Court Rules that Constitutional Protections Do Not Apply to "Hackers"

Are you keeping up with today's newspeak?  From Digitalbond:

The US District Court for the State of Idaho ruled that an ICS product developer’s computer could be seized without him being notified or even heard from in court primarily because he states on his web site “we like hacking things and don’t want to stop”. . . .

Apple to Offer iWork Suite for Free on New Macs

From CNET:

Apple showed off revamped versions of its iLife and iWork apps Tuesday at its event in San Francisco. Both suites of apps, which include Garageband, iPhoto and Pages, are now free with any Mac computer or iOS device purchase.  Apple is calling this the biggest update to iWork ever, though some of the changes are subtle. The most notable change, is a brand-new sharing feature that marries iWork on your Mac or iOS devices with the iWork for iCloud beta, Apple's office apps for the Web. You can now start a document or project on one device and pick up where you left off on another. Files that you share via iCloud can be opened by up to 20 people at once and edited in real-time. You can also edit documents from the web, through the iCloud website, which challenge's Google's cloud-based and web-based Google Drive, which offers word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation apps. iWork for iCloud is still in beta and works on Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer.

Senate Makes Another Push for Internet Censorship

From Mother Jones:

This summer, when Edward Snowden dropped his bombshell about PRISM, the NSA's vast Internet spying program, the House had recently passed a bill called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Widely criticized by privacy advocates, CISPA aimed to beef up US cybersecurity by giving tech companies the legal freedom to share even more cyber information with the US government—including the content of Americans' emails, with personal information intact. CISPA supporters, among them big US companies such as Verizon and Comcast, spent 140 times more money on lobbying for the bill than its opponents, according to the Sunlight Foundation. But after Snowden's leaks, public panic over how and why the government uses personal information effectively killed the bill. Now that the dust has settled a bit, NSA director Keith Alexander is publicly asking for the legislation to be re-introduced, and two senators confirmed that they are drafting a new Senate version.

"I am working with Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) on bipartisan legislation to facilitate the sharing of cyber related information among companies and with the government and to provide protection from liability," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told Mother Jones in a statement.

With both Democrat and Republican support, we can safely presume this legislation will be doubly bad.  

Filling the Vacuum After the Silk Road Bust

From Atlantisblog:

It’s almost two weeks since I reported on the race to create Silk Road 2.0 and it seems the mass migration is well underway with existing sites busting at the seams to accommodate the huge increase in traffic with some sites witnessing a 600% increase in listings in two weeks alone and with several more in the final stages of testing it looks like it won’t be long before silk roads legacy of 12,000 drug listings are divided out among its suitors. So who will be the big winners and losers in the battle for the spoils? Well it would seem Sheep Marketplace with its slick interface and easy to navigate listings has seen the biggest explosion in growth while the well established heir to the throne Black Market Reloaded has almost doubled it number of drug listings despite having to temporally close the site on several occasions due to huge influx of traffic and a security breach on another occasion.

This morning the Silk Road subreddit graced me with a list containing links to many new TOR marketplace sites and since many of these are still untested and unproven I decided now might be a good time to assess the state of the union and check  each of them out for myself.

The rest of this post goes into quite a bit of detail on each market so if you are looking for a tl;dr It’s my opinion the new Silk Road [2.0] site is going to be the one to watch and for second place it’s a total free for all.  Below are the most promising sites I’ve seen, I could have listed more but if you cant get what your looking for on one of these I don’t think it exists.

Microsoft Releases Remote Desktop App for Android and iOS

From The Next Web:

In addition to the release of Windows 8.1, Microsoft today launched Microsoft Remote Desktop for Android and iOS, bringing the Windows desktop to phones and tablets. You can download the free app now directly from Google Play and Apple’s App Store.

As its name implies, the app lets you can connect to a remote PC while on the go. This is mainly aimed at business users looking to get their work done from wherever they are, but you can use the Remote Desktop client for your own purposes . . .

NSA Spying Revelations Boost Strong Crypto

Of course, there is no such thing as unbreakable encryption, but what do you expect from the corporate media?  From Fortune:

As revelations about the depth and breadth of the NSA's digital eavesdropping program continue to come to light, Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute is rolling out a new kind of network encryption designed to be virtually un-hackable -- not only now, but in the future. The non-profit research and development contractor has installed the first quantum key distribution (QKD) protected network in the U.S. linking its headquarters in Columbus to those in its manufacturing facilities in Dublin, Ohio, some 20 miles away.

Brazil Planning Encrypted Email Service

Following on the hells of German, from BBC:

Brazil has confirmed plans to create a secure email service, following revelations of cyber-surveillance techniques used by the US and UK.

President Dilma Rousseff posted a series of tweets over the weekend, saying the move was required to "prevent possible espionage".  She added the country's Federal Data Processing Service (Serpro) would be charged with developing the system.

One expert said the tech involved was well established but had limitations.
"There's a good precedent for this with the German provider Gmx.de," said Prof Ross Anderson, head of the security research group at the University of Cambridge's computer laboratory.

"They just need to tell a company to keep the servers in Brazil, encrypt all the traffic inside or outside the country, and only give access to Brazilian police and intelligence services.

"Bang, finished, it's trivial. It's a well understood and well solved problem."
He said that the Brazilian system could be designed to interact with Gmx and equivalent encrypted services, in which case the NSA (US National Security Agency) and GCHQ (UK Government Communications Headquarters) would effectively be shut out unless the countries where the relevant servers were based decided to co-operate.