I knew I wasn’t just being paranoid:
FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack
It wasn’t ever seriously in doubt, but the FBI yesterday acknowledged that it secretly took control of Freedom Hosting last July, days before the servers of the largest provider of ultra-anonymous hosting were found to be serving custom malware designed to identify visitors.Freedom Hosting’s operator, Eric Eoin Marques, had rented the servers from an unnamed commercial hosting provider in France, and paid for them from a bank account in Las Vegas. It’s not clear how the FBI took over the servers in late July, but the bureau was temporarily thwarted when Marques somehow regained access and changed the passwords, briefly locking out the FBI until it gained back control.
The new details emerged in local press reports from a Thursday bail hearing in Dublin, Ireland, where Marques, 28, is fighting extradition to America on charges that Freedom Hosting facilitated child pornography on a massive scale. He was denied bail today for the second time since his arrest in July.
Freedom Hosting was a provider of turnkey “Tor hidden service” sites — special sites, with addresses ending in .onion, that hide their geographic location behind layers of routing, and can be reached only over the Tor anonymity network. Tor hidden services are used by sites that need to evade surveillance or protect users’ privacy to an extraordinary degree – including human rights groups and journalists. But they also appeal to serious criminal elements, child-pornography traders among them.
On August 4, all the sites hosted by Freedom Hosting — some with no connection to child porn — began serving an error message with hidden code embedded in the page. Security researchers dissected the code and found it exploited a security hole in Firefox to identify users of the Tor Browser Bundle, reporting back to a mysterious server in Northern Virginia. The FBI was the obvious suspect, but declined to comment on the incident. The FBI also didn’t respond to inquiries from WIRED today.
If you start shopping for a hitman to kill your spouse it’s 99% certain that the guy you end up talking to has a badge and a microphone hidden on him somewhere. If you start surfing the internet for child porn or information on how to make meth or bombs you will attract the attention of law enforcement toot sweet.
Some people think they are safe from getting caught because they use some kind of masking software or service to make their activities untraceable. That’s like thinking the cops can’t trace cell phones.
I have always assumed that Big Brother was watching the internet. It’s practically designed to allow the government to snoop on you. Even before the internet was more than a toy for computer nerds the FBI was the biggest “dealer” of child porn via mail order. But if you ordered any it would get delivered by a SWAT team and you would go off to the Graybar Hotel for an extended visit.
Now they don’t have to worry about claims of entrapment. All they have to do is have some people spend their time looking for certain things posted on the internet and when they find it set up an electronic stakeout to see who comes by to visit. When someone shows up, the cops trace them back to the computer they are using.
Didja know that if you use caller ID blocking when you call 9-1-1 your number shows up anyway?
But wait! There’s more!
NYC Is Tracking RFID Toll Collection Tags All Over the City
In the northeast U.S., most of the tolls people encounter when driving make use of a system called E-ZPass to let them pay the tolls electronically. Drivers are given small RFID transponders that are scanned in tollbooths, at which point the toll is automatically deducted from a pre-paid account. One hacker got curious whether the RFID tags were being scanned elsewhere, so he tweaked his E-ZPass to blink a light and make a noise every time it was read. He tested the streets of New York City, and wasn’t surprised to see it light up in plenty of places where there were no tollbooths to be found.
Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking
Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of. Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges, they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations. At first the captured plate data was used just to check against lists of cars law enforcement hoped to locate for various reasons (to act on arrest warrants, find stolen cars, etc.). But increasingly, all of this data is being fed into massive databases that contain the location information of many millions of innocent Americans stretching back for months or even years.
The good news is that The Fuzz are gathering so much data they can’t possibly look at all of it. But when their attention gets focused on one person then that person has no privacy left. They even have toys (thermal imaging) that see through walls. That’s why I go au naturale inside my domain.
If they wanna watch me, I’ll gross ’em out.
