[Bradford] Fwd: GNU hackers discover HACIENDA government surveillance and give us a way to fight back

[d.carpenter]

This may or may not be news to some of you...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Free Software Foundation <info at fsf.org>
Date: 21 August 2014 00:26
Subject: GNU hackers discover HACIENDA government surveillance and give us
a way to fight back



           Dear David,



GNU community members and collaborators have discovered threatening details
about a five-country government surveillance program codenamed HACIENDA.
The good news? Those same hackers have already worked out a free software
countermeasure to thwart the program.



According to Heise newspaper
<http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/NSA-GCHQ-The-HACIENDA-Program-for-Internet-Colonization-2292681.html>,
the intelligence agencies of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom,
Australia, and New Zealand, have used HACIENDA to map every server in
twenty-seven countries, employing a technique known as port scanning. The
agencies have shared this map and use it to plan intrusions into the
servers. Disturbingly, the HACIENDA system actually hijacks civilian
computers to do some of its dirty work, allowing it to leach computing
resources and cover its tracks.



But this was not enough to stop the team of GNU hackers and their
collaborators. After making key discoveries about the details of HACIENDA,
Julian Kirsch, Christian Grothoff, Jacob Appelbaum, and Holger Kenn
designed the TCP Stealth <https://gnunet.org/kirsch2014knock> system to
protect unadvertised servers from port scanning. They revealed their work
at the recent annual GNU Hackers' Meeting <https://www.gnu.org/ghm/> in
Germany.


  You can view a video announcing the discovery on fsf.org. Please be sure
to share this with everyone you know who cares about bulk surveillance.
<https://fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-hackers-discover-hacienda-government-surveillance-and-give-us-a-way-to-fight-back?pk_campaign=hacienda&pk_kwd=email>



We must fight the political battle for an end to mass surveillance and reduce
the amount of data collected about people in the first place
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy>. On an
individual level we have to do everything we can to thwart the surveillance
programs that are already in place.



*No matter your skill level, you can get involved at the FSF's surveillance
page
<https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/surveillance/?pk_campaign=hacienda&pk_kwd=email>.*



Ethical developers inside and outside GNU have been working for years on
free software that does not keep secrets from users, and programs that
anyone can review to remove potential vulnerabilities. These capabilities
give free software users a fighting chance against surveillance. Now, our
community is turning its attention to uncovering and undermining insidious
programs like HACIENDA. Free software and its ideals are crucial to putting
an end to government bulk surveillance.



*Share this news with your friends, to help make people aware of the
importance of free software in fighting bulk surveillance.*



*Jacob Appelbaum of the TCP Stealth team gave a remote keynote address at
the FSF's LibrePlanet conference this year. Watch the recording of "Free
Software for freedom: Surveillance and you."
<http://media.libreplanet.org/u/zakkai/m/free-software-for-freedom-surveillance-and-you/>*





Libby Reinish and Zak Rogoff
Campaigns Managers



*You can view this post online
<https://fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-hackers-discover-hacienda-government-surveillance-and-give-us-a-way-to-fight-back?pk_campaign=hacienda&pk_kwd=email>.*

Follow us on GNU social <https://status.fsf.org/fsf> | Subscribe to our
blogs via RSS <https://fsf.org/blogs/RSS> | Join us as an associate member
<https://www.fsf.org/jf>

Sent from the Free Software Foundation,
51 Franklin Street
Floor 5
Boston, Massachusetts 02110-1301
United States
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/bradford/attachments/20140821/c7a2feb2/attachment.html>