Kauilapele's Blog: “New internet law in effect in Brazil”

http://kauilapele.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/bricspost-6-24-14-new-internet-law-in-effect-in-brazil/

BRICSPost 6-24-14… “New internet law in effect in Brazil”
Posted on 2014/06/26 by kauilapele
Well, at least somebody’s out there trying to correct things.

——————————————–

New internet law in effect in Brazil

The Brazilian government’s new legislation aimed at protecting internet privacy and guaranteeing open access to the web came into effect on Monday in a bid to tighten security after the espionage scandal exposed by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The ‘Marco Civil da Internet’ bill was signed into law in April by President Dilma Rousseff, and defines the duties and rights of Internet users and providers.

“The internet you want is only possible in an environment of respect for human rights, especially privacy and freedom of expression,” Rousseff said in a statement on her website after signing the law in April.

Internet security generated a lot of heated debate in late 2013 after reports that the US government had spied on Brazil’s private communications, including e-mails and phone calls of President Rousseff.

The reports also said other government officials, and Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil and gas company, were targeted.

The new law includes a net neutrality provision that bars internet access providers from restricting content and from charging more for data-heavy services. According to official data, the IT sector in Brazil grew by 15 per cent in 2013, above the 4.8 per cent world average.

To ensure users’ privacy on the web, the new law has limited the metadata that can be collected on Brazilian users by access providers. Companies are also forbidden from selling people’s personal data and global internet firms will be subject to Brazilian law in cases involving domestic users.

In a move to ensure freedom of expression, companies cannot remove content posted by users without a court order, unless the content is related to, for example, pedophilia or pornographic images or videos.

Meanwhile, Brazil is pushing ahead with plans to boost its Internet security by developing an undersea fibre-optics communications cable that would reroute its online traffic directly to Europe, bypassing the United States.

State-owned telecom provider Telebras recently announced that it was entering into a joint venture with Spain’s IslaLink Submarine Cables to build a link between the northeastern city of Fortaleza and the Iberian Peninsula.

The undersea cable is budgeted at $185 million and construction is scheduled to begin in July.

GCHQ secret unit uses DDOS attack tactics against Anonymous – Snowden leak

GCHQ secret unit uses DDOS attack tactics against Anonymous – Snowden leak
Published time: February 05, 2014 08:48
Edited time: February 05, 2014 10:51 Get short URL
AFP Photo / Peter StefenAFP Photo / Peter Stefen

http://rt.com/news/gchq-ddos-attacks-anonymous-670/

British intelligence has its own hacker subdivision that uses questionable practices for hunting down enemies of the state, reveals a new leak from Edward Snowden. GCHQ is fighting Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists with DDoS attacks and malware.

A classified document obtained by NBC News reveals that the British secret service is brandishing a cyber-sword in the guise of the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), an intelligence unit not constrained by domestic or international laws.

The JTRIG unit is staging distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber-attacks, implanting malware to disclose identities of hackers in order to prevent their communications. JTRIG is such a secret unit that its very name has never been mentioned anywhere before.

A PowerPoint presentation prepared for a 2012 NSA conference called SIGDEV, obviously from the collection of documents from the former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, contains information about the Rolling Thunder operation against Anonymous hacktivists. JTRIG organized a DDoS attack on the internet relay chat (IRC) used by Anonymous, which reportedly resulted in 80 percent of the users quitting internet chat rooms.

The fact that the presentation was made at a conference of America’s National Security Agency is particularly interesting. It means that the NSA was informed about such governmental activities in the UK.

A DDoS attack is a criminal offence in most countries, the US and UK included. For example, in the UK a person found guilty of a cyber attack would be charged in accordance with the Computer Misuse Act, while in the US such illegal activities are prosecuted with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Besides that, according to cyber experts, a DDOS attack takes down an entire server, with all websites hosted on it, along with other severs operated by the same Internet Server Provider (ISP). This means that while attacking Anonymous chat rooms, JTRIG was actually disabling other web resources that had no connection to Anonymous whatsoever.

