What’s new is old again

I find it incredible that after a whole generation, we are still facing the exact same personal privacy concerns on the internet.  With the recent Facebook blow-up regarding Cambridge Analytica, one would be lead to believe that there is now some concern about what these companies do with our data… but this comes crashing down as now, many weeks later, reports are showing that everyone is just “meh”, and usage on FB actually went up!  At least now with GDPR Day tomorrow (May 25, 2018), many companies are reviewing their policies and making privacy settings a little easier to understand.

So, what’s the new ‘old’?  A nice article from 1996 that surfaced recently.  Here’s the live link, but also a copy of the article text.  (I do remember very well the issue back then with PGP and encryption and government export controls, because I’m old, lol)

https://www.wsj.com/public/current/articles/SB848585925823144000.htm

On-Line Privacy Fears Draw Upon Fantasy As Well As Fact
By DAVID A. HARVEY
Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE

How important is privacy to the on-line community? Just ask Lexis-Nexis Corp.

In June, the Dayton, Ohio, company, a unit of Reed-Elsevier PLC, found itself the target of Net users’ fury as e-mails flew across cyberspace charging that the company was offering on-line access to people’s Social Security numbers, credit and medical histories, and mother’s maiden names through P-TRAK, a personal locator service marketed to the legal community for use in tracking down litigants.

“Word about P-TRAK spread quickly across the Net,” says Sara Fitzgerald, spokeswoman for Interactive Services Association, a Silver Spring, Md., trade association that serves the on-line industry. “I think there is a concern about large databases posted where people can have access, and that provide data to a wide number of people.”

The anger flooded into Lexis in the form of phone calls, letters, faxes, and e-mails late this summer. But largely lost amid the fury in cyberspace was the fact that most of the anger was based on misinformation. Lexis had removed Social Security numbers from the database in June, just 11 days after the system was set up, and P-TRAK contained no information that wasn’t publicly available. The information it did offer was nothing unusual — it amounted to what’s known in the industry as a credit-header report and contains, according to Lexis spokesperson John Hourigan, names, current and two previous addresses, sometimes the months and years of birth, and telephone numbers. The system does allow users to enter a Social Security number and find out whom it belongs to, however.

Those facts didn’t prevent Lexis from having to fend off on-line users’ fury, however, or from trying to control the damage by setting up mechanisms allowing people to have themselves delisted.

P-TRAK may have served as a rallying cry for on-line users worried about their privacy in a wired age, but it was far from the only event to arouse such concerns in 1996. Arguments continued over the use of technologies such as “cookies” that collect marketing information as people browse the Web. Junk e-mail drew users’ wrath and on-line services’ legal action as both fought to keep mailboxes clear of unwanted solicitations. The White House continued to fight the spread of strong encryption technologies for the Internet, backing a built-in “key” for law enforcement and other authorized bodies. And on the international front, on-line users’ concerns led to the passage of Internet-privacy legislation in several countries.

But as the P-TRAK incident demonstrated all too clearly, many on-line users remain ill-informed about exactly what personal information is available on the Internet, and attach greater significance to the fact that such data is available on-line than they do to the fact that it resides on the mainframes of numerous data-collection entities — from publishers to credit-card companies.

Marc Rotenberg of Washington, D.C.’s Electronic Privacy Information Clearinghouse notes that concerns about Internet privacy are “near the top of the list” of consumers’ privacy hot spots. But such concerns aren’t always based on facts.

A 1996 study of Internet users conducted by Atlanta-based Georgia Institute of Technology’s Graphics, Visualization and Usability Workshop found respondents strongly agreed they should be able to visit sites on the Internet anonymously and that they should have complete control over the dispersal of their personal information.

But the GVU respondents held erroneous beliefs about what information could be collected when they visited a Web page. While the majority of respondents believed — correctly — that the name of a page, the time of viewing, the name of the machine, browser and operating system were loggable, a slightly smaller majority believed, wrongly, that the user’s e-mail address was also loggable.

Bulk E-Mail Battles

As more users take to cyberspace, it seems like more bulk e-mail is generated, leaving on-line service providers struggling with consumer complaints about full in-boxes. Many users equate junk e-mail with an invasion of privacy — even though many of those same users don’t raise an eyebrow when they find their snail-mail boxes jammed with paper every day.

