The U.N.'s Internet Sneak Attack

INFORMATION AGE

November 25, 2012, 4:24 p.m. ET

Letting the Internet be rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla.


By L. GORDON CROVITZ

Who runs the Internet? For now, the answer remains no one, or at least no government, which explains the Web's success as a new technology. But as of next week, unless the U.S. gets serious, the answer could be the United Nations.

Many of the U.N.'s 193 member states oppose the open, uncontrolled nature of the Internet. Its interconnected global networks ignore national boundaries, making it hard for governments to censor or tax. And so, to send the freewheeling digital world back to the state control of the analog era, China, Russia, Iran and Arab countries are trying to hijack a U.N. agency that has nothing to do with the Internet.

For more than a year, these countries have lobbied an agency called the International Telecommunications Union to take over the rules and workings of the Internet. Created in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union, the ITU last drafted a treaty on communications in 1988, before the commercial Internet, when telecommunications meant voice telephone calls via national telephone monopolies.

Corbis

Next week the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai, and past months have brought many leaks of proposals for a new treaty. U.S. congressional resolutions and much of the commentary, including in this column, have focused on proposals by authoritarian governments to censor the Internet. Just as objectionable are proposals that ignore how the Internet works, threatening its smooth and open operations.

Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day.

Many of the engineers and developers who built and operate these networks belong to virtual committees and task forces coordinated by an international nonprofit called the Internet Society. The society is home to the Internet Engineering Task Force (the main provider of global technical standards) and other volunteer groups such as the Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Research Task Force. Another key nongovernmental group is Icann, which assigns Internet addresses and domain names.

The self-regulating Internet means no one has to ask for permission to launch a website, and no government can tell network operators how to do their jobs. The arrangement has made the Internet a rare place of permissionless innovation. As former Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard recently pointed out, 90% of cooperative "peering" agreements among networks are "made on a handshake," adjusting informally as needs change.

Proposals for the new ITU treaty run to more than 200 pages. One idea is to apply the ITU's long-distance telephone rules to the Internet by creating a "sender-party-pays" rule. International phone calls include a fee from the originating country to the local phone company at the receiving end. Under a sender-pays approach, U.S.-based websites would pay a local network for each visitor from overseas, effectively taxing firms such as Google GOOG +1.93% and Facebook FB +0.80% . The idea is technically impractical because unlike phone networks, the Internet doesn't recognize national borders. But authoritarians are pushing the tax, hoping their citizens will be cut off from U.S. websites that decide foreign visitors are too expensive to serve.

Regimes such as Russia and Iran also want an ITU rule letting them monitor Internet traffic routed through or to their countries, allowing them to eavesdrop or block access.

"The Internet is highly complex and highly technical," Sally Wentworth of the Internet Society told me recently, "yet governments are the only ones making decisions at the ITU, putting the Internet at their mercy." She says the developers and engineers who actually run the Internet find it "mind boggling" that governments would claim control. As the Internet Society warns, "Technology moves faster than any treaty process ever can."

Google has started an online petition for a "free and open Internet" saying: "Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future." The State Department's top delegate to the Dubai conference, Terry Kramer, has pledged that the U.S. won't let the ITU expand its authority to the Internet. But he hedged his warning in a recent presentation in Washington: "We don't want to come across like we're preaching to others."

To the contrary, the top job for the U.S. delegation at the ITU conference is to preach the virtues of the open Internet as forcefully as possible. Billions of online users are counting on America to make sure that their Internet is never handed over to authoritarian governments or to the U.N.

A version of this article appeared November 25, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The U.N.'s Internet Sneak Attack.

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Mainstream Media Now Openly Admits The FBI And CIA Are Reading All Your Emails

Add caption

Sunday, November 18, 2012 by: J. D. Heyes

For years, those of us who have tried to warn the American public that Big Brother monitors all Internet users were demonized, vilified and ridiculed.

Now, the mainstream media has proven us correct.

“The U.S. government — and likely your own government, for that matter — is either watching your online activity every minute of the day through automated methods and non-human eavesdropping techniques, or has the ability to dip in as and when it deems necessary — sometimes with a warrant, sometimes without,” ZDNet reported earlier this month. “That tin-foil hat really isn’t going to help. Take it off, you look silly.”
The Petraeus case

Where’s the proof that the government has this capability?

You might recall a fellow by the name of (retired) Gen. David Petraeus. He’s been in the news lately.

This four-star general-turned-CIA chief just resigned his post after news broke that he had engaged in an extra-marital affair with is biographer, herself a West Point graduate and former Army officer.

What led to this shocking discovery was Petraeus’ use, of all things, Google’s online email service, Gmail.

According to federal law, mind you, authorities are not legally permitted to electronically snoop around in your email box.

“The government can’t just wander through your emails just because they’d like to know what you’re thinking or doing,” Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Homeland Security Department who’s now in private law practice, told The Associated Press. “But if the government is investigating a crime, it has a lot of authority to review people’s emails.”

Or, in the case of the CIA, if the agency wants to track a suspect ostensibly for “national security” purposes. Ditto the NSA.

The wrangling of Petraeus’ email account has certainly landed him in a world of trouble, but his story has also, once again, ignited a new the debate over when, how and why governments and law enforcement agencies alike are able to access the email accounts of ordinary citizens – even if they head up the most powerful spy agency in the world.

