Monthly Archives: July 2017

Our love-hate relationship with the First Amendment – Progress Index

Posted: July 10, 2017 at 7:52 pm

Common practice for liberals and conservatives now is to take turns calling each other enemies of the First Amendment. The results of this year's "State of the First Amendment" survey gave us the opportunity to consider these insults and after the numbers are crunched, who is the real enemy of the First Amendment?

Well, no one. And, everyone.

Most of our fellow citizens, regardless of their political ideology, are quite fond of the First Amendment, at least in the abstract. The people who think that the First Amendment goes too far are a minority 22.5 percent of us. A majority of Americans (67.7 percent) thinks that the press plays an important role as a watchdog on government; a slightly narrower majority (58.8 percent) thinks that freedom of religion should extend to all religious groups, even those widely considered extreme or fringe.

That's the good news: Even in a time of great political turmoil, we're generally supportive of the First Amendment's protections.

The bad news: When it comes down to specific applications of the First Amendment, we're less positive, and also deeply divided along ideological lines. Both liberals and conservatives have certain pain points where they balk at the amount of protection that the First Amendment provides.

Liberals are more likely than conservatives to think:

Colleges should be able to ban speakers with controversial views.

People should not be able to express racist comments on social media.

Meanwhile, conservatives are more likely than liberals to think:

Government officials who leak information to the press should be prosecuted.

Journalists should not be able to publish information obtained illegally, even if it serves the public interest.

Government should be able to determine which media outlets can attend briefings.

Government should be able to hold Muslims to a higher standard of scrutiny.

Worth noting: Some of these differences in attitude may not be a direct result of whether you're a liberal or a conservative; instead, they might be circumstantial. Do more liberals support press freedoms because that's a core value of liberal ideology or because the press is a watchdog on the government, which liberals don't currently control?

Do more conservatives think that colleges shouldn't be able to ban speakers because of a greater commitment to free speech or because most banned speakers, at least in recent years, have tended to be conservative? It will be interesting to see in subsequent years if attitudes change as circumstances change.

One thing that unites the majority of Americans right now: Most of us, liberals and conservatives, prefer to read or listen to news that aligns with our own views.

That's true even if you think that the news media reports with a bias, as most Americans do (56.8 percent). Apparently, we're not inclined to correct that bias by taking in multiple and varied news sources. Instead, we're more likely to double down on the news that fits in with our pre-existing ideological perspectives.

This finding is both obvious and disheartening: Everyone likes reading and hearing news that confirms what they already believed. That's one of the factors that keep us so divided.

Lata Nott

Executive director

First Amendment Center

Newseum Institute.

Washington, D.C.

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Third Circuit Appeals Court Establishes First Amendment Right To Record Police – Techdirt

Posted: at 7:52 pm

Early last year, a federal court judge decided filming police officers was not protected by the First Amendment. How the court arrived at this conclusion was by narrowly defining the First Amendment as only protecting "expressive" speech. Simply documenting activity was somehow not covered by the First Amendment, according to the government's theory (the city of Philadelphia, in this case).

According to the district court, expression is key. It was the wrong conclusion to reach, but it helped some Philadelphia police officers escape being held accountable for retaliatory arrests of citizen photographers. Even worse, it created a chilling effect for citizen photographers in the court's jurisdiction, giving them a publish or die be arrested mandate.

At that time, it seemed unlikely the Third Circuit Appeals Court would overturn its own precedential rulings. The Appeals Court had never gone so far as to establish a First Amendment right to record public officials. In fact, precedent had mostly sided with law enforcement officers who had been sued for shutting down recordings. An affirmation on appeal would have resulted in a circuit split that could only be resolved if and when the Supreme Court chose to take up a case directly related to this issue.

Fortunately, the Third Circuit Court has reversed the lower court's finding, at least in terms of the First Amendment. This adds to the list of circuits already viewing recordings of cops as protected speech. The issue appears to be (slowly) resolving itself without the Supreme Court's assistance.

The ruling [PDF] is a fantastic read, at least as far as its handling of the First Amendment goes. The opening makes it clear the lower court screwed this up badly. [h/t Brad Heath]

This case involves retaliation. Richard Fields and Amanda Geraci attempted to record Philadelphia police officers carrying out official duties in public and were retaliated against even though the Philadelphia Police Departments official policies recognized that [p]rivate individuals have a First Amendment right to observe and record police officers engaged in the public discharge of their duties. No party contested the existence of the First Amendment right. Yet the District Court concluded that neither Plaintiff had engaged in First Amendment activity because the conductthe act of recordingwas not sufficiently expressive. However, this case is not about whether Plaintiffs expressed themselves through conduct. It is whether they have a First Amendment right of access to information about how our public servants operate in public.

Every Circuit Court of Appeals to address this issue (First, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh) has held that there is a First Amendment right to record police activity in public. See Turner v. Lieutenant Driver, 848 F.3d 678 (5th Cir. 2017); Gericke v. Begin, 753 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2014); Am. Civil Liberties Union of Ill. v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2012); Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011); Smith v. City of Cumming, 212 F.3d 1332 (11th Cir. 2000); Fordyce v. City of Seattle, 55 F.3d 436 (9th Cir. 1995). Today we join this growing consensus. Simply put, the First Amendment protects the act of photographing, filming, or otherwise recording police officers conducting their official duties in public.

This establishes citizen photography as protected speech, no matter what the photographer's intent is. The protection here has very little to do with expression, no matter how much the defendants wish it was. Instead, it has everything to do with access.

