August 2013

President Barack Obama pledged he’d appoint “outside experts” to review the country’s surveillance practices, but he’s since tapped largely insiders for the key posts.

The group, formed to examine the policies and procedures at the National Security Agency as it tracks terrorism suspects’ digital communications, is composed mostly of Washington types, many with connections to the very intelligence establishment they’re now tasked with scrutinizing in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks. There’s Michael Morell, a CIA veteran who once led the agency on an interim basis; Richard Clarke, a top counter-terrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations; and Cass Sunstein, a well-known academic who did regulatory work for the Obama White House and is married to United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power. In the absence of technologists on the board, Chris Soghoian, principal technologist and senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said there’s “no way” for the new surveillance review group to address the burgeoning debate over surveillance when it’s composed primarily of lawyers and career Washington types. The board does not include technology executives either, some of whom — like Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google engineer Vint Cerf — huddled with Administration officials and the President himself days before President Obama announced the review.

“I think it’s fair to say that by stressing the idea of an independent review board, the appointees don’t live up to what most people view as independent,” said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology. What President Obama was actually seeking, Harris said, was a group to look at the internal management and effectiveness of surveillance programs. She added the board has a “very broad mission, and I’m going to withhold judgment until I see what they do.”

Robocop may not be real, but his efficiency is something worth aspiring to. Through the use of Google Glass, communications vendor Mutualink may soon give public safety and military personnel a chance to capture some of the half-robot, half-man’s technological capabilities.

Showcased from August 18 to 21 at the annual Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) conference in Anaheim (CA), Mutualink demonstrated how Google Glass could serve real-time information to public safety officials using their interoperability communications platform. Google Glass doesn’t change how their system works, he said. In many ways, it’s just another computer, but with the important difference that it frees up the hands of the person using it. In one demonstration, the company illustrated how Google Glass and their network could allow video or a map to be shared during a mock school shooting. “We really saw firsthand that first responders inside a school need to have timely and situational awareness and they need their hands. Both of them,” he said. Google Glass’s heads up display (HUD) allows users to look to the right in their peripheral vision and view information that is being served to them, like maps, blueprints, surveillance video feeds, or other documents. Information can also be returned back to command and control from the field. As for Google Glass, Col. Corval said he anticipates the most useful component of the system will be the ability to capture data from the point of view of first responders. The initial purchase of Mutualink equipment will be installed at the Integrated Command and Control Center in Rio de Janeiro so that security, fire and emergency supervisors and dispatchers can easily share information.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida found Hotfile, one of the world’s most trafficked infringing sites, liable for copyright infringement.

It rejected Hotfile’s defense under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and held that its principal, Anton Titov, was personally liable for the infringement. Chris Dodd, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, cheered the decision on behalf of member studios. This case marks the first time that a U.S. court has ruled on whether so-called cyberlockers can be held liable for their infringing business practices.

The Syrian Electronic Army’s high-profile attacks against the New York Times and Twitter have drawn a lot of attention — and raised some anxious questions about vulnerabilities across the Web. This type of attack is known as a domain name system, or DNS, hijacking which changes information within the DNS, a system that essentially acts as a phonebook for the Internet by directing users who type in a Web address to the right place. A DNS hijack changes where users get directed when they type in an address.

The SEA used this method to cause mischief and publicize what it was doing, but security researchers said that others could cause more damage than that. For example, F-Secure security advisor Sean Sullivan said that hackers may be able to use this method to redirect users logging into something like a banking Web site to a false version of the company’s log-in screen and trick people into logging in.