PI Newswire

Scenario: Your government is displeased with the communication going on in your location and pulls the plug on your internet access, most likely by telling the major ISPs to turn off service.

This is what happened in Egypt January 25 prompted by citizen protests, with sources estimating that the Egyptian government has cut off approximately 88 percent of the country’s internet access. What do you do without Internet?

Step 1: Stop crying in the corner. Then start taking steps to reconnect with your network. Here’s a list of things you can do to keep the communication flowing.

Make your network tangible
Print out you contact list so your phone numbers aren’t stuck in the cloud. Some mail services like Gmail allow you to export your online contact list in formats that are more conducive to paper, such as CSV or Vcard, and offer step-by-step guides on how to do this.

Broadcast on the radio
CB Radio: Short for “Citizens Band” radio, these two-way radios allow communication over short distances on 40 channels. You can pick one up for about $20-50 at Radio Shack and no license is required to operate it.

Ham radio: To converse over these radios, also known as “Amateur radios,” you have to obtain an operator’s license from the FCC. Luckily, other Wired How-To contributors have already explained exactly what you need to do to get one and use it like a pro.

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The White House wants additional power to snoop on private e-mail and social-network communications in the interest of national security. These are thorny issues, not easily resolved. Our advice is to go slowly.

Once government intervenes, even for the best of motives, that authority rarely is rescinded. There also promises to be unintended consequences and perhaps more damage than benefit if the federal government plows ahead without regard to tradeoffs and costs.

The New York Times recently reported that “law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet.” Authorities say they are losing ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects because people increasingly communicate online rather than by telephone. This is a legitimate concern.

However, the White House reportedly wants Congress to require all Internet communications services, such as “encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking websites like Facebook and software that allows direct ‘peer to peer’ messaging, like Skype,” to make technical changes to give government, if authorized by a court wiretap order, the ability to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages. The administration plans to submit a bill to lawmakers next year, the Times reported.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, told the Times. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”

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(CNN) — On Monday, The New York Times reported that President Obama will seek sweeping laws enabling law enforcement to more easily eavesdrop on the internet. Technologies are changing, the administration argues, and modern digital systems aren’t as easy to monitor as traditional telephones.

The government wants to force companies to redesign their communications systems and information networks to facilitate surveillance, and to provide law enforcement with back doors that enable them to bypass any security measures.

The proposal may seem extreme, but — unfortunately — it’s not unique. Just a few months ago, the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and India threatened to ban BlackBerry devices unless the company made eavesdropping easier. China has already built a massive internet surveillance system to better control its citizens.

Formerly reserved for totalitarian countries, this wholesale surveillance of citizens has moved into the democratic world as well. Governments like Sweden, Canada and the United Kingdom are debating or passing laws giving their police new powers of internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell. More are passing data retention laws, forcing companies to retain customer data in case they might need to be investigated later.

Obama isn’t the first U.S. president to seek expanded digital eavesdropping. The 1994 CALEA law required phone companies to build ways to better facilitate FBI eavesdropping into their digital phone switches. Since 2001, the National Security Agency has built substantial eavesdropping systems within the United States.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a scathing analysis Tuesday of a bill designed to combat online piracy, calling it “a censorship bill that runs roughshod over freedom of speech.”

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act introduced Monday by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee would make it easier for the Department of Justice to shut down a website or domain name that is found to be trafficking in pirated movies, videos or music.

The government would be able to apply for a court order forcing Internet service providers, payment processors and other services to block users from the domain.

The nonprofit advocacy group, which has clashed repeatedly with the entertainment industry over copyright enforcement online, harshly condemned the bipartisan effort. EFF Activist Richard Esguerra called the bill “flawed” and said it “would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time” by censoring certain websites.

“COICA is a fairly short bill, but it could have a longstanding and dangerous impact on freedom of speech, current Internet architecture, copyright doctrine, foreign policy, and beyond,” Esguerra wrote. “In 2010, if there’s anything we’ve learned about efforts to re-write copyright law to target ‘piracy’ online, it’s that they are likely to have unintended consequences.”

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Intel threatened legal action Friday against anybody who uses its proprietary crypto key — leaked on the internet — to produce hardware that defeats the so-called HDCP technology that limits home recording of digital television and Blu-ray.

“There are laws to protect both the intellectual property involved as well as the content that is created and owned by the content providers,” said Tom Waldrop, a spokesman for the company, which developed HDCP. “Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies.”

Intel’s comments came as it confirmed that the internet leak of the “master key” to the High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection system was authentic.

HDCP is a copy-protection technology that encrypts high-definition video traveling from Blu-ray players or set-top boxes to television monitors. The technology was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in 2004, and is a standard feature in televisions, cable boxes, satellite receivers and Blu-ray players in much of the modern world.

