgia, 687 F.3d 1244, 1265 (11th Cir. 2012), the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that An individuals right to bear arms as enshrined in the Second Amendment, whatever its full scope, certainly must be limited by the equally fundamental right of a private property owner to exercise exclusive dominion and control over its land. Based on this holding, a Court would also likely determine that a community association prohibition on concealed-carry firearms on common element property is not violative of owners second amendment constitutional rights. As noted above, Florida law currently does not, as a general matter, prohibit an owner of private property from regulating the use of firearms on its property. Accordingly, absent a provision in the community associations own governing documents establishing a right of owners or guests to conceal-carry on common elements, we believe that a community association may generally regulate such use.

Notwithstanding the general ability of community associations to regulate firearms on common element property, such regulations should be drafted with the community associations particular circumstances in mind. For instance, Fla. Stat. 790.251 prohibits employers from preventing its employees, contractors, volunteers, or other invitees from keeping a firearm in a locked vehicle in a parking lot on the employers property. To the extent a community association has employees, Fla. Stat. 790.251 may apply to require the community association to allow its employees, contractors, volunteers or other invitees to keep firearms in their vehicles. Additionally, regulations on firearms should be carefully drafted to ensure that the regulations are proper in scope. For example, if the community associations regulations on firearms are so broad as to affect an owners ability to transfer and keep firearms in his or her home, the regulation could be seen as impermissibly preventing an owner from exercising his fundamental constitutional right to maintain firearms in the home for personal defense (as established by the U.S. Supreme Courts decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)), which may subject the rule to invalidation under the Juno by the Sea North Condominium analysis.

Although a community association is generally authorized to regulate the carrying and use of firearms on common element property, the validity of a particular regulation will be dependent on several factors discussed above. Accordingly, we recommend that a community association seeking to impose regulations on firearms consult with legal counsel to ensure that the regulation is thoughtfully drafted and will withstand scrutiny if challenged.

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Community Associations and the Second Amendment - Lexology (registration)

New senator wants to shred First Amendment protection – Mesquite Local News

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Nevadas newly elected U.S. senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, has already taken up the cudgel against the First Amendment previously wielded by her predecessor, Harry Reid.

She put out a press release recently announcing that she has joined with other congressional Democrats to reintroduce a constitutional amendment that would overturn Supreme Court rulings that have held that it is a violation of the First Amendment to restrict the amount of money corporations, nonprofits, unions and other groups may spend on political campaigns and when they may spend it.

In its current incarnation it is being called the Democracy for All Amendment. In previous years it bore the unwieldy acronym DISCLOSE Act Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections. Reid frequently took to the floor of the Senate to pound the table for the amendment and disparage the Koch brothers political spending as the embodiment of evil.

The U.S. Constitution puts democratic power in the hands of the American people not corporations or private companies, the press release quotes Cortez Masto as saying. Since the Citizens United decision, big corporations have gained unprecedented influence over elections and our countrys political process. I am proud to be a cosponsor of this legislation; its critical that we end unlimited corporate contributions if we are going to have a democratic process and government that will truly work for all Americans.

In the 2010 Citizens United decision, a 5-4 Supreme Court struck down the part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that prohibited organizations such as Citizens United, a political action committee, from expending funds for electioneering immediately prior to an election. In this case the Federal Election Commission blocked the 2008 broadcast of Hillary: The Movie, which was critical of Hillary Clintons presidential bid.

During the arguments in the case, the Justice Department attorney defending the law admitted the law also would censor books critical of candidates, though newspapers and other media, most owned by large corporations, were exempted from the law and may criticize, editorialize and endorse or oppose candidates freely. Some corporations are more equal than others.

Cortez Mastos statement concluded, The Democracy for All Amendment returns the right to regulate elections to the people by clarifying that Congress and the states can set reasonable regulations on campaign finance and distinguish between individuals and corporations in the law.

The problem is that free speech is not free if the incumbent government satrapy can curtail its dissemination.

Justice Anthony Kennedy explained this in his majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC: As a restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign, that statute necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached. Were the Court to uphold these restrictions, the Government could repress speech by silencing certain voices at any of the various points in the speech process. (Government could repress speech by attacking all levels of the production and dissemination of ideas, for effective public communication requires the speaker to make use of the services of others).

The fact the expenditure is coming from a group instead of an individual does not negate the First Amendment guarantee of the freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely, because it also guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition their government.

An assembly is not just a crowd of people on the street, it is also an organization.

