NGO to crowdfund legal challenge against Investigatory Powers Act Civil liberties advocacy group Liberty is seeking to crowdfund a judicial review of the Investigatory Powers Act. Liberty is launching the legal challenge following a landmark EU ruling in December which found that data retention had to be targeted and not practiced on a population-scale to be lawful. This is not the case …
Pledged. At the rate this is going, ElReg commentards could fund this by ourselves!
(But what happens to El Reg when we're all in gaol?)
[One weakness on the Liberty sign-up page - they ask us to share on FB and Twitter, but that would like the real me, and my credit card, to my definitely unreal FB and Twitter accounts]
Count me in, here's £10.
Normally I think crowd funding is at best very risky and at worst an outright con but this is one risk worth taking. The risk here is the Gov will round up all the donors after using said spying laws and intern them as enemies of the state however no freedoms were ever earned by just bending over and taking it like a chump.
Crowd Justice is the first site I've ever seen that has a sensible input field for a credit card number. It automatically displays as groups of four digits - just like they appear on the card. Not sure if it also accepts a space from the user too.
No requirement to "join" the site before donating - unlike Just Giving. Sensible tick boxes that allow email anonymity even from Liberty.
Donations are only charged once the target is reached.
The donation can be Gift Aided too - although you have to click on the option's text before the tick box appears.
Something which would still be just a tinfoil hat wearers claim before Edward Snowden.
However hopefully some of it's clauses can be moderated and maybe the Supreme Court can review it's view that "Oh it's alright, it's not "collected" till a human actually listens/views the surveillance"
Let's never forget the real inspiration of this process. As the Cardinal put it 400 yrs ago.
"Give me 6 lines from an honest man and I will find something with which to hang him."
Re legalising what its been doing for ages, exactly right. My uncle, Keith Rose of HMP Parkhurst breakout infamy used to sell GCHQ computer equipment and helped set up the Prestel messaging system for the Govt which was also used by the Royal Family. Due to my interest & abilities in computers I've been targeted since I was at school, getting grades marked down despite having a couple companies running my software whilst doing GCSE's and enjoying the school receptionist taking messages for me as this was pre-mobile phone days. But the govt/secret services actions don't just stop at hacking and placing dodgy stuff on your computer, they will also drug your food, getting local butchers to comply by sending uniform's in with letters (all official looking) on the pretence of said target not taking their GP prescribed med's for one technique. Its amazing what you can hide in your beef mince!
Of course trying to get another agency like the Food Standards Agency to test said food then turns up nothing, so it pays to educate oneself in a variety of subjects where possible to test yourself.
In the mean time, badBios, badUSB, Stuxnet, Duqu & Flame are all the same evolving suite of malware.
It works on computers built in 2004 and possibly even earlier (but not tested), it rewrites the firmware of some Hard drive manufacturers, CD/DVD drives, 8051 controllers typically found in USB devices like mem sticks & multi card readers, and seems to be adept at altering the Arm controller on (micro)SD cards that carryout the wear levelling, whilst also targeting the USB bus on both Windows & Linux. Not tested Apple.
If you look at the MS links regarding how the USB works, you can see how firmware is downloaded from a USB device when its connected.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/ff537061(v=vs.85).aspx
"Because firmware is downloaded every time the device starts"
or check out https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/drivers/bringup/system-and-device-firmware-updates-via-a-firmware-driver-package
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/drivers/bringup/boot-and-uefi
AV companies do not have access to device manufacturers firmware for independent verification which is a weakness in the industry standards, just like your ISP supplied router lets all traffic out without hindrance, when really all firewalls should block everything going in and out by default and then allow traffic in and out according to the users requirements. With people like the BBC advocating Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to the workplace, and their love of that oh so buggy Flash for media content delivery, is it any wonder systems get compromised so easily? BBC employers can be negatively and positively tested for roles required by the secret services.
Another problem is hardware manufacturers don't provide the tools for end users to verify their firmware has not been altered, and considering some chip's can be reprogrammed, they have space for firmware malware to hide within.
It only takes a few lines of assembler to jump to another area sometimes not even on the same device to inject some additional code. Exploit the standards & rules like Bradley Wiggins the smoker did when winning the Tour de France and Olympics.
You only have to look at jmicron and how their cert's were stolen to help facilitate this for Stuxnet or Flame. jmicron are one manufacturer who have discovered they have had IP stolen, other manufacturers don't know due to not having secure processes & procedures in place, just look at Yahoo owning up about being hacked some years after the event, and companies are not legally obliged to report to users/customers the fact they have been hacked as its bad for business.
So by using psychological techniques to predict a users actions, early adopters (FanBois) are easily manipulated and good to target just like other novelty seeking individuals, you can have plenty of unwitting individuals carrying out your dirty deeds, and that's before you get into the art of hypnosis to further cover up any traces. Derren Brown knows a trick or two when it comes to social compliance aka peer pressure. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-pushed-to-the-edge
Welcome to the dark arts of the secret services......
Any spare cash you have could be spent on a decent overseas VPN! Some related site that might help:
https://www.bestvpn.com/
https://vpn-services.bestreviews.net/
https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-anonymous-review-160220/
First two are sort of advertorial, but have some useful guides and comparisons. Last is focused on BitTorrent file-sharing so anonymity to avoid the likes of ACS:Law from chasing you matters, or the draconian penalties being proposed in the Digital Economy Act where you can get more jail-time than, for example, glassing someone in an unprovoked pub fight.
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