The anonymous release this week of the HDCP master key means black market hardware makers, perhaps in China, can now create hardware capable of defeating the copy protection scheme. The leak comes just months after the movie studios persuaded the FCC to let them remotely switch-off the analog ports on your satellite receiver or cable box, so that Hollywood could sell new movie releases as pay-per-view offerings without fear that they’ll be recorded from non-HDCP outputs.

Waldrop declined comment on whether Intel has already brought in federal law enforcement to investigate the breach as a potential trade-secret violation. Federal prosecutors and the FBI in Silicon Valley also declined to comment.

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BIRMINGHAM, AL (WBRC) – A growing number of people are members of a social networking site. Sometimes, those very people share too much information…..information that can get them in to a lot of trouble.

Posting too much information can compromise your safety, identity, or cost you your job.

I spoke to an expert who says people have become way to comfortable and trusting on these sites, which causes some major problems for themselves.

Gary Warner is an expert in computer forensics at UAB. He says sites like Facebook and Twitter are great places for information.

Some things he says you should not do include posting your home address because it makes it easy for anyone looking to harm you.

Also posting vacation plans can be dangerous. It lets burglars know when you’re away.

Profiles can also reveal password clues for crooks to hack into your online accounts. Things like posting your birthday or hometown could lead to identity theft. Posting certain pictures can cause big problems because employers are now checking up on applicants on these sites.

“They go on the Facebook, find their Twitter accounts and see what they’ve been talking about,” said Warner. If you have a professional person talking about drug use or see them at parties wasted in photos on Facebook maybe this is isn’t the kind of person you want working for you.”

Kristyn Burks says, “I do tend to put pictures up sometimes maybe that I shouldn’t put on there.”

Eric West says, “I don’t really put anything about what I do all day. I know some people do.”

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GOOGLE has confirmed the sacking of an engineer accused of spying on minors in its second major privacy scandal this year.

The search giant today said it had dismissed David Barksdale for breaking “strict” privacy policies.

The sacking comes after the company was involved in a worldwide privacy scandal earlier this year when it “mistakenly” collected personal data while gathering information for its Street View service.

Earlier today industry gossip blog Gawker published a number of allegations against Mr Barksdale from an anonymous source.

The source alleged that the 27-year-old harassed and spied on four underage teenagers by snooping on their chat logs and internet voice calls while he was employed by Google.

Mr Barksdale worked as a site reliability engineer at Google’s Kirkland office near Seattle in Washington and had access to private user data, the blog said.

Google today said it had sacked Mr Barksdale for breaching “strict” privacy policies, but would not confirm other details.

“We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google’s strict internal privacy policies,” said Google senior vice president of engineering Bill Coughran.

“We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls.

“That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly — which is why we take any breach so seriously.”

A Google Australia spokesperson would not confirm if minors were involved in Mr Barksdale’s dismissal.

It is understood that Mr Barksdale is not the first Google employee to be fired for a privacy breach.

Gawker said it was not clear why Mr Barksdale would have spied on the teens and there were no allegations of sexual harassment.

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The Government today outlined how the cost of tackling online copyright infringement, as laid out in the Digital Economy Act, would be met.

Ed Vaizey, the minister for communications, said that rights holders would absorb 75 per cent of the cost of sending warning letters to web users suspected of online copyright infringement, while internet service providers would be responsible for covering the remaining 25 per cent.

“Protecting our valuable creative industries, which have already suffered significant losses as a result of people sharing digital content without paying for it, is at the heart of these measures,” he said.

“The Digital Economy Act serves to reduce online copyright infringement through a fair and robust process and at the same time provides breathing space to develop better business models for consumers who buy music, films and books online.”

The fees will cover the cost of notifying suspected copyright infringers, and of administering the appeals process. Consumers who wish to appeal a so-called “notification of copyright infringement” – a letter sent through the post – will not have to pay a fee in order to have their case heard.

But the decision has been met with dismay from internet service providers, who say the cost of the measures could push up the price of home broadband connections for consumers.

“Consumers should not be picking up the tab for the enforcement of copyright laws that will benefit the music industry to the tune of millions of pounds,” said Robert Hammond, head of post and digital communications at watchdog Consumer Focus.

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The next time you surf the Internet, consider this: You might be just one click away from becoming the next cybercrime victim.

A new study released from security software maker Norton reveals the staggering prevalence of cybercrime: Two-thirds (65 percent) of Internet users globally, and almost three-quarters (73 percent) of U.S. Web surfers have fallen victim to cybercrimes, including computer viruses, online credit card fraud and identity theft. As the most victimized nations, America ranks third, after China (83 percent) and Brazil and India (tie 76 percent).

