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Selene
20th February 2014, 18:44
In today’s Guardian, author Luke Harding writes that while working offline under tight secrecy on a book about the Snowden files ‘the paragraphs began to self-delete’ whenever he wrote something negative about the NSA. Who was watching him – and remotely controlling his keyboard - as he wrote? http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/20/edward-snowden-files-nsa-gchq-luke-harding


By September the book was going well – 30,000 words done. ....... I was writing a chapter on the NSA's close, and largely hidden, relationship with Silicon Valley. I wrote that Snowden's revelations had damaged US tech companies and their bottom line.

Something odd happened. The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping.


Over the next few weeks these incidents of remote deletion happened several times.

There was no fixed pattern but it tended to occur when I wrote disparagingly of the NSA. All authors expect criticism. But criticism before publication by an anonymous, divine third party is something novel. I began to leave notes for my secret reader. I tried to be polite, but irritation crept in. Once I wrote: "Good morning. I don't mind you reading my manuscript – you're doing so already – but I'd be grateful if you don't delete it. Thank you." There was no reply.

<Also>

There were curious moments in New York, too, from where many Snowden stories were reported. Within hours of publication of the first one – which revealed that the NSA was mass-scooping data from the US telecoms company Verizon – diggers arrived outside the Guardian's loft office in Broadway. It was a Wednesday evening. They dug up the pavement and replaced it.

The same thing happened outside the Guardian's Washington bureau, four blocks from the White House, and the Brooklyn home of US editor-in-chief Janine Gibson. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Could some ‘interesting tool’ have been implanted under the pavement of a target location that's capable of detecting – and modifying – digital signals? All you’d need after that is the proverbial guy in the white van parked nearby (or perhaps miles away?), reading everything you're doing - even offline - in addition to listening...

Cheers,

Selene

johnf
20th February 2014, 18:51
The NSA can indeed target offline devices.

http://techreport.com/news/25923/report-nsa-can-hack-offline-computers-via-radio-waves

It sounds like they have gotten their devices into a lot of peoples laptops.

JohnF

Roisin
20th February 2014, 19:00
Oh gee, I need an Advil.

doodah
20th February 2014, 19:12
Time to resusitate the old electric typewriter. Or maybe the old manual typewriter.

Lifebringer
20th February 2014, 19:22
Time the mail time again and buy a stamp or just blog or tweet where others can publicly acknowledge and "know" if someone is doing it. Removal I mean from posts. I stopped posting at HuffPo because the AmerOnLine peeps/moderators would allow all kinds of nasty stuff and when people debunked w/links, they wouldn't post them. Lots of posters now just "focus" on the solutions or say "suppose" in a hypothetical manner. Just noticing, the communication multi accessibility, now infiltrated and snooped on by the snooper/poopers of our economy.

Alien Ramone
20th February 2014, 20:16
Maybe he should work in a Faraday Cage:

http://www.physics.gla.ac.uk/~kskeldon/PubSci/exhibits/E3/pfarad1.gif

Tesla_WTC_Solution
20th February 2014, 20:22
I had to log in when I saw this thread (oops).
Thanks for sharing this.

I think if you are writing anything important, a good investment might be a fireproof (concrete/plastic) lock box.
You can get a credit card shielding wallet and put anything in there that's small, like your flash drives with documents on them, etc.
And that in turn fits in the lockbox/firebox. Which can go in the basement etc.

Anyone writing a book in today's environment should print as they write.
That is probably the safest way to work on a digital device, make sure you print each page as you go, and put it in a binder, and into that lockbox.

The reason I bring up lockbox is, I bought a firebox while in the military and it's a real lifesaver, even if you're just looking for old paperwork, voila, it's worth the 20 dollars.

Love to all, sorry for the short/weird comeback;
this thread is very important, for about 4 years off and on, I've experienced non-specific harassment (wasn't sure about TI) and it could have something to do with the persistent mass surveillance in our Big Brother country.

It's probably not even about you, me, mom, dad, the neighbor, and the mailman, it's happening to everyone who speaks out.

