China arrests 5,000 for internet pornography offences

China arrested more than 5,000 people in 2009 in a drive to purge the internet of pornography and other “harmful information”.

China maintains strict censorship of the internet in order to make sure that unhealthy content, including criticism of the Communist Party, does not reach a wide audience.

Telegraph | Jan 1, 2010

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai

The ministry of public security said 5,394 people had been arrested and that over 9,000 websites had been deleted for having pornographic content. The ministry did not say how many people had subsequently been put on trial.

The authorities released the figures with a warning that its policing of the internet would intensify in 2010 in order to preserve “state security”.

China maintains strict censorship of the internet in order to make sure that unhealthy content, including criticism of the Communist Party, does not reach a wide audience.

Websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are all blocked and Google has received a public warning for not censoring itself more thoroughly.

With over 350 million internet users, the government worries that any small cracks in its authority could quickly spiral out of control. In the first six months of 2009, an average of 221,000 Chinese a day started using the internet for the first time, or 153 new users a minute.

The authorities are also hoping to tackle the growing number of Chinese hackers and fraudsters who use the internet to spread viruses and steal personal information.

The government has tightened regulations for websites, forcing owners to prove their identity before being allowed to register a name.

The ministry said it would “strengthen punishment for internet operators that violate the laws and regulations” in the coming year and “severely punish operations that have serious problems with harmful information”.

“Purifying the internet environment and cracking down on internet crimes is related to long-term state security,” the ministry said.

In December, the government offered a reward of up to 10,000 yuan (£906) to people who reported websites that feature pornography.

The government attempted last year to coerce computer manufacturers into only selling computers which had a censorship program called Green Dam Youth Escort already installed. The move was eventually defeated.

The Sun | Dec 26, 2009

By RHODRI PHILLIPS

A PREGNANT mother was horrified to see live pictures of her BED on a travel news website.

A camera meant to be monitoring traffic was instead pointing directly at Megan Franklin’s bedroom.

And footage on the site was so clear that her PILLOWS could be made out.

Shocked Megan, 31, who is expecting her second child with her husband, said last night: “It is an inexcusable invasion of our privacy.

“I don’t like the thought of some pervy camera operator looking at me while I’m getting ready in the morning.

“I never thought anyone would see me because the room can’t be seen from the street. This is just wrong.”

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And she accused a mystery worker at Transport for London, which placed the camera outside her home near Richmond, Surrey, of deliberately aiming it at her semi.

She said: “This can’t be accidental. The camera is perfectly orientated towards the window of my bedroom. It must have been done on purpose.”

The creepy camera’s antics were exposed by a commuter who uses the TfL website to keep an eye on traffic jams.

He was shocked to find himself looking into a bedroom instead of at a main road.

The commuter told The Sun: “This is taking Big Brother culture to extremes.

“Someone – probably a bored camera operative – must have deliberately pointed the camera at this bedroom. There is no excuse for it.

“I’m disgusted by it. If I lived in that house I’d be furious. Transport for London has some serious questions to answer.”

Megan, who is six months’ pregnant, said she had discussed the camera with neighbours, but added: “They are as baffled and as disturbed as I am. Where else has this camera been looking?

“And which other cameras across the country are pointed where they shouldn’t be?”

Last night the machine was back looking at the road.

TfL blamed the incident on a camera fault, which had now been put right. A spokesman said: “We apologise for any distress caused – this is totally unacceptable.

“This camera was not intentionally facing in this direction and was not set that way by a member of staff.”

He said the incident was being investigated.

The potential for online warfare has become a hot topic after a string of major incidents in recent years.

Russia and US in secret talks to fight net crime

guardian.co.uk | Dec 13, 2009

by Daniel Nasaw in Washington and Bobbie Johnson in San Francisco

American officials have been holding secret talks with Russia and the United Nations in an attempt to strengthen internet security and rein in the growing threat of cyberwarfare.

