Thursday, November 28, 2013
Microsoft Denies Monitoring Skype Calls After Banning Users For Bad Language
Company suspends accounts of foul-mouthed Xbox gamers
After it was revealed that Microsoft was suspending the Skype accounts of Xbox gamers who used bad language, the company was forced to deny that it was monitoring Skype conversations.
Image: Microsoft (Wikimedia Commons).
Xbox users complained that Microsoft was banning them from using Skype or the Xbox Upload Studio because of “past behavior.” The censorship stemmed from the company targeting people who used bad language in their uploaded videos.
“Kinect likes to listen to you. It’s a big part of the console’s appeal. But it doesn’t like to hear your swears. At least not in Upload Studio, the Xbox One service that lets you share gameplay clips (with non-profane voiceover!) with friends, and save those clips to your SkyDrive. If you’ve got a dirty mouth, you can run into trouble,” reports Gizmodo.
Some Xbox users expressed concern at why Microsoft was applying the ban to Skype accounts when accessed via the Xbox console, leading to fears that the company was monitoring their private conversations, prompting a statement from Microsoft;
“To be clear, the Xbox Live Policy & Enforcement team does not monitor direct peer-to-peer communications like Skype chats and calls. Also, we take Code of Conduct moderation via Upload Studio very seriously. We want a clean, safe and fun environment for all users. Excessive profanity as well as other Code of Conduct violations will be enforced upon and result in suspension of some or all privileges on Xbox Live. We remain committed to preserving and promoting a safe, secure and enjoyable experience for all of our Xbox Live members.”
However, a respondent to the Gizmodo article points out that one of the bans was applied for someone solely using Skype, remarking, “So yes they are listening, or someone complained about the persons behavior.”
In suspending people for using bad language in video uploads, Microsoft is imposing censorship well beyond the likes of YouTube, which does not even age-restrict videos that contain swearing.
Although Microsoft is moving towards encrypting all its Internet traffic due to “suspicions that the NSA is intercepting traffic within its private networks,” the company was deeply embroiled in the NSA wiretapping scandal, allowing the snooping agency backdoor access to spy on users of its services.
In May it emerged that Microsoft “regularly scans (Skype) message contents for signs of fraud.” As the Edward Snowden leaks confirmed, Skype audio conversations “can be wiretapped by American intelligence agencies,” despite previously having been considered resistant to interception.
As we reported last week, Microsoft also denied claims that the new Xbox One’s Kinect camera could see gamers’ genitals after video footage emerged which suggested the device’s IR camera was so sophisticated that it could capture the outline of a user’s penis.
The Xbox One’s array of microphones and video cameras can distinguish between six different voices in a room while responding to voice commands and reading skeletal and muscular movements. The device can even tell if someone is looking at or away from the television.
Neurosurgeon Explains How You can Detox Chemtrail Poisons
Whether the pilots on huge C130’s know what they are doing, or are practicing the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil tactics encouraged by our US military (commanded by a corrupt government) they are dumping all kinds of chemicals on us at an alarmingly increasing rate. (There are plenty of amazing service-people who have even been whistle-blowers on chemtrails) .
It doesn’t matter if you believe chemtrails are a ‘conspiracy theory,’ though even though the US government coined the term ‘chemtrails’ before any blogger ever did; people will still get sick from their existence. Dr. Blaylock warns we will see an increase in numerous diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia, cancer, and upper-respiratory diseases just to name a few. But here is the good news – according to this particular neurosurgeon, you can help your body detox from some of the numerous chemicals in chemtrails (thorium, barium, mercury, aluminum oxide, and strontium).
Here is the list of things you can do to reduce the inflammatory response that is caused by some of these chemicals:
- Tocopherols in Vitamin E will help reduce inflammation in your brain and body, thus reducing the toxic effect of chemtrails. Almond milk is a great source of naturally occurring Vitamin E, as is
- Vitamin C, when added to Vitamin E, is a powerful protector of the brain, according to Dr. Blaylock.
- Curcumin binds with aluminum and helps to reduce its toxic effects, and supports its elimination from the body.
- Saffron is another great way to support brain health and detox these chemicals. It is also full of cancer-fighting carotenoids. In some studies, saffron has also shown to promote learning, memory and recall due to a compound in the plant called ‘crocin’.
- Flax seed has been shown to help reduce radiation poisoning and boost brain power as well.
- Cinnamon is full of antioxidants and can also reduce the inflammatory response in the body.
For further suggestions, you can watch the video, and start detoxing from chemtrails and their noxious poisons today.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Monsanto, the TPP, and Global Food Dominance
“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. ”Control food and you control the people.”
Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.
Profits Before Populations
According to an Acres USA interview of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, two modified traits account for practically all of the genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals). Often known as Roundup after the best-selling Monsanto product of that name, glyphosate poisons everything in its path except plants genetically modified to resist it.
Glyphosate-based herbicides are now the most commonly used herbicides in the world. Glyphosate is an essential partner to the GMOs that are the principal business of the burgeoning biotech industry. Glyphosate is a “broad-spectrum” herbicide that destroys indiscriminately, not by killing unwanted plants directly but by tying up access to critical nutrients.
Because of the insidious way in which it works, it has been sold as a relatively benign replacement for the devastating earlier dioxin-based herbicides. But a barrage of experimental data has now shown glyphosate and the GMO foods incorporating it to pose serious dangers to health. Compounding the risk is the toxicity of “inert” ingredients used to make glyphosate more potent. Researchers have found, for example, that the surfactant POEA can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. But these risks have been conveniently ignored.
The widespread use of GMO foods and glyphosate herbicides helps explain the anomaly that the US spends over twice as much per capita on healthcare as the average developed country, yet it is rated far down the scale of the world’s healthiest populations. The World Health Organization has ranked the US LAST out of 17 developed nations for overall health.
Sixty to seventy percent of the foods in US supermarkets are now genetically modified. By contrast, in at least 26 other countries—including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Russia—GMOs are totally or partially banned; and significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.
A ban on GMO and glyphosate use might go far toward improving the health of Americans. But the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade agreement for which the Obama Administration has sought Fast Track status, would block that sort of cause-focused approach to the healthcare crisis.
Roundup’s Insidious Effects
Roundup-resistant crops escape being killed by glyphosate, but they do not avoid absorbing it into their tissues. Herbicide-tolerant crops have substantially higher levels of herbicide residues than other crops. In fact, many countries have had to increase their legally allowable levels—by up to 50 times—in order to accommodate the introduction of GM crops. In the European Union, residues in foods are set to rise 100-150 times if a new proposal by Monsanto is approved. Meanwhile, herbicide-tolerant “super-weeds” have adapted to the chemical, requiring even more toxic doses and new toxic chemicals to kill the plant.
Human enzymes are affected by glyphosate just as plant enzymes are: the chemical blocks the uptake of manganese and other essential minerals. Without those minerals, we cannot properly metabolize our food. That helps explain the rampant epidemic of obesity in the United States. People eat and eat in an attempt to acquire the nutrients that are simply not available in their food.
According to researchers Samsell and Seneff in Biosemiotic Entropy: Disorder, Disease, and Mortality (April 2013):
Glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology . . . . Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
More than 40 diseases have been linked to glyphosate use, and more keep appearing. In September 2013, the National University of Rio Cuarto, Argentina, published research finding that glyphosate enhances the growth of fungi that produce aflatoxin B1, one of the most carcinogenic of substances. A doctor from Chaco, Argentina, told Associated Press, “We’ve gone from a pretty healthy population to one with a high rate of cancer, birth defects and illnesses seldom seen before.” Fungi growths have increased significantly in US corn crops.
Glyphosate has also done serious damage to the environment. According to an October 2012 report by the Institute of Science in Society:
Agribusiness claims that glyphosate and glyphosate-tolerant crops will improve crop yields, increase farmers’ profits and benefit the environment by reducing pesticide use. Exactly the opposite is the case. . . . [T]he evidence indicates that glyphosate herbicides and glyphosate-tolerant crops have had wide-ranging detrimental effects, including glyphosate resistant super weeds, virulent plant (and new livestock) pathogens, reduced crop health and yield, harm to off-target species from insects to amphibians and livestock, as well as reduced soil fertility.
Politics Trumps Science
In light of these adverse findings, why have Washington and the European Commission continued to endorse glyphosate as safe? Critics point to lax regulations, heavy influence from corporate lobbyists, and a political agenda that has more to do with power and control than protecting the health of the people.
In the ground-breaking 2007 book Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, William Engdahl states that global food control and depopulation became US strategic policy under Rockefeller protégé Henry Kissinger. Along with oil geopolitics, they were to be the new “solution” to the threats to US global power and continued US access to cheap raw materials from the developing world. In line with that agenda, the government has shown extreme partisanship in favor of the biotech agribusiness industry, opting for a system in which the industry “voluntarily” polices itself. Bio-engineered foods are treated as “natural food additives,” not needing any special testing.
Jeffrey M. Smith, Executive Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, confirms that US Food and Drug Administration policy allows biotech companies to determine if their own foods are safe. Submission of data is completely voluntary. He concludes:
In the critical arena of food safety research, the biotech industry is without accountability, standards, or peer-review. They’ve got bad science down to a science.
