The obvious solution and the remaining problem with it

Refocus the Priority of the NSA back onto National Security

• We need a 100% disclosure rate for exploits discovered by the NSA. The NSA should report every single vulnerability it finds to the relevant software vendor within one month of discovering it. The funny thing about exploits is that smart people all over the world are working on finding them every day, and nobody seems to be substantially faster than anybody else. When one person discovers an exploit and reports it to a bug bounty program, 500 hackers sigh with disappointment because they were days or weeks from discovering the same one.

• We need an end to mandatory backdoors into communications systems. Backdoors cannot be relied upon to remain hidden and only available to the law-enforcement or government personnel who are the intended users. Quite the contrary, backdoors render a cryptosystem worse-than-useless because they deliberately cultivate a false sense of security while simultaneously providing a predictable avenue of attack for malicious actors. Eventually, this should culminate in the drastic revision of ECPA and CFAA, and the repeal of CALEA.

• We need to end mass surveillance because it's not helping us identify threats. As a technology, the hypothesis has failed and it's time to stop wasting money repeating the same mistakes.

• We need to focus on combating cyber-espionage and cyber-warfare proactively, by fixing bugs before they can be exploited by malicious actors rather than hoarding exploits, which disproportionately leaves innocent computer users vulnerable. If cybersecurity is to be the purview of the US Government and the NSA, then the NSA must be re-imagined as a security research and bug reporting agency. In this way only can we perfect our computer systems and protect our people from cyber-espionage and cyber-warfare in the long term

Fix the Problems with The Chain of Evidence

• We need something quite bizarre to fix this problem. We need to encourage a criminal escalation in cybercrime and cyber-related crime like online drug trafficking. The escalation we need is an SSL-Encrypted, peer-to-peer Log-Hash-Escrow system, which stores non-reversible hashes of security logs for sensitive sites. This is to assure that all hacking performed by law-enforcement agencies is accurately reported when it is entered into evidence in a court of law. This will also help limit frivolous and excessive inaccuracies of lawsuits on the part of copyright lobbying agencies that stifle innovation like the RIAA and MPAA.

• This is another difficult decision, like Tor itself was, but it is one of the only credible ways of restoring credibility to American cybercrime investigators.

The obvious solution and the remaining problem with it

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One last thing, let's talk about Parallel Construction

From the standpoint of due process, perhaps the most unsettling aspect of NSA activity so far is how it's bad processes have spread like a virus, corrupting agencies that have potentially much more positive and useful missions like the FBI. "Parallel Construction" is a practice recommended by the NSA to investigative agencies like the FBI and investigative arms of administrative agencies like the IRS, which entails the use of illegal evidence to discover suspects and directs investigators to fabricate a legal chain of evidence in order to obtain a legal conviction on U.S. soil in a U.S. court of law.

I was recently contacted by a young person who wanted me to help him breach a Facebook account belonging to his mother, believing that she was about to remarry her current boyfriend. The young man believed he would be able to discern his mother's suitor by stealing her private messages. I told him exactly what I tell everyone who asks me to violate someone's privacy, which is no, but I also told him something that I hadn't told anyone before.

"If I were to violate your mother's privacy and steal her messages so you could confront her with the identity of her suitor, she would certainly suspect that the information was obtained by surreptitiously intercepting her messages. That means that you have done wrong, while she has simply chosen to remarry, which is her right and privelege. Doing this is a violation of her trust on your part, which damages your position before you even get a chance to make it. It is better to be honest."

Activities like Parallel Construction undermine the confidence that law-abiding, honest Americans have in the ability of law enforcement, which is compounded by the problem which makes it possible, that any evidence collected in the course of a computer crime investigation comes under the control of an agency that has a vested interest in conceal any practice of Parallel construction. In short, confidence in the very notion of a chain of evidence for cybercrime is rightly shattered and requires an engineering solution.

One last thing, let's talk about Parallel Construction

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Cost-benefit is all well and good, but does it work? Does the technology yield results?

It really doesn't look like it. Here's the thing. If you're willing to take a few fairly simple precautions, you can and will be able to avoid NSA, GHCQ, or cranked-out Russian teenager surveillance for sensitive communications. People who really need to hide from the U.S. Government, generally already do. It is possible to avoid the BitLocker key escrow/ password reset backdoor by powering on your machine on an offline connection and disabling that section of the backup software. Off-The-Record messaging, which uses a different key for every chat session and thus any intercepted key is only useful for a single conversation, has been widely available for a very long time and can be applied to any messaging protocol. The most dangerous people are already capable of avoiding mass surveillance. What it comes down to is a choice. Do we want these products, which are not going anywhere, to be protecting innocent people as well as they do soldiers, journalists, victims and criminals, or do we want to leave innocents exposed by leaving known problems in critical infrastructure in order to mostly fail to track criminals?