The effort, first reported in the New York Times, is a virtual version of the nuclear arms talks being held between the two nations in Geneva – but rather than focusing on bombs and missiles, the discussions are aimed at curbing the increasing level of attacks taking place online.

With a rising tide of strikes by hackers on major institutions – including banks, businesses, government agencies and the military – diplomats are attempting to forge an international consensus on how to deal with cybersecurity problems.

“Both sides are making positive noises,” James Lewis, a senior fellow at the centre for strategic and international studies and a cyber security expert, told the Guardian. “We’ve never seen that before.”

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The potential for online warfare has become a hot topic in recent years, after a string of major incidents. Large-scale cyberattacks took place during last year’s conflict between Russia and Georgia while the Estonian government came grinding to a halt after an internet assault in 2007.

Critics have said the scale and impact of such incidents may be overstated, but experts accept there are serious dangers from criminal gangs operating online – as well as the rapid growth of state-sponsored espionage conducted over the internet.

Earlier this year, some of the plans for a new £2bn fighter aircraft being developed by the US, UK, Netherlands and Israel were stolen when hackers broke into American computers. Two years ago, it was revealed that hackers thought to be linked to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army had breached computer security systems at the Pentagon and Whitehall.

The latest discussions are thought to be an attempt to broker some sort of cross-border agreement over a number of issues related to internet security. Russia is said to be seeking a disarmament treaty for cyberspace, while the US hopes to use the talks to foster greater international cooperation on cybercrime.

Lewis confirmed that a Russian delegation met with officials from the US military, state department and security agencies in Washington about five weeks ago. Two weeks later, the White House agreed to meet representatives from the UN committee on disarmament and international security, the New York Times reported.

There are numerous sticking points however, not least the fact both the US and Russia – as well as most advanced militaries around the world – have sophisticated cyber warfare capabilities they are reluctant to document. Although the dangers of virtual conflicts are recognised, neither country is keen to hinder any future deployment by revealing the technologies they have developed, Lewis said.

Despite that, the talks mark a distinct turnaround from the approach of the Bush administration, which had resisted engaging with Russia and the UN over the prospect of a treaty on cyber weapons. Instead, it focused on dealing with cyber threats by economic and commercial means, rather than through the military.

Earlier this year, however, President Barack Obama identified cyber attacks as a “national security priority” and pledged to appoint a top-level White House adviser to co-ordinate responses..

“Cyberspace is real, and so is the risk that comes with it,” he said in May. “From now on, our digital infrastructure will be treated as a strategic asset.”

However, the post remains unfilled six months after the announcement., with disagreement inside the administration over how to coordinate the appropriate level of response. While some presidential advisers want the White House to take oversight of the issue, other top Obama aides prefer to let the commercial market handle cybersecurity. The US military and intelligence officials, meanwhile, prefer to pursue their own security programmes without direction from the White House.

Many American experts are more concerned with the financial threat of cybercrime and internet-based fraud, particularly since international enforcement efforts have been weakened by an inability to track and arrest the hackers responsible, many of whom are based in Russia and China.

Online crime is now a multibillion pound business worldwide, with criminal gangs across the globe conducting sophisticated cyber attacks to steal money from banks and disrupt commercial websites.

Last year, hackers broke into the Royal Bank of Scotland, using information gathered from to create cloned bank cards that were then used to withdraw more than £5m from cash machines in dozens of cities.

This August, an American man, Albert Gonzalez, pled guilty to his role in an attack that netted millions when an international hacking ring – largely based in Russia and the Ukraine – stole 130 million credit and debit card numbers from some of America’s biggest retailers.

Despite knowing the identities of several individuals linked to Gonzalez, however, the lack of international cooperation means that the other culprits remain beyond the reach of US prosecutors.

Ultrasound Encryption Scheme Makes Artificial Organs Hack-Proof

PopSci | Nov 10, 2009

By Clay Dillow

Securing Implantable Devices: Researchers are testing their system using an implanted device in the abdominal wall of a cow.