Granted, experts say “the little people” needn’t worry much about having their online presence tracked. Agencies like the CIA generally tend to have bigger fish to fry, so to speak. But nevertheless, the technology to pilfer email accounts at will obviously exists.

“Forget ECHELON, or signals intelligence, or the interception of communications by black boxes installed covertly in data centers,” writes Zack Whittaker for ZDNet. “Intelligence agencies and law enforcement bodies can access – thanks to the shift towards Web-based email services in the cloud – but it’s not as exciting or as Jack Bauer-esque as one may think or hope for.”

(Editor’s Note: ECHELON, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is the name of “a global Communications Interception (COMINT) system created by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to routinely and indiscriminately monitor and record all forms of electronic communications worldwide (both military and civilian) and overseen by the National Security Agency,” according to one published description of the program.)
How the top CIA official got busted

When he set up his private Gmail account, Petraeus used a pseudonym and composed email messages but never sent them. They were instead saved as drafts. His lover, Paula Broadwell, would then log in under the same account, read the drafts then reply to them in the same manner – as a draft, without actually sending the message.

The exchanges would not be sent across the networks through Google’s data centers, which would make it nearly impossible for the NSA or any other ELINT (electronic intelligence) agency (like Britain’s GCHQ or the Israeli Mossad) to “read” the messages while they are in transit between accounts.

Other sinister operators – terrorists, pedophiles and the like – have been known to use the same trick to avoid detection, ZDNet reported.

“But surely IP addresses are logged and noted? When emails are sent and received, yes. But the emails were saved in draft and therefore were not sent. However, Google may still have a record of the IP addresses of those who logged into the account,” the report said.

In the end, the FBI used a little-know law called the Stored Communications Act, which is part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as the basis for getting a warrant to view Petraeus’ private Gmail account. And that’s how agents found the stored messages that were never actually sent.

“Once it knew Ms. Broadwell was the sender of the threatening messages, the FBI got a warrant that gave it covert access to the anonymous email account,” the BBC’s Mark Ward reported.

Sources:
http://www.zdnet.com
http://finance.yahoo.com
http://actionamerica.org/echelon/echelonwhat.html

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One month until they regulate the Internet

By John Brandon

Published November 01, 2012

FoxNews.com

Oct. 17, 2011: Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Hamadoun Toure of Mali gestures during a news conference in Geneva. (REUTERS/Denis Balibouse)

Better enjoy Facebook while you can.

A U.N.-sponsored conference next month in Dubai will propose new regulations and restrictions for the Internet, which critics say will censor free speech, levy tariffs on e-commerce, and even force companies to clean up their “e-waste” and make gadgets that are better for the environment.

Concerns about the closed-door event have sparked a Wikileaks-style info-leaking site, and led the State Department on Wednesday to file a series of new proposals or tranches seeking to ensure “competition and commercial agreements -- and not regulation” as the meeting's main message.

Terry Kramer, the chief U.S. envoy to the conference, says the United States is against sanctions and believes management of the Internet by one central organization goes against free speech.

“[Doing nothing] would not be a terrible outcome at all,” Kramer said recently. “We need to avoid suffocating the Internet space through well-meaning but overly prescriptive proposals that would seek to control content.”

The conference will be run by the International Telecommunications Union (ITC), a U.N. agency that has typically provided a welcome service by making sure that the Internet works across countries. Many of its guidelines were first instituted in 1988. Most haven’t changed since then.



'While the worst-case scenario isn’t likely, there’s a decent chance that some of these regulations will go into effect.'

- Josh King, an attorney with legal advice site Avvo.com



The World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) is the first such meeting since those guidelines were created, and businesses are taking it seriously: U.S. delegates will include representatives from AT&T, Cisco, Facebook, GoDaddy, and dozens more.

To dispel concerns, the ITU played damage control in early October.

“There are no proposals submitted to create new international regulatory agencies, or mechanisms, and hence no proposals to put ITU in control of the Internet!” said Malcolm Johnson, ITU's telecommunication standardization bureau director, in a written statement.

Despite those reassurances, key experts remain concerned.

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is one of just five groups that assign numbers to Internet names, a key part of making the web tick. Cathy Handley, executive director of government affairs at ARIN and a conference attendee, said the meeting is meant to exert some sort of controls.

“Some of the proposals that could clearly have consequences address the high cost of mobile roaming, taxation of calls, issues associated with the routing of calls, cybersecurity and combating spam,” Handley told FoxNews.com. “A major concern is with any attempt to make the International Telecommunication Regulations prescriptive and force regulation.”

Indeed, the same statement in which Johnson urges calm mentions a possible vote for more regulation.

Josh King, an attorney with legal advice site Avvo.com, said the ITU will make stronger proposals at a 2015 conference in Dubai. For now, the goal is to restructure so the telecommunication companies in each country have more control over what is on the Internet.

“The open, multi-stakeholder approach that has led to the massive growth of the Internet over the last 15 years [would] be replaced with a system of top-down, international regulation,” he told FoxNews.com.

Michael Embrich, a spokesperson for Internet advocacy group TestPAC, defines that goal as a way to level the playing field on the Internet and give developing countries a fair shot. Smaller countries want more regulations to help them compete with the U.S, he said.

At the conference, the ITC will even propose regulations that go offline, further than the Web.

Emrich said one proposal, to be funded by $53B in U.S. dollars, is to connect North and South America using a massive telecom pipeline. Another rule would cover cell phone batteries.