Cost-benefit is all well and good, but does it work? Does the technology yield results?

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Let's start with blanket surveillance, can compromising privacy en masse save lives?

Balancing selection and privacy

How about programs that provide proactive intelligence based on so-called "Selectors?" Do they save enough lives to justify the invasiveness and expensiveness of mass archival of personal, potentially sensitive information?

The NSA currently claims that it's intelligence has prevented 55 terrorist events or cyberattacks this year. This is not likely to be true. As a matter of fact it's much more likely that this figure was made up on the spot. Statistically, the likelihood that 55 terrorist attacks on Americans were planned this year is almost inconcievable. I cannot find a calculator capable of turning that into a Z-score. We're like more than 30 standard deviations above the mean here. It's that unlikely. Bottom line, either the NSA has perjured itself or in the years since the US started the War on Terror the likelihood of a terrorist attack on Americans has exploded at a unprecedentedly catastrophic rate. Either way, that is a Really Big Problem.

But let's take them at their word for a moment and assume that they have actually prevented 55 terrorist attacks. The NSA spends about $10 billion per year, roughly 14% of the total national budget. $10 billion divided by 55 is an average cost of $181818181.81 per attack. Almost 200 million dollars per attack. It is not callous to call for this process to be more efficient.

Another potential analysis of the costs and benefits of this information is the problematic factors of putting such tempting information at the fingertips of fallible human agents. The widespread sharing of private love letters, especially those containing nude photos intended for personal messages between lovers, has occurred many many more than 55 times, although the actual figure is as yet indeterminate. Instances of stalking are also common among NSA employees, civilian contractors, and police all over the world, including in the US.

And let's not forget, if the NSA can get it, so can anyone else.

Let's start with blanket surveillance, can compromising privacy en masse save lives?

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But does it do any good? Can it do any good?

So we know that if the NSA can get it, anyone can get it, but if the NSA can do it's job efficiently enough to prevent loss of life or destruction of property does the end justify the means, if only in terms of cost-benefit analysis? In order to examine this we need to break internet surveillance into several categories.

First, a distinction needs to be made between Privacy and Anonymity.

Privacy in this context pertains to the contents of messages sent between users on the internet.

Anonymity pertains to the identifiable characteristics pertaining to the sender and recipient of a message.

Next, a distinction needs to be made between two types of surveillance.

Selection is defined as the process of distinguishing the majority of collected internet traffic from a potential risk. This is the "Needle in the haystack" analogy.

Targeted is defined as the use of exploits to compromise targets in order to gather evidence or determine the identity of a suspect.

But does it do any good? Can it do any good?

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Rooting: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part Five

4 Basic System Management - Rooting

This section is mostly for people who have to use "Modified Stock" ROM's instead of Free and Open Source ROM's, and only if the Modified Stock ROM doesn't come with the phone owner in control of the administrative account. It is mostly included to discuss the issues surrounding rooting and because it is required for those who wish to de-bloat a Stock system without compiling Android from source code for their device. Rooting also allows you to use certain applications to block applications from sending information using elevated permissions and a firewall.

What Is Rooting for the Purposes of our Discussion?

For the purposes of this set of instructions, Rooting is a necessary step in the process of assuring you are in complete control of the what the programs on your device do at all times. It is the process of obtaining full, administrative privilege over your devices settings, and contents. This is necessary because many of Android's features are used to transmit data back to various parties concerned with the operation of your device, like the manufacturer or Google. Even if the information is never misused by those parties, it can easily be eavesdropped upon from many locations in the network by unscrupulous characters and as such should be disabled on any phone used for sensitive communication.

Why you should understand rooting

Why rooting is a security risk and why you should do it anyway: Every root guide you will read will disclaim the security risks of rooting to you, but not every security guide will disclaim what those risks actually are. Sometimes, that's because the risks are so low, relatively speaking, that the people adapting the root exploits are not aware of them. There are only 2 risks really associated with rooting your device.

1. When you root your device, you must take full responsibility for the contents of your device. When you install an app which uses root to it's advantage, it will be capable of asking you for root privileges in order to take advantage of system-wide permissions. If those apps are malicious, then they will ask you for those same permissions and there is very little way to tell. Rooting gives you control, but with power comes the ability to make mistakes. Without rooting, one must accept the mistakes left behind by the manufacturer.
2. Root apps are just root exploits without malicious mechanisms. In order to root your phone, you'll have to execute an exploit(A "Hack" in the common parlance) which gives you the ability to change system-wide settings on your phone. Those same exploits can be embedded in malicious apps which will attempt to root your phone and give control not to you, but to some remote agent. Only use root apps which are widely reviewed and reputable, such as TowelRoot, and only if you cannot install a pre-rooted ROM.

