Snuggly the Security Bear

CIA money behind Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS)

How amazing would it be if you could walk into a fast food restaurant and order that mid-morning bacon taco meal with Mountain Dew Big Gulp from your mobile device?  Just imagine… as you approach the restaurant, a menu pops up on your screen, the phone makes suggestions and helps you super-size your order, before you even set foot inside!

Is there anything the IPad won't do?

This advertiser’s wet dream is about to become reality, thanks to WPS (Wi-Fi Positioning System) infrastructure pioneered by CIA front company Skyhook (formerly Quarterscope) and currently being implemented by several other intelligence-connected companies, including Google, Apple, and Navizon (which is supplying data to Microsoft).

WPS geolocates wireless network devices using a database of known wireless access points, such as in coffee shops.  Since at least 2004, WPS companies like Skyhook and Google have been war-driving for access point data.  More about the technical aspects of this later.

How did you conclude that Skyhook is an intelligence front company?

Follow the money.

In 2008 former CIA director George Tenet became Managing Director of Allen & Company, an investment bank that provided funding for Skyhook’s WPS development and Google’s IPO (Initial Public Offering) in 2004, while he was still director of the CIA.

Skyhook was also funded by shadowy investment firm Alliance Capital.  Frank Savage, Alliance Capital’s former board chairman, also served on the board of Lockheed Martin and Enron. Alliance was Enron’s largest shareholder.

Regardless of where the seed money came from, you can now buy this WPS data commercially.  The military industrial complex churns out new tracking and identification technologies, corporations exploit them, and ever-increasing amounts of personal data are exchanged on private networks which intelligence agencies can snoop on at will with their NSA Internet vacuum cleaners.

What exactly is WPS and how does it work?

Nearly every modern network connected device (phone, computer network card, cable modem, wireless router, bluetooth headset, etc), has a unique number called a MAC address (Media Access Control, not Apple) built in.

Even if a mobile device doesn’t obtain an IP address when connecting to wi-fi, merely conducting a normal SSID (Session ID) scan will result in the mobile obtaining the MAC of the access point, and may (during active scanning) result in sending the mobile’ MAC address  to the access point.  Access points embed their MAC addresses in beacon frames, which wireless devices scan for.

Here is the relevant thing you need to know about MAC addresses: they are unique and can identify any network connected device, wired or wireless, bluetooth, 802.11, etc.  The good news is you can change a device’s MAC address.†  The bad news is, that doesn’t really matter because that new number can be immediately correlated with your voice print and other biometric signatures in realtime by the mobile device (see Iphone trojan link below)

WPS is not generally used alone for geolocation. Hybrid systems including GPS (Global Positioning System) and cell triangulation are more commonly used to geolocate mobile devices. the advantage of adding WPS is that you can be located anywhere there’s a known wi-fi, such as inside buildings where GPS signals may not be strong, and you can be triangulated fairly accurately (depending on the type of radio hardware in the mobile device) using a large number of access points.  How often have you been in an urban setting and seen 10 or 20 or more access points in the list?  If the exact location of those access points are known, they can all be used together to triangulate the mobile more precisely.

So my phone trades MAC addresses with a restaurant’s Wi-Fi. They show me the daily specials.   Aren’t there potential benefits to something like this?

Yes, there are many potential benefits to advertisers, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies who want to track masses of people.  WPS is going to dovetail beautifully with the NSA’s Main Core and Apple’s new biometric Iphone trojan.

The only potential benefit to you is that you will not have to speak to the person behind the counter and your latté will be ready faster.

Intelligence agencies and DARPA are creating an AI surveillance cloud right before our eyes.  Don’t think that because you don’t have an Iphone means the 3 people sitting around you haven’t had their trojans activated to identify your voice print and snoop on your conversation.

We already know how this ends.  You better not be reading qbit.cc either or you’re going on their shit list!

† But why is it that on Apple OSX 10.4 you can’t change the MAC address of your wireless card even as root?  It simply fails with no error and keeps the original MAC address.  I will find the answer to this question.

