Privacy and Identity Theft

As the Internet becomes more pervasive in third world countries, more governments are engaging in filtering and censorship of the Internet. In response, the number of anonymity systems is also growing. These systems include

TOR – The Onion Router. Originally developed by the US Naval Research Labs, and now supported by the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

UltraSurf, FreeGate, Garden, Gpass and FirePhoenix – tools promoted by the Internet Freedom Consortium (www.internetfreedom.org).

Psiphon – a commercial anonymity tool from a company based in Canada, originally from the University of Toronto.

I found this announcement linked from the Reporters Without Borders site. March 12 is World Day Against Cyber-Censorship.

The group recently launched their “Internet Enemies” report, detailing the censorship of the Internet in over 20 countries, and listing cyber-dissidents who have been arrested for expressing themselves in blogs.

Researchers at the Berkman Center for Internet Society at Harvard University have accused 3 makers of Internet anonymity software of actually harvesting user traffic behavior and selling the data. It brings up concerns that nation states might pay these software companies to track user behavior to identify political activists and dissidents.

Skype, eBay’s Web communications unit, admitted that TOM-Skype, its China venture with TOM Online Inc, had been monitoring and storing some of its users’ text messages without Skype’s knowledge.

Skype apologized after a report revealed that the Web service monitors text chats with politically sensitive keywords and stores them along with millions of personal user records on computers that could be easily accessed by anybody — including the Chinese government.

TOM-Skype apparently changed their privacy policies without Skype’s consent, and began storing text messages with political content in them.

Russian armored columns entered the western Georgian city of Senaki and seized a Georgian military base on Monday night after issuing an ultimatum to Georgia to disarm its troops along the boundary with the separatist territory of Abkhazia.

Coincident with the physical invasion, a cyberwar has been launched against Georgia’s military and other network sites. Georgian websites have been under massive denial of service attacks, and web and email traffic has been virtually non-existant since the weekend.

Botnets that have previously been attributed to the Russian Business Network (RBN) appear to be behind many of the attacks. While there is much discussion about whether this is in fact state operated or state sponsored cyberwar, it’s really not possible to tell. Many of the IP addresses that are flooding the Georgian networks have been traced in previous months to DDoS attacks against other non-state sites (see shadowserver.org). Perhaps the Russian government has contracted with the RBN to launch these attacks? Maybe they have hijacked some botnets for their own use? Or maybe it’s just sympathetic hackers joining in to augment the physical invasion of the country?

“The Chinese government has put in place a system to spy on and gather information about every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying,” said Sen. Sam Brownback.

Journalists, athletes’ families and others attending the Olympics next month “will be subjected to invasive intelligence-gathering” by China’s Public Security Bureau. He said the agency will be monitoring Internet communications at the hotels.

Visitors to China for the Olympics would be wise to carry their IronKeys and use the SecureSessions service for their Web surfing and for checking Web email. SecureSessions encrypts all outbound traffic, and routes it through IronKey servers around the world, protecting the security and confidentiality of communications.

A growing underground network of young people armed with computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent months, spreading news that the official state media try to suppress.

Videos of demonstrations and confrontations are caught on video cameras and cellphones, and transfered to USB flash drives.

“It passes from flash drive to flash drive,” said Ariel, 33, a computer programmer, who, like almost everyone else interviewed for this article, asked that his last name not be used for fear of political persecution. “This is going to get out of the government’s hands because the technology is moving so rapidly.”

ikileaks is getting its domain name back. After spending 90 minutes or so hearing arguments from a raft of attorneys — two representing the Swiss bank that fought to get the site’s plug pulled and about 10 who are trying to get the site back online — a federal judge here has has ruled in favor of Wikileaks.

Swiss bank Julius Baer defended on Thursday taking legal action to shut down the wikileaks.org Web site that published what the site said were details of secret accounts linked to tax schemes.

Baer’s statement came as international pressure mounted on neighboring Liechtenstein to lift the veil on bank secrecy that many countries such as Germany and the United States say is used to evade paying tax.

Baer, one of Switzerland’s largest banks specializing in managing money for the wealthy, said the wikileaks.org Web site had published purported secret account information stolen by a former employee, and that the bank’s only aim was to protect privacy.

“It is not and never has been Julius Baer’s intention to stifle anyone’s right to free speech,” Baer said in a statement. It said the documents were prohibited from publication under both U.S. and Swiss laws.

“The posting of confidential bank records by anonymous sources significantly harms the privacy rights of all individuals,” Baer said.

The ACLU filed a motion earlier this week to lift the shutdown.

Myanmar’s junta has stepped up surveillance of the Internet, arresting one blogger who wrote about the stifling of free expression in the military-ruled nation, media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said.

Myanmar authorities have stepped up their surveillance of the Internet since the beginning of the month, pressuring Internet cafe owners to register personal details of all users and to program screen captures every five minutes on each computer, the release said.

This data apparently is sent to the Ministry of Communications, it said.