The Norton Cybercrime Report: The Human Impact shines a light on the personal toll cybercrime takes. The first study to examine the emotional impact of cybercrime, it shows that victims’ strongest reactions are feeling angry (58 percent), annoyed (51 percent) and cheated (40 percent), and in many cases, they blame themselves for being attacked. Only 3 percent don’t think it will happen to them, and nearly 80 percent do not expect cybercriminals to be brought to justice — resulting in an ironic reluctance to take action and a sense of helplessness.

“We accept cybercrime because of a ‘learned helplessness’,” said Joseph LaBrie, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Loyola Marymount University. “It’s like getting ripped off at a garage — if you don’t know enough about cars, you don’t argue with the mechanic. People just accept a situation, even if it feels bad.”

Despite the emotional burden, the universal threat, and incidents of cybercrime, people still aren’t changing their behaviors — with only half (51 percent) of adults saying they would change their behavior if they became a victim. Even scarier, fewer than half (44 percent) reported the crime to the police.

Cybercrime victim Todd Vinson of Chicago explained, “I was emotionally and financially unprepared because I never thought I would be a victim of such a crime. I felt violated, as if someone had actually come inside my home to gather this information, and as if my entire family was exposed to this criminal act. Now I can’t help but wonder if other information has been illegally acquired and just sitting in the wrong people’s hands, waiting for an opportunity to be used.”

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A new study from Internet security giant Symantec shows cybercrime affects everyone everywhere, and US Internet users are particularly vulnerable. Almost three-quarters of US Internet users are cybercrime victims, and the US ranks third on the list of countries attacked the most. When looked at globally, the number is still eye-opening, affecting about two-thirds of Internet users. Cybercrime includes computer viruses, online credit card fraud, and identity theft.

The 2011 Norton Cybercrime Report: The Human Impact examined victims’ emotional aftermath to understand user behavior. The only survey asked 7,066 adults aged 18 and over in 14 different countries how they felt about cybercrime. Researchers were interested in seeing what users are doing to protect themselves before and after the attack. The aftermath is particularly of interest to see how users adjust their behavior to prevent a recurrence.

A majority of cybervictims, at 58 percent, reported feeling angry after being attacked. Other strong feelings include being annoyed and cheated. Like many other crimes, these victims tend to blame themselves for being attacked. An overwhelming majority of them feel helpless and don’t expect the criminals to get caught. This often meant they didn’t report the crime, warn friends and family, or do anything about it. Users reported the time it took to resolve the issue as the biggest hassle, followed by dealing with feelings of helplessness, embarrassment, and stress. According to the report, it takes an average of 28 days to resolve the crime.

At least half of the users reported being a victim, which included viruses and malware, responding to online scams and phishing messages, getting their social networking profile hacked, harassed by sexual predators, identity theft, and credit card fraud. Even so, only 44 percent reported the crime to the police, and usually only when there was an actual financial loss or threat of physical harm.

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Law school students, prosecutors and homeland security agents will have the chance to learn more about cybersecurity law — an emerging area concerning online terrorism — as part of a project sponsored by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.

The Cybersecurity Law Project, which will be held at two Newark law schools, is one of the first of its kind nationwide, said Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli. Classes kicked off last week at Seton Hall Law School and the program at Rutgers School of Law will commence this spring.

“This is going to take our new students who are very technical and give them the legal background necessary to make them very good lawyers in the common-day marketplace,” Molinelli said. He added that most cybersecurity work is now done by people without formal legal training in the field.

In addition to the classes on both campuses, the program includes a full-day conference in spring and access to a portal website that will be updated with information about the field and internship opportunities for students, said Michael Ricciardelli, a spokesman for Seton Hall Law School.

Molinelli said he approached both law schools about six months ago and asked them to design a program open to law students and professionals such as prosecutors. Both schools have programs focused on public defender skill sets. Seton Hall Law professors then proposed the cybersecurity focus with involvement from state homeland security officials.

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Intel is buying security vendor McAfee in a blockbuster $7.7 billion all-cash deal.

Intel expects the deal to close by the end of the year pending regulatory approvals.

During a press conference call, Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO said that McAfee would be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel and would retain the McAfee brand, as well as its key management. With the deal, Intel further extends its play into software while also reinforcing its core silicon business with new security technologies.

“We believe that security will be most effective when enabled in hardware,” Otellini said. “Joining McAfee with Intel will accelerate and enhance the combination of hardware and software solutions, improving the overall security of our platforms. The bottom line is that this will better protect Internet users and their devices.”

But Gartner analyst Peter Firstbrook said Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) decision to purchase McAfee (NYSE: MFE) rather than simply partner with the world’s second-largest security software vendor doesn’t make a lot of sense at first glance.

“Certainly Intel has other software capabilities, but now they’re selling security with a chip,” Firstbrook told InternetNews.com. “I don’t believe you can build security on the chip. Security is dependent on the OS and the apps in the stack. You can’t anticipate that in the chip.”

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