Apple patenting AI trojan for use in mobile devices [updated]

While many of my pals have I-phones, I have no intention of getting one.  The interface is slick and it has all the features a person could ask for in a mobile device (and more), but the inability to remove the battery sends shivers up my spine.

Steve Jobs proudly displays the latest NSA bugging device

In this patent application, Apple claims it has software that essentially turns a mobile device into a biometric trojan horse, identifying users by their biometric data (heartbeat pattern, accelerometer vibration patterns, voice print, and face recognition), logging keystrokes, saving packet data, etc. all under the thin guise of protecting the device from unauthorized use.

Now let’s not kid ourselves, law enforcement agencies can already install a trojan on most if not all major models of mobile devices via firmware updates, but as usual Apple is thinking different.  This is bigger.  Machine vision, biometric identification, accelerometer analysis, GPS, voice recognition…. all these streams of data amount to much more than a traditional eavesdropping device.

Apple’s patent turns the devices into literal sensory organs for an AI threat assessment system like the NSA Main Core.  Humans would not even begin to be able to integrate all these input data streams, but AI software can.

Not only has Apple devised the ultimate intelligence trojan, they’ve also designed a personalized weapon targeting system.  If a mobile device identifies a human target, A missile or beam weapon strike can be confidently delivered to the target using the device’s biometric identification and GPS locator, confirmed by satellite.

The sheer number of mobile devices and sensory data available, and the abililty to integrate these streams centrally using AI systems creates a biometric surveillance cloud for the ruling oligarchs to have Total Information Awareness* over their subjects, the human cattle.§

As communications device manufacturers and telcos grow, they will inevitably be approached by intelligence agencies with offers they can’t refuse.  Either they cooperate and profit from compromising the security of their platforms, or misfortune may befall them.  It’s the easy way or the hard way.

The big story here is that Apple is going out in the open with it, attempting to profit from the intellectual “property” they’ve developed, most likely at the command of shadow government intelligence agencies.

The brazen nature of filing a patent for an intelligence agency AI trojan is significant.  As we move past the point of no return toward the New World Order, the shadow government devils will come out of the shadows, until ultimately when their drone armies are sufficiently powerful, they will wage a new World War on some manufactured threat in an effort to reduce our numbers and enslave us, in what they believe will be a utopian “re-wilding” of the Earth.

We need to stop deluding ourselves. When they bring this AI extermination grid online it’s going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.    Just do something, whatever you can. At the very least, stop  feeding it.  We still have the power to disable this thing using the free market and whatever is left of our free will.

Don’t take that job for Raytheon or Lockheed Martin.  Don’t sell your research to DARPA.  Don’t enlist in the military. Don’t support the corporations that are building the extermination grid.  Do use your powers for good and not evil.  Do work toward self-sufficiency and strengthen your family and local community.  Do protect your children from brainwashing.

Here’s the patent application:

What is claimed is:

1 . A method for identifying an unauthorized user of an electronic device, [This means the software will be running all the time.] the method comprising: determining that a current user of the electronic device is an unauthorized user; gathering information related to the unauthorized user’s operation of the electronic device in response to determining, wherein the unauthorized user’s operation comprises operations not related to the authentication; and transmitting an alert notification to a responsible party in response to gathering.

2 . The method of claim 1, wherein determining further comprises: determining the identity of the current user; comparing the determined identity to the identity of one or more authorized users of the electronic device; and detecting that the determined identity does not match the identity of at least one of the one or more authorized users.

3 . The method of claim 1, wherein determining further comprises: identifying a particular activity performed by the current user that indicates suspicious behavior. [device will be profiling your behavior]

4 . The method of claim 3, wherein the particular activity comprises one or more of hacking the electronic device, jailbreaking the electronic device, unlocking the electronic device, removing a SIM card from the electronic device, and moving at least a predetermined distance away from a synced device. [like an electronic house arrest tracking device]

5 . The method of claim 1, wherein gathering further comprises gathering one or more of screenshots, keylogs, communications packets served to the electronic device, and information related to a host device coupled to the electronic device.

6 . The method of claim 1, wherein the alert notification comprises a general message indicating that an unauthorized user has been detected.