Reid in one of this many diatribes on the subject said: But the flood of special interest money into our American democracy is one of the greatest threats our system of government has ever faced. Lets keep our elections from becoming speculative ventures for the wealthy and put a stop to the hostile takeover of our democratic system by a couple of billionaire oil barons. It is time that we revive our constituents faith in the electoral system, and let them know that their voices are being heard.

This implies the voters are too stupid to hear an open and free-wheeling debate and not be influenced by the volume or frequency of the message.

Lest we forget, in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump was outspent by Hillary Clinton by two-to-one $600 million to $1.2 billion.

Censorship is unAmerican and unnecessary. Cortez Masto should abandon this assault on free speech.

Thomas Mitchell is a longtime Nevada newspaper columnist. You may email him at thomasmnv@yahoo.com. He also blogs athttp://4thst8.wordpress.com/.

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New senator wants to shred First Amendment protection - Mesquite Local News

Facts, Falsehoods and the First Amendment – Wall Street Journal

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Facts, Falsehoods and the First Amendment
Wall Street Journal
The First Amendment sky is not falling as a result of the recent decision of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals permitting climatologist Michael Mann's case to proceed against the National Review Online, despite the claims of NRO's attorneys ...

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Facts, Falsehoods and the First Amendment - Wall Street Journal

First Amendment Needs Protecting from Liberals, Say Republican Legislators – Nashville Scene

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Unofficial co-sponsors of the bill? Milo Yiannopoulos and Scottie Nell Hughes

Rep. Martin Daniel, left, and Sen. Joey Hensley introduce the "Tennessee Student Free Expression Act," for when the First Amendment just isn't enough.

Sure, the First Amendment is, you know, a constitutional protection and all, but if you're a conservative minority in a sea of big, bad liberals on college campus, sometimes you just need a safe space, you special snowflake you. It can be very hard these days to speak your mind in a country with a Republican president and a Republican majority in Congress and the Senate and a Republican supermajority in both chambers of the Tennessee Legislature and a Republican governor and two Republican senators and seven out of nine Congressional districts represented by Republicans, not counting all the many, many, many, many Republicans in office at the local level across the state of Tennessee. Nope, it is definitely the poor College Republicans and other conservatives on campus who definitely need greater free speech protection than what the First Amendment offers.

At least, that's what state Rep. Martin Daniel (R-Knoxville) and Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) are saying is their justification for filing the "Tennessee Student Free Expression Act," a revamped version of a similar bill Daniel filed last year. However, this year they are nicknaming the bill the "Milo Act," after Breitbart writer/editor and noted white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos, whose recent appearance at the University of California at Berkeley was cancelled after protests turned violent.

Daniel and Hensley who have both been accused of assault in the past, Daniel during a primary debate last summer and Hensley in 2015 after his ex-wife alleged he hit her with his truck, twice are just horrified, horrified, that students in California would try to prevent Yiannopoulos from speaking and are using those protests as justification for their bill. (Never mind that Yiannopoulos spoke at Vanderbilt University without incident last fall.) At the press conference announcing the legislation, they showed clips from Berkeley, and then they showed a video from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville last fall in which a white male student dressed up as Trump had his wig knocked off by an African-American female student walking past him. The video characterized this as an "assault"; however, the woman keeps walking away with no further incident rude, yes, but nothing even close to assault.

The presser proceeded with Daniel and Hensley talking about the bill, followed by Trump surrogate andFox talking head Scottie Nell Hughes who has stated in the past that "riots aren't necessarily a bad thing," at least, if they are in support of Trump. A member of the UTK College Republicans also spoke, as did the student who had portrayed Trump in the aforementioned video. Someone else read a statement from Yiannopoulos, who said he wished he could be here but was, alas, stuck in Florida. Afterwards, legislative staff on both sides of the aisle seemed flummoxed by the lengthy production. ("What the hell was that?" one staffer texted this reporter.)

The bill itself is not nearly as noxious as last year's version, which stated, in part:

The governing boards of the institutions shall prohibit an institution from:

(1) Establishing safe zones;

(2) Requiring or encouraging the issuance of trigger warnings;

(3) Establishing a system for students or other persons to report incidents of mere bias, where no threats or harassment occurred;

(4) Disciplining students for microaggressions

Several UTK professors contacted by the Scene expressed relief that the newer bill is more vaguely worded, but they still have many concerns.

"The opening of the 'free speech' bill sounds like an insult: as if those of us who work at the university are not already advocates of free speech, as if we haven't spent our entire lives embracing and promoting free speech," says UT-Knoxville English professor and poet Marilyn Kallet. "No thinking person would oppose free speech. But isn't that what we are already doing?"

Another UTK English professor, Lisi Schoenbach, says the legislation raises more questions than it answers.

