Politics

There were sharp words on the floor of the US Senate on Wednesday as lawmakers debated the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) and its amendments.

The bill, proposed by Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), would allow internet giants and other companies to share people’s personal information with the US government so it can be analyzed for signs of lawbreaking – be it computer related or not.

In return, the companies would get legal immunity from angry customers, although legal action is unlikely because the businesses and the government don’t have to reveal what they have shared, even with a freedom of information request.

The proposed legislation has been criticized by internet rights groups, and also by technology firms. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others published an open letter calling for the legislation to be rewritten, and since then Apple, Salesforce.com, Yelp, and Wikipedia have joined them in opposing the draft law.

Feinstein said organizations won’t be forced to reveal citizens’ private lives to Uncle Sam: it won’t be mandatory for businesses to hand over people’s private records, she claimed.

If you don’t like the bill, you don’t have to do it, Feinstein said.

So it’s hard for me to understand why we have companies like Apple and Google and Microsoft and others saying they can’t support the bill at this time. You have no reason, because you don’t have to do anything, but there are companies by the hundreds if not thousands that want to participate in this.

Her colleague Burr said on the floor that he couldn’t understand the opposition to CISA. Businesses against the new law will put their users at risk, he said, because by not sharing people’s personal information, they will not be given intelligence and heads up on attacks from the Feds.

When the companies who are against this get hacked, they are going to be begging to cooperate with the federal government, he opined — via redwolf.newsvine.com

One of the world’s most notorious providers of offensive information technology to governments has had its internal systems breached and customer documentation dumped on the open internet.

Hacking Team, founded in 2003 and based in Milan, Italy, provides surveillance software and intrusion tools to law enforcement agencies around the world.

On its website it boasts clients across the US, Europe and the Asia Pacific, assisted by more than 50 employees providing all aspects of offensive IT tools.

The company’s primary surveillance tool – dubbed Da Vinci – earned it a spot on the Reporters Without Borders Enemies of the Internet list.

Its products allow governments to monitor online communications, record voice-over-IP (VoIP) sessions, remotely activate microphones and cameras, and break encrypted files and emails.

The company’s Twitter account was today compromised, and around 400GB of internal emails, files and source code were leaked to the internet, and spread via social media.

The attackers also posted screenshots of the compromised data from the leaked file to Twitter, and defaced the company’s logo and biography.

Earlier this afternoon — before his own Twitter account appeared to be hacked — Hacking Team engineer Christian Pozzi confirmed the breach and said the company was notifying affected customers and working with police.

According to the leaked data, Hacking Team counts customers from South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt and Mongolia. The company has long maintained it does not sell to oppressive governments — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Australia is one of the most aggressive countries in the world in terms of mass surveillance and its techniques could be the subject of future leaks, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first reported on the Edward Snowden revelations for the Guardian, has said.

Greenwald, who now works for The Intercept, told ABC’s Lateline program on Thursday night that Australia is probably the country that has gotten away with things the most in terms of the Snowden revelations.

There are interesting documents about what Australia is doing to privacy rights — not just to their own citizens Glenn Greenwald

Australia is one of the most aggressive countries that engage in mass surveillance as a member of the Five Eyes partnership, he said, referring to a security sharing arrangement between the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

There has been less reporting on Australia than the other four countries. We intend to change that.

We are working on the reporting, he continued. We will definitely get that done as soon as we can — via redwolf.newsvine.com