“They would like to implement a law that would require all makers of rechargeable batteries to make them 30 percent smaller and more efficient. They claim to have a study that says they can do this though proper regulations and requirements,” Embrich said.

Handley told FoxNews.com that it is likely some of the proposals at WCIT will be enacted over the next five years. What were formerly considered rough guidelines will become more precise governances, she said.

“The impact will be determined by the proposals that are adopted,” Handley said. “[Previous regulations have been viewed as] high-level principles, which means that countries have been able to implement them as they have seen needed.”

“While the worst-case scenario isn’t likely, there’s a decent chance that some of these regulations will go into effect,” King agreed.

Even if the ITU adds new rules, it won’t be able to enforce Internet governance on a global stage, Emrich said. Iran now has a closed Internet, and the only recourse the ITU has is to impose sanctions, for example.

“India has also recently imposed harsh censorship on their Internet users that go against the recommendation of practices of the WCIT,” he told FoxNews.com. “The WCIT has shown no evidence that they will try to stop it.”

Vivek Mohan, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former Microsoft attorney, says the talks should be taken seriously, even if there might not be any short-term impact.

“This is a fight for life for the ITU. If they don't assert authority and jurisdiction, they will become irrelevant,” he told FoxNews.com.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/11/01/one-month-until-regulate-internet/#ixzz2Cc5Bn900

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New Google Transparency Report Says Government Surveillance and Censorship is on the Rise

By JG Vibes
theintelhub.com
November 14, 2012

It should come as no surprise to anyone who uses the internet that government surveillance and censorship has been increasing in intensity by the day.

This week everyone’s suspicions have been confirmed by Google’s new transparency report.

Twice a year Google releases a report which shows how many take down requests they receive from government agencies or organizations worldwide. The report also gives details on government surveillance through their networks.

The numbers that they give in the new transparency reports are alarming, but even Google admits that they only represent a small portion of what is taking place, because they only know about the government spying that is going on through their networks, with their knowledge.

According to the report:


“This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise. As you can see from the graph below, government demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report. In the first half of 2012, there were 20,938 inquiries from government entities around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 accounts.”



The report continues:


“The number of government requests to remove content from our services was largely flat from 2009 to 2011. But it’s spiked in this reporting period. In the first half of 2012, there were 1,791 requests from government officials around the world to remove 17,746 pieces of content.”



The report concludes that:


“You can see the country-by-country trends for requests to hand over user data and to remove content from our services in the Transparency Report itself, but in aggregate around the world, the numbers continue to go up…….

The information we disclose is only an isolated sliver showing how governments interact with the Internet, since for the most part we don’t know what requests are made of other technology or telecommunications companies. But we’re heartened that in the past year, more companies likeDropbox, LinkedIn, Sonic.net and Twitter have begun to share their statistics too. Our hope is that over time, more data will bolster public debate about how we can best keep the Internet free and open.”


For people who are concerned about privacy on the internet it may be a good idea to start learning encryption. There are many encryption programs that you can download for free so you can have private conversations and a private space on your computer.

Programs like Cryptocat can allow you to instant message privately, while a program like truecrypt can encrypt files on your computer. If you want to encrypt your emails, do a Google search for “gpg4win” and you will find a free program that will allow you to do that.

There is also now a smartphone app called Silent Circle, which allows people to encrypt all of their phone calls and text messages for a very reasonable monthly fee (roughly 20$).

So it is always important to remember that if you are online you are probably being watched, so be careful! With increased surveillance and crack downs on file sharers it is likely that projects like the TOR Browser will become more popular and more user friendly.

TOR is an anonymous browser that allows users to browse a deeper interface of the internet completely anonymously and as of right now that is one of the only options for totally anonymous surfing, but it does not allow you to surf the whole internet.

For a certain level of anonymity while surfing the general web, Proxy Servers and anonymous search engines like startpage.com are good to use.

*****

Read more articles by this author HERE.

J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer and reporter for The Intel Hub and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio.

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Internet Addiction Is The New Mental Health Disorder

Alice G. Walton, Contributor

FORBESWOMAN

10/02/2012 @ 1:33PM

Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife

There’s been a lot of controversy about some of the maladies included in the freshly revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM-V). Internet addiction, or formally, Internet Use Disorder (IUD), may soon be included as an actual mental health disorder, although the authors do say it still needs a lot of additional study. So what are the symptoms of IUD, and maybe more importantly for those of us flirting with it, what’s the treatment?

Internet Use Disorder has the many of the basic hallmarks of any other addiction. According to the American Psychiatric Association, the crafters of the DSM-V, a person with IUD will experience “preoccupation” with the internet or internet gaming, withdrawal symptoms when the substance (internet) is no longer available, tolerance (the need to spend more and more time on the internet to achieve the same “high”), loss of other interests, unsuccessful attempts to quit, and use of the internet to improve or escape dysphoric mood.

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There’s been more and more scientific research devoted to understanding what IUD is, how it works neurologically, and how we can treat it. Research has shown that people with internet addiction have demonstrable changes in their brains – both in the connections between cells and in the brain areas that control attention, executive control, and emotion processing. Most intriguing is the fact that many of these changes are what you see happening in the brains of people addicted to cocaine, heroine, special K, and other substances.