Stuck with a Stock ROM? You should still root if you can. Do it this way

It is also possible to root your device without trusting an app by executing the so-called "Master Key" exploit from your computer with your phone plugged in. In order to do this, you'll need to use a GNU+Linux computer with the Android Debug Bridge and Android Asset Packaging Tool installed.

1. First, download the mkbreak generic exploit for the Master Key from the source code repository as github. mkbreak by Saurik
2. Unzip the file and open a terminal in the mkbreak-master directory.
3. Run the command ./doit.sh and follow the text instructions displayed in the terminal.

Appendix 4

• Upkeep:
• Notes:

Rooting: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part Five

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So what is the point?

The point is that if the NSA can get it, anybody can get it. Accomodating NSA spying, far from being a way of preventing attacks on critical infrastructure, actually preserves dangerous attack vectors for criminal use. If the NSA discovers an exploit and does not report it to the developers of the vulnerable application, that application remains vulnerable for everyone who uses it, the vast majority of whom will by definition be non-criminal actors within the developed world. People with jobs, paying taxes that are, also by definition, making them less safe.

Exploit hoarding disproportionately harms Americans. Whatever else happens, the NSA's exploit hoarding programs, including but not limited to BULLRUN, must be stopped.

So what is the point?

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And oh, by the way, here's why backdoors are a bad idea

Some editions of Microsoft Windows include a full-disk encryption scheme called BitLocker. In order to enable a Windows user to recover the encryption key required to unlock their hard drive if they lose it, that key is kept in escrow by Microsoft on their Azure cloud platform. there are obviously good reasons to do something like this. In order for an attacker to retrieve a copy of that key, he can browse a user's social network profiles to troll for information which he can use to impersonate the target to Microsoft support. They call Microsoft, use the information to impersonate the target, Microsoft will send them the key. It's that simple. A glorified crank call. It is known that the NSA can access information on the Azure cloud both surreptitiously and by court order.

There is an easy way to avoid this. Don't escrow keys in systems which can be viewed by the person administering the server. Instead, use double-blind ways of storing the data, which leave the only usable, unencrypted copy of the key with the account holder and never hold an unencrypted key on the server. This has been implemented in Tahoe-LAFS and is now being implemented in many consumer grade clouds(Yay!). This is called Zero-Knowledge encryption.

This is essentially a password-reset vulnerability used to privelege-escalate into an encrypted storage device. A similar password-reset vulnerability exists on Facebook, Amazon.com, Linkedin, Netflix, World-of-Warcraft, a ton of other sites and in all Two-Factor Authentication schemes that rely on text-messaging a transient key to an account holder.

Additionally, the recent iCloud breaches somewhat ignominously dubbed "The Fappening" utilized a well-known backdoor used by law-enforcement agents in the U.S.

And oh, by the way, here's why backdoors are a bad idea

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And if that weren't bad enough

There are vulnerabilities available in many operating, communication, and encryption systems which require greater or lesser degrees of sophistication to exploit. Some of these are deliberately placed by a developer, manufacturer, or other intermediary in the software/hardware supply chain and qualify as backdoors, but most are the result of honest mistakes, lack of funding, insufficient testing, or run-of-the-mill incompetence. This is where the NSA's so-called "Advanced Intercept Capabilities" come in, and we actually have much less to be worried about here. Advanced Capabilities are usually targeted techniques against specific computers which, rather than passive eavesdropping, exploit them to give up non-standard information, like the various side-channel attacks carried out on Tor.

The critical issue with Advanced Capabilities is two-fold, first, we must cease the NSA's sabotage operations carried out against products used by U.S. persons, and second, we must provide an effective bug-disclosure policy which does not allow computer vulnerabilities discovered in the course of signals intelligence gathering to remain exploitable by criminals and enemies of America.