The junk-mail battles came to a head in September, when America Online Inc., citing consumer complaints, began blocking unsolicited e-mail from five major bulk-mail operators on the Internet. That prompted a nasty court fight; AOL won a key battle last month when a federal judge ruled that Philadelphia’s Cyber Promotions Inc. had no First Amendment right to ply AOL customers with unsolicited e-mail. CompuServe Inc. and Concentric Inc. have also won injunctions against the company.

[Go]Is the rise of the on-line world undermining our privacy? What makes you say so? What could the effects of such a development be on our society — and what should we do about it?

Mass e-mailings, known as “spam” in Net parlance, are by no means unique to AOL. Anyone with a bit of savvy can scan Usenet Newsgroups, download e-mail addresses and send out marketing ploys to the world. But on-line service providers haven’t turned only to the courts to stop such techniques.

“I think one of the things that has been interesting is that the market is working by itself to respond,” Ms. Fitzgerald says. “I know that many of the on-line service providers are moving to take action against the worst of the spammers, as are the independent-service providers when they get complaints against large-scale marketers.”

Such responses have typically taken the form of e-mail filters or features that allow a service’s subscribers to block e-mail messages from specific Internet addresses.

The Clipper Controversy

The battle over encryption technology also continued in 1996, as the White House pressed its efforts to limit the dissemination of strong encryption tools.

The Clinton administration has largely ignored individual users. Federal prosecutors in January ended a 28-month investigation of cryptographer Philip Zimmerman for using the Internet to distribute sophisticated encryption software called Pretty Good Privacy — perhaps recognizing that any user who can download a file can obtain a copy of PGP or a similar program as shareware.

Instead, the government has worked to maintain export controls on encryption software, a move that has infuriated the computer industry, which charges that such rules prevent it from competing with foreign companies that needn’t contend with such rules.

In October, Vice President Al Gore announced the administration would permit the export of 56-bit key encryption software if companies agreed to provide law-enforcement agencies with a built-in key to monitor suspicious e-mail, if given court approval to do so. That announcement appeared to mark an compromise brokered by the federal government and a handful of powerful computer companies, but in recent weeks the deal has shown signs of unraveling amid charges by the industry that the government is trying to change the agreement’s terms.

“The White house is trying to exploit public fears to move forward with an anti-civil liberties agenda,” says Mr. Rotenberg, adding that “this is a terrible situation, where draconian government proposals are put forward without evidence that they work. We don’t dispute that the government has a solemn responsibility to protect public safety or that there are a lot of dangers to public safety. But these proposals are driven more by fear than by reason.”

A Growing Call for Laws

Ironically, as the federal government has pressed for restrictions on encryption technology that would leave it out of step with other nations’ policies, it has also fallen behind international efforts to write electronic privacy into law.

Many European Economic Community nations have electronic-privacy laws, notes Mr. Rotenberg, adding that 1996 saw Australia, Japan and Canada announce they would pass such measures.

“There is growing recognition in other countries of the need to establish privacy law for record systems,” he says, adding that the growing number of such foreign laws “means that the US is going to find itself, at least in some trade relations, without an adequate privacy standard as viewed by these other countries.”

It wasn’t for lack of trying in Congress, however. Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass.,) introduced H.R. 3685, an act to enable the Federal Trade Commission to develop and enforce uniform standards for privacy of consumer information on the Net. A new version of the bill is likely come to the House floor in the 1997 session.

And in the wake of the controversy over P-TRAK, the Federal Trade Commission recommended that laws be adopted forbidding credit-reporting agencies from providing Social Security numbers and other such information to database operators like Lexis.

Instead, Social Security numbers, previous addresses and mothers’ maiden names would gain the same privacy protection as a consumer’s full credit report, which may only be supplied for a few specified uses, such as credit applications and employment applications.

Taming the Information Beast

While databases like P-TRAK are obvious targets for those who worry about privacy, huge volumes of information are collected, ostensibly for marketing purposes, on a daily basis about Web users.

On-line users’ ire has focused on such methods of collecting marketing information as cookies and site-tracking, which attempt to harness the Web’s power to tailor information to a specific user. Such techniques are intended, in part, to help Web sites and on-line services create user profiles for customizing the look and layout of a site based on one’s interests, background and habits.