The whole mythos of the terrorist is really damaging in a human culture.
Anyone can wake up, at any time, and act in any way;
that's what they fear, that people will wake up as fast as they being put to sleep.

God Bless you guys for fighting the good fight,
thanks to all who keep this place running.

Electronic harassment is no good.
I think it comes from many different sources, including software companies.
Drug and medical outfits also hold grudges when they lose money over truth.
Weapons dealers hate the public outcry as well and would target whistleblowers with a vengeance.

Now, I know my Mason bashing isn't popular around here,
but when my phone number was illegally changed by a Comcast "mistake" a couple years back,
a lodge near Seattle called my house at the new extension and asked for me by name.
I gave a small donation for the Shriners parade to show that I wasn't afraid of them.

But it was very strange that someone was able to "pull strings" and change my phone number,
and the people who call next shouldn't know who I am but did. They even knew the phone number had been changed to 4400.

Be careful with your stuff.
One of the reasons flash drives are hated in the military is they are effective, fast, easy to hide, safe, etc.
They didn't want us bringing those into work. Even for gaming or document storage unrelated to military.

Anyone who writes, stores literature, is being targeted by our gov;t.
It's no matter if you are loyal, they don't want anyone knowing anything or having anything.

:( eeek!

truth is harsh and then you die, lol

Roisin
20th February 2014, 20:36
Very useful information Telsa. You've been missed. Good to have you back! :tea:

Sidney
20th February 2014, 20:43
I am with doodah - start shopping for the old typwriters (and ink) if and while they can still be found.

Carmody
20th February 2014, 23:29
Time to resusitate the old electric typewriter. Or maybe the old manual typewriter.

At the junk stores....all the manual typewriters are disappearing (all sold) as fast as they come in.

The best quality ones are sold in less than a day.


The other trick, is to use an older windows XP laptop. Early windows XP type set up, a laptop that has the most advanced software, but ZERO capability to use wireless communications. 2001-2005? maybe as late as 2005 vintage, or thereabouts. A laptop that has to use a PCMCIA adapter card to obtain wireless ability.

Use two usb sticks, both of high grade or quality (redundancy=2x) and then the local storage on the unit itself, or a DVD/CD-rom drive on the unit itself. That way you have a isolated and separate word processor, with multiple back-ups, one of which is inviolate -the DVD/CD-rom drive. A laptop that requires a physical operator to be directly present, in order to operate it. Park it with the battery half-out, so remote turn functions will not work, either.

Anchor
21st February 2014, 00:09
I guess its time to watch "Enemy Of The State" again.

It is on YouTube, even in HD ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ9vamMKFzE ) if you have the bandwidth.

Check the scenes where Gene Hackman's character works in a Faraday Cage

Really good film, worth watching if you have not before.

Buck
21st February 2014, 04:03
It is good to start talking openly about this stuff and sharing practical info where possible. The recent Disclosures via Snowden and others confirm for us what was previously tin foil hat nutter territory. Look up the term "air gapped computer security". This WAS the trusted protocol for really critical private communication. But the most recent revelations have dispelled the myth that as long as you stay offline, you are safe. Not so. Now you really do need to be in a Faraday cage.