And other research has found that people who are hooked on the internet have changes in how the brain’s dopamine system operates – dopamine is generally credited for allowing us to experience pleasure and reward. Some studies have found that people with internet addiction have fewer dopamine receptors in certain areas of the brain, and others have suggested additional ways in which dopamine function might be impaired. And very recent studies have suggested how certain genetic variations may be involved in internet addiction.

If we accept that internet addiction or IUD is a legitimate mental health disorder, then what? How bad does it have to get before you get treatment, and for that matter, what is the treatment?

There’s been a smattering of horror stories about internet and gaming addiction: Parents who have let their children die while they played games hours on end, teens keeling over after day spent staring at a screen, or killing their parents after the object of desire was taken away. You might be right to suspect that there are other things at play in these episodes, but internet or gaming addiction may also be involved.

These cases represent the dark side of addiction, certainly, but internet addicts with a milder version of the disorder might argue that their dependence is actually beneficial, since it lets them be more productive professionally. At any hour of the day, your addiction will endow you with the capacity for lighting fast responses to work emails, making you a more valuable employee than your non-addicted colleague. That argument might hold water to some degree, but when it starts to intrude on your overall well-being, or sanity, or it takes precedence over time with your kids or spouse, then it might be time to cut back.

How to treat internet addiction is then the next question. One might suspect that treatment won’t be straightforward, since most of us have to use the internet at some level (or even a lot) throughout the day. In this way, it’s a bit like food addiction, which they say is the hardest to treat, since you can’t just quit the substance, you have to actually learn how to manage it. And for many people, managing is harder than quitting.

Some studies have found that cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) might be an effective method to treat IUD. This form of psychotherapy teaches people how to replace the damaging thought and behavior patterns that plague them with healthier, more productive ones. When people with internet addiction were taught how to apply CBT to their internet use problems, they reported improved well being and less of the offending behavior, internet use.

Researchers will keep trying to learn about what’s going on with our internet use these days, and how we can get a handle on it before it gets out of control. We’ll certainly keep apprised of the developments on internet addiction research (probably by combing the internet), and the best ways to manage it.

Does your internet use affect your life negatively? Have you tried to cut back? Please comment below.

Follow me @alicewalton or find me on Facebook.

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Obama to compromise on cybersecurity executive order

President attempts to pacify hardliners and privacy advocates, report says

By Taylor Armerding


October 24, 2012— CSO— President Obama is reported to be willing to compromise on cybersecurity.

There have been continuing reports since early September that the president is preparing an executive order to implement some of the provisions of the 2012 Cyber Security Act (CSA), after it failed to come to a vote in the Senate in early August.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, in testimony before a Senate committee on Sept. 19, said while the order was still being vetted by various departments, that it would be issued as soon as a "few issues" were resolved.

Now, more than a month later, there are reports that a final draft is circulating that includes a major compromise to settle differences between those who want government to have free access to networks under attack, and those concerned about violations of privacy.

The Huffington Post's Richard Lardner reported that Associated Press obtained a copy of the draft order and released it last Saturday.

It includes a concession sought by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to include provisions proposed in the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which would allow for the sharing of Internet traffic information between the U.S. government and private sector companies, but only those involving critical infrastructure such as transportation and the electrical grid. Other private firms, including social media, would not be under the same mandate.

Another provision sought by privacy advocates would put the DHS, not the National Security Agency, in charge of the information-sharing network to distribute and "sanitized summaries of top-secret intelligence reports about known cyberthreats that identify a specific target," Lardner wrote.

"With these warnings, known as tear lines, the owners and operators of essential U.S. businesses would be better able to block potential attackers from gaining access to their computer systems," he wrote.

[Bill Brenner in Salted Hash: Third presidential debate - Both candidates flunk cybersecurity]

The reaction to the impending order has been mixed. Most Republicans oppose it, saying the president should not be bypassing Congress. Even Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a co-sponsor of the CSA, said she did not think an executive order was appropriate.

However, Democratic Sens. Christopher Coons, of Delaware, and Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, sent a letter late last week to the White House calling on the president to issue an executive order "directing the promulgation of voluntary standards [by DHS.]"

It doesn't appear to be at the top of the agenda of either Obama or his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, however. At Monday night's debate on foreign policy, the president said the word "cybersecurity" only once, in passing, and Romney mentioned "hacking" just once.

That was fine with Jason Healey, of the Atlantic Council, and a former White House security official. "First, cyber is not as pressing an international issue as most of the crises pressing on the president's time. No one has yet died from a cyberattack," he said. "Second, Romney did speak directly about pressuring China on intellectual property theft, which is the main cyber problem today."

The reaction from Healey and other security experts to the order itself is also mixed. Some argue that cybersecurity risks, while real, are not at the level of other threats to the nation. Bruce Schneier, on his blog Schneier on Security, criticized Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's recent speech warning of a "Cyber Pearl Harbor."

"It's difficult to have any serious policy discussion amongst the fear mongering," he wrote, adding that while there are real risks, addressing them does not require "heavy-handed regulation."

Good Harbor Consulting's Jacob Olcott agrees. "Targeted information sharing with a small number of companies has proven to be a useful exercise," he said. "But these efforts are very difficult to scale. It's a worthy initiative, but it's also hard to imagine that this will be a success in the short term."

"Heavy-handed regulation is absolutely unnecessary," he said. "In fact, the government would significantly improve private sector cybersecurity simply by enforcing existing securities laws that require companies to disclose material cyber risks and events to their shareholders."

