Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Monday, December 26, 2005
NSA's domestic data-mining ops gathered vast troves of info
Xeni Jardin: A New York Times story today reports that as part of the Bush-approved domestic spying program, the NSA traced and analyzed far more data from phone and internet communications than previously thought. Snip:As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.LinkThe government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.
(...) Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.
The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.
One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.
Previously on Boing Boing:
NSA spies on US: calls, emails intercepted without warrants
Experiment to see if your mail is being tapped by the gov't
[Boing Boing]
The great Linksys WRT54G debate
Xeni Jardin: Glenn Fleishman has been following the geektroversy brewing around the Linksys WRT54G model number issue, and says:Link.Linksys was using embedded Linux for the WRT54G gateway, a Wi-Fi access point, router, and Ethernet switch, that sells for as low as $50 these days. A couple of years ago, Linksys and Broadcom (the company that makes the device's Wi-Fi chips and created the reference platform that Linksys uses) were pushed to meet GNU and other license terms and release the modified OS and accompanying packages. They're routinely released each update since.
Now folks who hack the WRT54G with their own firmware noticed that newer models stopped allowing these hacks and were, in fact, now running the proprietary VxWorks OS. Linksys started talking publicly about this switchover--which happened in fall--just a few weeks ago, and noted that they needed to get the cost of goods down. They were able to halve the volatile and non-volatile memory with the VxWorks OS. (I and others think it is much less reliable in its early firmware releases, however; that's another story that's ongoing.)
The WRT54G v1 through v4 has the Linux kernel. The v5 (and ostensibly beyond) is VxWorks. Linksys opted to introduce a new model they're calling WRT54GL which is basically the same as the v4 release, but it'll have a street price of more like $70 than $50.
Interestingly, Linksys slipped sales numbers. The WRT54G sells "several hundred thousand" units per month, which could mean four or five million per year. They expect to sell about 120,000 WRT54GLs a year, which is quite sizeable, too, and shows the scope of the firmware hacking market for those commodity devices.
[Boing Boing]
Droidel, Droidel, Droidel
Xeni Jardin:In this Star Wars project for children and full-grown nerds, "the dreidel and the droid R2-D2 combine to make Droidel." Print out the PDF, follow the instructions, pour yourself some soynog, then play. Gaming tip: Let the Wookiee win.
Link. (Thanks, Bonnie!)
[Boing Boing]
Friday, December 23, 2005
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