7 . The method of claim 1, wherein the alert notification comprises at least a portion of the gathered information.

8 . The method of claim 1, further comprising: gathering information related to the identity of the unauthorized user in response to determining; and gathering information related to the location of the electronic device in response to determining.

9 . The method of claim 1, further comprising: restricting at least one function of the electronic device in response to determining.

10 . The method of claim 1, further comprising: transmitting sensitive data from the electronic device to a remote storage; and erasing the sensitive data from the electronic device.

11 . An electronic device operable to detect an unauthorized user of an electronic device, the electronic device comprising: a processor operable to: receive an input from a current user of the electronic device; determine the input is not associated with an authorized user of the electronic device; and record usage information of the electronic device in response to determining; and communications circuitry operable to transmit the usage information to a remote device.

12 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: a microphone operable to record the voice of the current user; and wherein the processor is further operable to: compare the recorded voice with voice prints of authorized user of the electronic device; and determine that the recorded voice does not match the voice print of any authorized user of the electronic device.

13 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: a heartbeat sensor operable to detect the heartbeat of the current user; and wherein the processor is further operable to: compare the detected heartbeat with heart signatures of each authorized user of the electronic device; and determine that detected the heartbeat does not match the heart signature of any authorized user of the electronic device.

14 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: an input device operable to receive an authenticating input for authenticating a user of the electronic device; and wherein the processor is further operable to: determine that a predetermined number of successive incorrect authenticating inputs have been received.

15 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: a camera operable to take a photograph of the vicinity of the electronic device; and positioning circuitry operable to determine current location information of the electronic device; and wherein the processor is further operable to: geotag the photograph by associating the photograph with the current location information.

16 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: an accelerometer operable to record a vibration profile of the electronic device; and a signal processor operable to compare the recorded vibration profile with a library of vibration profiles to determine a current mode of transportation of the electronic device.

17 . A system comprising: an electronic device comprising; an input device operable to receive a password provided by a user; a camera operable to take a photograph of the user; a processor operable to: determine that a predetermined number of incorrect passwords have been successively received; direct the camera to take a photograph of the user; and generate an alert notification in response to the processor determining, wherein the alert notification comprises information related to the identity of the user and the photograph of the user; and communications circuitry operable to transmit the alert notification to a remote device.

18 . The system of claim 17, wherein: the camera is operable to take a plurality of photographs of the surroundings of the electronic device; and wherein the processor is further operable to: analyze each of the plurality of photographs to identify distinguishing landmarks in the photographs; and determine the location of each photograph based on the identified distinguishing landmarks.

19 . The system of claim 17, wherein the alert notification is transmitted via one of text message, facsimile, VoIP application, instant messaging application, on-line profile application, on-line blog application, and a cloud server.

20 . Machine-readable media for identifying unauthorized users of an electronic device, comprising machine-readable instructions recorded thereon for: determining that a current user of the electronic device is an unauthorized user; gathering information related to the unauthorized user’s operation of the electronic device in response to determining, wherein the unauthorized user’s operation comprises operations not related to authentication; and transmitting an alert notification to a responsible party in response to gathering.

21 . The machine-readable media of claim 20, further comprising machine-readable instructions recorded thereon for: determining the identity of the current user; comparing the determined identity to the identity of one or more authorized users of the electronic device; and detecting that the determined identity does not match the identity of at least one of the one or more authorized users.

* Total Information Awareness project was publicly scrapped.  However it would be naiive to assume that intelligence agencies gave up on being “totally aware” of everyone’s private information.

§ Nice job.  I hope you’re happy with yourselves.

See also: Report: Apple testing RFID swipe support in iPhone prototypes

Wayne Madsen: Wikileaks is a CIA Front

Wayne Madsen Report via Arthur Zbygniew

…

WMR has confirmed Young’s contention that Wikileaks is a CIA front operation. Wikileaks is intimately involved in a $20 million CIA operation that U.S.-based Chinese dissidents that hack into computers in China. Some of the Chinese hackers route special hacking program through Chinese computers that then target U.S. government and military computer systems. After this hacking is accomplished, the U.S. government announces through friendly media outlets that U.S. computers have been subjected to a Chinese cyber-attack. The “threat” increases an already-bloated cyber-defense and offense budget and plays into the fears of the American public and businesses that heavily rely on information technology.