Whether or not depopulation is an intentional part of the agenda, widespread use of GMO and glyphosate is having that result. The endocrine-disrupting properties of glyphosate have been linked to infertility, miscarriage, birth defects and arrested sexual development. In Russian experiments, animals fed GM soy were sterile by the third generation. Vast amounts of farmland soil are also being systematically ruined by the killing of beneficial microorganisms that allow plant roots to uptake soil nutrients.
In Gary Null’s eye-opening documentary Seeds of Death: Unveiling the Lies of GMOs, Dr. Bruce Lipton warns, “We are leading the world into the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet. . . . Human behavior is undermining the web of life.”
The TPP and International Corporate Control
As the devastating conclusions of these and other researchers awaken people globally to the dangers of Roundup and GMO foods, transnational corporations are working feverishly with the Obama administration to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that would strip governments of the power to regulate transnational corporate activities. Negotiations have been kept secret from Congress but not from corporate advisors, 600 of whom have been consulted and know the details. According to Barbara Chicherio in Nation of Change:
The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has the potential to become the biggest regional Free Trade Agreement in history. . . .
The chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddique. If ratified the TPP would impose punishing regulations that give multinational corporations unprecedented right to demand taxpayer compensation for policies that corporations deem a barrier to their profits.
. . . They are carefully crafting the TPP to insure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.
Food safety is only one of many rights and protections liable to fall to this super-weapon of international corporate control. In an April 2013 interview on The Real News Network, Kevin Zeese called the TPP “NAFTA on steroids” and “a global corporate coup.” He warned:
No matter what issue you care about—whether its wages, jobs, protecting the environment . . . this issue is going to adversely affect it . . . .
If a country takes a step to try to regulate the financial industry or set up a public bank to represent the public interest, it can be sued . . . .
Return to Nature: Not Too Late
There is a safer, saner, more earth-friendly way to feed nations. While Monsanto and US regulators are forcing GM crops on American families, Russian families are showing what can be done with permaculture methods on simple garden plots. In 2011, 40% of Russia’s food was grown on dachas (cottage gardens or allotments). Dacha gardens produced over 80% of the country’s fruit and berries, over 66% of the vegetables, almost 80% of the potatoes and nearly 50% of the nation’s milk, much of it consumed raw. According to Vladimir Megre, author of the best-selling Ringing Cedars Series:
Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world – and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody’s got enough food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year – so in the US, for example, gardeners’ output could be substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens – and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.
In the US, only about 0.6 percent of the total agricultural area is devoted to organic farming. This area needs to be vastly expanded if we are to avoid “the sixth mass extinction.” But first, we need to urge our representatives to stop Fast Track, vote no on the TPP, and pursue a global phase-out of glyphosate-based herbicides and GMO foods. Our health, our finances and our environment are at stake.
Bitcoin Riches Spill Over to Alternative Digital Currencies
That was a week ago when the price of one Bitcoin was a mere $650. Today it flirts with $1000 and its market cap blew through the $10 billion mark yesterday. But the surge of government-issued money flowing into digital currencies doesn't stop with Bitcoin.
Almost all of the lesser known alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) experienced massive gains in the last few days, too. Look at the market caps the top cryptocurrencies below. Pay attention to the % Change and the graphs:
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| Source: CoinMarketCap.com |
Most of these currencies like Litecoin, Anoncoin, Namecoin, Goldcoin, and 56 others on the multi-currency exchange Cryptsy.com, trade against Bitcoin. Therefore, when they grow 3-4 fold against Bitcoin while itself gains in dollar value, the returns have become astronomical for altcoin daytraders.
Once you have some Bitcoin, Cryptsy makes it super easy to trade for other altcoins. I even managed to turn 2 bitcoins into 7 bitcoins there in a very short period.
One altcoin I got lucky with was Anoncoin (ANC). I bought some because it seemed unique compared to some of its peers. In the span of a few days it went from .0005BTC to .003BTC, a 500% gain against a currency (Bitcoin) that gained around another 25% at the same time. Look at its 1-month chart:
.jpg) |
| From Cryptsy |
The video below by the Bitcoin Channel on YouTube explains the rise as overflow from people who don't want to sell their Bitcoin for fiat dollars. It seems they'd rather diversify them into the altcoins.
The Bitcoin gains of late feel different from April's bubble. It feels more like Bitcoin is starting to reach critical mass, globally. And it seems its popularity spawned an entirely new asset class called cryptocurrencies to invest in.