The Crawdad Hole 
Keeping the bar low for the low info voters 😉 They know what sells in the US.
Tight ends? 😀
FYI:
If you are looking at porn, playing games or reading your personal email on your work computer, in most states you have no privacy rights to prevent your boss from snooping. The same thing applies to your work phone.
The thing is I’m so boring that anyone spying on me would be bored very quickly. I just don’t worry about it. In fact it’s sort of flattering that anyone would bother to spy on me.
The internet is actually pretty lousy for spying. Setting up something like a packet sniffer creates a big filter that traps all the packets that travel, but also has to send them on their way. The companies who were “forced” or willingly handed out meta data had to create separate pipelines to feed massive amounts of data back to the feds.
The worst part to me is that the government pays these companies for the trouble of providing this information. If the government is tracking me on my EZ-Pass, why do I have to pay for the transmitter? We’re paying billions in tax dollars to pay companies we already pay for to spy on us for the government.
Data collection is another matter entirely. You can’t throw trillions of pieces of data into a computer and predict some terror attack. You can only trace connections when you already have a name. The phone companies can do the same. They keep all this data, too. The only difference is that business has strict controls on their employees screwing around while the NSA can look up old girlfriends and their enemies’ records.
Free EZPasses for all!
Btw, even when the govt is fed family name, like Tsarnaev, they still don’t use their db properly.
The collection of every piece of data that goes with an individual is to condition us for control. They think. Why would they need every crappy debit card transaction, medical record, travel record, keystroke on the internet? They don’t need it, can’t possible use it, and are making up TERROR-TERROR-TERROR stories to justify the complete obliteration of privacy. The issue I have is that it is not just the feds who are doing this but the banks, telecoms, airlines, and every other corporate entity that can gather info to market, influence, spy, and CONTROL what we do. I, personally, get a wad of cash every month to spend on things that I need, or just want, that are untraceable without a huge amount of effort. Just for the hell of it. Often I don’t spend it all and turn around and put it back in the bank and then a couple of days later take it out again. Do I have nefarious intent? Put a law enforcement tail on me and find out. And if someone wants to talk to me about personal stuff they have to come see me and we talk in PRIVATE. I refuse to just roll over so they can just do this shit. And I vote in every crummy little election. Just for the hell of it.
I do the cash thing also. I take cash in payment and I pay with cash just to do some things untraceable. But I have to say that for all the data corporate America collects they are too stupid to do anything effective with it. My big example is tit and ass advertising which to men means using sex to sell. Of course it is sex from only a male perspective and although it is evidently a a hard concept to grasp there is a separate perspective on sex and that is the female perspective. So of all the billions of T&A adds tossed at me I have never clicked on one of them or purchased from a page displaying one and given the option will click to make them disappear. But somehow the dip $h!ts can’t figure out that “sex” isn’t selling to me and in fact their version of sex is causing them to lose sales to me. Still they pitch the T&A as if they have no idea. So based on that I think that they may be collecting a load of info but they are too stupid to do anything with it.
Wait until everybody has smart homes with smart appliances. My daughter is loosely involved with some of the smart home strategies. I’m glad I don’t have a smart home and I don’t think I ever want one.
Me either. I bought a new TV yesterday and passed on the smart. I want a dumb TV. I don’t have a GPS either because I can read maps. Crazy huh?
There’s smart tv’s now with a camera to watch you.
I bet they don’t watch me.
New cars now have the option for what looks like a built in iPad on the dash. I just hope by the time we buy another car it won’t be standard equipment. I’m not even smart enough to figure out the am dial on the car radio 🙂
My husband won’t drive anything but a stick and he has the carpeting torn out and replaced with some kind of plastic stuff that can he wiped off.. At least mine has automatic transmission.