And if that weren't bad enough

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Choosing your App Store: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part Four

3 Basic System Management - App Store

1. The Problem with the Play Store many people advocate the use of the Google Play Store for a few of it's advantages. The Google Play Store lets app developers sign their apps using their own cryptographic signatures, for one, which many app stores do not. It also sometimes receives updates before other app stores do. However, those pale in comparison with it's disadvantages. The first and foremost disadvantage is the seemingly total lack of meaningful auditing of the apps that are included in the Play Store. On a single search for a more-or-less benign term like "Chess Game" it is possible to find half a dozen instances of apps that ask for inappropriate or excessive permissions in order to track users. These anti-features are not explicitly listed and they are frequently deliberately surreptitious. There are other real problems with the Play Store and Google's services in general as well, including backdoors which allow Google to install and remove applications from your device without your consent or knowledge. If you installed a Free and Open-Source ROM for your device, you've already rid yourself of the Play Store and now you can move on to something better.
2. The Safe Alternative: F-Droid is an app store which was created partly to deal with the problems surrounding Google Play by the Free Software Community. It is much more selective about the apps it will include, meaningfully auditing the code for malicious inclusions and anti-features. Anti-Features which don't disqualify an app from being included in F-Droid must be explicitly listed in the app's description in order to allow the user the oppourtunity to make a conscious decision to use that app or not. Using F-Droid means you are much less likely to receive a malicious app or update from your app store. Installing F-Droid will require you go into your phone's settings and enable installing apps from "Untrusted" sources.

How to Install F-Droid

*First, Enable Installation from "Untrusted" Sources. * Out-of-the-box, your device "Trusts" applications which Google Play Services "Trusts," which we've already seen means your phone trusts the vast majority of malicious apps already. In this step, we're going to enable you to install apps which aren't trusted by Google Play Services but which provide their own trust mechanism through F-Droid. Security-Conscious users should carefully judge apps they install on their own merit, and not upon the trust that Google places in them.

1. Open your device's "Settings" app from the App Menu.
2. Tap the "Applications" menu in the "Settings" app
3. Tap "Enable Installation from Unknown Sources"
4. When warned, click OK.

Next, Download and Install F-Droid from the Web Site

1. Open the "Browser" app from the App Menu
2. Navigate to https://www.f-droid.org
3. Click the big blue button that says "Download F-Droid." It should only take a few seconds.
4. In your Downloads menu click "f-droid.apk" and install the app.
5. Open F-Droid from the App Menu to to access the app.

Appendix 3

• Upkeep: The focus of F-Droid is to put control of the device's features into the hands of the person who owns and uses the device. To that end, it will inform the user of when an update is available, but it will not install that update automatically. When using F-Droid to obtain security software, as you should, you should make sure to review and install updated versions of the apps as they become available.
• Notes: You should still avoid installing anything unnecessary, even though F-Droid provides reasonable assurance apps are not created with malicious intent, code is hard to create and vulnerabilities are easy to implement by accident in even the best of circumstances. Judgment will always be key to serious security.
• Developers/Aspiring Developers: F-Droid is a responsive, vibrant community for people who want to publish Free and Open Source apps for Android. If you're a developer, I encourage you to consider informing F-Droid of your Free Software application and asking them to consider including it. Usually, the process is only a matter of a few days and making F-Droid better makes the world a safer place for Android users.

Choosing your App Store: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part Four

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And it gets way worse...

In order to tolerate when those routers go down, those requests can be sent to many different routers, potentially. One router might be a backup in case the other router is experiencing heavy traffic, for instance. If an attacker has compromised one router, he can target messages by simply flooding the other router with fake traffic. That's just one of many, many ways. Some of them are even scarier.

Because of the voluntary nature of encryption use, anyone can do this, not just state actors like the US Government or the NSA.

It also means that you only need to compromise a fraction of the routers on the internet to compromise nearly all the traffic on the internet.

And it gets Way Worse

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A General Overview of Eavesdropping

Communications traveling over the internet are routed through many intermediate computers, called routers, which direct messages as they are sent by the programs that send them. If the programs that send them send all or part of those messages in an unencrypted format or in an encryption format known to be breakable those routers can intercept and copy those messages as they are routed, if necessary decrypting them at their leisure.

But NOTHING is encrypted unless the program tells it to be

Also, the NSA isn't compromising home computers directly, it is monitoring them by compromising routers and stealing the messages they communicate.

A General Overview of Eavesdropping

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Dispelling the key misconception about online tracking

Most people believe that online tracking is primarily contingent on the exploitation of vulnerable computers. While that does exist and is a serious concern, the reality of mass surveillance is much more banal and terrifying.

Think of it like Archimedes in the bath. The internet is like a bathtub, filled to the brim with water. As a function of getting into the bath, an equivalent volume of water is displaced, just as a function of connecting to the internet you disturb the activity of the surrounding network. For instance, in 1986, hacker and scientist Clifford Stoll was able to pinpoint the location of spy and mercenary Marc Hess in Germany by timing how long it took for Hess's computer to respond to a network diagnostic "Ping" request. This is one of the most basic, essential, and long-standing internet protocols and isn't going anywhere because something like Ping will always be required for computer networks to work. This kind of data will always be available to some degree or another. But the problem is that there is an immeasurable amount of superfluous water being displaced, figuratively speaking, just waiting for anyone to come along and calculate your volume.

