NSA to Web Firms:'Turn over user account passwords'

Secret demands mark escalation in Internet surveillance by the federal government through gaining access to user passwords, which are typically stored in encrypted form.


(Credit: Photo illustration by James Martin/CNET)

by Declan McCullagh, July 25, 2013

The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user. Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in situations where passwords are reused.

"I've certainly seen them ask for passwords," said one Internet industry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We push back."

A second person who has worked at a large Silicon Valley company confirmed that it received legal requests from the federal government for stored passwords. Companies "really heavily scrutinize" these requests, the person said. "There's a lot of 'over my dead body.'"

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts....


For more of the story...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-5...eb-firms-to-turn-over-user-account-passwords/

 

Oh hell to the fukken no.

This is getting out of hand. Our government is going to ruin the Internet just like the dick Chinese government.

We should be able to file a class action lawsuit? How does one stop this madness and when American citizens become the enemy of our government?

 

After watching 24, I always suspected the NSA of overstepping their boundaries with our privacy... but straight up asking for access to user password databases? That's just ridiculous. It's bad enough the copyright industries are trying to monopolize on all internet media, now this?

Thankfully most of these internet companies fight hard to protect us.

 

Since the day that the patriot act got passed, they have been pushing harder.

 

I think Ali is spot on, this is eventually going to ruin the internet. It was once a bastion of freedom from, now it's a swift tool for the Govt to spy and snoop on us.

Additionally, I was baffled why the D's and R's in Congress voted to keep NSA in our drawers, despite outcries from their far left and far right demanding for a stop ....UNTIL I read that the new wave industry is spy technologies, and that several former Military brass are running these companies that make/market the spyware to the Govt, so naturally such heavy investments leads to powerful lobby groups in Washington.

 

Oh, and in case you don't think the over-zeal is coming to a town near you...check this story out....

Keep in mind, this wasn't activity of say, 1000 child porn downloads, etc... this was a few searches.


*******************

NY Man Questioned for Computer Search History

NEW YORK August 2, 2013 (AP)

A former employee of a New York computer company was questioned after his workplace computer search history revealed inquires for "pressure cooker bombs" and "backpacks," but no criminality was determined, the Suffolk County Police Department said in a statement Thursday.

Authorities have said the bombs used at the Boston Marathon in April, which killed three people and wounded more than 260, involved pressure cookers placed in backpacks.

The man was questioned after detectives from the department's intelligence unit received a tip from a Long Island-based computer company claiming the recently released employee's computer had suspicious searches, the police said. After interviewing company representatives, they questioned the man at his home where they determined there was no criminality.

The police issued their statement after receiving numerous media inquiries in response to a blog post written Thursday by a woman writing under the name Michele Catalano.


Catalano, who did not return multiple requests for comment, speculated in her post that her husband had been interviewed Wednesday by "six agents from the joint terrorism task force" because of the family's search history on Google. :|

She wrote that her husband had researched buying backpacks and she had researched pressure cookers. She writes, also, that her "curious news junkie of a twenty-year-old son" may have read a news story about how instructions to make pressure cooker bombs are available online.

Her husband answered the officers' questions and her son was asleep when they were at the home, she wrote. She said in the post she does not own a pressure cooker, but does have a rice cooker to make quinoa.

********************


So ask yourself, how often have you searched crazy things out of curiosity, or just to be informed, or it's a subject being discussed on a forum and you look into it, etc...

 

I read this also.....Could it the coming together elements of the "New World Order" for more government monitoring, control or perhaps the establishment of "666"......vigilant eyes we will have to wait and see.....

 

It's fine, Americans are apathetic. We will read, feign disgust and do nothing about it.

The government is very well aware that they can do whatever they want and get away with it.

 

Even the sacred client lawyer privilege is not exempt from eaves-dropping.

When Snowden exposed that our Govt (aka State Department, aka Hillary) ordered the phone tapping of our German and French allied Leaders, one has to be struck by the deviancy of that. It wasn't because the the US had suspicions of them, more-so they were looking down the line that if they know how the leaders think, feel and stands on policy matters of their own country and of the world, it gives us(her) leverage up when dealing with them in the future, be it friendly, or in times of pressured support for the US. The NSA crossed the line and now not even our Allies trust us.

 

But is the lack of malcontent authentic resignation? Or a rational fear of the powerfully vindictive consequences.(ie: the ordered IRS audits, Snowden's Federal persecution).

So of course to our Govt, we mere peons - if isolated, are not powerful enough to fight them. There is no unity, no bipartisan, no solidarity in preserving the sacredness of one's privacy in the most basal level. If we even have it left to preserve.

 

Don't you mean everything?

 

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

 

Yeah. I pretty much mean that.

But in this instance it as about the NSA and passwords for email accounts.
So I an with it.

 

this is just the tip of the iceberg...retail stores are now using facial recognition spyware to identify when their big spenders are in the store...i'm fairly certain that they use it for shoplifters as well...the show "person of interest" is not too far off...at some point the gov will know where you are every second of the day...there is no such thing as privacy anymore...cameras everywhere...recording in the elevator...recording in the hallway...on the street...in places of business...it is just the new way of life...

:smt024 lippy

 

Good God, like the Casino's. In the street I have no problem, just please stay out of my fucking bathroom.

They are in fact, building TV's that have the ability for the Govt to watch and monitor you.

Re: article from last year....

-----------

The CIA wants to spy on you through your TV: Agency director says it will 'transform' surveillance

By Rob Waugh

When people download a film from Netflix to a flatscreen, or turn on web radio, they could be alerting unwanted watchers to exactly what they are doing and where they are.

Spies will no longer have to plant bugs in your home - the rise of 'connected' gadgets controlled by apps will mean that people 'bug' their own homes, says CIA director David Petraeus.

The CIA claims it will be able to 'read' these devices via the internet - and perhaps even via radio waves from outside the home.


Everything from remote controls to clock radios can now be controlled via apps - and chip company ARM recently unveiled low-powered, cheaper chips which will be used in everything from fridges and ovens to doorbells.

The resultant chorus of 'connected' gadgets will be able to be read like a book - and even remote-controlled, according to CIA CIA Director David Petraeus, according to a recent report by Wired's 'Danger Room' blog.

Petraeus says that web-connected gadgets will 'transform' the art of spying - allowing spies to monitor people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party.

'Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,' said Petraeus.

'Particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft. Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters - all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.'


****
Now, this next part is the most interesting...because we must always follow the money.....

Petraeus was speaking to a venture capital firm about new technologies which aim to add processors and web connections to previously 'dumb' home appliances such as fridges, ovens and lighting systems.

This week, one of the world's biggest chip companies, ARM, has unveiled a new processor built to work inside 'connected' white goods.

The ARM chips are smaller, lower-powered and far cheaper than previous processors - and designed to add the internet to almost every kind of electrical appliance...
...

Privacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have warned of how information such as geolocation data can be misused - but as more and more devices connect, it's clear that opportunities for surveillance will multiply.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ets-transform-surveillance.html#ixzz2aruQb8Ip

 

This would imply that they trusted us from the beginning. They do not. They are doing the same things that the USA is doing.

 

Perhaps we finally have good reason to take a page out of Ms' book:
Swear to god if the NSA gets my email passwords I'm going to send shit in all my emails. Just big huge piles of shit.
Horse shit.
Cow shit.
Elephant shit.

If only there was a way to make it scratch and sniff email.