Healey doesn't oppose an executive order. "This is all about such small items on the margins that getting too worried either way isn't really worth the trouble," he said.

"To fix cyber issues we need to make it so that it is easier to defend than to attack, globally," Healey said. "Sending a few tear line reports isn't going to solve that, but it's a start. Then again, if all we needed to make this happen was the say-so of the President, I wish we'd have done it 10 years ago."

But he is not entirely opposed to fear mongering. "If you're trying to convince people that they are insufficiently worried. I think Panetta can be right," Healey said. "But I still think that heavy-handed regulation isn't the right solution."



Read more about malware/cybercrime in CSOonline's Malware/Cybercrime section.


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Promoted by the Council of Catholic Bishops

A website in Arabic
for the Year of Faith

Baghdad, 27.

It's called Baghdad al Īmān (Baghdad of the faith) and the website (in Arabic) is promoted by the Council of Catholic Bishops in Iraq, led by the Syriac Catholic Bishop Abba Ephrem Yousef, of Baghdad, to promote the Year of Faith. According to “Baghdadhope”, the faithful can find everything about the events on the site's home page: the opening of the Year of Faith will be celebrated on 12 October in the Chaldean Cathedral of St Joseph, while the closing Mass will be celebrated on 22 November  2013 in the Armenian Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Flowers.

September 28, 2012

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How Much Government Surveillance On The Internet Is There?

Monday, August 27th, 2012 | Posted by Jeff Thomas

Google’s latest Transparency Report unveils how much government surveillance really goes on.

The Transparency Report, is a report from Google detailing how often the search engine supplies the government with private Internet company data.

For around two years, California technology giant, Mountain View, has released the number of requests from the government for Google’s user data, and other information. The numbers are a little scary, and show just how much the government is actually watching.

According to Google, the US government asked for user information 6,321 times for the six-month period ending December of 2011. This data included, IP addresses of user accounts, browsing activity, emails, and other documents such as Google Docs.

One missing piece of the puzzle though is how often data is requested by the government without a probable-cause warrant.

Google has ignored requests for probable-cause warrant information, in its reports.

Although we live in a digital world, and the majority of our information lives on internet company servers, other companies such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. don’t report on any statistics in this area, and perhaps should follow Google’s lead.

Some wonder if these internet companies aren’t being transparent because they have something to hide, and are perhaps in the cahoots with the government.

In Twitter’s defense, it has been effective and forceful at shining a light on government demands for data, and providing users with notice, so they can fight and object to irrational requests.

Users trust these online businesses with data to be able to use its services; however, this trust is based on transparency. Currently, none of the larger companies are properly detailing how much government surveillance is taking place, and how often.

Short URL: http://authorityempire.com/?p=8582

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Google to include people’s Gmail in search results

SUNDAY AUGUST 12, 2012, 11:05 AM
BY MICHAEL LIEDTKE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE RECORD

SAN FRANCISCO — Google is creating an information bridge between its influential Internet search engine and its widely used Gmail service in its latest attempt to deliver more personal responses more quickly.

The experimental feature unveiled Wednesday will enable Google’s search engine to mine the correspondence stored within a user’s Gmail account for any data tied to a search request. For example, a query containing the word "Amazon" would pull emails with shipping information sent by the online retailer.

Such Gmail results will typically be shown to the right of the main results, though in some instances, the top of the search page will highlight an answer extracted directly from an email. For example, the request "my flight" will show specific airline information imported from Gmail. Something similar could eventually happen when searching for a restaurant reservation or tickets to a concert.

Although Google has a commanding lead in Internet search, it remains worried about the threat posed by social networking services such as Facebook Inc. As social networks have made it easier to share information online, the Web is starting to revolve more around people than the keywords and links that Google’s search engine uses.

Google has been trying to adapt by building more personal services and plugging them into its search engine.



Privacy concerns



Blending email information into general search results could raise privacy worries. Google is trying to mitigate that by showing Gmail results in a collapsed format that users must open to see the details. For now, users must sign up to participate.

Google Inc. ran into trouble over privacy in 2010 when it tapped the personal contact information within Gmail accounts to build a social networking service called Buzz. Google set up Buzz in a way that caused many users to inadvertently expose personal data from Gmail. An uproar culminated in a Federal Trade Commission settlement requiring the company to improve its privacy controls and undergo audits for 20 years.

Google is treading carefully as it hooks Gmail up to its Internet search engine. The new feature initially will be available to 1 million Gmail users who sign up at http://g.co/searchtrial. That’s a small fraction of the more than 425 million Gmail accounts that have been set up since Google launched its free email service eight years ago to compete against the offerings from Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

After getting feedback from the test participants, Google hopes to give all Gmail users the option of plugging their accounts into the main search engine, according to Amit Singhal, a senior vice president for the company.

Singhal said Google is also willing to display information from other email services in its main search results. The gesture could avoid spurring additional complaints about Google abusing its position as the Internet’s search leader to favor its other services. That issue is the focal point of an antitrust investigation by antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe.



Increasing searches



Yahoo and Microsoft, the biggest rivals to Gmail, had no comment about Google’s offer.

When it started in 2004, Gmail provided 1 gigabyte of free storage, an amount that was unheard of at the time. Now, many longtime Gmail users have 10 gigabytes of storage. That has turned Gmail into a valuable storehouse of personal information going back several years.