If the fact of a DDoS attack by a secret service gets some independent proof, it would mean that Britain will become the first state incriminated in staging a cyber-attack, internationally recognized as unlawful.

“Law enforcement and intelligence officials must be able to pursue individuals who are going far beyond speech and into the realm of breaking the law: defacing and stealing private property that happens to be online,” said the former head of the US National Counterterrorism Center and now an NBC News analyst Michael Leiter, noting that “there must, of course, be limitations”.

“No one should be targeted for speech or thoughts, but there is no reason law enforcement officials should unilaterally declare law breakers safe in the online environment,” said Leiter.

“Targeting Anonymous and hacktivists amounts to targeting citizens for expressing their political beliefs,” said NBC News’ Gabriella Coleman, an anthropology professor at McGill University.

In another NSA document in possession of NBC News, a JTRIG official maintains that the unit’s activities are definitely not limited to computer network protection. JTRIG is staging attacks itself, Such as “Active Covert Internet Operations” and “Covert Technical Operations”. The unit is vigorously using cyber tools to disrupt enemy communications, engaging in computer and phone jamming, breaching email accounts and conducting ‘false flag’ operations.

The Anonymous global hacker community emerged in 2011, and conducted the “Operation Payback” campaign, a series of attacks against government websites in Britain and the US in protest against the prosecution of Chelsea Manning, who handed over thousands of classified US military documents to WikiLeaks. They also attacked several financial organizations, such as credit card companies and the PayPal pay service for blocking donations support to WikiLeaks.

France mulls new internet spying powers

France mulls new internet spying powers
Published time: December 03, 2013 14:13
Edited time: December 04, 2013 08:19 Get short URL
RIA Novosti/Vadim ZhernovRIA Novosti/Vadim Zhernov
http://rt.com/news/france-warrantless-internet-spying-644/


The French National Assembly has adopted a bill allowing the authorities to access and gather internet user data without judicial approval. The bill has been slammed by activists as going “against the principles of democracy.”

The legislation is part of the 2014-2019 Defense Appropriation Legislatures. Article 13 of the bill expands French powers to monitor and collect internet user data in real time without judicial oversight. It requires internet services providers (ISPs) and content hosting companies such as Dailymotion and YouTube to feed lawmakers with details of user activities.

French socialist parties and the radical left voted for the proposed legislature. The environmentalist groups and the Left Front voted against the proposal. Tuesday’s draft, presented by Jean-Yves Le Drian, the Minister of Defense, is an extension of the White Paper on French Defense and National Security that the country’s Senate passed on 21 October.

The Senate could consider the second reading of the bill in mid-December, while the Assembly have its second reading in January.

Currently in France, authorities are required to apply for a warrant to access this information – a process that usually takes several months.

Under the new legislation, access to data would be approved by an appointee of the prime minister for periods of up to 30 days, and would be renewable.

The legislation has attracted the ire of civil rights groups, who have slammed it as an affront to civil liberties. French think tank Renaissance Numerique condemned Article 13 of the bill in a statement on its website.

“Relaxing the conditions of access to personal user data on the internet goes against individual freedoms,” Etienne Drouard, a lawyer specializing in communications law, told Renaissance Numerique.

As well as being a victim of the NSA’s spying programs, the French government also collaborated with the American spy agency, handing over data gathered abroad.  Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks revealed that the NSA had gathered unprecedented amounted of metadata in France, recording around 70 million phone calls between December 2012 and January 2013.

President of Renaissance Numerique Guillaume Buffet issued a statement saying that in light of Snowden’s massive spy revelations measures must be taken to safeguard privacy on the net.

“A number of actors are attempting to turn the internet into something it is not – a tool to violate personal liberties,” Buffet said. “The internet is an extraordinary social, political and economic accelerator, in spite of what some may try and make us believe.”