Everything you do on the internet is easy to steal because nobody is doing anything right in the commercial space with regard to privacy.

Dispelling the Key Misconception about Online Tracking

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Device Encryption: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part Three

2 Basic System Management - Device Encryption

Goal: Make it prohibitively difficult for an attacker who can physically access your device to read, copy, or alter the data on your device.

This part is comparatively easy and self-explanatory. Android and related Operating Systems have the ability to encrypt the disk which contains the system, software, user data, and similar sensitive information. Encryption accomplishes 2 tasks.

• First encryption hides the contents of the storage device by scrambling the information on it in accordance with a private key. When you enter your password, you unlock that private key, which tells the system how to de-scramble the information on the storage device. This keeps people from reading your files.

• Second: partly as a consequence of the first step and partly as a result of design and review in the encryption field, encryption also guarantees that your data hasn't been altered by someone who manipulated your disk from within a running Operating System on another device, and keeps code from being injected in that manner.

Configuring Device Encryption

The best time to encrypt your phone is when it is 1: Fully Charged, 2: Plugged in to a Power Source, and 3: Mostly Unused. This will result in the fastest, most reliable encryption process.

Enable Password

1. Open your device's "Settings" app from the App Menu.
2. Tap the "Security" menu in the "Settings" App.
3. Tap either "PIN" or "Password" to set the password to unlock your device.

When your device goes to sleep, the password will be required to unlock the device.

Enable Encryption

1. Go back to the "Settings" App.
2. Tap the "Security" menu.
3. Tap "Encrypt Phone" or "Encrypt Tablet" depending on your device.

Now when your device goes to sleep, it relinquishes the encryption keys until you re-enter the password you set previously.

Appendix 2

• Upkeep: This pretty much "Just Works" and shouldn't change much, and if it does, it's because something way bigger than you happened. You should remember that without the password, encryption is one-way and cannot be reversed. Don't forget your password.
• Notes: Ideally, you would set two passwords, one to turn the device on, and one to unlock it from sleep mode. This is because each time you enter the password, there is a chance that someone or something is watching which might observe you entering it. A secondary password would keep such an observer from being able to use the screen-unlock password to attack a powered-down device. Since this is not supported in the operating system, keep your disk encrypted but use a second layer of encryption and passwords for sensitive information like the Instant Messengers and Encrypted Notepads we will discuss later.

Appendix 2a, Encryption Vocabulary

Codes and Ciphers

• Code: A "Code" is a way of representing information for a specific purpose. There are codes which are intended to be readable, like Morse Code or computer programming languages, and there are codes that are intended to be unreadable, so-called "Secret Codes" which can be created in many ways. This article mainly deals in when and where you.
• Encryption: "Encryption" is the use of mathematics to obscure the content of a message except to it's intended recipient. That intended recipient has in his or her possession a "key," a unique piece of knowledge that is required to unlock the contents of a message. As a side-effect of the key's uniqueness, it can also verify that a message came from the recipient. This process is what is referred to as a digital signature.
• Key-Pair: Encryption programs generate what are called "Key-Pairs", which are composed of a public and private(sometimes called secret) key. When you generate a key-pair you distribute the public key to people who you want to communicate with. This allows them to encrypt messages and send them to you, and to verify your signature on a message and thus that the message came from you. A private key can be used to sign a message or decrypt a message which was encrypted by the sender with the corresponding public key.
• Ciphertext: "Ciphertext" is the encrypted text of a message. When you use a public key to encrypt a message, the output is the ciphertext. The private key can then be used to decrypt the message.
• Cipher: A "Cipher" is the description of the algorithm used to generate the public and private keys and to encrypt and decrypt messages using those keys.
• Steganography: "Steganography" is the process of concealing the presence of a message from people entrusted to transport it. Concealing information in an image, for instance, is a means of using steganography.
• Somewhat like Steganography, it is advisable to conceal the intended meaning of any potentially dangerous terms even in ciphertext in case a private key is compromised. This is no different from slang. You have an ounce of T-shirts you wanna roll up and smoke.