"Why such a bill would be necessary? And why the legislature should be involved in the governance of the university?" asks Schoenbach. "It appears to me that the bill repeats a lot of very standard language that can be found in any number of places regarding the importance of free expression on campus, except with extra emphasis on how important it is to have disagreeable and unpleasant speech on campus. Wouldnt this be an argument in favor of Sex Week, and lots of other campus speech that the legislature finds disagreeable?"

When asked about Sex Week and other such things on campus to which conservatives in the Legislature have taken exception, Hensley said the issue with that was not the free speech but the university spending money on it. When asked if bringing a speaker like Yiannopoulos would not also cost money, he changed the subject.

Pippa Holloway, a history professor at MTSU and president of the MTSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, says the bill is completely unnecessary.

"The legislation's claim that 'state institutions of higher education have abdicated their responsibility to uphold free speech principles' has no basis in fact. I would challenge the representative to visit our campuses; meet with our students, faculty, and administrators; and learn more about how Tennessee colleges and universities operate before wading into territory he obviously knows little about," Holloway comments.

"The legislation would require colleges and universities to modify the content of their freshman orientation and send emails every semester during the first week of classes reminding students of their First Amendment protections. What about the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights? Should we send out emails every semester reminding them of their Second Amendment rights also? And what about the Third Amendment? If students are asked to quarter a solider in their house during a time of peace, shouldn't we remind them every semester that they can say no? If those questions sound ridiculous, they should, because such micromanaging of the daily operations of college campuses through state law IS ridiculous," Holloway adds.

The thing is, state campuses already do have free speech policies in place. When asked if they had read UT's policy, for one, the legislators admitted they had not. It's also unclear that they have any idea as to who Yiannopoulos actually is. When introducing the bill, Hensley commented, "We dont want to allow hate speech or offensive speech, but certainly when it comes to political issues, every student should have their right to expression." When asked if that wasn't exactly what Yiannopoulos often incites hate speech Daniel replied, "Were just asking that university administrators abide by and respect the first amendment, thats all."

But Yiannopoulos is a proponent of hate speech, in addition to misogyny, racism, homophobia (despite being openly gay himself) and general meanness. He thinks women shouldn't learn science or math. It is nearly impossible to be so horrible that Twitter will actually permanently ban you, yet Yiannopoulos managed it. It seems likely that the writer has only glommed onto the legislation as part of his never-ending quest for self-promotion, especially given that he has a book coming out in March why legislators who had a problem with LGBT diversity funding at UT want to help promote a man whose book was originally going to be called The Dangerous Faggot Manifesto is, well, odd.

UT itself has only issued a vague statement on the bill, with spokesperson Gina Stafford saying in an email, The proposed legislation would apply to all public universities in Tennessee, including the University of Tennessee. The constitutional right of free speech is a fundamental principle that underlies the mission of the University of Tennessee, and the University has a long and established record of vigorously defending and upholding all students right to free speech.

The ACLU of Tennessee also says it will be keeping an eye on the bill.

"This legislations goal of promoting free speech on state campuses is certainly laudable, and the bill contains elements that indeed foster free expression. However, in areas of campus that are not considered public fora, a public university has multiple obligations not only to free speech but also to preventing creation of a hostile environment. The devil is in the details and we are still in the process of closely analyzing this measure," says executive director Hedy Weinberg.

Meanwhile, says Schoenbach, if Daniel and Hensley really want to know about free speech on campus, they should take a class.

"If only there were a way for them to learn about the difference between facts and opinions, critical thinking skills, evidence based argumentation. There should be some state-provided access to this sort of information!" says Schoenbach.

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First Amendment Needs Protecting from Liberals, Say Republican Legislators - Nashville Scene

Lia Ernst of Vermont ACLU Joins NEFAC Board, Strengthens First Amendment Efforts – vtdigger.org

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

News Release NEFAC Feb. 9, 2017

Contact: Justin Silverman 774.244.2365 mail@nefirstamendment.org

The New England First Amendment Coalition is pleased to announce the addition of Lia Ernst, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, to its Board of Directors.

Were very excited to have Lia join NEFAC and help our efforts defending the First Amendment in Vermont, said Justin Silverman, the coalitions executive director. Shes going to be a tremendous resource not only for our organization but for all New Englanders.

At the ACLU of Vermont, Ernst litigates civil liberties, civil rights and open government cases; advocates before state and municipal governmental bodies on ACLU legislative priorities; and educates community groups on protecting and exercising their rights.