Automatics are for suckers. When the zombie apocalypse comes (and it’s coming), the last cars on the road will be manual transmissions. I feel sorry for people who can’t drive them. 😉
LOL Lola, it’s the bicycle people who will trump the apocalyspse. So glad my kid chose a recession and zombie proof skill and business 😀
I can drive a stick, but too damn lazy, so I gave up my driver’s license for a guider’s license (bah-room-pah, old joke).
My older kid (bookworm like me) said that if the zombie apocalypse comes she resigned to being one of the first non-survivors.
Apparently the post-apocalypse world does not seem the least bit fun.
I use a old basic cell phone which isn’t holding it’s charge anymore. I went to Verizon and told them I want a plain phone (there are 4 other smart phones on my account). If I want to listen to music I use my little apple music deal if I want to drive somewhere I read the map, if I want a picture I use my camera if I want to read trash I use my Nook and if I want to own a book I buy it at the Friends of the Library sale for $.50. After hearing their load of BS they are telling me it will cost $10. a month extra to have a plain phone, “therefore I should get a smart phone and just not use the stuff I don’t want.”
I remember with great affection my great uncles dumb, crank phone on our family farm in Oldenburg, IN. Cranking that phone and annoying the operator was one of our favorite pastimes as a kids when we would stay at the farm.
Wait until everyone has smart cars that drive themselves. Then if the “government” or someone within government wants to kill you remotely, they can just remotely drive your car into an oncoming car, or off a bridge, or into an abuttment, or over the cliff beside a cliffside road.
My favorite Big Brother FAIL over here relates to license plates and photo-cop “technology.” On all the bigger highways they have the radar machines that photograph your plates if you’re speeding. Okay, fine, their society, whatever. HOWEVER, the license plates are made by Jacques your local garagiste, and he isn’t paid very well for the job.
Can you see where this scam is going? People with bad intentions walk up and down parking lots looking for cars that are the same make/model as their own. Then they write down or photograph the license plate, go back to Jacques, have an identical plate made, and joyride on the autoroute at 250km/hour. And when the photoradar takes a pic, the zillion-euro ticket gets sent to Madame Innocent.
LOL. I kinda like that. I got a ticket from a camera thing recently. Guess what? I wasn’t driving it. I wrote it down on my calender. I lent the vehicle to friend’s kid to haul something in the back of it for about an hour so he could avoid a delivery fee. I signed an affidavit with the name and address of the actual driver and sent it in. I have not heard one word back from the ticketing agency or my friend’s kid (or my friend). Next time he can pay the delivery fee.
You can buy spray stuff from the car store that is clear and doesn’t obscure your license plate to eyes but makes it impossible to photograph. If they no longer have it in the store you can get it online.
Kerry agreed to only say “Yes sir” and the negotiations are going swimmingly.
I just read somewhere the deadline for the redline is now mid 2014. Where was the urgency Obama and Kerry had last week ? Geesh, we almost blew stuff up for fun? And they called Bush stupid?
test
Congrats you passed. 🙂
For all those who say I do not care if the government spys, I do not do anything wrong, do you keep your toilet in the living room? you do have the right to privacy
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/14/done-deal-us-agrees-to-russian-terms-on-un-syria-deal/
DONE DEAL : US agrees to Russian terms on UN Syria deal
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague says the UK welcomes US, Russia agreement on Syrian chemical weapons – @SkyNewsBreak
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/09/14/obama-concedes-to-leave-threat-of-force-out-of-un-resolution-on-syria-if-assad-doesnt-comply/
backtrack concedes
agrees to leave the treat of force out of UN resolution on Syria if assad doesn’t comply
One of my relatives called him President Windsock.
LOL! LOVE that!
😆 him and Kerry both. 😆
http://news.yahoo.com/us-russia-reach-agreement-syria-weapons-102700028–politics.html
here is some of just what backtrack agreed to
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/14/202156/assad-adds-a-condition-to-deal.html#.UjRpqT8XIzc
Assad adds a condition to deal
And the prog blog is afire with praise for Obama and how beautifully he has handled all of this and how brilliantly planned it all was on his part. This country has gone completely delusional.