Gmail users already can pluck information contained in old correspondence by conducting a search within Gmail. Google is betting Gmail users will appreciate being able to eliminate a step by including any relevant email information alongside the results of its main search page.

In the process, Google is hoping Web surfers will have even more reasons to use its dominant search engine, which already processes more than 100 billion requests every month.

Luring more queries is crucial to Google because they give the company more opportunities to show the ads that generate most of its revenue, which is expected to exceed $49 billion this year.

Personal information from Google Plus, a social networking service started last year to compete with Facebook, has been featured in Google’s main search results since January.

Ultimately, Google hopes to know enough about each of its users so it can answer their questions with the precision and insight of the artificial intelligence that so far has been the stuff of science fiction.

"The destiny of search is to become that perfect Star Trek computer," Singhal said.

Source

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Understanding cyberspace is key to defending against digital attacks

FBI asking Internet Companies for Wiretap-Friendly Back Door

By VC | May 8th, 2012

The push to make the internet a controlled space used to spy on citizens, where supposedly “private” information is automatically shared with authorities, might soon reach another threshold. A new report suggests that the FBI is currently discussing with major internet companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo and Google to build backdoor accesses to their services to facilitate government surveillance. The FBI is also attempting to convince these companies to support an upcoming law that would allow the outright spying of social networks, VoIP, and Web e-mail providers. The law, like many other similar ones that are being proposed and adopted, is in direct violation with the 4th Amendment, which states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Of course, those who wrote the Bill of Rights were not expecting the advent of the internet and the storing of information on remote servers. The application of its principles is however nebulous today. However, if those in power truly wished (and if citizens somewhat cared) to preserve the spirit of the Amendment (which was created to protect citizens from government oppression and tyranny) they would have extended the principles of the Fourth Amendment to cyberspace. We are however witnessing the exact opposite: The advent of the internet, of social networks and other technologies appears to be the perfect opportunity for state authorities to deny these historic rights to citizens and to move towards a high tech police state.

Here’s an article on these FBI discussions with internet companies.

FBI: We need wiretap-ready Web sites – now

CNET learns the FBI is quietly pushing its plan to force surveillance backdoors on social networks, VoIP, and Web e-mail providers, and that the bureau is asking Internet companies not to oppose a law making those backdoors mandatory.

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance.

In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.

The FBI general counsel’s office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.

“If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding,” an industry representative who has reviewed the FBI’s draft legislation told CNET. The requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded, according to a second industry representative briefed on it.

The FBI’s proposal would amend a 1994 law, called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, that currently applies only to telecommunications providers, not Web companies. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband networks.

FBI Director Robert Mueller is not asking companies to support the bureau’s CALEA expansion, but instead is “asking what can go in it to minimize impacts,” one participant in the discussions says. That included a scheduled trip this month to the West Coast — which was subsequently postponed — to meet with Internet companies’ CEOs and top lawyers.

A further expansion of CALEA is unlikely to be applauded by tech companies, their customers, or privacy groups. Apple (which distributes iChat and FaceTime) is currently lobbying on the topic, according to disclosure documents filed with Congress two weeks ago. Microsoft (which owns Skype and Hotmail) says its lobbyists are following the topic because it’s “an area of ongoing interest to us.” Google, Yahoo, and Facebook declined to comment.

In February 2011, CNET was the first to report that then-FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni was planning to warn Congress of what the bureau calls its “Going Dark” problem, meaning that its surveillance capabilities may diminish as technology advances. Caproni singled out “Web-based e-mail, social-networking sites, and peer-to-peer communications” as problems that have left the FBI “increasingly unable” to conduct the same kind of wiretapping it could in the past.

In addition to the FBI’s legislative proposal, there are indications that the Federal Communications Commission is considering reinterpreting CALEA to demand that products that allow video or voice chat over the Internet — from Skype to Google Hangouts to Xbox Live — include surveillance backdoors to help the FBI with its “Going Dark” program. CALEA applies to technologies that are a “substantial replacement” for the telephone system.

“We have noticed a massive uptick in the amount of FCC CALEA inquiries and enforcement proceedings within the last year, most of which are intended to address ‘Going Dark’ issues,” says Christopher Canter, lead compliance counsel at the Marashlian and Donahue law firm, which specializes in CALEA. “This generally means that the FCC is laying the groundwork for regulatory action.”

Subsentio, a Colorado-based company that sells CALEA compliance products and worked with the Justice Department when it asked the FCC to extend CALEA seven years ago, says the FBI’s draft legislation was prepared with the compliance costs of Internet companies in mind.

In a statement to CNET, Subsentio President Steve Bock said that the measure provides a “safe harbor” for Internet companies as long as the interception techniques are “‘good enough’ solutions approved by the attorney general.”

Another option that would be permitted, Bock said, is if companies “supply the government with proprietary information to decode information” obtained through a wiretap or other type of lawful interception, rather than “provide a complex system for converting the information into an industry standard format.”

A representative for the FBI told CNET today that: “(There are) significant challenges posed to the FBI in the accomplishment of our diverse mission. These include those that result from the advent of rapidly changing technology. A growing gap exists between the statutory authority of law enforcement to intercept electronic communications pursuant to court order and our practical ability to intercept those communications. The FBI believes that if this gap continues to grow, there is a very real risk of the government ‘going dark,’ resulting in an increased risk to national security and public safety.”