It's tough to say what the future holds for Bitcoin or these other altcoins. They may be purely speculative at the moment, However, strangely, I feel more secure holding them than I do with Federal Reserve Notes.
Source: Activist Post
Monday, November 25, 2013
Is your TV spying on YOU? It sounds like science fiction but many new TVs can watch you - telling advertisers your favourite shows or even filming you on the sofa. And there's no off switch!
Earlier, you sat on the living-room sofa eating supper, before loading the dishwasher and heading upstairs.
You have, in other words, just enjoyed a perfectly normal night, in a perfectly normal home. The curtains are drawn, the central heating turned up. It’s cosy, relaxing and, above all, completely private. Or so you thought.
The truth turns out to be quite the opposite. For on the other side of the world, people you didn’t know existed are keeping a beady eye on your every move.
On the other side of the world, people you didn't know existed are keeping a beady eye on your every move
These characters can see what clothes you have been wearing and what food you’ve eaten. They heard every word you said, and logged every TV show you watched. Some are criminals, others work for major corporations. And now they know your most intimate secrets.
It may sound like a plot summary for a futuristic science-fiction movie. But real-life versions of this Orwellian scenario are being played out every day in towns and cities across the globe — and in most cases the victims have no idea.
At fault is a common electronic device invented nearly a century ago and found in almost every modern household: the domestic television set.
Put simply, our TVs have started spying on us.
Last week, there was a high-profile case in point. An IT consultant called Jason Huntley, who lives in a village near Hull, uncovered evidence that a flat-screen television, which had been sitting in his living room since the summer, was secretly invading his family’s privacy.
He began investigating the £400 LG device after noticing that its home screen appeared to be showing him ‘targeted’ adverts — for cars, and Knorr stock cubes — based on programmes he’d just been watching.
Huntley decided to monitor information that the so-called smart TV — which connects to the internet — was sending and receiving. He did this by using his laptop effectively as a bridge between his television and the internet receiver, so the laptop was able to show all the data being sucked out of his set.
He soon discovered that details of not just every show he watched but every button he pressed on his remote control were being sent back to LG’s corporate headquarters in South Korea.
Smart televisions, which connect to the internet, could be invading ordinary families' privacy (stock picture)
There, the electronics company appeared to be using its customers’ data to make money. A promotional video shown to commercial clients suggested that data was being used to provide ‘the ad experience you have always dreamed of’.
The information Huntley’s TV had sent — without his knowledge — included the contents of his private digital video collection, which he’d watched on the television. This included camcorder footage of family celebrations containing images of his wife and two young children.
Most worrying of all, the device continued sending such information to Korea even after Huntley had adjusted the television’s default settings to ‘opt out’ of data sharing.
Huntley wrote about the findings on his blog. After his case was picked up by mainstream news outlets, LG announced an investigation. ‘Customer privacy is a top priority,’ the firm said. ‘We are looking into reports that certain viewing information on LG smart TVs was shared without consent.’
LG has also removed its promotional video about targeted advertising from its website.
The Information Commissioner’s Office says it is now investigating the firm for a ‘possible breach’ of the Data Protection Act. Jason Huntley, meanwhile, tells me he is ‘very suspicious and also a little worried’ by the affair.
‘I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this. Who knows what else these televisions are doing that we don’t know about?’
It doesn’t take much digging to find out. Talk to any IT security expert and they will tell you that Huntley’s discovery is probably the tip of the iceberg.
What’s to blame is the continuing rise of smart televisions, which account for most new TV sets sold and are predicted to be in more than half of British homes by 2016. These high-tech devices differ from traditional televisions in that they are not just passive boxes that receive a signal and transfer it to a backlit screen.
Instead, they are essentially computers that connect to the internet — and so also send information back the other way.
In theory, this can be extremely useful. For example, many smart TVs have shopping ‘apps’ to access Amazon. They connect to iTunes. They allow us to watch YouTube, instantly download films via Netflix, stream BBC shows on iPlayer, and talk to friends using the video phone link Skype.
But in practice, like almost every type of computer, they can be all-too-easily hacked. And unlike PCs, almost all of which have fairly good anti-virus ‘firewalls’, smart TVs have little or no such software.
Indeed, most have been designed so that outside software — including anti-virus programmes — can never be installed.
This year, Luigi Auriemma, an IT security researcher and computer programmer from Malta, demonstrated the risks that these devices pose when he showed it was possible to hack into several types of Samsung smart television.
Last week, IT consultant Jason Huntley uncovered evidence that his LG flat-screen television, which had been sitting in his living room since the summer, was secretly invading his family's privacy
After accessing the devices via the internet, Auriemma was able to control them: turning the TVs off and on, and secretly accessing data they held about a user’s viewing habits.