Yes, delusional. The end result is basically status quo. Nothing changes. Putin was successful in blocking the possibility of a chapter 7 resolution, which is the only kind with teeth. A chapter 6 resolution is nothing but a verbal scolding. Yet they are celebrating this as a triumph. Morons.
Delusional morons, I would say.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/dangerous_times_putin_the_peacemaker_vs_obama_the_warmonger.html
a must read on Putin and the ME
Sarah being sued again … I’ve seen this photo thousands of times since 9-11-01 all over the social medias. But, because Sarah….
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/09/sarah-palin-sued-for-posting-9-11-photo-on-facebook/
she still lives rent free in the mind of a liberal.
She was thinking of running for congress. I hope she does not. She has more freedom to speak out and be a kingmaker as a private citizen
She can run for Congress only if they make her House Speaker 🙂
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/09/ha-al-qaeda-faction-in-syria-announces-offensive-on-fellow-rebels/
al qaeda faction in Syria announces offensive on fellow rebels
Oh, look – Obama has named Jeff Zients to be Director of his Economic Council. Know where Zients hails from? Bain Capital
But….but…but….Obama told us that Bain Capital was EVIL. Horrible horrible bad people who know nothing about creating jobs or prosperity because they are vultures.
With every move, he is proving to be exactly what we said he was. . . and more. It makes no sense that those koolaid slurping, vile obots are so taken in they cannot – or will not – see the truth when it sits on their faces.
Read this guy’s whole timeline. He is on a very educational rant re: Nelson Mandela.
Yes.
I’d prolly soil myself too.
Holy Slytherin! Damn peeping snake!
Yes by all means that language is legitimate in this situation. It is important to teach children the proper context of cuss works.
“Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes. I hate snakes.”
Indiana Jones
There are worse things than having a snake outside your door:
This cracked me up, it’s how Chicks on the Right handle the “war on women” …..
http://chicksontheright.com/posts/item/24711-do-not-mess-with-the-chicks
Priceless.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/14/mechanics-perils-and-pitfalls-destroying-assads-chemical-weapons-arsenal/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fpolitics+
mechanics perils and pitfalls destroying assad’s chemical weapons
I have great sympathy for people who are struggling. But when you start hysterically throwing around words like “brutalized”, you fill me with contempt.
People seem to forget, most of these sort of stores are franchises. That means it’s usually a local mom and pop store. They don’t make that much money, and any of this crap people seem to want comes out of their pockets, not the bigger corporation. Stupid should hurt.
All bosses are slavedrivers.
White House: Low-income workers on union health plans aren’t eligible for federal subsidies – @AP
should we tell the fast food workers that SEIU want to join their union that they will get NO government help to pay for health care?
I welcome our new fast food overlords.
Mind-control burgers were the plot line of a Supernatural ep in season 7. LOL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-fruits-of-epic-incompetence/2013/09/12/7e6771d2-1bdf-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html
the fruits of epic incompetence
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/09/14/the-u-s-russia-agreement-on-syrias-chemical-weapons/?mod=WSJBlog&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
full text of US Russian agreement
http://www.trust.org/item/20130914125536-4k7em
Syrian rebel leader : US Russian deal a blow to the uprising
You had me at bacon.
Bacon is nature’s perfect food.
It’s the smokin’ whut does it. 🙂
Bacon is the gateway meat for vegetarians.
This is why I have reached the point of NO MORE govt interventions, even if it’s a “good” program. They do not give a shit about the poor, or the sick. It’s all about power and control-grabbing.
Too true!
What’s frustrating is that some good could be done, if you trusted any of them further than you could throw them. I don’t anymore. Govt power needs to be scaled WAY back before I’ll consider giving them one iota more, for ANY project or reason.
I just scored like a congressman. I hit a secret sale at Goodwill and 3 garage sales in 45 minutes and hauled home 3 vhs movies, 3 dvd movies and 2 recently printed hardback books.