Addressing and Transport

• Client: A "Client" is a program that you run on your computer to connect to a communications network. Your web browser, ChatSecure, TextSecure, RedPhone, and AnTox are all client programs for connecting to communications networks.
• Server: A "Server" is a program that runs on another computer that you connect to with a client. Facebook mostly runs on a Server which is accessed through the client, which is the web interface in your web browser
• Address: An "Address" is a piece of information that represents the destination of a message. It is also a type of "Metadata," which is information about a message not necessarily related to the content itself. Your address can, but does not have to, give away your location when you send or receive messages. That is what Tor is for, and some forms of peer-to-peer communication offer this type of protection as well.
• Peer-To-Peer: "Peer-To-Peer" refers to methods which require no intervention on the part of a central authority or service provider, such as Facebook or Google. AnTox and Tor Hidden Services are peer-to-peer networks which can be used for communication without central authorities.
• "End to End: Peer-to-peer encryption is also referred to as "End-To-End" encryption, and refers to encryption schemes where only the concerned parties are involved in the encryption and decryption process. This means that even if information is stolen in transit, it's meaning cannot be revealed by downgrading the strength of the encryption while the eavesdropping occurred.

Device Encryption: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part Three

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Building an IR Emitter Detector out of stuff you already have.

title: Counter-Surveillance, Part One Detecting IR Photography

To do this project, all you'll need is a 3.5mm Floppy Disk and a cheap digital camera. A digital camera in a super cheap phone could easily be suitable, we'll get to why cheap is important in a second, but for right now I'm going to address that double take you're doing. A Floppy Diskette? Yes, a floppy Diskette. While not much use as a storage medium anymore, it does have the useful property of blocking most visible light while allowing most infrared light to pass through. But most companies have discontinued manufacturing of floppy diskettes, and they can be a little hard to come by. Any of the following links might die when supplies run out.

• 3.5 Floppy Diskettes
• 3.5 Floppy Diskettes
• 3.5 Floppy Diskettes
• 3.5 Floppy Diskettes

You will need to get ahold of the clearest packing tape you possibly can, the kind they use as a sort of ad-hoc way to laminate shipping labels. The clearer and thinner the better. This Shurtape PP-803 is some of the clearest and thinnest I've used, but I have no reason to think it is the best other than my anecdotal experience. This might be useful information to have on-hand.

You should also have a small pair of sharp scissors, and a pair of tweezers will help you keep from getting fingerprints on the filter you will be building.

Additionally, disclaiming the title, don't rely on me for real counter-surveillance tips. If you need that, you'd be much better off getting your information from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Guardian Project, The Tactical Technology Collective, or another similar organization who makes it their mission to protect people from the dangerous erosision of privacy we're experiencing. I write these articles because they're enjoyable and I hope they are informative, but I can't save your life with a blog. So, as always, grain of salt.

Why You Shouldn't Use Old Floppy Disks For This Project

The history of computing is important, and much of it is housed on fragile, obsolete media like ancient cellophane tapes and thin magnetic film slices. This data can be precious in unexpected ways, sometimes even valuable. If you must recycle an old floppy disk for this project, you should back up the information on it first as a disk image, then upload it to a server of your choice for safekeeping. Do not commit copyright infringement, don't share anything you're not allowed to by your terms of ownership, but don't let the information go to waste.

If you need a floppy drive to do your backups with, external drives are really cheap these days.

• External Floppy Drive, USB

Out of the Pulpit, on to the Practical

So you wanna know something else neat about floppy disks? They block out almost all visible light, but they let almost all Infrared light through. They aren't perfect infrared filters, but they work great for detecting certain types of Infrared Security Cameras. How? Well it's actually pretty simple.

First, find a suitable phone and set it up.

The first thing you're going to need is a digital camera of some kind, with a low-end Infrared Filter which doesn't attempt to filter out any more than the average, ambient ultraviolet light given off by say, the sun. This means that cheaper, older cameras can be recycled and put to this use fairly easily, as well as cameras in cheap smartphones and even feature phones if they support increased exposure. In order to test your camera's IR filter, get a remote control with fresh batteries and go into a dark room. Press buttons on the remote while taking a picture with the camera. If you see a bright purple flash in the picture, congratulations! You have a phone with a suitable Infrared filter.

Now that you have your camera, turn the "Exposure" setting up as high as it will go. If you can change the default settings, you may just want to make maximum exposure the default setting. Now set it aside for later.

Second, get the required piece of the Floppy Diskette

Next, get one of your floppy diskettes and hold it flat by either side. Gently bend it until you hear the sound of the glue cracking in each of the corners of the diskette. Pull off the metal protective plate from the diskette and carefully remove the film material within. Carefully cut a slice of the material which is just large enough to cover the lens of the camera from a section which your fingers have not touched. Pick the slice up with your tweezers and place it on a clean sheet of paper and set it to the side.