Next steps
The FBI’s legislation, which has been approved by the Department of Justice, is one component of what the bureau has internally called the “National Electronic Surveillance Strategy.” Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that since 2006, Going Dark has been a worry inside the bureau, which employed 107 full-time equivalent people on the project as of 2009, commissioned a RAND study, and sought extensive technical input from the bureau’s secretive Operational Technology Division in Quantico, Va. The division boasts of developing the “latest and greatest investigative technologies to catch terrorists and criminals.”

But the White House, perhaps less inclined than the bureau to initiate what would likely be a bruising privacy battle, has not sent the FBI’s CALEA amendments to Capitol Hill, even though they were expected last year. (A representative for Sen. Patrick Leahy, head of the Judiciary committee and original author of CALEA, said today that “we have not seen any proposals from the administration.”)

Mueller said in December that the CALEA amendments will be “coordinated through the interagency process,” meaning they would need to receive administration-wide approval.

Stewart Baker, a partner at Steptoe and Johnson who is the former assistant secretary for policy at Homeland Security, said the FBI has “faced difficulty getting its legislative proposals through an administration staffed in large part by people who lived through the CALEA and crypto fights of the Clinton administration, and who are jaundiced about law enforcement regulation of technology — overly jaundiced, in my view.”

On the other hand, as a senator in the 1990s, Vice President Joe Biden introduced a bill at the FBI’s behest that echoes the bureau’s proposal today. Biden’s bill said companies should “ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law.” (Biden’s legislation spurred the public release of PGP, one of the first easy-to-use encryption utilities.)

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. An FCC representative referred questions to the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, which declined to comment.

From the FBI’s perspective, expanding CALEA to cover VoIP, Web e-mail, and social networks isn’t expanding wiretapping law: If a court order is required today, one will be required tomorrow as well. Rather, it’s making sure that a wiretap is guaranteed to produce results.

But that nuanced argument could prove radioactive among an Internet community already skeptical of government efforts in the wake of protests over the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in January, and the CISPA data-sharing bill last month. And even if startups or hobbyist projects are exempted if they stay below the user threshold, it’s hardly clear how open-source or free software projects such as Linphone, KPhone, and Zfone — or Nicholas Merrill’s proposal for a privacy-protective Internet provider — will comply.

The FBI’s CALEA amendments could be particularly troublesome for Zfone. Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP who became a privacy icon two decades ago after being threatened with criminal prosecution, announced Zfone in 2005 as a way to protect the privacy of VoIP users. Zfone scrambles the entire conversation from end to end.

“I worry about the government mandating backdoors into these kinds of communications,” says Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has obtained documents from the FBI relating to its proposed expansion of CALEA.

As CNET was the first to report in 2003, representatives of the FBI’s Electronic Surveillance Technology Section in Chantilly, Va., began quietly lobbying the FCC to force broadband providers to provide more-efficient, standardized surveillance facilities. The FCC approved that requirement a year later, sweeping in Internet phone companies that tie into the existing telecommunications system. It was upheld in 2006 by a federal appeals court.

But the FCC never granted the FBI’s request to rewrite CALEA to cover instant messaging and VoIP programs that are not “managed”–meaning peer-to-peer programs like Apple’s Facetime, iChat/AIM, Gmail’s video chat, and Xbox Live’s in-game chat that do not use the public telephone network.

If there is going to be a CALEA rewrite, “industry would like to see any new legislation include some protections against disclosure of any trade secrets or other confidential information that might be shared with law enforcement, so that they are not released, for example, during open court proceedings,” says Roszel Thomsen, a partner at Thomsen and Burke who represents technology companies and is a member of an FBI study group. He suggests that such language would make it “somewhat easier” for both industry and the police to respond to new technologies.

But industry groups aren’t necessarily going to roll over without a fight. TechAmerica, a trade association that includes representatives of HP, eBay, IBM, Qualcomm, and other tech companies on its board of directors, has been lobbying against a CALEA expansion. Such a law would “represent a sea change in government surveillance law, imposing significant compliance costs on both traditional (think local exchange carriers) and nontraditional (think social media) communications companies,” TechAmerica said in e-mail today.

Ross Schulman, public policy and regulatory counsel at the Computer and Communications Industry Association, adds: “New methods of communication should not be subject to a government green light before they can be used.”

- Source: CNet

Source

Sony straps on Internet-linked wristwatch

SmartWatch will sell for $150 (AFP/File, Lluis Gene)


(AFP) – 46 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO — Sony on Thursday released an Internet-linked wristwatch powered by Google-backed Android software.

SmartWatch gets online by connecting wirelessly to a wearer's Android smartphone using Bluetooth technology, according to Sony.

The high-tech timepiece reminiscent of one worn by classic comic strip detective Dick Tracy was priced at $150, available online and at Sony stores.

"SmartWatch provides access to live content and entertainment on the go," said Sony Mobile Communications customer unit president Paul Hamnett, who billed it as the first in a series of gadgets to "expand the smartphone's reach."

SmartWatch can switch from displaying time to acting as a touchscreen interface for smartphone information.

Vibrations or alerts flashed on the 1.3-inch (3.3-centimeter) screen can signal incoming calls and wearers can glance at their wrists to peruse email or text messages as well as Facebook or Twitter updates by friends.

Mini-applications tailored to add features to SmartWatch devices were available at the Google Play online shop, according to Sony.