Think about it: Would you want someone launching the equivalent of a denial-of-service attack on the device that keeps your heart beating properly?

In an effort to ensure control of implantable devices remains in the proper hands, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control are developing a security scheme based on ultrasound that determines the exact distance between a medical device and the device attempting to access it. Under the scheme, devices will be accessible to devices up to 10 meters away that complete the required series of authentication procedures. In emergency situations — a heart attack for instance — it will grant access to any device within close proximity to the patient. Otherwise, any device asking for personal data or giving commands to your implant would essentially have to be in the room with you.

Previous security schemes based on proximity have been proposed using standard radio signals, but researchers worry that proximity can be mimicked by an attacker using a radio signal booster. Ultrasound waves layered on top of radio signals ensure that implanted devices can gauge true distance; since the speed of sound is constant, devices can calculate with extreme accuracy the distance between implant and any device attempting access.

While researchers acknowledge that the current risks of attacks on medical devices are relatively small, in the future they will become more and more important as novel new ways to exploit implantable technologies are approved and implemented. Creating the bionic human is only as good as science’s ability to ensure that technology is safe. Because Rickrolling is funny; burning up the batteries in someone’s pacemaker is decidedly not.

Matrix creep: Mind Trip Intel wants into your brain. (Image Warner Bros.)

Researchers expect brain waves to operate computers, TVs and cell phones

PopSci | Nov 20, 2009

By Jeremy Hsu

If the idea of turning consumers into true cyborgs sounds creepy, don’t tell Intel researchers. Intel’s Pittsburgh lab aims to develop brain implants that can control all sorts of gadgets directly via brain waves by 2020.

The scientists anticipate that consumers will adapt quickly to the idea, and indeed crave the freedom of not requiring a keyboard, mouse, or remote control for surfing the Web or changing channels. They also predict that people will tire of multi-touch devices such as our precious iPhones, Android smart phones and even Microsoft’s wacky Surface Table.

Turning brain waves into real-world tech action still requires some heavy decoding of brain activity. The Intel team has already made use of fMRI brain scans to match brain patterns with similar thoughts across many test subjects.

Plenty of other researchers have also tinkered in this area. Toyota recently demoed a wheelchair controlled with brainwaves, and University of Utah researchers have created a wireless brain transmitter that allows monkeys to control robotic arms.

There are still more implications to creating a seamless brain interface, besides having more cyborgs running around. If scientists can translate brain waves into specific actions, there’s no reason they could not create a virtual world with a full spectrum of activity tied to those brain waves. That’s right — we’re seeing Matrix creep.

U.S. pandemic options include crippling home modems

computerworld.com | Oct 30, 2009

The U.S. has a dark box of options for keeping Internet traffic flowing during a pandemic, including restricting the bandwidth capability of home modems.

The feds have already shown their willingness to impose their power on carriers because of national security, something that happened after 9/11 with the Patriot Act. If a pandemic keeps large numbers of the workforce at home and causes network congestion, the U.S. government will likely act again.

Most businesses and government agencies have diverse routing and pay carriers handsomely for bandwidth rich connections. But if a pandemic keeps 30% or more of the population at home, the so-called low bandwidth “last mile” to homes will be critical but in trouble as legions of at-home employees attempt work along with those playing networked games and streaming video.

Voluntary appeals to reduce Internet use will likely be the first option for policy makers. But if that doesn’t work, the U.S. General Accountability Office report this week on pandemic planning and networks, outlined some of the other possibilities.

One “technically feasible alternative,” wrote the GAO, is to temporarily cripple home user modems…

Full Story

Investment arm In-Q-Tel is funding Visible Technologies, making its online brand analysis capabilities available to U.S. intelligence agencies.

InformationWeek | Oct 22, 2009

By J. Nicholas Hoover

Businesses are increasingly looking to social media to monitor and manage their brands online. U.S. intelligence agencies now have similar capabilities as part of their technology portfolios.