Privacy advocates remain wary of such techniques, generally agreeing that information should not be surreptitiously collected and that users should be allowed to deactivate such programs. But a great deal of personal information is given freely by users — most commonly at the point of entry for a Web site, where many sites request users’ ages, addresses, phone numbers, income brackets and occupations.

Legislation like Rep. Markey’s would mandate a degree of consumer control over the collection and dissemination of such information. But to what degree the government should be involved in protecting consumers’ privacy is the source of considerable argument.

Both privacy advocates and their opponents agree that at minimum, consumers should be able to opt out of having their personal information resold, or passed on to marketers. Further, virtually everyone involved believes that full and complete disclosure of what information is being collected and how it will be used must become standard.

Perhaps such a step would help diffuse the privacy battles: The GVU study found that 78% of users would be willing to give out information if told what it would be used for.

For their part, on-line companies — as well as those that are moving into the on-line world — argue that they need marketing data in order to build markets, justify advertising, and to customize services. They also argue that being able to collect such information from users is a fair trade for offering other information — whether it’s company profiles or Hollywood gossip — to those same users.

[Go]Will our society eventually accept some loss of privacy in exchange for being fully wired? Is that choice likely to be a conscious one — or simply a development that takes hold slowly in our daily lives?

“I feel that there’s a difference between someone who gathers information versus someone who acts on information,” says ISA’s Ms. Fitzgerald. “Most of the marketers I’ve talked to in our membership are collecting information through a formal registration process.”

And most of them, she notes, offer users the ability to opt out of having their marketing information shared. Those that don’t, she adds, point out that “the relationship is quid pro quo for getting valuable and free information on the Internet.”

The GVU study offers some evidence that on-line users understand such a relationship and are willing to accept it. The study found that 44% of the respondents were willing to give information for a value-added service, while 46% would offer such data in return for free access to a Web page.

If the GVU study is correct, the outlines of an eventual understanding between on-line users and marketers may be already emerging.

“I do think that standards and new privacy laws are needed — not only to protect [the] privacy interests of consumers, but also to give industry some clear guidelines of what’s up for grabs and what isn’t,” says Mr. Rotenberg.

But, he adds, “I feel very strongly that these issues can be resolved through politics or technology. There are enough people saying that the Clipper chip and P-TRAK are bad. The sky is not falling.”

Choose two

From [http://www.harvardnsj.com/2010/04/cybersecurity-and-national-policy/]:

Those with either an engineering or management background are aware that one cannot optimize everything at once — that requirements are balanced by constraints. I am not aware of another domain where this is as true as it is in cybersecurity and the question of a policy response to cyber insecurity at the national level. In engineering, this is said as “Fast, Cheap, Reliable: Choose Two”. In the public policy arena, we must first remember the definition of a free country: a place where that which is not forbidden is permitted. As we consider the pursuit of cybersecurity, we will return to that idea time and time again; I believe that we are now faced with “Freedom, Security, Convenience: Choose Two”.

Published
Categorized as Security

Back in the USA

This guy should be everyone’s hero for taking a stand:

(Copied from here [http://knifetricks.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-am-detained-by-feds-for-not-answering.html] from blog by Paul Karl, so all credit is his, I just want a full copy here for posterity.)

I Am Detained By The Feds For Not Answering Questions

UPDATE: The comments have raised many issues, and I address the most salient ones in a new post titled “10 Brief Responses To 700 Comments About Refusing To Answer Questions At Passport Control.” http://knifetricks.blogspot.com/2010/09/10-brief-responses-to-700-comments.html

Sherman Oaks, California

I was detained last night by federal authorities at San Francisco International Airport for refusing to answer questions about why I had travelled outside the United States.

The end result is that, after waiting for about half an hour and refusing to answer further questions, I was released – because U.S. citizens who have produced proof of citizenship and a written customs declaration are not obligated to answer questions.


“Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron.

“None of your business,” I said.

Her eyes widened in disbelief.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“I’m not going to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country,” I said.

This did not go over well. She asked a series of questions, such as how long I had been in China, whether I was there on personal business or commercial business, etc. I stood silently. She said that her questions were mandated by Congress and that I should complain to Congress instead of refusing to cooperate with her.