Had he been a criminal, he could also have obtained details of the credit cards that users had uploaded to access pay-per-view TV, download films or use shopping apps.
Other experts recently made the chilling discovery that it is possible to remotely access the video cameras built into the front of thousands of smart televisions, and spy on the users in their own home.
One such expert is Kurt Stammberger, who works for the IT security firm Mocana. He says the company was recently asked by a television manufacturer to do ‘penetration tests’ on its devices.
‘We weren’t just able to find out what someone was watching, and had watched,’ he says. ‘We could also install “spyware” that could, if they had a video camera, allow us to see through that camera — without even activating the little light that indicates it’s on.
‘It was a fairly straightforward thing to do. People who work in IT often place tape over their computer’s camera lens [in a laptop they are usually set into the inside of the lid] unless they want to actually use it, because it’s so common to hack them. We should all do the same with smart TVs.’
Such an attack, which Stammberger describes as ‘frighteningly easy’ to mount, could provide voyeuristic hackers with a chance to snoop on unsuspecting home-owners in their living rooms or bedrooms.
According to Roger Grimes, who has written eight books on IT security and worked in the field for 28 years, the gangs then sell lists of hacked credit card numbers to fellow criminals
You have only to witness the extraordinary success of the critically acclaimed Channel 4 show Gogglebox, in which consenting families allow the viewing public to watch them watching television, to appreciate how enticing that prospect could be.
More commercially minded hackers could use such an attack to steal commercial secrets. It could even be used to spy on foreign powers.
‘It’s a serious prospect and I would be very surprised if the Government ever puts in a big order for TVs from, for example, a Chinese manufacturer such as Huawei,’ adds Stammberger, referring to the giant corporation that has been banned in America because of fears over espionage.
‘But supply chains these days are so long and so complex that it’s very rare to buy an electronic device that doesn’t have some sort of Chinese component in it.’
Gangs based largely in Eastern Europe and Russia, meanwhile, are already using so-called ‘data-mining’ programmes to trawl the internet looking for smart TVs in which owners have entered their credit card details. A single search can yield thousands of results.
According to Roger Grimes, who has written eight books on IT security and worked in the field for 28 years, the gangs then sell lists of hacked credit card numbers to fellow criminals.
Card details that were obtained within the past 24 hours sell for around £2.20 each. Older ones are cheaper because there is more chance the cards could have been changed or stopped.
‘What we are starting to see now is really just a foretaste of what’s going to be happening in the next couple of decades,’ says Grimes.
‘Thanks firstly to mobile devices, and now smart TVs, we are entering a brave new world where there will be computers everywhere. Bad guys will take advantage of that.’
And we may not even be safe in our own living rooms.
Social Logins for Government Services Profile User's Identity
The chip, called a secure element, can either be in a card, or a mobile phone, and you’ll have to hang onto it for dear life, because without it, your life would fall apart. This global smart ID is about to make its debut – using ‘social login’.
Apart from the surveillance involved using social logins, there will be a number of other chilling effects to follow – biometric enrolment, for starters, followed by relentless profiling in the name of predictive policing (aka NSA, GCHQ), and even digital clones used for simulations.
Mistrust will run amok. Always having to prove who you are, and what you’re allowed to do.
You could even be held responsible for maintaining our online profiles, meaning you’d be liable for what you claim about yourself, and for updating your details when your ID changes in any way. You will also have to pay to have your attributes (such as passing an exam) verified. People are already being advised to watch what they say online, but the global smart ID system would be able to restrict your access to certain resources if you are deemed to be illegible. This might soon happen to people on benefits – caught drinking, or smoking, their benefits might be stopped, for instance.
Without any public debate, it has been decided that you will pass control of your identity to one of the Identity Providers. It’s important to spread this information, because although the government insists it’s voluntary, there is no other option being presented for those who opt not to sign up. There aren’t any press releases, but this thing is happening right now. Offices and phone lines are being closed down. Even Bitcoin has gotten involved, as exchanges have begun using the very same ‘identity ecosystem’, and there are Bitcoin ATMs which require you to scan your palm print.
Any identity can be revoked, i.e. switched off.
The ultimate aim is to get us all using the same standards, which have been developed by the very same companies which stand to profit handsomely from this system.
OpenID, used for social logins for government services, “… is a standard that lets sites such as Google, Twitter or Facebook share the same login credentials. U.S. Government sites require a trust framework, a certification system that enables a party who accepts a digital identity credential to trust the identity, security and privacy policies of the party who issues the credential. OIX is the first Open Identity Trust Framework provider, enabling certified sites to share their login credentials with U.S. Government sites.” In 2010, Janrain was reportedly the only company to be, “working with the Apps.Gov site to provide OpenID-based login and registration tools.”