In-Q-Tel, the investment firm established by the CIA to support U.S. intelligence agencies, has invested in Visible Technologies, a start-up that monitors social media content on the Web.

Visible Technologies’ software-as-a-service apps are used by companies to monitor and manage their brands by observing and analyzing public opinion on the Web in real-time.Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Hormel Foods, Xerox (NYSE: XRX), Panasonic, and marketing and public relations firms are among its customers.

U.S. intelligence organizations could use Visible Technologies’ service to monitor and analyze public opinion on the Web, much as private sector companies do.

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Visible Technologies’ TruCAST engine “casts a net on whatever the client wants to know more about,” said senior VP Blake Cahill. TruCAST pulls information from blogs, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, news sites, and Web forums, though it can’t reach into places like Facebook and MySpace where users have set privacy controls. Using that information, companies can run sentiment and relevancy analysis, look at a commenter or blogger’s level of influence, and search for posts based on defined criteria.

CIA invests in firm that monitors Internet

Visible Technologies has been focusing increasingly on the government sector, and it has done some work through the General Services Administration, according to Cahill. Concepts & Strategies, a consultancy that advises the Department of Defense, is one of its partners.

In-Q-Tel has invested in more than 175 companies, including ArcSight (security information management), Lucid Imagination (open source search), Endeca (search), Adapx (smart pens) and Keyhole, the developer of foundational technology used in Google Maps.

Visible Technologies has raised $23.5 million in funding since its inception in 2005, including $8 million since December. Terms of In-Q-Tel’s investment weren’t disclosed.

An astonishing £380 a minute will be spent on surveillance in a massive expansion of the Big Brother state.

Daily Mail | Oct 21, 2009

By James Slack

The £200million-a-year sum will give officials access to details of every internet click made by every citizen – on top of the email and telephone records already available.

It is a 1,700 per cent increase on the cost of the current surveillance regime.

Last night LibDem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne described the sum as ‘eye-watering’.

‘There is already enough concern at the level of Government snooping,’ he said.

‘In an era of tough spending choices, it cannot be a justified response to the problems we face as a country to lavish millions of pounds a year on state spying.

‘The increase in money spent on tapping phones and emails is all the more baffling when Britain is still one of the few countries not to allow intercept evidence in court, even in terrorist cases.’

State bodies including councils are already making one request every minute to spy on the phone records and email accounts of members of the public.

The number of snooping missions carried out by police, town halls and other government departments has rocketed by 44 per cent in two years to a rate of 1,381 new cases every day.

Ministers say the five-year cost of the existing regime is £55.61million, an average of £11million a year.

This is paid to phone companies and service providers to meet the cost of keeping and providing private information about customers.

The cost of the new system emerged in a series of Parliamentary answers.

It is to cover payments to internet service providers so they can store mountains of information about every customer for a minimum of 12 months, and set up new systems to cope.

The actual content of calls and emails is not be kept – only who they were from or to, when they took place and where they were sent from.

Police, security services and other public authorities can then request access to the data as part of investigations.

Some 653 bodies are currently allowed access, including councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service and fire authorities and prison governors.

The new rules allowing access to internet records will be introduced by Parliament before the end of the year.

They are known as the Intercept Modernisation Programme.

Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a massive Government-run database, but chose not to because of privacy concerns.

Yesterday Alex Deane, director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘The Government is preparing to make British people pay through the nose so that they can track our movements online.’

But a Home Office spokesman said the costs involved were entirely separate from those necessary to comply with the European Data Retention Directive, which requires the storage of phone and email records.

‘Communications data is crucial to the fight against crime and keeping people safe,’ he added.

‘We have made clear that there are no plans to collect and hold the content of everyone’s communications.’

There were 504,073 made last year to intercept email and telephone records under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. It was passed ostensibly to fight terrorism.

But it has been used to spy on people suspected of putting their bins out on the wrong day, dropping litter and attempting to cheat school catchment area rules.

A system that creates “brain to brain communication” has been developed by British scientists, it has been claimed.