Oh, and about USB sticks, and actually anything with a read/write operating system of even the most rudimentary kind- an external drive, memory cards, sticks, chips, including (most especially including) that little tinfoil chip you stick into your cell phone- (SIM card) to activate it and allow it to connect to a cell network- ALL of them have been oh so carefully, and methodically broken into and secretly corrupted by the dudley Do-Right brigade. Hidden partitions that we mortals will never see, lie dormant, ready to command our devices to do things that we, the rightful owners of, have no idea is going on. You take that nice brand new USB stick and put it in your ancient laptop that is running clear with no corruption or possibility to communicate via RF (btw radio frequency bandwidth includes bluetooth, Wifi, microwave, ultrasound, Infrared, and a few others) and the Guv has developed attacks via sound-waves that can connect, and in some cases execute command and control functions by way of the speakers and microphone on a device), and unseen by you, the USB stick has a hidden partition that executes a "payload drop" on your device, compromising it in a variety of ways. And for 90% of our devices these days, we have a wireless device embedded in your laptop or desktop computer (older devices and more dedicated efforts to avoid snooping just inspire these guys to make a personal visit. It is a lot like any large bureaucracy, where there is an incentive to keep the near limitless amounts of taxpayer money (and apparently black funds as well) flowing in, the regular employee looks for opportunities to do something useful, or just to do anything that uses resources and wastes time. So that means, there's no problem arranging for you to have a personal visit, clandestine of course, your house or apartment broken into (either made to look like a robbery or it is totally clandestine and no one sees anything) or entered under false pretense right in front of you (before I woke up to the Matrix, several years ago, I had a cable company "level 3" team drop by to assist with my repairs. I was helping one of the guys unlock the basement door that had inexplicably gotten stuck and walked back into my house to find one of the other tech sitting at my laptop, tapping away. He hurriedly stood up and said well that's that- you are all set now. Yes, little did I know just how set up I was). Btw, Level 3, as I later discovered, is actually the name of a security company that subcontracts to the telnets, and does have covert links.

And so, like me- you don't even have to be that high on the food chain to warrant a special delivery, just stand out from the crowd for any reason, a little anti- war protesting, or maybe you are a gun owner?, or perhaps you have been doing a lot of spiritual exploration- you would be surprised how fascinated the government is with spiritual disciplines of certain kinds. Or some of you (myself included) have come to suspect that even this modest forum might attract some interest from the letter teams. God forbid you check off on one or more of these boxes at once.

There are so many options available to infiltrated and compromise your efforts to mantain your privacy. Once they set you up with some version of wireless functionality on your computer (either by remote activation of latent capability of device implant, or by covert installation of an RF implant) they will drive proverbial white van (usually never a white van, btw :) but rather a friendly local service provider vehicle, fitting seamlessly into the background of the area) to a location nearby (currently up to about 8 miles away they can still get a good shot at connecting) and hack away at creating an active comm link with the "target" machine (which is what your computer is to them, and yes, that makes you the "target", which is, really, apparently what we all are to commander claptrap and co. And presto ! whatever you did have, that you dared to try to consider was not anyone else's business, that you had the right to privacy in your own home, is now being vacumned out and stored on a massive server network, along with everyone else's dirty laundry, just in case it''s needed for a "rainy day" (thats spook-speak for insurrection, and or just general purpose blackmail). Oh and it's a two way street, of course- if they feel the need, they have the capacity to remotely install data on your computer, USB stick, external drive, whatever, or if they need to get fancy, they can alter your data to suit whatever narrative they might find useful.

It's a mess. A really frustrating mess.

The top flight IT security gurus - of all stripes (black hat wearing mercenaries and white hat defenders working to secure corp networks all the way down to humble forums like this- ALL of them are nearly unanimous in their outrage over the boneheaded duplicity and the exponentially growing power of the secret police state of the NSA and it's many associated letter agencies of nefarious shenanigans.

These self appointed lords of the universe have apparently compromised many, if not all of the encryption protocols that were intended to protect networks and communication networks that not only citizens of conscience rely on for sharing concerns and repressed information, but it also has crippled the security of ALL digital networks. Recent revelations include the smoking gun that one of the most trusted and widely implemented security certification protocols in use today- RSA, accepted a secret deal to allow the NSA to engineer a clandestine "back door" access key to allow secret access to any RSA based encryption (which is most of the banking institutions in the world, among others). The front line people on this topic are the computer geeks who are relied on to stay one step ahead of the bad guys and keep our nuclear facilities from getting Suxnetted, or our power grids from being treated to an massive internal attack that bricks our entire infrastructure with the push of a button, triggering a software based "nuclear event" that destroys every single digital device from water pump rpm monitors to turbine heat sensors, hospital power stations, security gates, street lights, power grid relays, routers, ethernet switches, wireless wind turbine controllers- basically every network has now been revealed to be inherently crippled by our own spooks, who have gone so off the rails they essentially shot our ship of state full of holes and we are wondering why we are taking on water so fast. In the name of making us safer, they made us into a sitting duck.