To record what there is the right for the eye to see or the ear to hear corroborates or lays aside subjective impressions for objective facts. Hence to record is to see and hear more accurately. Recordings also facilitate discussion because of the ease in which they can be widely distributed via different forms of media. Accordingly, recording police activity in public falls squarely within the First Amendment right of access to information. As no doubt the press has this right, so does the public.

[...]

In sum, under the First Amendments right of access to information the public has the commensurate right to recordphotograph, film, or audio recordpolice officers conducting official police activity in public areas.

In the Third Circuit, cops can no longer expect to shielded from lawsuits related to shutting down citizens' recording efforts.

As was noted by the court, the right likely should have been established at the time the incident took place (2014).

In 2011 the Department published a memorandum advising officers not to interfere with a private citizens recording of police activity because it was protected by the First Amendment. In 2012 it published an official directive reiterating that this right existed. Both the memorandum and directive were read to police officers during roll call for three straight days. And in 2014, after the events in our case and the occurrence of other similar incidents, the Department instituted a formal training program to ensure that officers ceased retaliating against bystanders who recorded their activities.

Unfortunately, the court still sides with the officers, stating that precedent from various circuits did not divorce the act of recording entirely from the concept of "expression." At the point the arrests occurred, it may have seemed reasonable to shut down citizens who attempted to record police if they couldn't clearly state an "expressive" reason for doing so. And that's apparently ok even if the officers had received repeated instructions from their supervisors about respecting the public's right to record.

The dissent disagrees with this conclusion. It wasn't just court precedent and the PD's own directives. Officers also should have been aware of the DOJ's directive along the same lines, which was handed down in 2012 to all local law enforcement agencies urging them to respect the public's "right to record."

With all of this, it is indisputable that all officers in the Philadelphia Police Department were put on actual notice that they were required to uphold the First Amendment right to make recordings of police activity. From a practical perspective, the police officers had no ground to claim ambiguity about the boundaries of the citizens constitutional right here.

Even absent this wealth of directives, any officer should have "reasonably" known retaliating against citizens for recording in public was the wrong way to handle this.

A reasonable police officer would have understood, first-hand, the significance of this proliferation of personal electronic devices that have integrated image capture into our daily lives, making it a routine aspect of the way in which people record and communicate events. Apart from any court ruling or official directive, the officers own lived experience with personal electronic devices (both from the perspective of being the one who is recording and one who is being recorded) makes it unreasonable to assume that the police officers were oblivious to the First Amendment implications of any attempt by them to curtail such recordings.

The upshot is the judicial enshrinement of the right to record police. The downside for the plaintiffs is the officers can't be sued for violating what should have been considered a clearly established right, even before the Appeals Court decision.

The way things are going, the Supreme Court may never have to address the issue. As the presiding judges note (both in the opinion and during oral arguments), the establishment of this right across the nation is inevitable. As more circuits address the issue head-on, the rulings should result in further First Amendment wins.

As a side note, the oral arguments are an amazing watch. The government's lawyer desperately wants the discussion to center on questions of immunity, but the court is far more interested in how he intends to argue speech must be tied to expressive intent to receive First Amendment protections. The fun starts about 19:45 into the recording. By the time a judge brings up the Zapruder recording ten minutes later, you almost feel sorry for the government's legal rep.

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First Amendment Under Attack? TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman Weighs in With Panel of Experts (Video) – TheWrap

Posted: at 7:52 pm

A panel of lawyers said the case between Hulk Hogan and Gawker was a debate between First Amendment rights and privacy rights, but TheWraps Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman disagreed.

In a society where we have the rich getting richer and the media fragmented and difficult to sustain as it is, this is the kind of thing that could happen all the time, Waxman said in a panel discussion Thursday. It doesnt sound like speech. It sounds like something rich people get to do.

Waxman spoke on TheWraps panel The First Amendment in The Age of Trump following a screening of the new documentary Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press.It charts how Gawkers decision to publish Hulk Hogans sex tape led to a trial that has potentially opened the flood gates for billionaires to make news outlets they dont like disappear.

Also Read: Is Freedom of Expression in Danger in Trump Era? First Amendment Experts Weigh In (Video)

Waxman shared an instance when she and TheWrap were sued by a millionaire heiress whose pride was hurt when she didnt like the story that ran about her.

We had to suffer this lawsuit going through the courts for two years, a million dollars was spent, it wouldve put us out of business at that time, and the case died one day when the woman failed to show up in court, and the judge threw it out, Waxman said.

Thankfully TheWrap was covered by insurance, but Waxman pointed to Sheldon Adelson privately purchasing the Las Vegas Review-Journal and John Olivers recent report on Sinclair Media Group as examples of how anyone could use their wealth to influence the media.

See Nobody Speak: Trials of a Free Press's latest POWER MOVE.

Anybody can decide that they dont like something that was written about them, and theyre going to be encouraged by Trump, Waxman said. These are all really concerning.

Waxman added that the right to privacy is still a serious matter, but shes less sure about the specifics of the Hulk Hogan case as depicted in Nobody Speak.

The idea that Hulk Hogan and Terry Bollea have two different penises is something very difficult for me to get my brain around, Waxman said.

Watch the video of Waxmans comments above, and check out the complete video and recap here.

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Jitsi | Futurist Transhuman News Blog – euvolution.com

Posted: at 7:51 pm

Featured questions (hide)

How do I get the latest Jitsi source code?

