Friday 10-14-11

People are guilty until proven innocent or you pay to keep yourself from being molested, i bet if someone dug deep enough you would find one of the high up in the TSA or the administration's family that owns the company that issues the cards

Airport security made easier for breast cancer survivors

Breast cancer survivors need not be embarrassed explaining why they would prefer to avoid a pat down -- they can just hand airport security a card.

The breast prosthesis ID card developed at the Ohio State University is the size of a business card. It lists a person's name, address and whether their prosthesis is left, right or bi-lateral. It's signed by their doctor.

The breast cancer survivor who helped develop the card is an Ohio State researcher. Electra Paskett says the card isn't a way to avoid security. Instead, it gives women and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers a way to communicate a very private matter more discretely.

"You should neither be asked to nor agree to lift, remove, or raise any article of clothing to reveal your breast prosthesis, and you should not be asked to remove it," writes the TSA on its website.

The agency also offers a notification card travelers can fill out and print from its website.

It allows people to specify health conditions, disabilities or medical devices that might affect screening. Some people, for example, have metal implants that can set off metal detectors. Some heart medications are picked up by scans for chemical substances.

The breast prosthesis card is available through Hope's Boutique, which is associated with the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.

The store will mail cards to cancer survivors who contact them at 614-293-9393.

http://wtop.com/?nid=267&sid=2588481

There are 5th columnist under every bush

Va. man accused of working for Syrian intelligence

A Syrian-born, naturalized U.S. citizen has been indicted on charges of spying on American activists opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and providing audio and video recordings to that country's intelligence agents.

According to an indictment unsealed Wednesday, Mohamed Soueid of Leesburg, Va., who was arrested Tuesday, was charged with acting in the U.S. as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Soueid (pronounced SWAYD) was scheduled to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Wednesday afternoon.

According to the indictment, Soueid sent 20 recordings between April and June to Syrian intelligence agency. They depict protests in this country against the Syrian regime, which has cracked down ruthlessly on anti-government protesters there.

The indictment also states that he traveled to Syria in June to meet with Assad personally. When Soueid returned, he was searched and questioned by authorities upon his return to Washington Dulles International Airport. Soueid informed his handler that he would have to change his procedures in the future as a result of the scrutiny, but that the he would continue his work on the "project."

Soueid, 47, also tried to recruit others to monitor anti-Assad rallies and protests in the U.S., according to the indictment.

Soueid is also charged with making false statements about his activities for the Mukhabarat, Syria's intelligence agency, when interviewed in August by the FBI.

"The ability to assemble and protest is a cherished right in the United States, and it's troubling that a U.S. citizen from Leesburg is accused of working with the Syrian government to identify and intimidate those who exercise that right," said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Neil MacBride, whose office is prosecuting the case. "Spying for another country is a serious threat to our national security, especially when it threatens the ability of U.S. citizens to engage in political speech within our own borders."

Soueid, who also goes by the names "Alex Soueid" and Anas Al Said, was sued, along with Assad and others in the Syrian government, earlier this year in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia by a group of Syrian-Americans who say they were victimized by the regime.

The lawsuit alleges that through Soueid efforts, "the (Assad) regime learns the identities of Syrians based in the United States, who are trying to assist in the efforts to counteract the tactics of the (Assad) regime. He transmits such information to Damascus to initiate criminal conduct against the families of the identified Syrians."

Soueid arrest came on the same day that the Justice Department announced charges against two men who allegedly were working with the Iranian government on a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. There does not appear to be any link between the two cases.

At the White House, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said, "This desperate effort to monitor protesters in the United States shows that the Assad regime is grasping for any means to silence those speaking out against their brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters. But the regime's efforts to monitor and silence protesters here in the United States will do nothing to satisfy men and women in Syria who are yearning for democracy and freedom. As long as Assad remains in power, we will continue working in concert with our international allies around the world to increase pressure on him and his regime until he steps down."

Calls and an e-mail to the Syrian Embassy in Washington were not immediately returned Wednesday morning. Calls to a phone number in northern Virginia listed for Soueid were also not returned. It was unclear whether Soueid had retained a lawyer.

http://wtop.com/?nid=159&sid=2588334

Wait our government hears about this, they will do it bigger and better . I can see them arguing in the alphabet agencies now, about why none of them had thought of doing that and how they can do it better.

German government accused of spying on citizens with state-sponsored Trojan

A well-established group of German hackers, the Chaos Computer Club, has accused the German government of releasing a backdoor Trojan into the wild. According to Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure, the announcement was made public on the group’s website in the form of a 20-page PDF (in German).

The accompanying English-language post claims the group reverse-engineered and analyzed the program, which it calls “a ‘lawful interception’ malware program used by German police forces”.

It has been found in the wild and submitted to the CCC anonymously. The malware can not only siphon away intimate data but also offers a remote control or backdoor functionality for uploading and executing arbitrary other programs. Significant design and implementation flaws make all of the functionality available to anyone on the internet.

[...]

The trojan can, for example, receive uploads of arbitrary programs from the Internet and execute them remotely. This means, an “upgrade path” from Quellen-TKÜ components over the network right from the start, making it a bridge-head to further infiltrate the computer.

[With an additional module] it can be used to remotely control infected PCs over the internet [and] watch screenshots of the web browser on the infected PC – including private notices, emails or texts in web based cloud services.

In its own analysis, F-Secure confirmed the workings of the program:

The backdoor includes a keylogger that targets certain applications. These applications include Firefox, Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ and others.

The backdoor also contains code intended to take screenshots and record audio, including recording Skype calls.

In addition, the backdoor can be remotely updated. Servers that it connects to include 83.236.140.90 and 207.158.22.134.

F-Secure sidestepped the thorny question of where the Trojan came from, saying, “We do not know who created this backdoor and what it was used for. … We have no reason to suspect CCC’s findings, but we can’t confirm that this trojan was written by the German government. As far as we see, the only party that could confirm that would be the German government itself.”

The company further added, “We have never before analysed a sample that has been suspected to be governmental backdoor. We have also never been asked by any government to avoid detecting their backdoors.”

This isn't the first time a government has been accused of using software to clandestinely spy on its citizens. The recent takeover of digital certificates issued by the Dutch firm DigiNotar was attributed by some sources to the Iranian government, which then reportedly used the forged certificates to snoop on its citizens’ communications via Google Mail.

Similarly, the Chinese government was blamed for Operation Aurora, a 2010 attack that broke into servers at Google and as many as 30 other large corporations.

Over the years, Microsoft has been accused of working with the U.S. National Security Agency to build backdoors into Windows. Those accusations have been mostly discredited. (See this 2008 report and an earlier, overblown dust up over a cryptographic key dating back more than a decade.)

If the CCC analysis turns out to be accurate, this will be a first, and a significant black eye for a government that has largely been in the forefront of safeguarding personal privacy of its citizens.

The German government has not yet responded.

http://m.zdnet.com/blog/bott/german-government-accused-of-spying-on-citizens-with-state-sponsored-trojan/4044