Before coming to the Vermont affiliate, Ernst had been a legal fellow at the ACLU of Massachusetts and a legal intern at the ACLU of Michigan. She also clerked for two years with U.S. District Court Judge Julian Abele Cook Jr. in Detroit and for one year with Judge Norman H. Stahl of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston. In between, she was an associate attorney at a Michigan law firm outside Detroit, focusing on criminal defense and attorney ethics.

Ernst is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and holds a masters degree in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin. Her undergraduate degree is from Swarthmore College, where she majored in biology. She served two years in the Peace Corps in Guinea, West Africa after college.

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Lia Ernst of Vermont ACLU Joins NEFAC Board, Strengthens First Amendment Efforts - vtdigger.org

Tor Browser 6.5 Download – TechSpot

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.

Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.

Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor's hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.

Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they're working with that organization.

Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members' online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommend Tor as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Which locations have employees working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting websites? Which research divisions are communicating with the company's patent lawyers?

A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.

What's New:

This is a major release and the first one in the 6.5 series. First of all it fixes the usual critical bugs in Firefox by updating to ESR 45.7.0. It contains version updates to other bundle components as well: Tor to 0.2.9.9, OpenSSL to 1.0.2j, HTTPS-Everywhere to 5.2.9, and NoScript to 2.9.5.3.

Besides those updates Tor Browser 6.5 ships with a lot of the improvements we have been working on in the past couple of months.

On the security side we alwaysblock remote JAR filesnow andremove the support for SHA-1 HPKP pins. Additionally we backported from an other firefox branch patches to mark JIT pages as non-writable and other crash fixes that could disrupt a Tor Browser session quite reliably.

With respect to user tracking and fingerprinting we now isolate SharedWorker script requests to the first party domain. We improved our timer resolution spoofing and reduced the timing precision for AudioContext, HTMLMediaElement, and Mediastream elements. We stopped user fingerprinting via internal resource:// URLs, and for Windows users we fixed a regression introduced in Tor Browser 6.0 which could leak the local timezone if JavaScript were enabled.

A great deal of our time was spent on improving the usability of Tor Browser. We redesigned the security slider and improved its labels. We moved a lot of Torbutton's privacy settings directly into the respective Firefox menu making it cleaner and more straightforward to use. Finally, we moved as many Torbutton features as possible into Firefox to make it easier for upstreaming them. This allowed us to resolve a couple of window resizing bugs that piled on over the course of the past years.

The features mentioned above are only some of the highlights in Tor Browser 6.5. The full changelog since 6.0.8 is:

All Platforms

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Tor Browser 6.5 Download - TechSpot

Why Did an Internet Censorship App Send My Phone to Hardsextube.com? – Gizmodo

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Cannabis.com, GayEgypt.com, Circumcision.org, WhitePower.com, and yes, HardSexTube.com are all sites that the Tor Projects new app pointed my iPhone towards this morning. Dont worry, its all for a good cause.

The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) has been around for the last five years or so, but its software suite, Ooniprobe, only existed as command line-installable a desktop software package. Sponsored by the Tor Projectbest known for its mostly secure Tor web browserOoniprobe seeks to map where internet censorship is taking place via a live map. Unsurprisingly, the US is largely unaffected while Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia arent so lucky.

As of today, Ooniprobe is available as an Android or iOS app that even the least computer savvy but censorship-concerned internet user can easily install. That is, if the warnings in the markedly easier installation process dont scare you half to death.

The mere use of ooniprobe might be viewed as a form of espionage, regardless of the laws in your country, the welcome screen warns, we encourage you to consult with a lawyer prior to installing and running ooniprobe. New York is in the middle of a snowstorm, and I dont exactly keep legal counsel on retainer, so that didnt happen. The same screen warns potential users that the app will download data from provocative or objectionable sites (e.g. pornography) as you may already have guessed.

Ooniprobes risks page describes the possibility of severe civil, criminal, or extra-judicial penalties such as being assaulted or targeted for surveillance. Caveating the whole thing is the disclaimer: The risks described below are quite speculative. To our knowledge, no ooniprobe user has ever faced consequences from the risks described below. Hmm.

As to the app itself, the web connectivity test is the meat of its functionality. Essentially it attempts to visit a slew of sites which range from mundane email portals (hotmail.msn.com) to the Air Forces F-35 Lightning II page (jsf.mil). At the same time, a server tries to get to those same pages and if they load differently its flagged in red as potentially censored. Ooniprobes test sites are, as The Atlantic points out, a list built collaboratively between OONI and Citizen Project and aim to catalog crucial services or controversial content most likely to be censored. (Flatteringly, our sister site Jezebel made the cut.)