The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) was founded in 2010 by Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA and Booz Allen Hamilton, to create a “trust framework” of standards and certification which would work across borders, and between public and private sectors.
Your government wants you to click ‘sign in with Facebook’, (or some other identity provider) to begin a transaction with any of its departments. This ‘social login’ sets in motion a sweep of the Internet to track and trace your words and actions, and decide if you’re a real person. This process is known as “internet life verification”. Each of the IDPs are part of the federated identity ecosystem, which means they are all using the same global standards; it means handing control of your identity to a third party, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, PayPal, Microsoft, or LinkedIn. These are the dominant IDPs which provide citizens with a social (or federated) login.
Social login is the ability to access a web site or application using an account on a social network. You may have already used it, or at least seen the login buttons as an option on various sites' sign-in screens.Some websites now have the ‘NASCAR logo’, which features the icons of the dominant Identity Providers (IDPs) listed above, (and maybe some others), and the option to sign in quickly using one of these social accounts is being offered by more and more websites and apps these days. Users may not realise that doing this would mean granting permission for their personal information to be gathered and analysed – every single time they sign in.
Over the next few years, more and more people all over the world will be using a smart phone, probably in combination with smart-rings or bracelets[1], to pay friends, and access buildings, using their NFC-enabled devices – simply verify yourself to your Identity Provider, and the IDP will do the rest for you. In the blink of an eye.
To understand what information can be gleaned from these IDPs, you gotta go here.Note that apps, etc, could get read/write access to people’s Facebook data, as well as that of their friends[2]. Security expert Dan Blum notes,
According to Janrain’s quarterly numbers and other sources, Facebook Login has almost 50% of the social login “market” and Google Plus (which is growing more rapidly) about 35%. Yahoo, Twitter and LinkedIn also register with smaller slices of the pie. Janrain notes: “Despite the possible perception that this is a two-horse race, it is critical to note the diversity of consumer preferences on different types of sites…We also have observed disparate preferences across geographic regions. For example, Hyves contends with Facebook as the most popular social network in the Netherlands…. In Brazil and India, Orkut is a popular identity provider for social login, while in China, Sina Weibo and Renren maintain popularity. Mixi is a common social login choice in Japan, while VK is preferred in Russia.A recent ‘conversation’ amongst developers, about the clear progression of social logins, became a “bloodbath”, with comments such as:
…. I don’t like being tracked.
…. Leaves trails.
…. I don’t like you (consumers don’t like the companies asking for the data or sharing data).
…. I don’t like spooks (can be accessed by the government/intelligence professionals, metadata creates patterns, companies are beholden to government requirements).
…. I like Mozilla persona (just use that).
…. You’re a single point of vulnerability.
…. You’re a single point of blockage.
…. Too much power to Facebook.
…. What’s going on is that corps are collecting data on what the users are doing.Also, at the Internet Identity Workshop last month (October, 2013), a long list of “user challenges with federated login” were recorded in the minutes from the meeting; for instance, it was noted that the Identity Provider has the, “ability to follow the user to where they go”, and that when a user builds up a “long term identity relationship, [they] may get greater access to services for having a quality account”, but users (who are said to have given permission to share their data) may not understand “what get’s shared”, and be “unclear on the potential use of the data”.
A great many problems are touched upon in the meeting:
- [users] must relinquish data to gain service benefits
- if something goes wrong, who are you going to call, the RP [the Relying Party] or the IDP
- if the user is faced with inability to access a paid service, who reimburses the user?
- we are habituating consent
- if you fail to share data, you fail authentication
Although this prevents other websites from seeing your details, there are several companies who will gather it up for them, literally splattering personal info all over the place. Data is now considered an asset in itself, so the trade in identities will become an even more lucrative market.
The thing is, the identity profiles are created and owned by the Data Miners, and, when social profiles are combined with the credit history, and “other offline data” about that person, (such as call history and device ID, see below), the profiles are considered to provide substantial assurance that the person being presented is indeed who they say they are. Combined with behavioural biometrics, they also provide deep insights into an individual’s personality and lifestyle.
