THC/vonJeek proudly presents an ePassport emulator. This emulator applet 
allows you to create a backup of your own passport chip(s).


The government plans to use ePassports at Immigration and Border
Control. The information is electronically read from the Passport
and displayed to a Border Control Officer or used by an automated
setup. THC has discovered weaknesses in the system to (by)pass the
security checks. The detection of fake passport chips does not
work. Test setups do not raise alerts when a modified chip
is used. This enables an attacker to create a Passport with an
altered Picture, Name, DoB, Nationality and other credentials.

The manipulated information is displayed without any alarms going off.
The exploitation of this loophole is trivial and can be verified using
thc-epassport.

Regardless how good the intention of the government might have been, the
facts are that tested implementations of the ePassports Inspection System
are not secure.

ePassports give us a false sense of security: We are made to believe
that they make usemore secure. I'm afraid that's not true: current

ePassport implementations don't add security at all.  --MORE WITH VIDEO--

Bailout bill loops in green tech, IRS snooping

Last week, the Bush administration proposed a three-page bill to bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion. It died in the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this week.

Section 115 of the law says that the administration can, after notifying Congress and waiting 15 days, purchase and hold $700 billion of assets "at any one time." (It can buy and hold $350 billion without waiting.)

This, too, is a potential loophole. It permits the Treasury Department to buy up, say, $700 billion in 2008, sell those assets off gradually over the next year at a (probable) loss, and repeat the same process in 2009. Losses to taxpayers, in other words, could exceed $700 billion. Although the Treasury Department is instructed to try to avoid losses, the text of the law does not forbid that scenario.

--MORE--

By John Ruwitch and Emma Graham-Harrison

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Savvy Internet users in China began avoiding the version of Skype offered by its Chinese partner two years ago, but news it filtered and recorded text messages has sparked new worries about the global firm's commitment to privacy.

The U.S.-owned Web communications firm faces a backlash at home and in China for apparently allowing core principles to be compromised in order to meet the demands of Chinese censors, analysts warned.

"We may never know whether some of those people whose conversations were logged have gone to jail or have had their lives ruined in various ways as a result of this," said Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet expert at Hong Kong University.

--MORE--
 

What Did Bush Tell Gonzales?

In March 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a now-famous late-night visit to the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking to get Ashcroft to sign a certification stating that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was legal. According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit.

The hospital visit is already central to many contemporaneous historical accounts of the Bush presidency. At the time of the visit, Ashcroft had been in intensive care for six days, was heavily medicated, and was recovering from emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has said that he believes that Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who accompanied Gonzales to Ashcroft’s hospital room, were trying to take advantage of Ashcroft’s grievously ill state—pressing him to sign the certification possibly without even comprehending what he was doing—and in the process authorize a government surveillance program which both Ashcroft and the Justice Department had concluded was of questionable legality.

--MORE--

Hey, Moishi, give my regards to Peres.


Trojan Horse

How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the US Government's Telecom System and Compromised National Security

by Christopher Ketcham

Since the late 1990s, federal agents have reported systemic communications security breaches at the Department of Justice, FBI, DEA, the State Department, and the White House. Several of the alleged breaches, these agents say, can be traced to two hi-tech communications companies, Verint Inc. (formerly Comverse Infosys), and Amdocs Ltd., that respectively provide major wiretap and phone billing/record-keeping software contracts for the US government. Together, Verint and Amdocs form part of the backbone of the government's domestic intelligence surveillance technology. Both companies are based in Israel – having arisen to prominence from that country's cornering of the information technology market – and are heavily funded by the Israeli government, with connections to the Israeli military and Israeli intelligence (both companies have a long history of board memberships dominated by current and former Israeli military and intelligence officers). Verint is considered the world leader in "electronic interception" and hence an ideal private sector candidate for wiretap outsourcing. Amdocs is the world's largest billing service for telecommunications, with some $2.8 billion in revenues in 2007, offices worldwide, and clients that include the top 25 phone companies in the United States that together handle 90 percent of all call traffic among US residents. The companies' operations, sources suggest, have been infiltrated by freelance spies exploiting encrypted trapdoors in Verint/Amdocs technology and gathering data on Americans for transfer to Israeli intelligence and other willing customers (particularly organized crime). "The fact of the vulnerability of our telecom backbone is indisputable," says a high level US intelligence officer who has monitored the fears among federal agents. "How it came to pass, why nothing has been done, who has done what – these are the incendiary questions." If the allegations are true, the electronic communications gathered up by the NSA and other US intelligence agencies might be falling into the hands of a foreign government. Reviewing the available evidence, Robert David Steele, a former CIA case officer and today one of the foremost international proponents for "public intelligence in the public interest," tells me that "Israeli penetration of the entire US telecommunications system means that NSA's warrantless wiretapping actually means Israeli warrantless wiretapping."