You could either clone the Git repository from GitHub (see Retrieving and Building the Sources for details) or use one of the nightly source snapshots (check the Download page).

Ive discovered a bug, what can I do?

Please, report it to the developers! Take a look at the Reporting bugs guidelines page describing the steps to report bugs effectively.

Where is the user profile directory?

Jitsis user profile directory is where Jitsi keeps its configuration, logs, etc. Its location depends on the operating system.

Where do I find the log files?

The easiest way to get hold of the log files is to save them to a location of your choice using Jitsis GUI. You can do so by clicking on ToolsOptions (JitsiPreferences on OS X), then selecting the Advanced tab and opening the Logging form. Youll see the Archive Logs button in there.

Check out the screenshot for an even better description.

Important Note: When asked for logs, please make sure that you provide the full set of logs, or better yet, the zip that Jitsi generates when following the above instructions. Please do not send separate files or file snippets as those are likely to be insufficient. If you need to provide the logs for a GitHub issue, send them to Dev Mailing List and link to the thread in the archive or create a Gist and link to it. Please DO NOT paste the log as a comment.

Otherwise, if you really want to know, the log files are located in:

Where is the configuration file?

Jitsis main configuration file is called sip-communicator.properties and is in the user profile directory.

How do you spell Jitsi and what does it mean?

The correct spelling of the application name is Jitsi (jitsi also works). The origin of the name is Bulgarian (spelled ). It means wires and the point is that the application allow you to connect to many network and people just as wires do. Of course no one other than Bulgarians is supposed to know what this means and we picked the name mainly because it was short and sounded good.

Id like to see a new feature in Jitsi, can you do that for me?

Yes, developers take feature requests into account. Send an email to the development list with a detailed description of the requested feature. After we examine its feasibility and decide whether it can be included in the Jitsi distributions you would likely be asked to open a ticket in our issue tracker. It is worth mentioning though, that handling feature requests is highly dependent of the developers availability and there is no guarantee that all requests will be satisfied.

How do I subscribe to mailing lists?

Please visit the Mailing Lists page to learn more about Jitsis mailing lists.

How do I contact the project developers?

You can ask questions concerning usage of the Jitsi on the dev mailing list (Note that the mailing lists are moderated, so, unless you subscribe to them, there may be a delay before your post shows up). For all urgent queries you could also use IRC at irc.freenode.net, channel #jitsi.

How do I send a patch?

Mail patches to the dev mailing list, with a subject line that contains the word PATCH in all uppercase, for example

A patch submission should contain one logical change; please dont mix N unrelated changes in one submission, send N separate emails instead.

The patch itself should be generated from within the project root directory using unified diff format. The following example shows one way to generate it:

You should give your patch files meaningful names. For instance if you fix a socket bug in the foo class do not call your patch file patchfile.txt but instead call it foo-socket.patch.

If the patch implements a new feature, make sure to describe the feature completely in your mail; if the patch fixes a bug, describe the bug in detail and give a reproduction recipe. An exception to these guidelines is when the patch addresses a specific issue in the issues database in that case, just make sure to refer to the issue number in your log message.

Note that unless you are describing a change rather than posting one, we would probably need you to sign our contributor agreement as either an individual or a corporation

I would like to update this wiki what can I do?

Currently, only project developers are permitted to update the wiki. Please send your suggested changes to the dev mailing list.

A wiki page can be updated by appending the string ?action=edit to the current url and refreshing the page. The page will then be displayed with an extra menu line that includes a Page Edit item.

If you click on the Page Edit item, you will be redirected to a logon page. Enter your developer username and password and you should be redirected back to the original page. Click on Page Edit again to access the source content of the page (a quick reference to wiki markup syntax is also displayed).

How do I reset my XMPP or jit.si password?

You can reset your jit.si password from within Jitsi. You can do the same for any XMPP account that allows it.

In the case of jit.si, you can also change your password via the web

Why cant I connect to ekiga.net?

NB: the problems described in this section also apply to other providers such as 1und1.de

Short Answer: The ekiga.net SIP servers are configured in a way that prevent Jitsi (and many other SIP user agents for that matter) to register with the service. Please use iptel.org or ippi.com instead.

Slightly Longer Answer: The service at ekiga.net is configured to only accept SIP REGISTER requests that contain a public IP address in their Contact header. This means that registration from Jitsi would fail unless you actually have a public IP address. The Ekiga client circumvents this by using STUN to learn the address and port that have been allocated for the current session. It then uses the pair in the SIP Contact header. This kind of use was common for the first version of the STUN protocol defined in RFC 3489 which was sometimes referred to as classic STUN.

The IETF has since significantly reviewed the way STUN should be used. The new version of the protocol is now defined in RFC 5389 which, among other things, advises against the use of STUN as a standalone NAT traversal utility:

Today STUN represents one of the tools used by complete traversal mechanisms such as SIP OUTBOUND (RFC 5626) or ICE (RFC 5245). Neither of these includes sending a STUN obtained address in a Contact header.

So, where does Jitsi currently stand on all this? At the time of writing, we support the ICE protocol but only use it with XMPP. Use with SIP is likely to come in the near future. The reason we havent implemented it yet is that most SIP servers currently open to use over the Internet, use a technique called latching. When such servers detect you are connecting from behind a NAT, they would start acting as a relay, receiving media from your peers and then forwarding it to you (and vice versa). While this is by far the most reliably way of traversing NATs, it does indeed imply some scalability constraints.