The app seems to give plenty of false positives. Among the supposedly censored sites were sex toy site realdoll.com, kids.yahoo.com, myspace.com, and metacrawler.com, all of which worked just fine on desktop. Ooniprobes helpful suggestions to avoid being denied the full scope of Real Dolls online retail website are to use open DNS (check), force HTTPS (which most browsers now do by default), or to use the Tor browser (Tor is not presently available on iOS).

Currently, the only other two tests included in this mobile build of Ooniprobe are an HTTP Invalid request test and a standard speed test. The former showed no anomaly and the latter gave me upload, download, and ping times comparable to Ooklas industry-standard speed test.

So what have we learned from this experience? Internet censorship isnt really happening on an infrastructural level in the USat least not in a way this app can detect it. And even though youre unlikely to be sent to a gulag for installing Ooniprobe, pinging WhitePower.com has definitely landed me on some sort of watchlist.

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Why Did an Internet Censorship App Send My Phone to Hardsextube.com? - Gizmodo

University of Luxembourg: Researchers develop Zcash cryptocurrency – Science Business

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Danzig

Scientists at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) of the University of Luxembourg have developed an important mathematical algorithm called Equihash. Equihash is a core component for the new cryptocurrency Zcash, which offers more privacy and equality than the famous Bitcoin. Zcash came into operation as an experimental technology for a community-driven digital currency in late 2016. Competing cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin is by far the most recognised and widely used digital currency. It was introduced in January 2009 and has garnered much attention since then. But it is not the only one of its kind. Wikipedia lists nearly one hundred cryptocurrencies boasting more than 1 million US dollar market capitalisation.

One of the newest cryptocurrencies is Zcash, which can be seen as an update to the Bitcoin protocols. In Bitcoin, the transfer of coins is recorded in a global ledger, the so-called blockchain. The validity of the latest transfers in the blockchain is verified about every ten minutes. Verifying the transfers and creating new blocks for the blockchain (the so-called mining) requires a lot of computing power, which is provided by distributed computers worldwide. The miners who allocate the processing power are rewarded with new coins.

Zcash is trying to resolve two main shortcomings of Bitcoin: its lack of privacy for transactions and the centralisation of transaction verification into the hands of a mere dozen miners who have invested in large amounts of specialised mining hardware: Bitcoin is prone to such centralisation because the computational load of the bitcoin mining algorithm can be split into many different small tasks, which can be conducted in parallel. The algorithm is easy to implement in dedicated, energy-efficient and cheap microchips, but not suited to standard hardware. Bitcoin mining today is therefore done on special-purpose supercomputers which are located in places with cheap electricity and/or cheap cooling. Such supercomputers are expensive, costing millions of euros, but provide much more mining power than if one were to use standard PC hardware of the same price.

New algorithm for cryptocurrency

Prof. Alex Biryukov, head of the research group Cryptolux and Dr. Dmitry Khovratovich at SnT have developed the algorithm Equihash which can resolve this problem. Equihash is a so called memory-hard problem, which can not be split up into smaller working packages. It can be more efficiently calculated on desktop-class computers with their multiple processing cores and gigabytes of memory than on special hardware chips. If 10.000 miners with a single PC were active, in Zcash the investment to compete with them would be 10.000 times the price of a PC, while with bitcoin, the investment would be significantly smaller, says Khovratovich. This creates a more democratic digital currency by allowing more users to contribute to the mining process. Khovratovich adds: The strength of a cryptocurrency comes from the fact that the ledger is globally distributed. Our Equihash algorithm reverses the situation back to this more ideal world.

Equihash was first presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium last year one of the top-5 IT security events. Prof. Biryukov comments: Since Equihash is based on a fundamental computer science problem, advances in Equihash mining algorithms will benefit computer science in general. Equihash is so far unique among all the mining algorithms: it is memory-hard on the one hand and very easy to verify on the other. In other words, while mining new coins with Zcash/Equihash is comparatively expensive, hence posing a smaller risk of monopolisation because it requires large amounts of computer memory and hard computational work, checking that the new coins are genuine is memoryless, fast and cheap.

Understanding these advantages, the creators of Zcash chose Equihash as the algorithm for mining coins and verifying transfers. Equihash itself is not limited to use in Zcash and can be used in any cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin.

With our contribution to Zcash, the Cryptography and Security lab (CryptoLux) has shown its strength in innovative research that has immediate applications in the financial technology industry, says SnTs director, Prof. Bjrn Ottersten. We invite students to follow us in this promising field, adds Professor Biryukov: There are still lots of challenging research problems to solve.

University of Luxembourg: Researchers develop Zcash cryptocurrency - Science Business

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