She asked me to take one of my small bags off her counter. I complied.

She picked up the phone and told someone I “was refusing to cooperate at all.” This was incorrect. I had presented her with proof of citizenship (a U.S. passport) and had moved the bag when she asked. What I was refusing to do was answer her questions.

A male Customs and Border Protection officer appeared to escort me to “Secondary.” He tried the good cop routine, cajoling me to just answer a few questions so that I could be on my way. I repeated that I refused to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country.

“Am I free to go?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

The officer asked for state-issued ID. I gave him my California Identification Card. I probably didn’t have to, but giving him the ID was in line with my principle that I will comply with an officer’s reasonable physical requests (stand here, go there, hand over this) but I will not answer questions about my business abroad.

The officer led me into a waiting room with about thirty chairs. Six other people were waiting.

The officer changed tack to bad cop. “Let this guy sit until he cools down,” the officer loudly said to a colleague. “It could be two, three, four hours. He’s gonna sit there until he cools down.”

I asked to speak to his superior and was told to wait.

I read a book about Chinese celebrities for about 15 minutes.

An older, rougher officer came out and called my name. “We’ve had problems with you refusing to answer questions before,” he said. “You think there’s some law that says you don’t have to answer our questions.”

“Are you denying me re-entrance to my own country?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, and walked away.

I read for about five more minutes.

An officer walked out with my passport and ID and handed them to me.

“Am I free to go?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

But we weren’t done.

I picked up my checked bag and was told to speak to a customs officer. My written declaration form had been marked with a large, cross-hatched symbol that probably meant “secondary inspection of bags.”

The officer asked if the bags were mine; I handed him my baggage receipt.

He asked if I had packed the bags myself. I said I declined to answer the question.

He asked again, and I made the same reply. Same question; same response. Again; again.

“I need you to give me an oral customs declaration,” he said.

“I gave you a written declaration,” I said.

“I need to know if you want to amend that written declaration,” he said. “I need to know if there’s anything undeclared in these bags.”

I stood silently.

Visibly frustrated, he turned to a superior, who had been watching, and said that I refused to answer his questions.

“Just inspect his bags,” the senior officer said. “He has a right to remain silent.”

Finally! It took half an hour and five federal officers before one of them acknowledged that I had a right not to answer their questions.

The junior officer inspected my bags in some detail, found nothing of interest, and told me I could leave.


Principal Take-Aways

1. Cops Really Don’t Like It When You Refuse To Answer Their Questions. The passport control officer was aghast when I told her that my visit to China was none of her business. This must not happen often, because several of the officers involved seemed thrown by my refusal to meekly bend to their whim.

2. They’re Keeping Records. A federal, computer-searchable file exists on my refusal to answer questions.

3. This Is About Power, Not Security. The CBP goons want U.S. citizens to answer their questions as a ritualistic bow to their power. Well, CBP has no power over me. I am a law-abiding citizen, and, as such, I am the master, and the federal cops are my servants. They would do well to remember that.

4. U.S. Citizens Have No Obligation To Answer Questions. Ultimately, the cops let me go, because there was nothing they could do. A returning U.S. citizen has an obligation to provide proof of citizenship, and the officer has legitimate reasons to investigate if she suspects the veracity of the citizenship claim. A U.S. citizen returning with goods also has an obligation to complete a written customs declaration. But that’s it. You don’t have to answer questions about where you went, why you went, who you saw, etc.

Of course, if you don’t, you get hassled.

But that’s a small price to pay to remind these thugs that their powers are limited and restricted.

————————————–

(Follow-up entry from here [http://knifetricks.blogspot.com/2010/09/10-brief-responses-to-700-comments.html] where he answers some comments from the first post)

My post about refusing to answer questions from Customs and Border Protection officers when re-entering the U.S. has resulted in a lot of debate. My thanks to everyone who joined the conversation, including the authors of the more than one hundred posts that called me a douchebag. Let me address the major points raised, although there are multiple issues – such as the fine distinction between CBP’s immigration powers and its customs powers – that I need to truncate or elide to keep this response from becoming a law review article.

