Sunday, June 9, 2013
Is Yonaguni Monument The Japanese Atlantis?
The Yonaguni-jima Kaitei Chikei, literally translated as “Yonaguni Island Submarine Topography,” is an underwater mystery off the coast of the Ryukyu Islands, Japan. The massive underwater rock formation is speculated to have existed for more than 10,000 years, but whether the formation is completely man-made, entirely natural, or merely altered by human hands is still debated.
The monument was first discovered in 1986 by a diver. Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist at the University of the Ryukyu, explored the monument for nearly two decades. Kimura remains convinced that the site was carved thousands of years ago, when the land mass was above water.
According to Kimura, the Yonaguni’s right angles, strategically placed holes and aesthetic triangles are signs of human alteration. He also claims that carvings exists on the monuments, resembling Kaida script. He believes that a pyramid, castles, roads, and monuments can be identified within the structure–which is evidence that the monument is what remains of the Lost Continent of Mu, the Japanese equivalent to Atlantis.
Source: Disinfo>/p>
How to Hide Your Digital Communications from Big Brother
Big Brother is hoping to eliminate anonymous digital communication, but a new messaging protocol may provide privacy advocates a way around their snooping government no matter where they live.
It couldn't come at a better time as governments increasingly demand access to private communications.
In fact, an FBI whistleblower recently revealed that all digital communications are being recorded and stored by the U.S. government.
Since most emails, instant messaging, and all voice calls (land line, cell or Internet) run through central service providers that database all user activity, the government has easy access to this information upon request, secret subpoenas or even backdoors to these services to view private communications in real time.
The Associated Press was recently violated by the Department of Justice who, with a secret subpoena, forced service providers to hand over phone records of AP's reporters and central offices.
The U.S. government claims the authority to track, trace, and database all electronic communications in order to keep us safe. Despite the obvious intrusion of privacy, it clearly has the intent to spy on all communications and is actively seeking expanded legal cover and technological advances for full spectrum digital surveillance.
Large central service providers make this nefarious goal possible.
But as the government cracks down on Web privacy, a new decentralized communication protocol called Bitmessage has emerged to offer an easy way for people to send and receive encrypted messages.
What is Bitmessage?
Bitmessage is a peer-to-peer encrypted messaging protocol that allows people to communicate anonymously.
Bitmessage's official description is as follows:
Bitmessage is a P2P communications protocol used to send encrypted messages to another person or to many subscribers. It is decentralized and trustless, meaning that you need-not inherently trust any entities like root certificate authorities. It uses strong authentication which means that the sender of a message cannot be spoofed, and it aims to hide "non-content" data, like the sender and receiver of messages, from passive eavesdroppers like those running warrantless wiretapping programs. (Source)Based loosely on Bitcoin's open-source protocol, Bitmessage utilizes the computer power of decentralized users to process the messages making them essentially impossible to track. Addresses are made up of 36 random characters as opposed to a name and other personal information that email services require.
Example Bitmessage address: BM‐2nTX1KchxgnmHvy9ntCN9r7sgKTraxczzyE
In their white paper, the Bitmessage developers emphasize that privacy was their main motivation for creating it:
Hiding one’s identity is difficult. Even if throw‐away email addresses are used, users must connect to an email server to send and retrieve messages, revealing their IP address.
...if just one of those organizations is run by a government agency, and if they have certain network hardware in place between users and destination servers, then they would be able to perform a targeted man‐in‐the‐middle attack of ostensibly secure communications at will...
What is needed is a communications protocol and accompanying software that encrypts messages, masks the sender and receiver of messages from others, and guarantees that the sender a message cannot be spoofed, without relying on trust and without burdening the user with the details of key management.The addresses not only emphasize privacy but guarantee sender verification:
While certainly more cumbersome than an email address, it is not too much to type manually or it can be made into a QR‐code. Users have already demonstrated this to be acceptable as Bitcoin addresses are similar in format and length. This address format is superior to email in that it guarantees that a message from a particular user or organization did, in fact, come from them. The sender of a message cannot be spoofed.Though it may sound complicated, Bitmessage makes it easy for anyone to communicate anonymously. Once the program is downloaded on your computer, you just need to set "Your Identities", "Passphrase", and "Addresses" in your Bitmessage folder which is much like a Bitcoin "wallet".