It is also pointed out that on Wikileaks advisory board is Ben Laurie, a one-time programmer and Internet security expert for Google, which recently signed a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and has been charged by China with being part of a U.S. cyber-espionage campaign against China.

…

Full article here

NSA in the limelight today

Some NSA-related news from Cryptogon today

NSA Falsified Intercepted Communications in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident – New York Times

In an echo of the debates over the discredited intelligence that helped make the case for the war in Iraq, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday released more than 1,100 pages of previously classified Vietnam-era transcripts that show senators of the time sharply questioning whether they had been deceived by the White House and the Pentagon over the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident.

“If this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress, has been misled by pretext into a war in which thousands of young men have died, and many more thousands have been crippled for life, and out of which their country has lost prestige, moral position in the world, the consequences are very great,” Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, the father of the future vice president, said in March 1968 in a closed session of the Foreign Relations Committee.

…

Robert J. Hanyok, a retired National Security Agency historian, said Wednesday in an interview that “there were doubts, but nobody wanted to follow up on the doubts,” perhaps because “they felt they’d gone too far down the road.”

Mr. Hanyok concluded in 2001 that N.S.A. officers had deliberately falsified intercepted communications in the incident to make it look like the attack on Aug. 4, 1964, had occurred, although he said they acted not out of political motives but to cover up earlier errors.

Many historians say that President Johnson might have found reason to escalate military action against North Vietnam even without the Tonkin Gulf crisis, and that he apparently had his own doubts. Historians note that a few days after the supposed attack he told George W. Ball, the under secretary of state, “Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish!”

Former NSA executive Thomas A. Drake may pay high price for media leak – Washington Post (page 2)

In 2001, Drake was promoted to senior executive, heading the office of change leadership and communications. His first day on the job happened to be Sept. 11: In the course of hours, al-Qaeda’s attack changed the national conversation about privacy. Suddenly the emphasis was on detecting plots rather than on trying to ensure that the agency never spy on Americans, even inadvertently.

Facebook adds face detection for photos, only 1% of users have it so far

downloadsquad.com
by Jay Hathaway (RSS feed) Jul 2nd 2010 at 2:30PM

Facebook is testing out a new face detection feature in its photo app, according to AllFacebook.com. This is the first big change to Photos since Facebook bought up Divvyshot a couple of months ago. Face detection recognizes faces in photos, and gives you a prompt to tell FB whose faces they are. This reduces the amount of clicking required to go through and tag that huge album from last night’s party. Of course, this feature won’t help you identify the strangers who appear in those photos … that would be a bit creepy.

It doesn’t sound like this is full-on facial recognition and auto-tagging … yet. That seems like the obvious next step for Facebook, though. If they go that route, they’ll already have the ability to pick a face out of a photo, and then plenty of user data about who the faces belong to. Geez, it’s hard enough to untag my ugly mug in photos as it is!

If you don’t see face detection on your photos yet, don’t worry. Only 1% of users have it so far, according to Facebook.

must … delete …. facebook profile [udpated]

Facebook came after my time, and I learned better before getting entirely sucked into that. Ok scratch that.  I had a change of heart recently on this issue. I created a facebook app just for qbit.cc.  I don’t like using it for personal stuff but it can be useful for networking.

Friendster and Myspace were scary enough but Facebook’s ever-changing privacy agreement and DARPA/CIA connections have taken social data mining to a new level.  It would hardly be a surprise if every last bit of private data in all all our social network profiles were being integrated into Main Core.

When pondering the privacy implications of social networking, I envision a scenario where an Orwellian pre-crime system has determined that you are at risk of committing a crime, or some non-crime that you have “committed” in the past (blogging) retroactively becomes a crime, and the government uses private info from your social network sites to hunt you down.