(BTW, I’m blown away by the hubbub. In the last three days, this blog has received more than 75,000 hits. The original post currently has 175 comments, while the Boing Boing report has 172 comments, the Consumerist article 312 comments, and the Reason piece 121.) (Update: The Hacker News section of ycombinator currently has 104 comments.)

1. A U.S. Citizen Cannot Be Denied Re-Entry To Her Own Country.

A federal judge in Puerto Rico – a territory sensitive to the rights and privileges of its residents’ U.S. citizenship — said it best: “The only absolute and unqualified right of citizenship is to residence within the territorial boundaries of the United States; a citizen cannot be either deported or denied reentry.” U.S. v. Valentine, 288 F. Supp. 957, 980 (D.P.R. 1968).

So, while some commenters worried – or advocated – that a citizen who refused to answer CBP questions would be denied re-entry to the United States, the U.S. government does not have the power to prevent a citizen’s re-entry.

2. (The Right To) Silence Is Golden.

This is principally about the right to silence. CBP officers are law enforcement (pictured), who can detain you, arrest you and testify against you in criminal court. You place yourself in jeopardy every time you speak to them about anything.

CBP officers are not your friends. CBP officers treat returning U.S. citizens as potential criminal defendants. You should likewise treat them as if they were corrupt cops on a power trip, targeting you to goose their arrest statistics. The best way to protect yourself against their depredations is to refuse to speak to them or to answer their questions.

3. Any Misstatement To A Federal Officer Can Result In Your Arrest.

If a federal officer claims you lied to him, you can be arrested and charged with the crime of making false statements. You do not have to make the statements under oath (which would be the different charge of perjury).

This statute – which is referred to as Section 1001 and which can be read here [http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1001.html] in all its prolix glory — is the reason why Martha Stewart has a Bureau of Prisons number.

The only way to immunize yourself against a false statements charge is to refuse to speak to federal officers.

“Wait,” you ask, “what about telling the truth?” Doesn’t work. If, in the course of your conversation, you mis-remember something or speak inarticulately, you can now be arrested. Innocent mistake? Prove it in court after being jailed, charged, tried and paying for a lawyer.

Cardinal Richelieu is alleged to have said, “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” That’s also how the false statement charge works. Any cop or prosecutor can concoct a “lie” from your statements.

The only way to protect yourself from a false statement charge is to refuse to speak to federal law enforcement officers.

4. “Business or Pleasure?” Is A Trap.

Which brings us to the reason why, contrary to the belief of many commenters, the seemingly innocuous CBP question of whether your international trip was for business or pleasure is a trap.

You say “business” (because you were at a conference) but the stamps in your passport indicate that you’re returning from a tourist destination like Bali. Now the officer can argue that you have made a false statement, have engaged in an attempt to claim improper business deductions under the Internal Revenue Code and have broken any other federal criminal law — there are more than 10,000 — which he can mold around the circumstances.

You and your travelling companion say “pleasure” but you’re returning from Antwerp, a city known for its diamond trade not its nightlife. Liars and smugglers! And, with two people involved, the feds can levy conspiracy and aiding and abetting charges.

[Clarification: I\’m not saying these charges would stick. I\’m saying they can be concocted because of purported inconsistencies in your story. My point is that the officer acting in bad faith wouldn\’t have that ammunition if you invoked your right to silence.]

Answering the question also immediately opens you up to more questions, which can lead to more chances for the feds to claim that you said something suspicious, inconsistent or false.

(In addition, and this is very much a lawyer’s objection, the question requests a legal conclusion. I have no idea how many federal laws create a distinction between business and pleasure travel or what standards are used. It’s not my call.)

5. Politeness Would Make No Difference.

Many of the commenters took issue with my rude tone toward the CBP officers. This criticism is profoundly misguided.

To the authoritarian mind, there are only two responses to a demand: submission or defiance, and anything less than total submission is defiance. A Lutheran grandmother from Savannah with manners from an antebellum finishing school would be hassled if she refused to answer CBP’s questions.

Answering with a tart “None of your business” underscores that I will not be pushed around and – potentially important from a criminal procedure perspective – is an unambiguous statement that I am not waiving any rights. It is a line in the linoleum.

Further, why is politeness a one-way street? Many commenters relayed stories about rude, abusive, mean and intrusive CBP officers. The entire cop ethos is based on intimidation and domination. We should be able to give the officers a little of their own medicine, and, if they’re as tough as they claim, they can take it.

