Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
  • CNET
  • All john gilmore posts

john gilmore

Facebook's outmoded Web crypto opens door to NSA spying

Secret documents describing the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus have highlighted vulnerabilities in outdated Web encryption used by Facebook and a handful of other U.S. companies.

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden confirm that the NSA taps into fiber optic cables "upstream" from Internet companies and vacuums up e-mail and other data that "flows past" -- a security vulnerability that "https" Web encryption is intended to guard against.

But Facebook and a few other companies still rely on an encryption technique viewed as many years out of date, which cryptographers … Read more

Amid criticism, WikiLeaks shifts focus

When WikiLeaks launched with little fanfare in early 2007, its founders touted it as a unique collaboration that would rely on the same anyone-can-edit software and sense of community that made Wikipedia such a success.

Instead of having a small group of experts examine documents, WikiLeaks promised, the forthcoming Web site would allow "the entire global community" to "interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public." News coverage at the time quoted spokesman Julian Assange emphasizing the lack of hierarchy, saying WikiLeaks is "an international collaboration, primarily of mathematicians."

That was then. In … Read more

Touching a nerve in Silicon Valley

I did attend the Ron Paul rally I mentioned on Friday. (More info here, here, and here.)

It wasn't what I expected-- in a good way.

If elected, Dr. Paul would withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, abolish the IRS and the Federal Reserve system, and return the country to the gold standard.

There were other speakers addressing these topics, and many of the people attending the event were apparently there to hear about these things-- anti-war activists, gold bugs, even a contingent of conspiracy theorists. I expected these people to dominate the rally, and I was prepared to … Read more