Then it works similarly to email where you choose from one of your "From" addresses to compose a message to "Send" to another address. The message's encryption is then "processed" by the peer-to-peer network of servers and delivered to the recipient's "wallet" (Bitmessage folder) on their personal computer. The "stream" or "proof of work" takes roughly four minutes to process the message to the recipient.
Bitmessage also offers a "broadcast" feature for mass announcements. So if you run an organization, website or blog with a newsletter, you can send anonymous "broadcasts" to subscribers. Meanwhile, subscribers can sign up without giving out their email address or anything that links them to the information.
Just as Bitcoin has the potential to displace centralized currencies, Bitmessage may be the future of free and private communication. As the government increases its Big Brother spying on average citizens, Bitmessage proves that freedom will always find a way.
Watch the video below for more information about Bitmessage:
Get started with Bitmessage here.
Another great resource for how to get started with Bitmessage:
http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/03/09/setting-up-and-using-bitmessage-an-encrypted-communications-platform-based-on-bitcoin/
Source: Activist Post
NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
Through a top-secret program authorized by federal judges working under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. intelligence community can gain access to the servers of nine Internet companies for a wide range of digital data. Documents describing the previously undisclosed program, obtained by The Washington Post, show the breadth of U.S. electronic surveillance capabilities in the wake of a widely publicized controversy over warrantless wiretapping of U.S. domestic telephone communications in 2005. These slides, annotated by The Washington Post, represent a selection from the overall document, and certain portions are redacted. Read related article.
Introducing the program
A slide briefing analysts at the National Security Agency about the program touts its effectiveness and features the logos of the companies involved.
The program is called PRISM, after the prisms used to split light, which is used to carry information on fiber-optic cables.
This note indicates that the program is the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports.
The seal of
Special Source Operations, the NSA term for alliances with trusted U.S. companies.
Monitoring a target's communication
This diagram shows how the bulk of the world’s electronic communications move through companies based in the United States.
Providers and data
The PRISM program collects a wide range of data from the nine companies, although the details vary by provider.
Participating providers
This slide shows when each company joined the program, with Microsoft being the first, on Sept. 11, 2007, and Apple the most recent, in October 2012.
Spying on Americans before 9/11: NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999
Government Built Spy-Access Into Most Popular Consumer Program Before 9/11
In researching the stunning pervasiveness of spying by the government (it’s much more wide spread than you’ve heard even now), we ran across the fact that the FBI wants software programmers to install a backdoor in all software.
Digging a little further, we found a 1999 article by leading European computer publication Heise which noted that the NSA had already built a backdoor into all Windows software:
A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA “help information” trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.
The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren [an expert in computer security]. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.
***
Two weeks ago, a US security company came up with conclusive evidence that the second key belongs to NSA. Like Dr van Someren, Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys. Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, Service Pack 5. He found that Microsoft’s developers had failed to remove or “strip” the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called “KEY”. The other was called “NSAKEY”.
Fernandes reported his re-discovery of the two CAPI keys, and their secret meaning, to “Advances in Cryptology, Crypto’99″ conference held in Santa Barbara. According to those present at the conference, Windows developers attending the conference did not deny that the “NSA” key was built into their software. But they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without users’ knowledge.
A third key?!
But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft’s top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was “stunned” to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders. The latest discovery by Dr van Someren is based on advanced search methods which test and report on the “entropy” of programming code.
Within the Microsoft organisation, access to Windows source code is said to be highly compartmentalized, making it easy for modifications to be inserted without the knowledge of even the respective product managers.
Researchers are divided about whether the NSA key could be intended to let US government users of Windows run classified cryptosystems on their machines or whether it is intended to open up anyone’s and everyone’s Windows computer to intelligence gathering techniques deployed by NSA’s burgeoning corps of “information warriors”.
According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system “is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system“. The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.
***
“How is an IT manager to feel when they learn that in every copy of Windows sold, Microsoft has a ‘back door’ for NSA – making it orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer?” he asked.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again'
Source for the Guardian's NSA files on why he carried out the biggest intelligence leak in a generation – and what comes next