Besides all of the (former) tin foil nutters, such as many of us on this quaint little forum, the entire 'civilized' world relies on a form of "trust but verify" for secure communcations and transactions of all kinds. What these idiots have done, in their rush to turn the entire planet into a real world SkyNet for Captain Claptrap to oversee from his Star Trek command chair, is to undermine the security ALL forms of digital interaction and communication so thoroughly, it actually would be safer to use a typewriter and carrier pigeons.

lelmaleh
21st February 2014, 08:15
How about hand writing?

Lcam88
21st February 2014, 17:58
Another suggestion, use a non-Ubuntu linux based OS like Debian or Gentoo linux.

There is a report of someone trying to install a root kit in the Linux kernel, and ultimately there is no way to be sure whether one was put in or not. But generally speaking, the level of technical skill required to create an exploit is substancial. From that perspective, the more common systems like Windows and MacOS are often targeted simply because they have a greater return on investment (of expert time). Because Linux has largely scientific and/or server based uses, I would imagine it to be a low priority platform to dedicate time and money to develop an exploit.

Openoffice has a linux port, and if it fails you can always appeal for a more exotic publishing system. Another observation, openoffice port to linux depends on Java so be sure to have the latest version available installed.

Buck
21st February 2014, 21:07
The current thinking seems to be trending towards open source platforms as having more potential to secure and monitor any attempts to subvert. Fascinating (to me, anyway :) parallels that surface when you consider the underlying beliefs/ thought forms at work;

closed source/proprietary = gated community, locked doors, citadels, moats, barbed wire, protective force fields, perimeter controls, security gates, guns, lots of guns (!), hoarding, stockpiling, alignment with concept/energy of scarcity/ alignment with elitism, nationalism, Me-Firstism :), shadow based (closed areas kept away from light)

open source/ communal = group consciousness, universal wisdom, inherent self regulating "ethics" and "morality", sharing, alignment with concept/energy of abundance, alignment with awareness of inherent connection to all things, alignment with concept/awareness of sentient evolution as purposeful intent, light based

Nasu
22nd February 2014, 16:38
The current thinking seems to be trending towards open source platforms as having more potential to secure and monitor any attempts to subvert. Fascinating (to me, anyway :) parallels that surface when you consider the underlying beliefs/ thought forms at work;

closed source/proprietary = gated community, locked doors, citadels, moats, barbed wire, protective force fields, perimeter controls, security gates, guns, lots of guns (!), hoarding, stockpiling, alignment with concept/energy of scarcity/ alignment with elitism, nationalism, Me-Firstism :), shadow based (closed areas kept away from light)

open source/ communal = group consciousness, universal wisdom, inherent self regulating "ethics" and "morality", sharing, alignment with concept/energy of abundance, alignment with awareness of inherent connection to all things, alignment with concept/awareness of sentient evolution as purposeful intent, light based

Great post and wonderful responces. I like this open source analogy, by this definition we need for the future an open source community... N

Anchor
24th February 2014, 09:00
If you need secure ad-hoc access to the internet, try looking into TAILS.

http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Features/Tails-Secure-Distro

It may seem like next level paranoia, but if you are a journalist dealing with a "snowden" and you are not using something like this when trying your hardest to be discrete and anon, then perhaps you are not trying hard enough.

johnf
24th February 2014, 13:09
If you need secure ad-hoc access to the internet, try looking into TAILS.

http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Features/Tails-Secure-Distro

It may seem like next level paranoia, but if you are a journalist dealing with a "snowden" and you are not using something like this when trying your hardest to be discrete and anon, then perhaps you are not trying hard enough.

This is very interesting, the best part of Tails is it's documentation, you just download the iso, burn a dvd, and reboot into it.
You can learn about security from the documentation, and reboot into your usual OS and get spied on again when you want to do other stuff.
https://tails.boum.org/download/index.en.html#index2h1

John