As Contradictions Mount, Experts Call For Declassification of Yahoo's Email-Scanning Order (onthewire.io) 50
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Look at this contradiction in the government's story about their secret scans on hundreds of millions of Yahoo emails. "Intelligence officials told Reuters that all Yahoo had to do was modify existing systems for stopping child pornography from being sent through its email or filtering spam messages." But three former Yahoo employee have now said that actually the court-ordered search "was done by a module attached to the Linux kernel -- in other words, it was deeply buried near the core of the email server operating system, far below where mail sorting was handled... They said that made it hard to detect and also made it hard to figure out what the program was doing."
Slashdot reader Trailrunner7 writes: Now, experts at the EFF and Sen. Ron Wyden say that the order served on Yahoo should be made public according to the text of a law passed last year. The USA Freedom Act is meant to declassify certain kinds of government orders, and the EFF says the Yahoo order fits neatly into the terms of the law. "If the reports about the Yahoo order are accurate -- including requiring the company to custom build new software to accomplish the scanning -- it's hard to imagine a better candidate for declassification and disclosure under Section 402," Aaron Mackey of the EFF said.
Slashdot reader Trailrunner7 writes: Now, experts at the EFF and Sen. Ron Wyden say that the order served on Yahoo should be made public according to the text of a law passed last year. The USA Freedom Act is meant to declassify certain kinds of government orders, and the EFF says the Yahoo order fits neatly into the terms of the law. "If the reports about the Yahoo order are accurate -- including requiring the company to custom build new software to accomplish the scanning -- it's hard to imagine a better candidate for declassification and disclosure under Section 402," Aaron Mackey of the EFF said.
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Yes, feminists even argue for more rules, more censorship and criminalizing more things, rather than working towards a more tolerant and free society. They want to introduce starecrime and wantcrime, where simply the act of wanting a woman and looking at her is equal to rape. Welcome to the orwell society!
Trump is a very bad choice for president, but locker room talk really is not why he should be avoided. The only positive thing from this is that many republicans condemn his actions and declare to not supp
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Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, perhaps, there are a lot of people who will behave differently inside a voting booth than outside of it?
For all the people claiming "he can't win", there is a extremely large population of Americans that long for 1950's and will vote that way, no matter what they say in the polls.
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In general I don't think the polls are to be trusted this year. Polling is objective data derived from a subjective process, and the polls are all based on the assumption that the demographic mix of voters this year will be the same was it was in 2012. But there is no way blacks are going to come out for Hildawg the way they came out for Black Jesus, and no one has spoken to the white working class (or any working class) like Trump has in 50 years. I do not know what the correct method should be, and I don'
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Just like Romney thought he had won in 2012 .... oh wait.
But yes, you are right. On the other hand the same thing is true for Clinton voters.
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Or, perhaps, there are a lot of people who will behave differently inside a voting booth than outside of it?
This is a pretty well-know scenario - when polled, people answer partly based on social expectations, but in the voting-booth it is solely their own opinion that matters.
Yes, that means there'll be reluctant Trump-supporters, who won't admit who they are voting for when polled, but will vote Trump on election day.
Have fun
locker room talk? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've heard "locker room talk", and it was nowhere near as crude as what he was saying. I've never heard any guy casually talking/bragging about forcing themselves on women.
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Then you must be a female!
Re: locker room talk? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a big difference between a guy saying "I want pussy" or saying "take Pam out for a cheap dinner and she'll give you all the head you want" and saying what Trump said. The offensive part isn't that he said the word "pussy". The offense is that he said he can just walk up to a random woman and touch her in the groin without asking and that he'll get away with it because he's important. So do you really want to make him one of the most important people in the world, when he's already proud of being able to get away with sexual assault?
Re: locker room talk? (Score:5, Informative)
I have heard and said things that lewd but I've never heard or said anything that rapey. Vulgar language is not the main problem here. Trump suggested that he got away with sexual assault, that's the main problem.
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I've heard "locker room talk" between guys too, for about 40 years so far, and everyone does it. I've heard a lot worse, and any guy that says they never talked that way is a liar.
