The Caucus : The Wiretapping Fight in Congress
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Republicans warn that the law's expiration over the weekend diminishes the ability to conduct terrorist surveillance, but the Democrats call those statements misleading.
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The U.S. House Energy and Commerce  Committee will ask wireless company executives and the head of  the Federal Communications Commission to testify Friday on the  use of deceptive measures to obtain personal information, known  as pretexting, the panel said on Monday.
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Congressional subpeonas portend a showdown over executive privilege.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. lawmakers promised to push ahead legislation aimed at cracking down on pretexting despite some objections from telecom carriers and the U.S. Department of Justice. Nearly all the members of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee pledged to push the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act, which would give the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) authority to file lawsuits against pretexters and the people who hire them. The bill would also require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to draw up new rules for telecom carriers to protect private phone records, and it would prevent carriers from sharing customer information with third parties without permission. Despite some concerns about the bill, lawmakers said consumers need protection against pretexting, the practice of posing as a telecom customer to obtain phone records and other private information. "Someone with bad intentions and a few bucks can get a hold of almost anybody's cell phone records," said Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican. President George Bush signed a bill creating criminal penalties for pretexting in January. But proponents of the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act say the extra protections in the bill are also needed. The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the same bill during the last session of Congress, but the legislation apparently was held up on the House floor because of concerns from federal law enforcement agencies that the bill could slow efforts to get information on terrorism suspects. Lawmakers from both parties complained that they received little explanation about why the bill died last year. Thomas Navin, chief of the FCC's Wireline Bureau, said the Department of Justice was concerned that the FCC would set up rules that consumers are notified too soon after their phone records were accessed by someone else. The DOJ wanted a delay of seven days before consumers were notified, he said. But Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said consumers should be notified immediately. "I don't think the Department of Justice should be listened to on that issue," he said. "I think [victims] should be listened to on that issue." Markey pointed to news reports this week saying the FBI may have violated the law and its internal rules while collecting telephone, data, and other personal records through the Patriot Act. "There is still a lack of respect for the law of our country," he said. Beyond the law enforcement concerns, representatives of trade groups the United States Telecom Association and CTIA-The Wireless Association said the bill could prevent them from sharing customer information with third parties that market complementary products. CTIA members don't share customers' personal information with unrelated groups, but the carriers do use third-party vendors to market wireless-related products, said Steve Largent, CTIA's president and CEO. But Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, questioned industry concerns about language in the bill that could require carriers to get opt-in permission from customers to share their personal data. "It seems if we want to protect privacy, we should change this from opt out to opt in," he said.
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A media sting operation gone awry revives a debate on media regulation
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NEW YORK, July 3 -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief strategist is being accused of illegal eavesdropping in a lawsuit that alleges he and his polling firm monitored the personal e-mails of a former associate who started a rival company.
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The Justice Department begins a nationwide crackdown against spammers. Also: The EU extends its review of Microsoft's deal with Time Warner & hellip;. Sprint finds a third cable partner to offer VoIP & hellip;. and more.
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(InfoWorld) - There's already an RFID security brouhaha brewing in Washington, and if some people have their way, it won't be the last legal fight waged in the nation's capital over use of the wireless technology. The IT security community is buzzing with interest over a legal spat that broke out on Feb. 27, one day ahead of the start of the Black Hat DC 2007 conference. Officials with Seattle-based IOActive were forced to scale back a planned presentation at the government-themed security trade show in which an expert from the company was to have detailed a technique for hacking data transmitted by HID's popular proximity identification cards used by millions of people nationwide.Â  Chris Paget, IOActive's director of research and development, had planned to show off an RFID "cloning" device that could be used to steal access codes from HID-brand proximity cards, store them, then use the stolen codes to fool an HID card reader. According to show organizers, HID quashed the session by threatening to file a patent infringement suit against IOActive over the use of HID's source code in the demonstration. Despite the Black Hat lecture's amendment, U.S. lawmakers say the debate over use of similar RFID security technologies in the government space is far from over. IOActive claims that its initial experiment in hacking the HID system was partially spawned by the firm's physical proximity to government IT assets protected by the devices. The security service provider maintains that its offices are located in a building that uses HID's cards for physical access that also houses "components of the nation's critical infrastructure." Such concerns have pushed some lawmakers to introduce new bills seeking to limit the use of RFID-based systems in the government sector. Among those backing legislation is California State Senator Joe Simitian, a Democrat who is currently pushing five related bills in his home state. One of the laws introduced by Simitian (California SB-31), whose 11th Senate District encompasses much of California's Silicon Valley, directly addresses "skimming," the same hacker technique to have been displayed by IOActive through which wireless transmissions from RFID technologies may be captured. A second bill (California SB-30) calls for a moratorium on the adoption of RFID technology in government-issued IDs, while the others propose similar controls