Sunil Madhu, CEO of Socure explains, “Peoples’ social behavior is something that is a part of who they are; a hard to replicate biometric signature. Socure’s Social Biometrics solution focuses on the strength of our social behaviors on different types of social networks as a way to assert the authenticity of a user’s identity online. When Socure’s machine learning algorithms are combined with traditional legacy identity verification software, you have a very formidable set of fraud detection tools.”Marketers are eager for any information which will enable them to personalise their services, i.e. targeted ads. They really want to get to know their customers, as explained in a White Paper by Janrain, another social identity proofing company:
Marketers can gain a more sophisticated understanding of their consumers by leveraging the profile data that people already maintain on their social networks. Social profile data includes not only basic demographics such as name, age, gender, geography and email address, but also deeper psychographic information such as interests, marital status, political views, hobbies and friends. And because the profile information that users maintain on their social networks is transparent to friends, family and coworkers, it is more likely to be current and accurate than personal data that consumers may supply during a traditional registration process.Trulioo is another company which aggregates social data from the Internet; it then runs proprietary algorithms which can spot ‘fake IDs’, such as those created on Facebook. Developers are advised:
TruVerify is installed on your website as a widget that enables global identity verification with as little as a single click supporting 9 different social networks and email providers. Once the user authenticates to their preferred provider, you send our API the profile information you would like verified, and we will return match results with a related confidence score in real-time. The verification process does not rely on information that a user has claimed in any specific social network profile. Instead it draws conclusions about the user’s identity based on their interactions on the Internet across time utilizing many sources to correlate identity information.
Higher levels of activity result in a higher score and are used to determine the level of social embededness or degree of digital life presence. This in turn is used to determine the confidence level on the consumers’ identity information.
Depending on customer requirements, these responses may be supplemented with historical and temporal analysis, crowd sourced analytics and correlation against public information sets.Trulioo is partnered with several companies, including Janrain, Socure, and Verizon, which provides ‘Universal Identity Services’.[3] Trulioo has been boasting that the UK government is planning to use its services, and saying social logins are a good way to “get people on board”.
For a few years now, financial organisations, such as PayPal and Equifax, have been using social profiles as an additional authentication factor when it comes to authorisation. (So it helps that Google and Facebook are insisting people use their real name.)
In other words, even without seeing your birth certificate or passport, the information contained in these profiles is considered to bolster the trustworthiness of data from credit bureaus, cell phones, and criminal records, and allow you to apply for credit online. Financial institutions are already using the services of companies like Janrain, Trulioo, and Socure to decrease the risk of fraud. These companies use “social biometrics”, to screen an online profile to see if it’s a “wet carbon lifeform”, i.e. a real person. The identity proofing companies take in all the data the person has ever entered into any of the social networks, combine it with other “publicly available data”, and analyse it to assess how genuine it is. There are no laws restricting the collection of this data, and it is even more valuable because it is user-generated (not from cookies), and therefore more reliable.
“While the companies can access only public information or what people choose to share, a great deal is readily accessible. Many young people allow the public to see certain parts of their Facebook profiles, as well as accounts on Twitter andLinkedIn (LNKD). Consumers also leave traces of themselves on blog posts, Yelp (YELP) reviews, and online forums. Public data can include photo tags, locale check-ins, and a person’s network of friends. Facebook and LinkedIn provide software tools that let companies automatically import information from profiles on the social networks—with users’ permission—and consumers are allowing this more often, opting for the ease of signing into a website through Facebook, for instance, instead of filling out a separate form.
Intuit, the largest seller of personal-finance software and a provider of payment systems, has begun using LinkedIn to help verify the identities of users, whose profiles on the site list detailed employment history and often include endorsements and recommendations from colleagues. “There’s definitely enough meat on the bone there,” says Ken Miller, vice president of strategic risk services at Intuit.
Equifax is teaming up with government agencies, both state and federal, to help detect whether citizens who are receiving benefits are truly eligible. The bureau must verify identity, state of residence, the existence of a criminal record, and income level, things that social media can help check, Roy says.Even without any credit history, an individual’s social activity online can, over time, be enough to authenticate an identity to Level of Assurance 1. Once a user has begun the process, (e.g. by clicking, “sign in with Facebook”), an identity file is created, and can gradually be built up to become a trusted identity, by adding other layers of authentication, such as passport, driving licence, and biometrics such as fingerprints, or heartbeat patterns.
With all of these layers put together, a fully assured, Level 4 identity has been created, allowing that person to participate in everyday life. After all, you’ll be needing Level 4 more and more as time goes by….
You’re then supposed to carry this identity around with you wherever you go, because you’ll be needing it throughout the day – not just to access government services, or fill out a few forms on the Internet, but to open doors, pay for things, use your smart meter, log in at work, and much more, as time goes by, and trust decreases.
Labelling ‘the trusted ones’ has already begun. Have you noticed some websites are ‘secure’ and have the green address bar?
And you can’t leave comments on YouTube any more unless you sign in to Google.