I’m having a “Turn on, tune in, drop out” hippie moment.  For those of you saying “I’ve got nothing to hide, thus no reason to worry about having my private info on social networks.”  I wish I could tell you a story about being caught up in some drama, thru no fault of my own, and having my Myspace profile analyzed by a cop posing as a reporter.  But I’m no longer naiive enough to post private things in public places.

I’ve got nothing to hide… therefore the government has got no f’ing business accessing my private information.

Related:
Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers (Ars Technica)

Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Wikipedia)

Qwest CEO imprisoned in retaliation for failure to cut surveillance deal with NSA

(WMR) — WMR has learned from sources who worked in senior positions for the telecommunications company Qwest that its former chairman and CEO, Joseph Nacchio, was threatened with retaliation after he refused to participate in an unconstitutional and illegal National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping program after he met with NSA officials on February 27, 2001, some six months before the 9/11 attacks. Nacchio refused to turn over customer records without a court order — something NSA did not possess at the time it made its request.

After Nacchio refused NSA’s request on the grounds that it was illegal, sources close to Nacchio reported his legal problems with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission began in earnest. First, Qwest lost out on several lucrative federal government contracts and second, Nacchio was indicted and convicted in 2007 of 19 counts of insider stock trading. Nacchio was sentenced to six years in the Schuykill federal prison camp in Minersville, Pennsylvania, where he is now assigned prisoner number 33973-013.

In January, US District Judge Marcia Krieger of the 10th Circuit Court in Denver denied Nacchio’s motion for a new trial. Krieger was nominated for the federal bench by President George W. Bush on September 10, 2001. The September 10 date is significant – it was then clear that Nacchio was not going to be a player in the NSA and FBI illegal surveillance programs and it was the day before the Bush administration would sweep aside the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Qwest is headquartered in Denver.

The illegal NSA surveillance program, once known by its highly-classified code-name STELLAR WIND, was revealed by AT&T employee Mark Klein, who divulged NSA’s “secret room” on the 6th floor at AT&T’s central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco. The “secret room” was next door to the 4ESS phone switch. According to AT&T documents, NSA had direct wiretaps on key Internet circuits on the floor above. NSA’s operation conducted vacuum-cleaner copying of the data stream of the Internet, which included e-mail, web browsing, VOIP phone calls (e.g., Skype) and all the other common Internet services. There is informed speculation that because of an aggressive AT&T internal campaign to transfer all its old long-distance traffic to fiber lines, traditional phone calls that passed through the 4ESS switch were likely transferred to the Internet circuits, making phone calls also very likely subject to NSA eavesdropping.

AT&T and Verizon agreed to participate in the STELLAR WIND program.

Even though there is ample evidence that the federal government engaged in massive prosecutorial misconduct in retaliation for Nacchio’s refusal to participate in STELLAR WIND and associated FBI surveillance programs, the Supreme Court refused to review the case against the former Qwest chief. The Supreme Court also denied Nacchio bail pending his appeal, a clear attempt by the most corrupt Supreme Court in American history to prevent Nacchio from airing the NSA’s dirty laundry about domestic wiretapping and pressure on telecommunication firms’ senior corporate officials.

Qwest shareholders and retirees blamed Nacchio for their financial losses, however, it is now clear that the NSA and the Bush administration targeted Qwest for retribution after its top boss refused to cooperate in the illegal domestic wiretap programs of the NSA and FBI.

Qwest founder, railroad and oil magnate Philip Anschutz, a conservative Christian who owns The Examiner chain of metro region newspapers and several entertainment firms and professional sports teams, testified on Nacchio’s behalf.

The news of NSA’s threats of retaliation against Nacchio will come as little comfort to those NSA employees, including the jailed ex-NSA analyst Ken Ford, Jr., on similar trumped up charges. If someone as wealthy and powerful as Nacchio could be brought down by the illegal domestic joint targeting operations carried out by the NSA, FBI, and corrupt Justice Department prosecutors, those rank-and-file NSA employees who have blown the whistle on NSA’s illegal operations stand little chance of having their “day in court.”

WMR has been told by NSA insiders that if the full extent of NSA’s illegal operations became public, the American people would go into a “state of shock.”