ICE on the other hand would only fall back to relaying if no other way was found to connect the two participants. This is why it is considered as a more optimal solution and why its also on our roadmap.

Note however that the constraints on ekiga.net would continue preventing Jitsi from connecting even when we do implement support for ICE.

Why do I see ICE failed errors when trying to make calls.

Jitsi implements a number of NAT traversal methods as described here. In many situations we will be able to setup a call directly between you and other users but in order to be able to reliably establish calls, your XMPP or SIP provider has to provide relaying capabilities such as TURN, Jingle Nodes or . If looking for services that support these you can try jit.si or ippi. Also note that both you and your partner need to have unhindered outgoing UDP access to the Internet or at least to your VoIP service provider. You DO NOT however need to map any port numbers on your home router. At best this is going to have no effect.

Does Jitsi support STUN? (and how about TURN, UPnP and Jingle Nodes?)

STUN, together with TURN, Jingle Nodes, IPv6 and UPnP, is one of the techniques that Jitsi uses as part of the Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) protocol to handle NAT traversal for calls made over XMPP.

For its SIP calls, Jitsi currently relies on servers to relay media (a technique also known as Hosted NAT Traversal or latching, which would be the case of the majority of the SIP servers used on the Internet today. Note that in terms of reliability Hosted NAT Traversal gives the same results as use of ICE. It even works better in some ways because the connection is setup immediately and no time is waisted for gathering candidates and making connectivity checks. The only downside of HNT is that it may put a strain on SIP providers requiring more bandwidth. This could become a problem especially in environments with a high number of all IP high quality video calls.

It is likely that ICE support for SIP calls would also be added to Jitsi in 2014 especially since this would also help with WebRTC compatibility.

Standalone support for STUN is NOT going to be part of Jitsi. Check out the ekiga entry for more information on the shortcomings of STUN as a standalone NAT traversal utility.

I have a few questions regarding ZRTP, SRTP and VoIP security in general. Where can I find some answers?

Check out our ZRTP FAQ.

Why does my call stay in the Initiating Call status and I can never connect?

A common reason for providers not to respond to calls is that they simply dont get the INVITE request Jitsi sends to them. This can happen if you are using UDP. The Jitsi INVITE requests may often exceed the maximum allowed packet size (MTU) for your network or that of your server. In such cases packets may be fragmented by your IP stack and fragmentation for UDP does not always work well in certain networks. This is what happens when a client supports multiple features ;). To resolve the issue you can do one of the following:

How does on-line provisioning work?

On-line provisioning is the feature that allows Jitsi to connect to an http URI every time it starts and retrieve part or all of its configuration there. On-line provisioning is often used by providers to remotely configure the clients they maintain. It can be used to set any property in Jitsi such as the codecs used, the features that users can manually configure and even protocol accounts.

When requesting its provisioning information Jitsi can transmit any of a number of parameters to the server, like for example: the OS it is running on, user credentials, a unique ID and others. This way the provisioning server can fine-tune the parameters it sends to Jitsi.

For more information, please check our on-line provisioning manual

Are my chat sessions protected and if so, how?

Jitsi supports the OTR encryption protocol. OTR stands for Off-the-Record Messaging and once youve set it up (i.e. clicked on that padlock icon in a chat window and verified the identity of your contact) it allows you to make sure that no one other than you two can read your messages, not even your service provider. You can find more on the OTR mechanisms here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging

Should logging be disabled by default when using OTR?

By default Jitsi stores all chats so that if you need any information from them it would always be available. If you would like to disable this behavior you can currently do so by opening Jitsis Options/Preferences, selecting the General pane and then unchecking the Log chat history option near the top. It is also possible to disable chats for specific contacts, to erase their history. An indicator in the chat window makes it aware at all times whether history is on or off while chatting with someone.

OTR protected chats follow the same pattern and some users have expressed concerns that this might be incompatible with their security expectations. Our position on this is that Jitsis role is to protect your communication. We also strive to offer usability. The current defaults represent these objectives: most people would prefer for their private communication not to be readable by third parties and most of the time people use Jitsi from personal devices where they are in control of the access policy.

In some cases users may wish for their communications not to be stored locally. This can be the case when using Jitsi on devices that others may also have access to. In such cases users need to be able to easily see whether history is being logged. They would also need to easily turn this off and potentially even erase previous history.

Note however that this subject is entirely different from the encryption one. They are separate measures meant to protect you against separate attacks or problems. We dont believe that the need for one would necessarily imply the need for the other. We are hence committed to also keeping that separation in the user interface.

Force SIP Message support.

Some SIP servers (Asterisk in particular) do not announce the MESSAGE support, despite supporting it. If you enable the account property FORCE_MESSAGING, Jitsi will attempt to use MESSAGE for chats, despite your configured SIP server not explicitly announcing this support to connected clients. For example, if your SIP account is john.smith@example.com, go to property editor type that in the search field and look for something like

net.java.sip.communicator.impl.protocol.sip.acc0123456789.ACCOUNT_UID with the value SIP:john.smith@example.com

The property to add in that case would be:

net.java.sip.communicator.impl.protocol.sip.acc0123456789.FORCE_MESSAGING with the value true.

How to add/edit configuration properties.

You can do so by clicking on ToolsOptions (JitsiPreferences on OS X), then selecting the Advanced tab and opening the Property Editor form. There you can search edit/delete or create new properties.

Is there an an Android version of Jitsi?