Third, apply the Floppy Diskette to the Camera Lens

Put your camera flat on the table with the lense facing up. Pick up the slice of floppy diskette material and place it on the lense. Pull some tape off the roll, then use your scissors to cut a clean section, devoid of oil and dust as much as possible. Quickly use the tape to secure the floppy diskette material to the lens of the camera. Press it down firmly and then wipe the surface with a clean towlette.

And there you have it. Now the camera will, as near as makes no matter, only detect light from the Infrared spectrum. On to why that's important:

Why it works

Because security cameras that need to operate at night have to find a way to illuminate the field without introducing light pollution or informing uncareful persons of their presence. In order to do this, they use these big arrays of infrared LED's which illuminate an area with Infrared light, which they then use to produce the security image. We use this to our advantage by using it to detect the presence of the Infrared emitter by making it the most visible light source in our field of vision. Hold your camera up and look for purple-to-white areas of light. Those are Infrared emitters, usually indicative of IR photography nearby.

Building an IR Emitter Detector out of stuff you already have.

6:53 PM android, hacking, making, privacy, tinkering

Obtaining Free Software: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part Two

1 Getting Started: The Bare-Minimum you need to know about Computers

Goal: Remove as many pre-existing vulnerabilities as possible and take control of the device in question from the manufacturer who really controls it.

1. Computer Hardware and Operating Systems The modern computer is possible as a consequence of the mathematical discovery of what has come to be known as "Turing Completeness," or that from a basic set of functions a machine can be built which can be programmed to perform any kind of calculation. However, Turing instructions are very simple and modern computers provide many ease-of-use layers between the person operating the keyboard and the actual hardware. The first of these are more-complex Instruction Sets used on modern chips, which are provably equivalent to Turing instructions(An engineering property also known as Turing-Completeness) but perform multiple Turing operations in a single step. This also allows your computer to run faster and more efficiently as well. The advantage of these systems is that they are fairly difficult to alter, even if they are vulnerable, it is likely that there would need to be a backdoor in the Operating System as well in order to trigger a vulnerability in the hardware, because an always-on vulnerability would visibly leak information as it was transmitted. The next layer of importance is the Operating System, which provides an interface for people to write the programs you use from day to day like your web browser or your word processor. The operating system does this by providing small, efficient programs which pass messages to each-other in order to process them in the correct order.

2. Get Updates You should always install the latest security updates for you operating system in order to deal with potential Operating System bugs that can introduce vulnerability. For instance, A program manages the speaker, and when you play a sound a "Stream" of information is passed to that program which it then uses to instruct the speaker. An example of a potential exploit which could make a computer vulnerable would be if a specific stream of information overflowed the memory the speaker program has reserved, which would allow an attacker to put information into the memory area adjacent to the speaker program. If that memory area is scheduled to run a program, the attacker has taken control of that process on your computer. Many exploits follow this pattern of injecting malicious code into a program which has permission to run it. These kinds of vulnerabilities are usually honest mistakes that are patched after being discovered in accordance with your Operating System Update Policy.

3. Stick to Free and Open Source Operating Software Wherever Possible There's a good chance that your device manufacturer has a sub-sufficient Operating System Update Policy. If at all possible, you should find a Free and Open Source ROM(The Android word for an Operating System) to put on your device. The reason for this is twofold, for one thing, by using a Free and Open Source ROM you can be reasonably guaranteed that your Operating System does not contain a deliberate backdoor or vulnerability because you can, at any time, review the instructions that make up the operating system. The most popular Free and/or Open Source ROM's are CyanogenMod, Replicant, OmniROM, and these are capable of receiving updates from the Operating System developers. If your device isn't officially supported by one of these ROM's, you can either find someone who has ported a Free and Open Source ROM to your device on a site like XDA-Developers, use that ROM, and actively contribute reports of your
   bugs, or financially support the independent development of Free-and-Open-Source support for your device, or take your chances with a "de-bloated Stock ROM" which may be better than using a Free and Open Source ROM which isn't being actively developed. The install procedure for your device may vary, but chances are that you'll find instructions at XDA-Developers.

