Obama signs executive order on cyber security – The end of blogging?

The Stingray is the digital equivalent of the pre-revolutionary British soldier. It allows police to point a cell phone signal into all the houses in a particular neighborhood, searching for one target while sucking up everyone else’s location along with it. With one search the police could potentially invade countless private residences at once.

Published: 13 February, 2013

Barack Obama has signed an executive order on cybersecurity following rumors that he would do so. In his State of the Union address he cited “growing threat from cyber-attacks” as the reason he used his executive power against the will of lawmakers.

America must face the rapidly growing threat from cyber-attacks, President Obama told the nation in his address.

“We know hackers steal people’s identities and infiltrate private e-mail. We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets. Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems.”

Years from now Americans cannot look back and wonder “why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy,” Obama said.

The order directs government officials to come up with standards to reduce cyber security risks within the next 240 days and encourage companies to adopt the new framework. It however has no legal power to force companies to adopt the framework of cybersecurity best practices.

The framework will be technology-neutral and aimed at addressing security gaps in the computer networks of crucial parts of the country’s infrastructure – the electric grid, water plants and transportation networks.

Obama urged Congress to follow his lead and pass legislation giving Washington “a greater capacity to secure networks and deter attacks.”

The order is seen as a direct response to Congress’ refusal to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) last year in light of serious privacy concerns.

This week, following a series of cyber espionage and hacking attacks on US facilities, the same version of CISPA that was turned down last August is expected to be reintroduced before the US House.

http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-signs-cyber-security-order-042/

US plays policeman of the world: Former US Senator

Tue Feb 12, 2013

Press TV

“All you have got to do is just to travel around the world and you realize the amount of hatred that Americans are incurring as a result of wantonly feeling that we’re the policeman of the world and we can go kill, subjugate and intimidate anybody in the world,” said former US Senator Mike Gravel.

The ex-diplomat added that Washington has lost the ability to “morally participate in world affairs” amid global condemnation over its aggressive foreign policies, particularly concerning its illegal drone program.

“The use of drones and this change of morality that the American leadership has experienced is the change of morality that we experienced with the use of atomic bombs,” Gravel said.

The former Congressional representative cautioned Washington for what may prove to be the “greatest problem for the United States that we have ever had because we go around the world killing people arbitrarily – I say arbitrarily because all you have to do is to have some bureaucrats in government make the charge and that person’s life is forfeit.”

“You are going to find that the back draft on what we’re doing is going to create more terror, put more Americans at risk than if we paid attention to our own defense, rather than being around the world with our 700 plus bases, that we feel threatened by people who dislike us,” Gravel said.

The United States must “withdraw from these parts of the world and let these people and these various countries address and solve their own problems, rather than thinking that we can intimidate and kill them into submission to our will as the American empire,” Gravel concluded.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/12/288631/us-plays-policeman-of-the-world/

As Secretive “Stingray” Surveillance Tool Becomes More Pervasive, Questions Over Its Illegality Increase

Electronic Frontier Foundation

February 12, 2013 | By Trevor Timm

A few months ago, EFF warned of a secretive new surveillance tool being used by the FBI in cases around the country commonly referred to as a “Stingray.” Recently, more information on the device has come to light and it makes us even more concerned than before.

The device, which acts as a fake cell phone tower, essentially allows the government to electronically search large areas for a particular cell phone’s signal—sucking down data on potentially thousands of innocent people along the way. At the same time, law enforcement has attempted use them while avoiding many of the traditional limitations set forth in the Constitution, like individualized warrants. This is why we called the tool “an unconstitutional, all-you-can-eat data buffet.”

Recently, LA Weekly reported the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) got a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant in 2006 to buy a stingray. The original grant request said it would be used for “regional terrorism investigations.” Instead LAPD has been using it for just about any investigation imaginable.

In just a four month period in 2012, according to documents obtained by the First Amendment Coalition, the LAPD has used the device at least 21 times in “far more routine” criminal investigations. The LA Weekly reported Stingrays “were tapped for more than 13 percent of the 155 ‘cellular phone investigation cases’ that Los Angeles police conducted between June and September last year.” These included burglary, drug and murder cases.

Of course, we’ve seen this pattern over and over and over. The government uses “terrorism” as a catalyst to gain some powerful new surveillance tool or ability, and then turns around and uses it on ordinary citizens, severely infringing on their civil liberties in the process.

Stingrays are particularly odious given they give police dangerous “general warrant” powers, which the founding fathers specifically drafted the Fourth Amendment to prevent. In pre-revolutionary America, British soldiers used “general warrants” as authority to go house-to-house in a particular neighborhood, looking for whatever they please, without specifying an individual or place to be searched.

The Stingray is the digital equivalent of the pre-revolutionary British soldier. It allows police to point a cell phone signal into all the houses in a particular neighborhood, searching for one target while sucking up everyone else’s location along with it. With one search the police could potentially invade countless private residences at once.

In another recent development, the FBI handed over two documents—out of an estimated 25,000 they have on Stingrays—to EPIC as part of the privacy group’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain more information about the use of mysterious devices. As Slate’s Ryan Gallagher reported:

Two heavily redacted sets of files released last month show internal Justice Department guidance that relates to the use of the cell tracking equipment, with repeated references to a crucial section of the Communications Act which outlines how “interference” with communication signals is prohibited.

It’s a small but significant detail. Why? Because it demonstrates that “there are clearly concerns, even within the agency, that the use of Stingray technology might be inconsistent with current regulations,” says EPIC attorney Alan Butler. “I don’t know how the DOJ justifies the use of Stingrays given the limitations of the Communications Act prohibition.”

The documents also suggest that the FBI is loaning out the devices to local police.

On March 28^th, the judge overseeing the Rigmaiden case, which we wrote about previously, will hold a hearing on whether evidence obtained using a stringray should be suppressed. It will be one of the first times a judge will rules on the constitutionality of these devices in federal court.

It’s time for local police and federal law enforcement agencies to come clean about the technology and how they are using it, before more ordinary citizens have their constitutional rights violated.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/secretive-stingray-surveillance-tool-becomes-more-pervasive-questions-over-its