Yes, but it is still in an early alpha stage and further development has been put on hold until further notice. A lot of the user interface is not yet implemented. You can find the apk on the Download page.

Is there an iPhone/iPad version of Jitsi?

No. Due to the restrictions imposed by the platform it is highly unlikely this answer is going to change.

The cc-buildloop target of ant fails with the following error message: Could not create task or type of type: junitreport.

On some Linux distributions such as Debian, the ant package is actualy subdivided into multiple packages. So when you chose to install junit and ant with the distribution specific package system, dont forget to install ant-optional too.

The cc-buildloop target of ant fails with the following error message: No test with id=IcqProtocolProviderSlick.

Have you created your own accounts.properties file in the lib directory? Youll need to define two ICQ test accounts at least, and preferably some test accounts for the other supported protocols.

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ACLU’s Gillmor on privacy: ‘We pay for what we value’ (Q&A) – The Parallax (blog)

Posted: at 7:51 pm

SAN FRANCISCOCan something as mundane as modern Web hosting be used to increase consumer privacy? Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a senior staff technologist at the ACLUs Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, thinks so. He also believes that the future of consumer privacy depends on technology providers taking bolder steps to protect their users.

At a recent conference held here by the content delivery network company Fastly, Gillmor spent 20 minutes explaining a set of technology proposals that a modern Web host like Fastly can undertake to defend privacywithout burying itself in costly changes.

The adversaries who are doing network monitoring tend to focus on metadata, not on content, he told the crowd of engineers about the essential tracking data created when we write emails, watch cat videos online, or text emojis. The importance of metadata to surveillance was underscored by former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden in 2014, when he declared, We kill people based on metadata.

Gillmor explained how a content delivery network, or CDN, could combine new Internet traffic analysis countermeasures and Domain Name System obfuscation to help prevent spies from snooping on consumers Internet activities. Gillmors talk was more of a pitch about what a CDN can do than what Fastly is actually doing.

Daniel Kahn Gillmor. Photo courtesy ACLU.

After Gillmors presentation, he and I spoke at length about three of todays biggest challenges to consumer privacy: rising costs, responsibilities of private companies to their users, and struggles to make email more safe and private.

What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Q: There seems to be a growing digital divide over privacy technology. Whats your perspective?

My biggest fear is that were going to accept, as a society, that privacy is a luxury. You see that already, in many situations. Someone who can afford a home has more privacy than someone who cant afford a home. This is not just a digital-divide thing; its a general situation where people buy privacy for themselves. Its unjust.

Some services people buy are intended to help keep you off others radar. (And some of them actually are invasive.) And a lot of people dont even actively consider privacy when making purchasing decisions. So theres not enough of a market, in some sense, for privacy-preserving technologies.

Which ostensibly privacy-preserving technologies are people are buying that might actually be compromising them? Virtual private networks?

If you cant afford a VPN, most of your connections are going out in the clear, which means that your network provider has an opportunity to surveil you and build profiles about you.

But if everyone gets a VPN, all network traffic would get concentrated at a few VPN companies instead of at the various Internet service providers. And you could monitor everybodys traffic just by monitoring the VPNs, instead of all the different on-ramps.

And if you had a big budget and wanted to do a lot of monitoring, you could even set up your own VPN and sell access. Brand and market it, and then maybe Im paying you to harvest my data.

Another consideration: What privacy controls do we have on existing VPN services we might buy? They should be subject to the same constraints that we would like to put on the ISPs, because they are in the position to see all of the different stuff that we do online. Thats a different perspective than a network service that you may or may not decide to use.

Tor is the exception to this rule because its free and designed to reduce tracking, right?

Theres a bunch of mythology around Tor. But if you want to play around with it, its really not that hard. You go to TorProject.org, download the browser, and use it to browse the Web.

Its a little bit slower than what people usually expect from a Web browser. But Tor developers have really thought carefully, not just about how to route network traffic, but also about what browsers do and how they pass traffic. Tor really does provide a significant amount of user privacy.

We have a responsibility as engineers to try to fix the systems people actually use.

In dealing with cookies, for example, it uses double-keyed cookies. The typical browser makes a request, the origin sends back the page, and the page refers to several subresources such as images or video. It sends them with cookies [a small piece of computer data that can track behavior on the Web], which might come from a third party such as an ad server.

So if I visit a site, make a request from a third-party server, then visit another site that uses the same third-party server, that third party can identify me as the same person because of the identical cookies I send.

The Tor browser ensures that the cookies you send different sites dont match. I think it would be better to just not send cookies at all, but the Web has evolved such that there are things like authentication schemes that dont work, if you dont send any cookies to a third party. This is something Tor does through its browser. Its independent from its network traffic obfuscation.

If youre interested in getting the most developed set of privacy preservation tools that have been thought about, researched, and well implemented, Tor is the place to get it. As part of the Tor uplift to integrate features from the Tor browser back into Firefox, Mozilla has added double-keyed cookies into Firefox as an opt-in. This is a good example of how collaboration between noncompany technology providers can add functionality for a wide swath of users.

For instant messaging, people should be using Signal. And if theyre not using Signal, they should use WhatsApp.

What about for email?

Im involved with an effort to try to do a similar thing for email called Autocrypt. We have had email encryption technology available to us for 20 years. But encrypting email is painful.

So painful that the creator of email encryption tells people to stop using email to send sensitive data.

Phil Zimmerman doesnt use it anymore. He says people should stop using it, but the fact is, that wont happen. And he knows that.