6. There Is A Profound Difference Between A U.S. Citizen Entering a Foreign Country and a U.S. Citizen Re-Entering Her Own Country.

Multiple commenters confuse or conflate the distinction between a U.S. citizen entering a foreign country (where she can be refused entry for any reason or no reason) and a U.S. citizen returning to the U.S. (where she cannot, as noted in Item No. 1, be denied entrance). These are completely different situations with almost no overlap in terms of governing law, procedures, rights, anything.

That being said – and this is a point several commenters made – entering the U.S. is a cruder experience than entering most other countries. Although I enter China multiple times a year, I have never been asked a question by an immigration or customs officer. When I have entered Thailand without a visa, the officer’s questions have been limited to the duration of my visit (to make sure I am within the Kingdom’s visa waiver rules). Once, a German immigration officer wanted to know my plans, and that interview was polite and three questions long. And, in my reading of travel blogs, the U.S., Canada and Great Britain are the three countries consistently mentioned for their overreaching border officers.

Even adjusting for the fact that a citizen has more interactions with the officers of his own country (and therefore more likely to have a bad encounter), U.S. border officers have a needlessly hostile view of the citizens who, on paper, they serve.

7. “Just Doing My Job” Is Bunk.

Many of the commenters are obviously CBP officers or shills – the repeated references to how CBP officers are underpaid is a tell – and they chant the mantra that the officers on the desks are front-line personnel merely carrying out policy.

I will resist the temptation to pull a Godwin and will merely respond, I don’t care. When a person accepts and keeps a job which involves pressuring and tricking citizens into waiving their rights of privacy and silence (while refusing to admit that the citizens possess those rights), the person has to deal with attitude on the incredibly rare occasion when someone exercises their rights.

You made your choice, officers. Don’t whine when someone points out the legally and morally dubious nature of the job you voluntarily accepted, remain at and could quit at any time.

8. The Other People In Line.

This is a bright red herring. To the extent any immigration or customs line is being slowed down by a citizen refusing to answer questions, it’s because the CBP officer refuses to accept the fact that the citizen is lawfully exercising her rights (as several commenters noted).

As a practical matter, there’s almost no hold up. When a citizen refuses to answer questions at the first CBP kiosk, she is ordered to secondary within a minute or two. The wait is less than it might be if a returning citizen submitted to questioning or had a complicated, multi-national family situation.

In addition, living in a free country means that sometimes you are inconvenienced by others’ assertions of their rights. On occasion, you have to see advertisements for products you think are disgusting, have your morning commute hampered by a strike, or have to drive half a mile out of your way because of the GLBT parade.

Perhaps I or a like-minded person made your stay in the airport four minutes longer. You’ll live.

9. Small, Successful Battles Can Prevent Large, Losing Battles.

When it comes to rights, you don’t know in advance what battle will be important. But you do know, based on history and human nature, that a right undefended will shrivel and die. If you don’t fight for the small right, you won’t be in a position to assert the large right.

Moreover, the existence of the right of privacy is usually based on whether people have a current expectation of privacy in a certain situation. To the extent that people decline to assert their right of privacy, it slips away. Lack of vigilance by citizens begets more government power.

10. Travellers Who Have Presented Proof of U.S. Citizenship Should Not Be Detained For Refusing To Answer Questions.
That’s what this is all about. Once a traveler has provided bona fide proof of U.S. citizenship, he or she is entitled to re-enter the country. CBP should not be asking questions as a matter of course, and, if citizens assert the right to silence, CBP should not be detaining them.

Update: Two commenters mentioned that the original photo was of the Border Patrol, not CBP, so I’ve substituted a photo of CBP officers training to arrest someone.

Repost: World’s Largest Data Collector Teams Up With World’s Largest Data Collector

From: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/worlds_largest.html

Quoting Bruce Schneier:

—-

Does anyone think this is a good idea?

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.

EPIC has filed a Freedom of Information Act Request, asking for records pertaining to the partnership. That would certainly help, because otherwise we have no idea what’s actually going on.

—-

Incredible. How can Google not have the resources to analyze this without Big Brother’s help? If Google is wise they’ll keep all of these potentially collusionistic dealings out in the open.