Total cost: $8
GREAT
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/09/14/putins-drunken-arm-wrestling-match-to-decide-who-won-cold-war/
Putin’s drunken arm wrestling match to decide who won the cold war
could you picture backtrack and putin, talk about one sided
Maybe Michele could arm-wrestle him on Barry’s behalf.
Rebel leaders say Assad now moving his chemical weapons to Iraq, Lebanon:
http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/322269-assad-shifting-chemical-stocks-to-lebanon-iran-says-rebel-leaders
Wow, did Obama just undo all the reasons we went to war with Iraq ? WMD’s making their way back now? What a clusterf**k he’s creating.
“Government Seeking Inclusion of ‘Social and Behavioral’ Data in Health Records http://shar.es/iACUb The purpose of Obamacare is control.”
*****
I’m sure the Obama admin. can be trusted not to misuse our medical data; just like FISA, NSA, etc.
“From WSWS:
“FISA records document “daily violations” by government spy agencies”
FISA court records declassified Tuesday show that government spy agencies systematically violated court orders in order to conduct illegal spying on Americans, while lying in court as to the extent of their activities. Previously secret rulings show that the Obama administration was found to be committing “daily violations” of court orders related to its spying activities.
These records came to light as a result of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). (The files can be accessed here.) The Obama administration fought to keep the documents secret, maintaining that their release would result in “serious and exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”
(snip)
The FISA court is a “court” in name only. It convenes in secret, with “judges” presiding over a “courtroom” in which only one side—the government side—is present. For targeted individuals and groups, there is no right to be present in court or even to be notified of the court’s rulings.
All of the court’s records are sealed, and if a person should for some reason find out about one of the court’s rulings, a gag order can be entered prohibiting that person from disclosing that information to anyone else. The court bases its rulings on secret laws and secret interpretations of the Constitution. There is no right to an attorney, no jury, no trial, and no appeal.
(snip)
The court records show that the government systematically lied to the FISA court about all of the essential features of this program. These lies date, according to one court record, “since the earliest days” of the program in 2006.
(snip)
Having obtained the FISA court’s authorization for the program, the NSA went on to use the program to spy indiscriminately without troubling itself to determine whether the targeted individuals and groups had any links to terrorism. In one case, the FISA court determined that only 10 percent of a set of nearly 18,000 telephone numbers the government had targeted through the program met that basic criteria set forth in the court’s original order.
(snip)
“It has finally come to light that the FISC’s authorizations of this vast collection program have been premised on a flawed depiction of how the NSA uses the data that is collected, one judge wrote. “The government has compounded its noncompliance with the court’s orders by repeatedly submitting inaccurate descriptions” of its processes.”
etc., etc.
And now “they” want all of our medical data. The Obama admin. makes the former GDR and its Stasi look quaint.
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/09/14/obamacare-employee-accidentally-sends-out-email-containing-2400-americans-social-security-numbers/
wonder if they went to the illegals that the dems want to vote
Today is “family” day.
First I gotta take my mom to see my tweeker cousin who is dying of cancer. He is literally on his deathbed. This will be the second time I’ve seen him since he was in diapers. My older sister went down and redeemed his soul the other day. (In my family we like to do things at the last minute.)
Then after we visit my cousin me and my mom are going to lunch with my sole remaining uncle. He lives in Arizona and he’s here to say goodbye to his son. This is the uncle that had a stroke right at Christmas time a couple years ago, so he’s not in the best of condition either.
Today should be lots of fun.
♥
*ditto*
Have a good time with your family, despite it all. 🙂
Duty visits are not fun. It will be over pretty fast. Good luck.
Smile…it’s good to smile your way through those events….even if you don’t want to.