We have a responsibility as engineers to try to fix the systems people actually use. Its one thing for us to say, Quit it. And its another thing to say, OK, we get it. You need email because email works in all these different ways.

I think we have a responsibility to try to clean up some of our messes, instead of saying, Well, that was a mistake. All of you idiots who are still doing what we told you was so cool two years ago need to stop doing it.

We need to actually support it. This is a problem that I call the curse of the deployed base. I take it seriously.

I expect to get a lot of shit, frankly, from some other members of the encrypted-email community.

The Autocrypt project is run by a group of email developers who are building a consensus around automated methods to give people some level of encrypted email without getting in their way.

Some of us deeply, intimately know the thousand paper cuts that come with trying to get encrypted email setup. We asked, Whats the right way to get around that for the majority of people? And the answer weve come up with isnt quite as good as traditional encrypted email, from a security perspective. But it isnt bad.

When someone asks me how to use email encryption, Id like to one day be able to tell him to use an Autocrypt-capable mail client, then turn on the Autocrypt feature.

From a solutions perspective, we dont necessarily handle everything correctly. But no one does traditional encrypted email properly. And encrypted email is a two-way street. If you want people to be able to do it, the people with whom you correspond need to also be doing it.

I expect to get a lot of shit, frankly, from some other members of the encrypted-email community. Five years ago, I would have said Autocrypt sounds dangerous because its not as strong as we expect. That is, I might have been inclined to give people shit about aproject like Autocrypt. However, I think that imperfect e-mail encryption with a focus on usability will be better protection than what we currently have, which is actually clear text for everyone, because no one can be bothered to use difficult e-mail encryption.

How important is it for consumers to understand whos targeting them?

This is the other thing that I feel like we dont have enough of a developed conversation around. Im a well-off white guy, working for a powerful nonprofit in the United States. Were not as powerful as wed like to be, and we obviously dont win as many of the fights that we would like to win. But I dont feel that Im personally, necessarily, a target.

Other people I talk to might be more targeted. I am responsible for pieces of infrastructure as a Debian [Linux] developer that other people rely on. They might be targeted. I could be targeted because theyre being targeted.

When we talk about threats, we take an individualistic approach when, in fact, we have a set of interdependencies. You and I exchange emails, and all of a sudden, someone who wants access to your emails can go attack my email.

We havent yet seen a sufficient shift to companies treating user data as a responsibility, instead of just as a future pot of money.

It used to be that I would set up a server, and you would connect to it to view my site. There were network intermediaries, but no CDN. Now there are both, and the CDNs privacy is my privacy is your privacy. All of these things are intermixed.

You have to think about the interdependencies that you have, as well as the threat model of the people who depend on you. Theres responsible data stewardshipI dont think that people think about that actively.

My hope is that every organization that holds someone elses data will see that data as a liability to be cared for, as well as an asset. Most people today see other peoples data as an asset because it will be useful at some point. Companies build venture capital on the basis of their user base, and on the assumption that you can monetize the user base somehow. Most of the time, that means sharing data.

We havent yet seen a sufficient shift to companies treating user data as a responsibility, instead of just as a future pot of money. How do we ensure that organizations in this middleman position take that responsibility seriously? We can try to hold them publicly accountable. We can say, Look, we understand you have access to this data, and we want you to be transparent about whom you leak it to. Or give it to.

Ive been happy to see large companies make a standard operating procedure of documenting all the times theyve had data requested by government agencies, but I dont think its adequate. It doesnt cover who theyve actually sent data to in commercial relationships.

A big challenge to the effort to protect consumers from hacking and spying is the effort to encrypt metadata. Where does it stand today?

Its complicated by a lot of factors.

First, what looks like content to some layers of the communications stack might look like metadata to other layers. For example, in an email, there is a header that says To, and a header that says From. From one perspective, the entire email is content. From another, the To and the From are metadata. Some things are obviously content, and some things are obviously metadata, but theres a vast gray area in the middle.

When youre talking about metadata versus content, it helps to be able to understand that the network operates on all these different levels. And the idea of encrypting metadata doesnt necessarily fit the full bill.

In terms of the size and timing of packets, for example, say you sent K bytes to me. You cannot encrypt the number. But you can obfuscate it.

Take profile pictures. If youre serving up a cache of relatively static data like avatars, you can serve every avatar at the same size.

Can you essentially hide other forms of metadata that cant be encrypted?

You can obfuscate an Internet Protocol address.

When I send you traffic over IP, the metadata at the IP layer is the source and destination address. If you encrypted the destination address, the traffic wouldnt reach the destination. So somebody has to see some of the metadata somewhere. And practically, realistically, I have no hope of encrypting, or protecting, the sending address. But maybe I dont need to present the source address.

Whether youre padding existing traffic to hide the size of the information transferred, or making changes to how domain name servers operate, what are the associated costs? Additional traffic isnt free, right?

Its hard to measure some of the costs. But youd measure padding to defend against traffic analysis in terms of throughput.

Imagine that your DNS was already encrypted. We know how to do it; we have the specification for it. Are we talking about an extra 5 percent of traffic? Or are we talking about an extra 200 percent or 2,000 percent of traffic? And if were talking about DNS, whats the proportion of that traffic relative to the proportion of all of the other traffic?

DNS traffic is peanuts compared to one streamed episode of House of Cards.

Some traffic analysis savant will come along and say, We found a way to attack your padding scheme, which is great. Thats how the science advances. But it might cost your adversary two to three times more to decipher, because of the padding.

