Over Redaction in Audit of FBI’s Use of Illegal Exigent Letters

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The report reveals that AT&T routinely provided the FBI with the “community of interest” profiles of its customers without any legal process. However, the DOJ redacted a large section of the report that discusses what a “community of interest” is, including an explanatory diagram. Yet, AT&T itself has published several research papers extensively discussing communities of interest. Basically, your community of interest includes the people you call and who call you, and the people with whom this group communicates. It is sometimes refined by frequency or by time period. AT&T even published the Hancock programming language, which AT&T designed to analyze communities of interest, and “sift calling card records, long distance calls, IP addresses and internet traffic dumps, and even track the physical movements of mobile phone customers as their signal moves from cell site to cell site.” AT&T published this graphic, which illustrates AT&T using what they call “guilt by association” to determine fraud within a community of interest (the shaded boxes).

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Alva Castro habría comprado equipos de chuponeo durante su gestión en el MININTER

CPN RADIO – 21 ENE| Pese a que la información confiscada a Rómulo León es secreta, un medio televisivo tuvo acceso a un correo electrónico que demostraría que el presidente del Congreso, Luis Alva Castro estaría involucrado en la compra de equipos para chuponeo telefónico. El documento extraído del CPU de León Alegría dice lo siguiente: “Lucho, Carlos José Mote sufre porque su amigo LAC no lo ayuda. Su principal en Israel le ha informado que el MININTER ha comprado a ISDS equipos de interceptación de celulares por más de un millón de dólares, productos que él representa y que oportunamente ofreció al Ministerio. Dime cuando puedo ir a visitarte con él”. Al respecto Alva Castro negó que bajo su gestión el Ministerio del Interior haya comprado estos equipos y aseguró que en ningún momento se reunió con Rómulo León para conversar sobre este tema. Carlos José Mote, quien es mencionado en el correo electrónico, es íntimo amigo de León Alegría, y fue su empresa Soclar la que representó al empresario dominicano Fortunato Canaán en temas relacionados a la construcción de hospitales. Link

Espionaje: piden prisión preventiva para el ex ministro Narodowski

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Burstein fue escuchado de manera ilegal gracias a un oficio judicial proveniente de un juzgado de Misiones que ordenó intervenir su teléfono celular en la investigación del homicidio de un dentista en esa provincia.

La diligencia fue pedida por James y solicitada a un magistrado de allí por tres policías, también procesados en la causa.

Además esta detenido con preventiva el ex jefe de la Policía Metropolitana Jorge Palacios, considerado ideólogo de la escucha a Burstein, quien criticaba su designación al frente de esa fuerza por supuestas irregularidades que dejo su paso por la investigación del ataque a la AMIA.

Oyarbide anticipo en los últimos días la posibilidad de convocar a declaración indagatoria al jefe de Gobierno Mauricio Macri y a además de Burstein, fueron escuchados con esta misma metodología un cuñado de Macri, Néstor Leonardo y también el empresario Carlos Ávila, gerentes de supermercados, entre otros.

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DOJ: Operators helped FBI illegally obtain phone records

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IDG News Service – The FBI was so cavalier — and telecom companies so eager to help — that a verbal request or even one written on a Post-it note was enough for operators to hand over customer phone records, according to a damning report released on Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.

The 289-page report details findings of the DOJ’s investigation into the FBI’s policies for requesting phone records from 2003 through 2006.

It found that in many cases the FBI issued written requests for telephone information, saying that it had secured the proper legal authority to make such requests, even though it didn’t.

Also, the report found that the FBI used far more casual methods to obtain records, including verbal requests and requests written on Post-it notes.

When the FBI did use formal written requests, it did not track their use or keep copies of them, the report found.

Some telecom employees, who were based in FBI offices so as to quickly respond to such requests, said that they assumed that the requests were based on a critical national security investigation, although at least one expressed doubts about the circumstances surrounding requests. In fact, some telecom company employees were so enthusiastic to help that they would generate the formal written requests for telephone records on behalf of the FBI.

The report refers to three telecom providers that placed employees in FBI offices, but it does not name the operators.
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Gold Line Encryption Software Sales Rise After Increase in Hacker Attacks

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When the two most widely used algorithms in the cellular communication industry were proven to be not completely safe against hacking attempts, it reinforced the notion that virtually any cellular conversation or online digital transaction that depends upon either of these exploited technologies are open to monitoring and interception by hackers, thieves, spies, government agencies, or terrorists.

According to Noam Copel, CEO of Gold Lock, this devastating one-two punch impacts over 85 percent of the world’s cellular users, and as these users realize their business and personal conversations are wide open to eavesdropping, they are quickly turning to military-grade encrypted phones as a solution.