for a range of use cases for the technology, including barring applications for tracking students in the state's school systems. Simitian submitted the bills after California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a broader piece of legislation proposing limits on the use of RFID in the government in Oct. 2006. The governor cited his belief that the bill could "unduly burden the numerous beneficial new applications of contact-less technology" as his main reason for shooting it down. To help illustrate the seriousness of the situation to his colleagues in California's senate and state assembly, Simitian conducted a test in 2006 through which a security expert was hired to visit the state's capitol building in Sacramento and hack an RFID card system used to gain entry to the building's garage. The cards used in that test were made by Motorola. "We're at the state capitol building in the post-9/11 environment, and we've spent millions to improve security, but in the space of several minutes, someone with a laptop can compromise the badge system," Simitian said in an interview with InfoWorld. "The main problem is that the issues aren't widely understood. That's why we've come back with five bills -- because I want to ensure I get to tell this story in every venue that I can; if we can sit down and explain the issue to people, they get it, but it's a hard, complex technical issue." Simitian said that HID was involved in negotiating the terms of the bill vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger but said that the firm still refused to give the legislation its blessing. The lawmaker labeled HID's move to stop the IOActive Black Hat briefing as proof of its "embarrassment" over the ease with which its products can be defeated. As the son of a computer programmer and the recipient of several awards from the IT security industry, including an honor bestowed at the RSA 2007 conference earlier this month, Simitian said he hardly considers himself as conservative when it comes to promoting new technologies. He has a hard time understanding why Schwarzenegger and others have blocked laws that require "practical" security measures for the use of RFID. "I'm a moderate on this issue, which is what frustrates me with the pushback, but those of us who are advocates for technology also know best that it must be used well and wisely," he said. "We have only ourselves to blame if not, and the notion of embedding government documents with RFID with no protections, or to use it in government ID cards, just strikes me as irresponsible." One of the solutions proposed by HID, whose officials maintain that the company's proximity cards have not been targeted by skimming attacks on a widespread basis, is for concerned customers to upgrade to its more expensive smart card IDs, which use a more advanced form of "active" RFID. "That's what was so frustrating about governor's message: He said that placing limits on RFID is premature, but the technology has already been with us for a decade," Simitian said. "Should we wait until it's deployed to millions of Californians and then worry? The time to identify problems is now before things get out of control. I think the public expects that." And data skimming isn't the only security concern to have been posed regarding RFID systems, which are being used for a wide range of industrial applications beyond providing access to facilities. In March 2006, Dutch researchers published a research report that contends that RFID chips can be infected with malware and used to spread attacks to the back-end IT systems to which they're connected. People like Simitian who oppose further adoption of RFID technologies in the government sector often refer to a now-defunct pilot program operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as further evidence that the tools aren't ready for widespread use. As part of the U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology (U.S. VISIT) program, DHS used documents bearing RFID technology between 2005 and 2006 to help track the movement of individuals at several major land border crossings. In a report issued on Jan. 31, 2007, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) indicated that the RFID portion of the program had been halted based on concerns about the technologies' usefulness and security ramifications. Like the HID proximity cards hacked by IOActive and those made by other popular vendors, the RFID technology used in the DHS pilot featured long-range radio frequency technology, which is considered by experts to be the most dangerous based on the ability for the devices' signals to be intercepted from as far as 30 feet away. Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, a public policy think-tank based in Washington, helped author a DHS report that reviewed security and privacy issues related to the use of RFID within the U.S. VISIT program. The HID-IOActive imbroglio serves as yet another example of how commonly-used RFID technologies aren't ready for application in the government and elsewhere, he said. "I don't think the government should try to lead the way on RFID; we should let the technologies mature further and iron-out the security risks first," Harper said. "Up to this point, the government has been a leading adopter, and all that has done is put U.S. citizens into the role of guinea pig." On the flip side, RFID proponents maintain that lawmakers must be prudent in drafting any limitations they place on the use of the technology so as to not limit potentially beneficial innovation. Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance, a 160-member nonprofit group that promotes the use of RFID in cutting-edge identification systems, said that legislators are correct to demand that security and privacy concerns surrounding use of the tools be addressed, but he observed that some of the bills that have been proposed are far too vague and all-inclusive. "The intention is right in terms of protecting citizens' privacy, but legislation that seeks to outlaw technologies without further defining their use is the wrong approach," Vanderhoof said. "One of the things that people in smart card industry have told me in reading this legislative language is that it is really broad and subject to interpretation and that the technical nuances between various forms of RF-enabled technologies are not taken into consideration." Despite the bad press being given to RFID by incidents such as the HID-IOActive squabble, the expert believes that common sense will win out and U.S. lawmakers will create regulations that allow for use of more secure applications of the technology in the government setting. "Our interest is to try to get people to become more specific about their language. When they say it's insecure to use long read-range RFID for an access card, they're probably right," said Vanderhoof. "We would like to see legislators putting meat into laws that will make it costly for people to try to exploit weaker forms of these technologies to commit fraud; we think it's smarter to use legislation as a deterrent rather than to restrict the use of technologies, many of which have proven very cost effective and productive."