I’m back. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but it still wasn’t good. My cousin is not doing well. But I ran into an old drinking buddy at the convalescent hospital. Apparently when he quit drinking with me he started going to AA meetings with my uncle. (My family could start our own AA chapter)
We went for lunch at Hu Phlung Pu Chinese buffet. I had about nine different kinds of
mystery meatchicken. We sat around comparing our medications and discussing who died since we last saw each other. Now I need a nap. (I’ve had about 2 hours sleep since 3am)My sister and mom are taking my uncle back to Fresno tonight to catch a flight back to Arizona.
I also got to see my uncle’s crazy ex-wife. I literally had not seen her for 40 years. That was when she freaked out at my aunt’s funeral back in 1973.
I have had the pleasure of not seeing my uncle’s crazy ex-wife for almost 2 decades now. I just wish I saw my uncle more.
Was not expecting the ending, cue the hanky alert 🙂
*sniff*
Don’t tell him about velcro!
Regarding the Zimmerman case…seriously, would any prosecutor in their right mind throw a high profile case, just to “get” the black guy? OMFG.
If the prosecutor wanted to “get” the black guy he wouldn’t have thrown the case (i.e., George Zimmerman is as “black” as Obama from his mother’s side).
ch…ch…ch…changes….
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html
If this is correct, then the currently melting glaciers and icefields should stop melting and maybe even start growing back. In which case, oceanside beachfront or seafront property should be a very good investment.
sounds familiar….
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/09/13/wsj-report-elite-syrian-unit-scatters-chemical-weapons-stockpile-to-as-many-as-50-sites-to-avoid-u-s-detection/
“Dan Pfeiffer, a top strategist for President Obama, visited a hospital twice last week with what officials describe as stroke-like symptoms, the White House confirmed to Post Politics.
Pfeiffer, 37, has since returned to work and is being monitored.
Doctors say Pfeiffer is suffering from what appears to be hypertension.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/09/13/top-white-house-aide-hospitalized-twice-last-week/
Per Wikipedia Dan is is Assistant to the President of the United States and Senior Advisor to the President for Strategy and Communications.
He was previously a member of Obama’s presidential transition team.
When a 37 year old professional liar is about to stroke out due to hypertension things are heading south at the WH. At least some of them realize just how much power they have lost.
Valjar prolly poisoned his soup 🙄
Didn’t Cheney have his first heart attack at 38?
He should try hypnotherapy. My blood pressure went down 20 points after hypnosis.
I’ve been seeing a lot of these articles lately. AGW scientists beginning to admit that…uh….we don’t know as much as we thought we did, and our models are crap.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/09/11/the-climate-science-capitulation-begins-hans-von-storch-we-definitely-have-seen-less-warming-than-expected/
comic relief…
HAPPY 199TH BIRTHDAY TO THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/14/putin-reportedly-agrees-to-visit-iran-to-assist-islamic-regime-with-nuclear-strategy/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=ShareButtons
Putin agrees to visit Iran to assist islamic regime with neclear strategy
Maybe I had better start learning Russian…
Hoax warning, and I’m pissed because I was hoping it was true 😉
http://blogs.orlandoweekly.com/index.php/2013/09/shellie-zimmerman-arrested-internet-hoax/
I think we should arrest people for bad satire.
Here’s the original “story” going around under the guise of “news”
http://nationalreport.net/shellie-zimmerman-arrested-charged-battery-george-zimmerman/
Pretty convincing, huh? Idiots on FB and twitter think so. GAH!
http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2013/09/why-did-john-kerry-70-mutilate-his-face-2711528.html
OUCH
http://reason.com/archives/2013/09/14/a-font-to-discourage-nsa-snooping
interesting
Jezebel is on a tear about a dad who wore very short shorts to show his daughter how dumb it was. Encouraging modesty is “dangerous” according to the twits on Jezebel.
Here’s another one on a related topic:
http://jezebel.com/concerned-mom-slutty-girls-selfies-are-tempting-my-pe-1251831479
Well, Wayne won the internet today if not this week. 🙂