Appendix 1

• Upkeep: It's important to keep up with the community that develops software updates for your phone. If you have an officially supported CyanogenMod, Replicant, or OmniROM phone, it's easy, just check in to their respective websites at CyanogenMod, Replicant, OmniROM and make sure to follow any of the security update procedures they may announce. Most of the time, updates will require little more than a re-boot. If you use an unofficial ROM, you should bookmark the XDA-Developers thread where your ROM is released and discussed. Check back in every few days. If you want, you can create an account at XDA-Developers and subscribe to the thread to get e-mail updates and participate in the development as well. Also, developers are human. If you hear about an Android vulnerability and it concerns you, politely and intelligently asking about it in the thread will help call attention to it and make fixes and feedback more likely.
• Notes: Firmware Blobs are pre-compiled proprietary binary software which is required to operate a specific component on your device, like a Wi-Fi chip or a Camera. Basically every single tablet, phone, or mobile device requires several of these blobs to operate. This is unfortunate because they can contain backdoors and I would strongly suggest that their use be avoided entirely if at all possible, but it is unlikely that this will be possible. It is also unlikely that all firmware blobs contain such backdoors and it's also unlikely that these backdoors would be triggered lightly, as when it became active it's transmissions would become visible. Demand cooperation with Free and Open Source driver and firmware developers from manufacturers whenever possible.

Obtaining Free Software: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part Two

12:42 PM Featured, privacy, recommendation, Tutorial

Using Free Software: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part One

Doable Privacy Instructions for Android

This is intended to be an accessible guide to practicing hardening and security awareness for technical laypeople using the Android platform to communicate. While there will never be a set-it-and-forget-it solution, this guide attempts to be a starting point for people who want to learn more about a practical and accessible security procedure for their Android phone.

The Difference between End-User Security and Power-User Security

The Android operating system usually ships with security settings that are, from a certain set of assumptions, true. Unfortunately, many times those assumptions are based upon promises Google or your phone's various manufacturers cannot truly keep while providing all the functionality that the end-user desires from their device. While these assumptions can keep you safe in some circumstances, they also make you part of a large, appealing target and they do break down, often. So people who want to be relatively assured of the privacy of their communication on Android based Operating Systems should be in control of their devices in every way they possibly can.

Rule 0: If you don't need it, assume it's malware

The rest of this guide will focus on how to avoid allowing a malicious actor to take control of your phone, but the truth is that 99% of compromises are the result of somebody clicking on something fucking stupid and usually won't admit it. They install a malicious fucking "Scrabble" game or some dumb fucking shit and then they get mad at me when I remove it and do my best to clean up the damage it did. There's no point securing your device if you're going to download shit willy-nilly off Google's fucking Play Store.

Do not install apps unless you can trust them to not contain deliberately placed malicious code. Depending on who places the code, this is called either a "Trojan Horse" or a "Backdoor." Scenario A is that a malicious person creates an application which contains code which takes control of information on your device and uses it for malicious purposes. This can be anything from simple things like collecting personal data or geolocation data, or more complex things like injecting malicious code into the Android operating system. As a rule, IF YOU CAN DO WITHOUT AN APP, DON'T INSTALL IT. If you wish to avoid surveillance in a serious way, remove as much non-essential software as possible which may contain bugs which Trojan Horses You may say, "But it's just a little game? Can't I install that? It's harmless." That is exactly how Trojan Horses work. That is what the phrase "Trojan Horse" means. An innocuous looking object that conceals a hidden threat. Virus makers do not label their products. Don't fucking install it.* Scenario B involves a malicious person creating an application which bills itself as a secure application but secretly contains code that allows the app maker to remotely access it. That is called a Backdoor and that kind of vulnerability exists in most proprietary messaging systems, such as Skype and Facebook Messenger. This is of course game-over from a privacy perspective. Much of this guide will center on offering alternatives to messaging systems that contain backdoors or Trojan Horses, but the bottom line is that if you don't need an app, don't install it. At times, this will mean giving yourself potentially dangerous power over your phone that the Manufacturer does not want you to have. Having this power does not make you inherently insecure, it simply means that anyone who takes security seriously must be in control of his or her own security at all times.

*If you want to get games, you should do one of two things. First, and the preferable option, is to get another device which you use to run apps that can't be trusted alongside private communication information. This device will be your social/entertainment "Sandbox," separate from your private communications. I usually keep one Social/Entertainment Sandbox and the rest of my computers are hardened, fully-liberated GNU+Linux machines which refuse any insecure connections. The other option is to only install games from Free Software projects, preferably through the F-Droid app repository explained below. This is still a compromise and could these could still contain vulnerabilities, but due to the ever-present possibility of peer-review these would be unlikely to contain malware or backdoors.

• What Is Free Software
• Wikipedia Article on Free Software
• Proprietary Backdoors
• A Specific Proprietary Backdoor

Using Free Software: Doable Privacy Instructions for Android Part One

1:00 PM darknet, privacy, recommendation, Tutorial