If we step back from that, lets ask about other costs. Have you looked at the statistics for network traffic with an ad blocker versus no ad blocker?

Your browser pulls significantly less traffic, if it doesnt pull ads. And yet, as a society, we seem to have decided that the default should be to pull a bunch of ads. Weve decided that the traffic cost of advertising, which is more likely to be privacy-invasive, is worth paying.

So yes, metadata padding will cost something. Im not going to pretend that it doesnt, but we pay for what we value.

And if we dont value privacy, and thus dont pay for it, there will be a series of consequences. As a society, well be less likely to dissent. Well be more likely to stagnate. And, if we feel boxed in by surveillance, well be less likely to have a functioning democracy.

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As Investors Turn to Cryptocurrencies, Gold Suffers – Investopedia

Posted: at 7:50 pm

Investors looking to make an investment in an exciting new area are increasingly turning to cryptocurrencies. It's no wonder why: Bitcoin, the leading digital currency by market capitalization, has gained nearly 200% since the beginning of 2017. Ethereum, the next biggest currency, has gained more than 3,000% over the same period. (See also: Why Ethereum Prices Reached Record Highs.)

There are new currencies added to the list every month, and a sharp uptick in the number of initial coin offerings, or ICOs, means there are many other new startups and ventures related to the burgeoning crypto industry as well. As investors move to place their assets in the digital realm, demand in other areas seems to be drying up. In fact, gold may have been the most heavily impacted by the recent gains in the cryptocurrency world.

Cryptocurrency supply has actually dropped fairly significantly in recent months, according to a report by Business Insider. The rate of Bitcoins added to the market has more than halved in the past 12 months, from a rate of 9.3% to 4.4%.

If mining continues to slow down, Bitcoin won't reach its theoretical maximum number of 21 million Bitcoins until the year 2045, if not later. As supply has dwindled, prices have continued to rise.

It seems that the opposite may be true for gold. Gold production has climbed significantly since 2009, now sitting at 3,100 metric tons. This constitutes a record high level of production of the precious metal.

Tom Lee, managing partner and head of research for Fundstrat Global Advisors, indicated in a letter to clients that "cryptocurrencies are cannibalizing demand for gold. Bitcoin is arguably becoming a scarcer store of value. Investors need to identify strategies to leverage this potential rise in cryptocurrencies."

What could the future look like for the prices of Bitcoin and gold? Fundstrat's research indicates that prices for the cryptocurrency could climb by about eight times over the next five years, with Bitcoin prices reaching $20,000 during that time.

If the scenario turns out more bullish, Fundstrat believes Bitcoin could surge to more than $55,000 by 2022. What would happen to gold during that period? "Our model shows gold's value being relatively static against a rise in Bitcoin," Lee suggested.

Lee believes that if central banks begin to invest in Bitcoin and other digital currencies, that could speed up the process by which Bitcoin substitutes for gold in the international markets.

"Already central banks have looked into this possibility. In our view, this is a game changer, enhancing the legitimacy of the currency," he wrote. Of course, there are also analysts who believe a potential crash or bubble collapse is imminent in the cryptocurrency space, so only time will tell what will happen. (See also: Goldman Sachs Takes Bearish View on Bitcoin.)

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Is Solar-Powered Cryptocurrency Mining the Next Big Thing? – Investopedia

Posted: at 7:50 pm

Cryptocurrency mining is a difficult and costly activity. Miners must pay to build rigs capable of vast amounts of processing power, and then the rigs themselves must be powered with large quantities of electricity. It's all a careful balance between how much the operation costs and how much profit it is able to generate. (See also: What Happens to Bitcoin After All 21 Million are Mined?)

With mining operations for Ethereum, one of the leading digital currencies on the market today, taking up the same share of electricity as that of a small country, miners have to be careful that they aren't spending more than they are making. Because of that, some mining operations have begun to look to solar-powered rigs, set up in the desert, in order to reduce mining costs and make the largest profit possible. (See also: Chinese Investment in Bitcoin Mining is Enormous.)

Mining operations with the tools and resources to be able to set up solar-powered rigs in the desert are finding that it is a good investment. Once you have paid for the solar panel system itself, the cost of mining is virtually free. Getting rid of a hefty electric bill which typically weighs down mining operations leaves more room for profit.

The Merkle recently documented a mining operation focused on Bitcoin in this manner. The setup has been running successfully for almost a year and currently uses 25 separate computing rigs. The process has been so profitable, in fact, that the miner running the operation plans to increase the number of computers to 1,000 this fall.

In the case of this particular desert miner, the individual mining rigs cost about $8,000. This cost has included all solar panels, power controls, batteries, and the Antminer S9 ASIC processor. When fully operational, each miner brings in a profit of about $18 per day.

Of course, a cheap mining operation is only part of the equation. In order for miners to make a tidy profit, the price of the cryptocurrencies they are generating must remain high.

In the case of the mining operation in question, Merkle suggests that Bitcoin prices must stay above $2,000 in order for the operation to be profitable. Considering that the price of most cryptocurrencies is highly volatile, and that drops of 205 or more have occurred in many individual days, this keeps a certain element of risk present in any mining operation.

It seems likely that more and more miners will turn to areas in which renewable energy is easily accessed. Iceland has already become a popular destination for Bitcoin miners thanks to its fast, virtually limitless internet. Miners looking to move to the desert should be cautious for other reasons, though: mining in the heat can cause rigs to break down more easily.