Telegraph | Oct 15, 2009

By Andrew Hough

The system, developed by a team at the University of Southampton, is said to be the first technology that would allow people to send thoughts, words and images directly to the minds of others, particularly people with a disability.

It has also been hailed as the future of the internet, which would provide a new way to communicate without the need for keyboards and telephones.

“This could be useful for those people who are locked into their bodies, who can’t speak, can’t even blink,” said the lead scientist Dr Christopher James.

The scientists claimed the research proved it could eventually be possible to create a system where people sent messages through their thoughts alone, although they conceded it was many years away.

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Scientists used “brain-computer interfacing”, a technique that allows computers to analyse brain signals, that enabled them to send messages formed by a person’s brain signals though an internet connection to another person’s brain miles away.

According to Dr James, during transmission two people were connected to electrodes that measure activity in specific parts of the brain.

The first person generated a series of zeros and ones, where they imagined moving their left arm for zero and right arm for one.

After the first person’s computer recognises the binary thoughts, it sends them to the internet and then to the other person’s PC.

A lamp is then flashed at two different frequencies for one and zero, the Times reported.

The second person’s brain signals are analysed after staring at this lamp and the number sequence is picked up by a computer.

“It’s not telepathy,” Dr James told the paper.

“There’s no conscious thought forming in one person’s head and another conscious thought appearing in another person’s mind.

“The next experiments are to get that second person to be aware of the information that is being sent to them. For that, I need to get my thinking cap on, so to speak.”

Players of Internet Eyes will monitor “thousands” of CCTV cameras, watching for crimes and reporting them to the authorities in hopes of winning monthly cash prizes.

escapistmagazine.com | Oct 9, 2009

by Andy Chalk

A new online “game” called Internet Eyes is about to launch, offering players a chance to earn money by spying on people through closed-circuit television cameras and reporting them to the police – for real.

Players of Internet Eyes will monitor “thousands” of CCTV cameras, watching for crimes and reporting them to the authorities in hopes of winning monthly cash prizes of up to £1,000 (roughly $1600). The game’s website will also feature a gallery of the people busted by Internet Eyes users along with a breakdown of their crimes and which user caught them. Tony Morgan, one of the men behind the scheme, said he and his partners were inspired to launch Internet Eyes by the fact that while the U.K. has roughly 4.2 million CCTV cameras installed throughout the country – a per-capita rate that easily outpaces even that of China – only “one in a thousand” actually gets watched.

“This could turn out to be the best crime prevention weapon there’s ever been,” Morgan said. “I wanted to combine the serious business of stopping crime with the incentive of winning money.”

The game will be free to play, while anyone who wants a camera monitored by Internet Eyes will pay £20 per week for the service. Morgan said he hopes that businesses, “local authorities” and even police forces will eventually take advantage of the service. The game will use cameras in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon when it launches in November, with a country-wide rollout expected soon after.

“Crimes are bound to get missed but this way the cameras will be watched by lots of people 24-hours-a-day. It gives people something better to do than watching Big Brother when everyone is asleep,” he said, apparently without a trace of irony. “We’ve had a lot of interest from local businesses and hope to roll it out nationwide and then worldwide.”

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about the plan as Morgan, however. Charles Farrier of the group No-CCTV called it “an appalling idea” and said, “It is something which should be nipped in the bud immediately. It will not only encourage a dangerous spying mentality by turning crime into a game but also could lead to dangerous civil rights abuses.”

I think “appalling” is a pretty good word for it. In the latter half of the 20th century, East Germany suffered under the incredibly repressive thumb of the Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi, a secret police agency famous for the extent to which it monitored the lives of everyday German citizens. Citizen-spies employed by the Stasi reported on each other to such an extent that two decades after reunification, the nation is still struggling to come to terms with the extent of the collusion. And now somebody wants to turn that sort of self-inflicted surveillance into a game?

On the other hand, maybe “appalling” isn’t strong enough.