I've never talked this way. Sex is not a subject I have any interest in talking about with other guys-- it's a "none of their god-damned business" subject with me.
If other guys had talked this way around me, I would assume they were lying. Guys brag about getting laid because they aren't actually getting laid.
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The only positive thing from this is that many republicans condemn his actions and declare to not support him anymore, so his chances of becoming president sink.
Have you people not got the message yet that the voters have completely rejected the neocon GOP establishment? No one cares what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and the rest of those quisling faggots have to say.
Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. He should be avoided for the stupidity he showed in making those comments while wearing a microphone. And, let's head off the idea that he thought the microphone was off: what's the first rule about wearing a microphone? Assume that it is on and recording.
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Oh, yes. Trump would bring change. The question is: is it the type of change you want?
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At this point, any change is better than the status quo.
"Any". I do not think that word means what you think it means. You must be mentally bounding "any" with some sort of limitations on what it could mean, because your statement is clearly false on its face. I can think of lots of things that the president of the United States could do that would leave us far worse off than the status quo.
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Trump isn't going to get rid of representative elections in the next 4-8 years, if that's what you mean.
No, I'm thinking mostly of the damage he can do as command in chief, and as our chief diplomat.
Clinton...who knows. I actually don't have 100% confidence that that wouldn't be the result of her election.
There's no way a president could do that, short of declaring martial law, and I think Trump is far more likely to do that than Clinton. In either case, I don't think it would stand if they did.
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Speaking of contradictions... (Score:4, Insightful)
The summary presents one itself.
But three former Yahoo employee have now said that actually the court-ordered search "was done by a module attached to the Linux kernel -- in other words, it was deeply buried near the core of the email server operating system, far below where mail sorting was handled... They said that made it hard to detect and also made it hard to figure out what the program was doing."
versus
If the reports about the Yahoo order are accurate -- including requiring the company to custom build new software to accomplish the scanning ...
Surely if the Yahoo employees custom-built the kernel module, they wouldn't have found it "hard to figure out what the program was doing". So were they handed a module and ordered to install it, or were they ordered to write custom code? If the first submission is accurate, the second submission is irrelevant - and vice-versa.
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I would hope that they were at least smart enough to keep any changes like that in-house. Trusting code they give you, especially a kernel module, would be epic stupidity.
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But three former Yahoo employee have now said that actually the court-ordered search "was done by a module attached to the Linux kernel -- in other words, it was deeply buried near the core of the email server operating system, far below where mail sorting was handled... They said that made it hard to detect and also made it hard to figure out what the program was doing."
Why is this a contradiction? Yahoo deals with billions of messages of a day. It's entirely possible that Yahoo built Kernel modules to handle mail sorting to squeeze out more performance from the kernel.
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I wonder if they have a hybrid/shim approach, like FUSE, or the nVidia modules, which allow the actual module to be somewhat independent of the kernel (and perhaps run in user space), but be more tightly integrated into the kernel than normal user space code?
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Perhaps the alleged kernel module was built on top of the netfilter code, doing deep packet inspection via xt_string. Theoretically such a system could be constructed to add hidden match rules from an iptables list from userspace, much like past Linux malware has run tasks not listed on the process table.
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There would have to be more involvement from Yahoo. Kernel modules have to be built against the correct kernel version. Upgrades to the kernel would have to be coordinated with the NSA/FBI/whoever to ensure that the upgrade did not remove the scanning module.
If Accurate... (Score:2)
"If the reports about the Yahoo order are accurate -- including requiring the company to custom build new software to accomplish the scanning"
I do believe there is a law out there that forbids the federal government from requiring companies to build things a specific way or design specific things specifically for the US Gov't. Slashdot has discussed this many times in the comments regarding the iPhone. The Gov't has no legal power to compel Yahoo or any other entity to do their bidding in this manner and so
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A site next door or in the same city or at the first big telco hub was not selected.
Re " or any other entity to do their bidding in this manner and some
The ability to suggest help can be worked on:
"The Telecom Exec Who Refused to Let the NSA Spy Is Out of Prison, and He's Talking" October 1, 2013
http://motherboard.vice.com/bl... [vice.com]
"His was the only company to resist