So this indictment is puzzling. It concerns Michael Sussman, a lawyer who organized the collection of DNS data from hosting providers allegedly for political purposes. Many of the companies are anonymized, can we tell who they are? (Thread) context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/def…
So we begin with “Internet Company-1”, which is a (major?) DNS resolver.
The executive in question (Tech Executive-1) claims to have been offered a position as Hillary Clinton’s cyberczar if she won, so maybe that’s a clue?
There are two other Internet companies in here. Internet Company-2 collects DNS data (maybe passively) and Internet Company-3 is maybe a threat Intel company owned by company #2. The executive has ownership interest in all three.
In case it isn’t obvious from context, this whole thread is about the Trump-Alfa Bank DNS allegations. Some of these quotes sent between researchers are pretty damning.
Overall this is an awful-looking story. The Clinton campaign and sympathetic executives at tech companies ran wild through private DNS data (which apparently has no protections at all) to concoct a narrative, and then dragged university researchers in to help confirm it.
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A lot of pro-CSAM scanning arguments take the following form: “phones already have lots of opportunities (real and potential) for privacy abuse, so you’re stupid for minding when we try to introduce a new and highly-scalable one.”
And to some extent this argument is correct! It’s hard to believe this, but the iPhone (and mass-market smartphones) only launched in 2007. In 14 short years these devices have done more to erode user privacy than 114 years of all other electronic technologies combined.
From my perspective the only reasonable reaction for any technologist observing this incredible privacy collapse is: to wake up in the morning trying to fix it, and collapse into bed at night having spent the entire day trying to undo the damage.
The thesis of this article is that Britain “tamed big tech,” but the actual legislation seems to require a few privacy switches for kids — switches that should be on for everyone under a reasonable regulatory regime. wired.co.uk/article/age-ap…
“Strange women lying in ponds is no basis for a system of government.”
The major observation here is that tech firms will do all sorts of things to “protect children” as long as they’re (1) relatively inexpensive, (2) don’t substantially harm their own financial interests. Which generally means doing ineffective things.
The story here, for those who may have forgotten 2015 (it was a long time ago!) is that the NSA inserted a backdoor into a major encryption standard and then leaned on manufacturers to install it. Thread. 1/
The backdoor was in a pseudorandom number generator called Dual EC. It wasn’t terribly subtle but it was *deniable*. You could say to yourself “well, that could be horribly exploitable but nobody would do that.” Lots of serious people said that, in fact. But they did. 2/
My 11 y/o is making friendship bracelets to support K9 Partners for Life. Also happy to take donations direct or at the Venmo below, since it would make her happy and we’re getting zero foot traffic on this 95 degree Baltimore day :) k94life.org
You can also send Zcash to zs1ztg7nnjqr99k4xn0g8fjw24at3nm95w864hlfk2ujq9mpumrwal2mtqe54985774whk9vvv9js8 but I can’t promise it will be tax deductible :)
Wow. $464.33 total raised for Canine Partners For Life. Thanks to everyone who donated, including the Zcash folks :)
I’m glad that Apple is feeling the heat and changing their policy. But this illustrates something important: in building this system, the *only limiting principle* is how much heat Apple can tolerate before it changes its policies. reuters.com/technology/aft…
I’m grateful that Apple has been so open and positive to the technical community. I wish they’d done this before they launched their unpopular service, not after. Some of us have been talking about these issues for two years.
Everyone keeps writing these doomed takes about how “the US government is going to force tech companies to comply with surveillance, so they might as well just give in preemptively.” Like it’s inevitable and we should just hope for what scraps of privacy we can.
Even I was pessimistic last week. What I’ve seen in the past week has renewed my faith in my fellow countrymen — or at least made me realize how tired and fed up of invasive tech surveillance they really are.
People are really mad. They know that they used to be able to have private family photo albums and letters, and they could use computers without thinking about who else had their information. And they’re looking for someone to blame for the fact that this has changed.