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A bill authorizing the president's warrantless wiretapping program stalls in committee. Supporters charge election-year obstructionism, but opponents want tougher oversight on the executive branch.
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Democratic lawmakers vow to come roaring out of the blocks when they assume control of the next Congress, passing several top-priority bills in the first 100 hours. Absent from that list, however, are the knottiest problems that bedeviled the outgoing Congress, including immigration, domestic surveillance and the war in Iraq....
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When it comes to covering politics, journalists often fall into the 'he said, she said' trap without taking the time to delve into the details. The nonpartisan FactCheck.org jumps into the informational breach. By Louise Witt.
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Political dirty tricksters in the United States are finding the Internet is fertile ground for launching attacks against opponents.  A growing number of political operatives are manipulating e-mail, videos and search engines to deceive voters, Politico.com reported.
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Traceroute Security researcher Jose Nazario has uncovered circumstantial evidence of the use of botnets in politically-motivated denial of service attacks.â¦
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Comment is free: Naomi Klein: So keen are America's leaders to hear dissent they're videotaping the dissenters. Welcome to a world of total surveillance.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. House of Representatives Committee has approved a controversial bill that would broaden the U.S. government's ability to conduct electronic surveillance on U.S. residents by making it easier for federal law enforcement officials to get court-issued warrants. The Electronic Modernization Surveillance Act,Â opposed by several privacy groups, would also allow federal law enforcement officials to spy on U.S. residents for up to 90 days without a court order in the period after a terrorist attack. The House Judiciary Committee approved the legislation Wednesday by a 20-16 vote, with all committee Democrats present voting against the bill. The bill, sponsored by Representative Heather Wilson, a New Mexico Republican, would reduce the amount of information required from federal agents applying for a wiretapping warrant from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The bill would clarify that the U.S. government can seek wiretaps on any type of electronic communication, not just telephone- or radio-spectrum-based communication. Republicans praised the bill, saying it will help the U.S. government fight terrorism. The bill will provide the U.S. intelligence agencies "greater agility and flexibility as they try to thwart our determined and dangerous terrorist enemies," Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, said in a statement. The full House is expected to vote on the bill by the end of the month. The committee's action comes after U.S. President George Bush called on Congress to approve a controversial electronic surveillance program conducted by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA has conducted the program, reportedly targeting U.S. residents speaking with foreigners who have suspected terrorism connections, without getting court warrants. Bush has asked Congress to authorize the NSA program to ward off multiple court challenges against it. In August, a U.S. judge in Michigan ruled the NSA program is illegal and must be halted. The Bush administration has appealed that ruling. The Senate Judiciary CommitteeÂ approved three surveillance billsÂ last week. The Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy and civil liberties advocacy group, called the Wilson bill and the Senate's National Security Surveillance Act two of the worst bills now in Congress. "Couched in the seemingly laudable terms of 'modernization,' the bills would radically undermine the privacy of innocent Americans -- not just by legitimizing the administration's warrantless surveillance programs -- but by granting this and future administrations even broader authority to spy on Americans in the United States without judicial review," the CDT said on its Web site.
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the computer programs that surreptitiously track people&#39;s online movements -- are steamrolling their way through Congress and a combined proposal could
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President Bush is going all the way to get amnesty for the phone companies who assisted the government in what appear to be illegal wiretaps of American citizens.  The Senate, even though it's controlled by Democrats, went with this nonsense (roll call). The House acted as a firewall, and voted for FISA renewal without amnesty. Good for them. Among the Presidential candidates, Obama voted against amnesty (thanks), McCain voted for, as did all other Republicans, and Clinton didn't vote, even though she was in DC and could have.