Herald

Hanford Patrol Officer Travers Bracy examines images on a monitor Tuesday from cameras set up around the Toyota Center. Officials with the federal Department of Homeland Security, with the help of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, are testing the high-tech gear on crowds entering the arena. Testing begins Sept. 26.

 

Can high-tech infrared cameras and millimeter-wave cameras "see" terrorist threats coming from as far as 130 yards away?

Kennewick police and Hanford Patrol officers will test the effectiveness of the high-tech gear in a six-week tryout at the Toyota Center.

The experiment, which goes live Sept. 26 for six home games of the Tri-City Americans, will help the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate determine if the technologies are effective in the hands of local law enforcement.

--MORE--

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 14, 2008; A01

This is the first of two stories adapted from "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," to be published Tuesday by Penguin Press. Original source notes are denoted in [brackets] throughout.

A burst of ferocity stunned the room into silence. No other word for it: The vice president's attorney was shouting.

"The president doesn't want this! [1] You are not going to see the opinions. You are out . . . of . . . your . . . lane!"

Five government lawyers had gathered around a small conference table in the Justice Department command center. Four were expected. David S. Addington, counsel to Vice President Cheney, got wind of the meeting and invited himself.

--MORE--

By Andy Dolan
Last updated at 5:45 PM on 09th September 2008

Telford Town Park in Shropshire, where council workers have been told to confront lone adults in the park to check if they are paedophiles

They are one of the few remaining refuges from the hustle and bustle of urban life - the perfect spot for a sandwich away from the office or a gentle stroll in the fresh air.

Except, it appears in Telford, Shropshire, where park staff have been ordered to stop and quiz people using the town's park who are not accompanied by a child.

They face having to explain what they are doing in the park and could be thrown out by park wardens or reported to police if they remained unconvinced.

--MORE--
 

Edvige, which is also a woman’s name, has been dubbed Sarkozy’s "Big Sister" in France

Charles Bremner in Paris

President Nicolas Sarkozy faced an embarrassing split in his Cabinet today over a computer system that a new French internal intelligence service will use to spy on the private lives of millions of law-abiding citizens.

Hervé Morin, the Defence Minister, broke government ranks to side with a growing revolt against Edvige, an acronym for a police database that will store personal details including opinions, the social circle and even sexual preferences of more or less anyone who interests the State.

Edvige, which is also a woman's name, was created by decree in July to store data on anyone aged 13 or above who is "likely to breach public order".

"Sarkozy's Big Sister", as it has been dubbed, will also track anyone active in politics or trade unions and in a significant role in business, the media, entertainment or social or religious institutions. Listed people will have limited rights to consult their files.

--MORE--

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer

Monday, September 8, 2008

Even though Congress has growled loudly enough to get Internet service providers to back off their plans to sell information about their customers’ Web surfing to advertising companies, one prominent legal expert argues that the law governing the issue should still be made tougher.

The issue was examined in a new paper, “The Rise and Fall of Invasive ISP Surveillance”, by Paul Ohm, a former Justice Department official who now is a professor of law at the University of Colorado.

Mr. Ohm argues that the prospect of Internet service providers using new technology to monitor what their customers do online is a grave threat to privacy.

--MORE--
 

The Debut of Chrome, Google's New Browser, May Have Been Quiet for a Reason

COLUMN
By MICHAEL S. MALONE

Sept. 5, 2008 —

While we're transfixed by the presidential election, in the world of high tech another duel between two well-funded, take-no-quarter candidates has just emerged & and in the long run the impact on our daily lives may be nearly as great -- and perhaps even sinister.

As you probably heard, on Monday -- that is, on a national holiday, when business announcements are almost never made -- Google rolled out Chrome, its new Web browser.

Why the odd timing? Hard to say. Google surely knows that just about anything it does these days is going to cause a news frenzy -- and especially when it's announcing its first thrust into a huge new market.

--MORE--