As a result of these attacks, the security concerning technology users the world over are turning to companies with software and products that are not based upon these technologies in order to save themselves against any potential hacking attack.

Gold Lock is one of those security solution providers, and deploys AES 256-bit and Elliptic Curve 384-bit encryption for protecting data and Diffie Hellman 4096-bit encryption for securing key transfers within its digital encryption software. Additionally, its security software solutions don’t need any extra hardware or training, as all encryption is executed using the protected device’s native processing power.

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La secretaria de Macri declaró que Macri le ordenó enviar el mail

Comisión “chuponeo” entregará su informe final antes de marzo

| CPN RADIO – 13:16 – 08 ENE| La comisión parlamentaria que investiga las interceptaciones telefónicas entregará su informe final antes de marzo, aseguró su presidente, Oswaldo Luizar.

En De primera mano de CPN Radio calculó que una semana antes de que concluya su mandato tendrán listo el documento, tras garantizar que no pedirán una ampliación.

Luizar Obregón detalló que ya no pueden perder tiempo, pues existe información importante que entregar.

Indicó, además, que los correos del presidente Alan García fueron interceptados cuando era candidato.

http://www.cpnradio.pe/html/2010/01/08/1/5109.htm

Secret mobile phone codes cracked

By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News Encryption is used on mobiles to stop eavesdropping A German computer scientist has published details of the secret code used to protect the conversations of more than 4bn mobile phone users. Karsten Nohl, working with other experts, has spent the past five months cracking the algorithm used to encrypt calls using GSM technology. GSM is the most popular standard for mobile networks around the world. The work could allow anyone – including criminals – to eavesdrop on private phone conversations. Mr Nohl told the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin that the work showed that GSM security was “inadequate”. “We are trying to inform people about this widespread vulnerability,” he told BBC News. “We hope to create some additional pressure and demand from customers for better encryption.” The GSM Association (GSMA), which devised the algorithm and oversees development of the standard, said Mr Nohl’s work would be “highly illegal” in the UK and many other countries. “This isn’t something that we take lightly at all,” a spokeswoman said. Mr Nohl told the BBC that he had consulted with lawyers before publication and believed the work was “legal”. ‘Secret key’ GSM encryption was first introduced in 1987 Mr Nohl, working with a “few dozen” other people, claims to have published material that would crack the A5/1 algorithm, a 22-year-old code used by many carriers. The code is designed to prevent phone calls from being intercepted by forcing mobile phones and base stations to rapidly change radio frequencies over a spectrum of 80 channels. It is known to have a series of weaknesses with the first serious flaw exposed in 1994. Mr Nohl, who describes himself as an “offensive security researcher”, announced his intention to crack the code at the Hacking at Random (HAR) conference in The Netherlands in August this year. “Any cryptographic function is a one way street,” he told BBC News. “You should not be able to decrypt without the secret key”. To get around this problem, Mr Nohl, working with other members of the encryption community, used networks of computers to crunch through “every possible combination” of inputs and outputs for the encryption code. Mr Nohl said there were “trillions” of possibilities. It lowers the bar for people and organisations to crack GSM calls Ian Meakin Cellcrypt All of the outputs are now detailed in a vast table, which can be used to determine the encryption key used to secure the conversation or text message. “It’s like a telephone book – if someone tells you a name you can look up their number,” he said. Using the codebook, a “beefy gaming computer and $3,000 worth of radio equipment” would allow anyone to decrypt signals from the billions of GSM users around the world, he said. Signals could be decrypted in “real time” with $30,000 worth of equipment, Mr Nohl added. ‘Not practical’ It has previously been possible to decrypt GSM signals to listen in on conversations, but the equipment cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” experts said. According to Ian Meakin, of mobile encryption firm Cellcrypt, only government agencies and “well funded” criminals had access to the necessary technology. He described Mr Nohl’s work as a “massive worry”. “It lowers the bar for people and organisations to crack GSM calls,” he told BBC News. “It inadvertently puts these tools and techniques in the hands of criminals.” However, the GSMA dismissed the worries, saying that “reports of an imminent GSM eavesdropping capability” were “common”. It said that there had been “a number” of academic papers outlining how A5/1 could be compromised but “none to date have led to a practical attack”. The association said that it had already outlined a proposal to upgrade A5/1 to a new standard known as A5/3 which was currently being “phased in”. “All in all, we consider this research, which appears to be motivated in part by commercial considerations, to be a long way from being a practical attack on GSM,” the spokeswoman said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8429233.stm