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The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

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Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#181

Post by rpgmaker »

white-flame wrote: post #2

To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same m…

> To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered.

There's nothing new about this, btw. The US government doesn't care about protecting the elusive "American ideals" or your freedoms and it has been that way for decades if not hundreds of years. There's nothing idealistic about the way a government operates, regardless of country.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#182

Post by neurotech1 »

deftnerd wrote: post #168
rdl wrote: post #29

I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…

I typically buy older Lenovo laptops that I can put LibreBoot on, an open-source BIOS replacement. Then I open it up and disconnect the speakers, microphone, and camera. When I close the laptop back up, I usually place tamper-resistant seals over several locations. For an OS, I run Whonix and have it configured so the system wipes the memory and shuts down immediately if anything foreign is attached or removed from U…

A friend does something similar with his laptops ThinkPad laptops for certain applications. He disconnects/removes the microphone, camera, bluetooth module and re-flashes the BIOS with a custom version.

On some ThinkPad models, there is a chip associated with the LAN management engine (AMT) that should be disabled as well. This isn't the Management Engine controller itself, only has a power management role for AMT & WoL that cannot normally be disabled.

My ThinkPad has a physical switch for Wifi and Bluetooth, although apparently that is only window dressing and can be bypassed with a BIOS setting (& configuration tool from Lenovo)

What do you think of having a hardware firewall processor for the Wifi and Ethernet interfaces on security focused laptops?

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#183

Post by maxander »

coliveira wrote: post #166
white-flame wrote: post #2

To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same m…

I don't understand why smart people have so much trust on encryption mechanisms. For any information to be useful, it has to be converted in some way. For example, if it is an image it has to be unconverted and presented as pixels in a screen. If you're typing an email it has to come unencrypted from a keyboard. Encryption only make it difficult to access the information once it is transmitted, but it is still pretty…

Well, sure, when a low-tech catch-all solution exists, its usually better- the best form of secure communication is to whisper the message in the recipient's ear in a dark alley. But this is not always feasible, so we have a set of more-secure-than-plaintext methods to at least give us a good shot at secure communication other times.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#184

Post by SixSigma »

tpallarino wrote: post #170
SixSigma wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved abroad in January and didn't have a SIM, and time went on and I didn't get a SIM and now, 5 months later, I never miss my phone. My contract expires in two weeks, I am not going to renew it.

Pretty inspiring to read, I want to throw my phone off a damn bridge most of the time.

I would never have thought I could either. I just leave it at home. I'm never far away from the internet for most of my life, the few hours without it are good.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#185

Post by krick »

microtonal wrote: post #149
dforrestwilson1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A co worker is heading to Las Vegas next week and we chatted about it yesterday. My Facebook ads are now advertising Las Vegas night clubs.

Or your coworker searched for or mentioned going to Las Vegas on Facebook and you are connected on Facebook as friends, by location on netblock.

That's actually an interesting thing to test. If it's the speech recognition you think is suspicious, why not try to talk it into showing you something it didn't show you previously, without mentioning the thing via facebook and stuff?

I'd even try it myself, but I don't have a facebook account, or any devices with "personal assistant" apps for that matter. For the obvious reasons.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#186

Post by krick »

white-flame wrote: post #2

To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same m…

> all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc

Excuse me, but you are made to believe that they exist in order to uphold the constitution and yada yada.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#187

Post by kobayashi »

thotpoizn wrote: post #174
kobayashi wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might you share an example of what leads you to believe that Comey is capable of acknowledging when he's gotten things wrong, changing course, and moving on? I've never had the chance to meet him but even General Hayden's remarks on Comey seem less glowing than yours. For example, while Hayden does describe Comey as a "very competent" and "very honourable man", Benjamin Wittes, in a conversation with Hayden, describe…

I wish I could provide such an example in good conscience, but a (very broad) NDA with a former employer precludes me from doing so. They might not mind, and he might not mind - but I would have gone back on my word, which I definitely would mind. I know that this reduces the strength of my argument to essentially "nuh-uh!" ... sorry. But I will tell you that, when he says (in that keynote address) that he is willing…

lol, good quote. To be clear, I don't hate the guy.

One of the first times I heard him speak was in late 2014 and he was essentially arguing for all the same things that he argues now: "I don't know how the tech community is going to do it, but they're smart, and they can build in secure access for law enforcement". He still completely ignores the national security implications of such a precedent, and he also ignores the fact that, over and over again, crypto experts are telling him that the community has enough trouble building secure systems at the moment, and adding access to third parties is likely to exponentially weaken system security.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#188

Post by frade33 »

white-flame wrote: post #2

To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same m…

'I will remain loyal to the state and constitution' ... where does it say 'remain loyal to its people' ?

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#189

Post by foodstances »

lyle_nel wrote: post #180
deftnerd wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typically buy older Lenovo laptops that I can put LibreBoot on, an open-source BIOS replacement. Then I open it up and disconnect the speakers, microphone, and camera. When I close the laptop back up, I usually place tamper-resistant seals over several locations. For an OS, I run Whonix and have it configured so the system wipes the memory and shuts down immediately if anything foreign is attached or removed from U…

How do you do the shutdown on USB change? I would like to try that out. I would imagine, depending on how it is done, that the malicious usb device might get a few keystrokes in before the system is completely down.

https://github.com/hephaest0s/usbkill

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#190

Post by greedo »

grkvlt wrote: post #179
CyberDildonics wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty easy to create a virus or something Step 1: Find someone using encryption Step 2: ???? pretty easy to create a virus or something ???? Step 3: Access encrypted information. Why dig a well when water evaporates into the air? Because pragmatically the amount of water over time matters and what could be described in an incredibly naive way as an absolute suddenly becomes a very different scenario when looking a…

> The NSA has tapped fiber backbones [...] If you think there is already no privacy, post [etc.] I'm actually OK with the idea of sending my full name, address and a picture of myself in the shower to the NSA, CIA, SIS or similar, to be included in one of their databases. Because that's what we're talking about, privacy from law enforcement and intelligence agencies searching for criminals, spies, terrorists etc. To…

This sounds very similar to the bankrupt idea of "I have nothing to hide from the government." It doesn't matter if you're currently comfortable; all it takes is a change in a law, or an new interpretation of an existing law to make you a criminal.
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