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Secret millions for cryptocurrency trader – SFGate

Posted: at 7:50 pm

Photo: KAREN BLEIER, AFP / Getty Images

Secret millions for cryptocurrency trader

An unknown cryptocurrency trader turned $55 million of paper wealth into $283 million in just over a month.

The only clue about this person or persons, beyond a virtual wallet with an ID code, surfaced on a June 11 Instagram posting, in Indonesian, in which someone boasted about the 413 percent profit accumulated this year from ether, the digital money of the Ethereum blockchain.

I get many private messages asking how much ether I have, the post read, alongside photos that purported to be the hardware powering a mining operation, but looked lifted from another website. One of the cool things about Ethereum is that all wallets around the world are transparent and open for everyone to see. And this is my wallets savings.

Hidden identities are a popular feature of the twilight world of virtual money. Now that the total value of cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin and ether, soared June 6 to more than $100 billion, approaching the market value of McDonalds Corp., concerned regulators say it might be time to link wallet IDs with actual humans.

Secrecy persists from the days when Ross Ulbricht, going by the name Dread Pirate Roberts, used bitcoin to launder money and traffic in narcotics, activities for which he started serving a life term at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.

Thats not to say that the person in Indonesia or any other entities are doing anything illegal. But opacity may be worsening jagged price movements. The value of ether, for example, rose from about $8 a unit at the start of the year to crest at $400 in June before settling around $250 now. A lack of transparency could also be stifling the mainstreaming of online money, according to draft legislation issued by the European Parliament in March.

The credibility of virtual currencies will not rise if they are used for criminal purposes, the draft said. In this context, anonymity will become more a hindrance than an asset for virtual currencies and their potential future popularity.

Pseudonymity has always been a big part of the markets allure. Upending traditional ways of doing business was the lodestar for Ethereums inventor, 23-year-old Vitalik Buterin. He released his software in 2015, not long after dropping out of Canadas University of Waterloo.

One of its more important features is that you dont have identities tied to this, said Spencer Bogart, head of research at venture firm Blockchain Capital. This financial privacy is an important characteristic.

Ether, the second-most-popular cryptocurrency after bitcoin, is used to pay for applications or programs that run on the Ethereum blockchain, a secured list of transactions that can be shared. That allows for the use of smart contracts, or pieces of computer code that make the terms of such agreements operate automatically. The blockchain has the potential to reshape business and finance by enabling immediate settlements of activities such as bank transfers and securities trades.

Tom Metcalf is a Bloomberg writer. Email: tmetcalf7@bloomberg.net

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Cryptocurrency ATB Coin Offers Investors a Crypto-Lottery for the $20.000 Grand Prize. Only 2 Days Left! – CryptoCoinsNews

Posted: at 7:50 pm

This is a sponsored story. CCN does not endorse, nor is responsible for any material included below and isnt responsible for any damages or losses connected with any products or services mentioned in the material below. CCN urges readers to conduct their own research with due diligence into the company, product or service mentioned below.

In less than 2 days, we will congratulate ATB Coin Crypto-Lottery winners. The Grand Prize fund of $20.000 is to be shared between 5 randomly chosen investors. The process and the results of lottery will be announced on a special page on ATB Coin website. The lottery will be held at 6 p.m. on July 11th for registered users who invest a minimum 200 ATB. For each 200 ATB, the investor gets one lottery ticket. The larger the amount invested, the greater the chance to win.

Prize funds are:

During the ICO, which still remains open today, the newly introduced cryptocurrency ATB Coin has already attracted 1700+ investors. Such an interest in this cryptocurrency is due to the numerous advantages of ATB Coin that is going to be the most secure, fast, and flexible, according to analysts. The strongest features of ATB Coin allow it to stand ahead of competition:

Being the one cryptocurrency combining the newest technologies, ATB Coin has all chances to overcome well-known inefficiencies within government central banks and other cryptocurrencies. Join ATB Coin, invest now in cryptocurrency of the future!

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Criminals rarely use cryptocurrency – BetaNews

Posted: at 7:50 pm

The fact that cybercriminals like to be paid in Bitcoin to unlock encrypted files or sell private information gives the impression that criminals must be major users of cryptocurrency. However, a new report from the European Commission suggests that the reality is very different.

Criminal organizations rarely use cryptocurrency (or, as the European Commission calls it, virtual currency) for illegal activities, like financing terrorism and money laundering, because it requires a certain level of technical expertise that hampers adoption.

The European Commission says that criminals have displayed "high intent" to use cryptocurrency in their activities, because it affords a certain degree of anonymity and it is relatively easy to transfer, but, at least right now, the"amounts of money laundered via virtual currencies are quite low."

On top of the expertise required in handling cryptocurrency, criminals too are not very fond of the market's volatility, which can see major spikes in either direction in a narrow time frame, at least when it involves money laundering.

When it comes to financing terrorism, the European Commission has found that there is a "limited but increasing number of cases related to [terrorist financing] through [cryptocurrency]," but, again, the "knowledge and technical expertise" that this requires "has a dissuasive effect on terrorist groups."

In both cases, the European Commission sees the fact that there are no regulations in place as the biggest vulnerability related to cryptocurrency. "There are no controls in place and no common rules in the EU to ensure that VCs [virtual currencies] providers apply AML/CFT [Anti Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism] requirements. The international cooperation is non-existent. New risks and opportunities may emerge with FinTech/RegTech."

To learn more, feel free to read the full report.

Image Credit: Lightboxx/Shutterstock

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