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Article Biometric Social Security Cards as a National Worker ID
Showing posts with label Security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Security. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
US Election Assistance Commission very selective in reporting of CIA analysis of electronic voting machines
Government reform orgs. deliver news on major events within their areas of expertise.
From: The Examiner
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission was created to oversee federal elections and regulate the electronic voting machine industry. Slow to the task and led by holdovers from the abandoned National Association of State Election Directors oversight scheme, the EAC has inched along developing a bureaucratic infrastructure to address the problems of electronic voting machines.
The main problem with the software driven devices used in electronic voting machines is that they can be hacked by undetectable malicious code or in simple language, the machines cannot be trusted.
Academic studies are piling up against the various voting machine manufacturers over the security and reliability of the machines. In February the EAC arranged for a cyber-security specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency to give them a heads-up about hacking.
The EAC website has posted Steve Stigall's CIA resume for all the public to read. The EAC also posted a summary of his remarks. However, what the EAC did not post were Stigall's dire warnings about the dangers of the voting machines.
What the EAC told us.
Steve Stigall started working for the CIA in 1985. Stigall's early analytic career at the spy agency was focused on Soviet strategic missile forces. "Since 1995 he has specialized in foreign computer threats. In 2000 Mr. Stigall was inducted into CIA's Senior Analytic Service."
Describing a "growing potential for cyber vote fraud" the EAC summarized Stigall's remarks.
"An analysis of foreign countries' experience with computerizing their election systems has revealed challenges to the electronic safeguarding of increasingly computer-dependent elections. This presentation, while not addressing US-specific approaches, offers insights for policymakers in this country who seek to enhance the role of computers and computer networks in the electoral process."
What the EAC didn't tell us.
McClatchy Newspapers has obtained a transcript of Stigall's warning to the EAC which they kept from the official website and have not shared with 'policymakers' in any public manner.
Stigall told the EAC that the CIA had reported apparent vote-rigging in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine. The news report was of "disturbing lessons for the United States" where Stigall warned of five entry points where a "malicious actor" could "make bad things happen."
Stigall told the EAC that any voting machine connected to the internet could be hacked and that machines not hooked up could be hacked wirelessly if the machine had a wireless card embedded in its hardware.
Stigall said that most web-based ballot systems were proven to be insecure. The CIA began studying foreign voting systems after concluding that foreigners might try to hack American elections to alter the outcome.
Stigall suggested that even an audit of the Venezuelan alleged-rigging may have been fixed. The CIA focused on Venezuela for study in part because Smartmatic, a Venezuela-connected company, owned Sequoia Voting Systems until 2007. The machines with a foreign connection were in use in 16 states and the District of Columbia raising concern at the CIA.
Stigall explained that in the country of Georgia people who died in the 1700's were added to the electronic voter registry. While in Macedonia the number of Albanians' purged from electronic voting lists amounted to "voter genocide".
According to the McClatchy story, Stigall asked the EAC not identify him yet the Commission posted his resume anyway.
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Sunday, March 15, 2009
"How-To Guide to Fight Government Spying" now online at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
From: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
EFF Releases How-To Guide to Fight Government Spying
'Surveillance Self-Defense' Gives Practical Advice on Protecting Your Private Data
March 3rd, 2009'Surveillance Self-Defense' Gives Practical Advice on Protecting Your Private Data
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched its Surveillance Self-Defense project today -- an online how-to guide for protecting your private data against government spying. You can find the project at http://ssd.eff.org.
EFF created the Surveillance Self-Defense site to educate Americans about the law and technology of communications surveillance and computer searches and seizures, and to provide the information and tools necessary to keep their private data out of the government's hands. The guide includes tips on assessing the security risks to your personal computer files and communications, strategies for interacting with law enforcement, and articles on specific defensive technologies such as encryption that can help protect the privacy of your data.
"Despite a long and troubling history in this country of the government abusing its surveillance powers, most Americans know very little about how the law protects them or about how they can take steps to protect themselves against government surveillance," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "The Surveillance Self-Defense project offers citizens a legal and technical toolkit with tips on how to defend themselves in case the government attempts to search, seize, subpoena or spy on their most private data."
Surveillance Self-Defense details what the government can legally do to spy on your computer data and communications, and what you can legally do to protect yourself against such spying. It addresses how to protect not only the data stored on your computer, but also the data you communicate over the phone or the Internet and data about your communications that are stored by third party service providers.
"You can imagine the Internet as a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up all of the private information that you let near it. We want to show people the tools they can use to encrypt and anonymize data, protecting themselves against government surveillance," said EFF Staff Technologist Peter Eckersley. "Privacy is about mitigating risks and making tradeoffs. Every decision you make about whether to save an email, chat online, or search with or sign into Google has privacy implications. It's important to understand those implications and make informed decisions based on them, and we hope that Surveillance Self-Defense will help you do that."
Surveillance Self-Defense was created with the support of the Open Society Institute.
For Surveillance Self-Defense:
http://ssd.eff.org
Contacts:
Kevin Bankston
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
bankston@eff.org
Peter Eckersley
Staff Technologist
Electronic Frontier Foundation
pde@eff.org
Related Issues: Privacy
[No comments allowed with EFF press release article]
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