For years, companies such as Google have traded their wares to marketers looking for that holy grail of advertising: an in-depth view of each individual customer, to be targeted with personalised ads. This they achieve by tracking their customers across the Internet, and in their phone and credit card transactions, in order to generate identity profiles of them. The profiles contain sets of ‘attributes’ which make up the digital identity. Marketing has gone beyond demographics, to dig deeper into who we are and reveal our ‘psychographics’. Our religious and political beliefs, our friends, our routines, our professed selves.
Are we really supposed to believe these profiles are not used by the NSA?
The NSA raised its efforts to control identity/access after the WikiLeaks saga and put together the Insider Threat Program – the message is, ‘trust no-one’, and always report them! The military sets the standards, and society must follow. Everyone is considered to be a potential threat. It’s all about “Information Assurance”.
Identity is also to be tied to the device we are using – this is part of achieving high authentication, and is to be controlled by the Trusted Computing Module (TCM), installed in billions of devices already. The TCM works with Windows 8 (which the German government was warned about), and has been approved by the NSA. Windows 7 can be used until the year 2020. The NSA also works with NIST (which is bringing in the NSTIC) to develop encryption standards.
All points are to be covered.
There are a great many sensors all around us which could be used to provide information to augment what is already known. Certainly, the trend will always be to increase security, as this is the start of a never-ending race to beat the identity thieves. The more that is known about a person, the less risk there is to the corporatocracy. Phones themselves have an incredible array of sensors,[4] even without biometrics.
Earlier this year, The Guardian reported on Raytheon’s RIOT system; they feature a video of a specialist at Raytheon showing how individuals could be tracked through their digital footprints, combined with transaction data.
However, the demo of RIOT, and even metadata analysis by the NSA, utterly pales in comparison to what marketers are already doing – with the information provided by the Data Controllers. By examining our every move, in real-time, highly revealing personality and lifestyle profiles are being stored and analysed all the time.
So if you’ve been riled by the idea of being tracked and scrutinized by intelligence personnel, you’re certain to reject enrolment in the Worldwide Federated Identity Ecosystem they are now proposing.
In fact, this is a truly marvellous opportunity for non-compliance, since the system is said to be voluntary. Living in the matrix makes our identities more vulnerable than they have ever been, to hackers and governments and the NSA, and programmers who work for them, creating a one-way mirror for surveillance and behaviour control. Forget their promise of privacy, because there will always be mistakes, hacktivists, and, worst of all, the quantum computer belonging to Google and Lockheed Martin.
Anyhow, the NSA, in its effort to predict crime, is already able to crack any encryption the Identity Providers provide, since they are all in cahoots:
The program used by the NSA that carves out its own “back door” in online encryptions, code-named Bullrun, “deployed custom-built, superfast computers to break codes.” But, the agency didn’t accomplish this on its own.
According to the leaked document, courtesy of Snowden, The NSA worked with technology companies in the US and around the world to create entry points into their products. Some companies claim they were coerced by the government to build a back door for them or hand over their “master encryption keys.”
The document, however, does not reveal specific company names.
The NSA says its ability to crack encryptions is vital to its mission. The agency’s efforts are still governed by laws that forbid it from deliberately targeting Americans without a warrant, but if nothing else, the document on “Bullrun” reveals that privacy protections cannot necessarily deter the intelligence community from not only collecting data, but reading the information it collects.Notes:
[1] Smart-rings and bracelets are now being trialled in an NSTIC pilot http://getmindsmart.com/NSTIC_UPDATES_LINKS.html by Exponent, HID Global, and others, with money awarded by the US government.
[2] Dan Blum noted, “Other than allowing one to choose or remove applications one by one, Facebook provides no granularity over how one’s data is handled. If, next to “Use apps, plugins, games and websites on Facebook and elsewhere?” one click’s on “Edit” there is only the draconian option to “Turn off Platform” and the stern warning…. You will not be able to log into websites or applications using Facebook; Your friends won’t be ale to interact and share with you using apps and websites; Instant personalisation will also be turned off; Apps you’ve previously installed may still have info you shared; Please contact these apps for details on removing this data.”
[3] Verizon is one of the IDPs chosen by the UK government. However, as reported by The Guardian, Verizon passed customer call records to the NSA, containing, “the phone number of every caller and recipient; the unique serial number of the phones involved; the time and duration of each phone call; and potentially the location of each of the participants when the call happened.” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/phone-call-metadata-information-authorities
[4] See ‘A Survey of Mobile Phone Sensing’, by Lane, et al., 2010)
http://www.academia.edu/646416/A_survey_of_mobile_phone_sensing
Source: Activist Post