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CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher

By Spencer Ackerman Author March 15, 2012 5:35 pm

CIA Director David Petraeus unwinds with some Wii Golf, 2008. Photo: Wikimedia

More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them.

Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired devices — at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”

All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you’re a “person of interest” to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the “smart home,” you’d be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room’s ambiance.

“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Petraeus said, “the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.”

Petraeus allowed that these household spy devices “change our notions of secrecy” and prompt a rethink of “our notions of identity and secrecy.” All of which is true — if convenient for a CIA director.

The CIA has a lot of legal restrictions against spying on American citizens.
But collecting ambient geolocation data from devices is a grayer area, especially after the 2008 carve-outs to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Hardware manufacturers, it turns out, store a trove of geolocation data; and some legislators have grown alarmed at how easy it is for the government to track you through your phone or PlayStation.

That’s not the only data exploit intriguing Petraeus. He’s interested in creating new online identities for his undercover spies — and sweeping away the “digital footprints” of agents who suddenly need to vanish.

“Proud parents document the arrival and growth of their future CIA officer in all forms of social media that the world can access for decades to come,” Petraeus observed. “Moreover, we have to figure out how to create the digital footprint for new identities for some officers.”

It’s hard to argue with that. Online cache is not a spy’s friend. But Petraeus has an inadvertent pal in Facebook.

Why? With the arrival of Timeline, Facebook made it super-easy to backdate your online history. Barack Obama, for instance, hasn’t been on Facebook since his birth in 1961.

Creating new identities for CIA non-official cover operatives has arguably never been easier. Thank Zuck, spies. Thank Zuck.

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UK Government wants access to emails, texts and web use

Snooping bill proposed

By Dave Neal
Mon Apr 02 2012, 10:17

THE AUTHORITARIAN UK Government wants access to all emails, text messages and internet use and will propose sweeping snooping powers in legislation to give it that soon.

The bill will be announced during the Queen's speech and will give crime busting agencies like GCHQ, the government's central intelligence *cough* spying agency, MI5, the police and who knows else access to all of the emails, text messages and internet histories of everyone in the UK.

The Home Office claims that the legislation is necessary to "obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public."

"We need to take action to maintain the continued availability of communications data as technology changes," said a spokesperson.

Accessible data will include the "time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call, or an email address, but not the content of the phone call or email," it added. The spokesman said that the Government does not plan to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of communications.

"As set out in the Strategic Defence and Security Review we will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows to ensure that the use of communications data is compatible with the Government's approach to civil liberties," it said.

Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties organisation, has already condemned the proposals and sniffed at their timing,

"This is an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran. This is an absolute attack on privacy online and it is far from clear this will actually improve public safety, while adding significant costs to internet businesses," said Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch.

He asked, "If this was such a serious security issue why has the Home Office not ensured these powers were in place before the Olympics?"

The Pirate Party is also concerned about the powers, which it said would lead to more insecurity.
"This story looked for all the world like an April Fool's joke: Labour's plan for a massive surveillance programme that would dwarf anything dreamed up by the KGB, brought back to life by its opponents?," said Andrew Robinson, the founder of the Pirate Party UK.

Robinson said that the powers would be circumvented by those that the government would seek to detect, while opening up everyone else to unnecessary inspection.

"We're bound to hear the sinister justification that 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'. Well, the exact opposite is true in this case. If you do have something to hide, it's inevitably going to be trivially easy to avoid this surveillance system, through privacy systems like Tor, or simply by using foreign web servers," he added.

"If you're just an honest member of the public you have to fear not just the phenomenal multi-billion pound cost of the system, or the massive logistical and economic burdens that UK companies will have to cope with, but something far worse: The absolute certainty of leaks."

This is the sort of thing that came up during the riots last year, when intrusive police access to Twitter and Blackberry's BBM messaging tool was considered but not implemented. µ

Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/18FmE)

Source

"Do Not Track" Has It Backwards

Feb 24, 2012 1:31 pm

By Tony Bradley, PCWorld

Google is doing its part for Internet privacy by adding a Do Not Track feature to its Chrome Web browser. The move is admirable, and Do Not Track may be better than nothing, but why should users have to opt out of having their online actions monitored?

The move from Google comes in the wake of allegations that it has been circumventing privacy controls in the Safari Web browser on iOS devices, and in Internet Explorer to track online activity. However, it is not a reaction to that controversy. A Google spokesperson told me: “We've been evaluating our [Do Not Track] options for a long time and have also been closely involved with standards bodies.”

Google is jumping on the "Do Not Track" bandwagon by adding the feature to the Chrome browser.

It also comes on the heels of increased pressure from Washington DC in the form of President Obama’s blueprint for a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. Susan Wojcicki, Google Senior Vice President for Advertising, praised that initiative. “We’re pleased to join a broad industry agreement to respect the ‘Do Not Track’ header in a consistent and meaningful way that offers users choice and clearly explained browser controls.”

Tracking isn’t a truly black and white issue, though. Wojcicki pointed out in a recent blog post that gathering information about online behavior enables Google to tailor the Web experience. By tracking activity, Google can target relevant content more likely to be of interest to you.

Even if the issue was truly that simple, though, the Do Not Track solution leaves a lot to be desired. The Wall Street Journal points out that the very concept of the Do Not Track feature has holes because it is dependent on companies agreeing to play by those rules--it is a voluntary system. It also points out that the Do Not Track initiative limits the ways data can be collected or used, but it can still be used for certain purposes like “market research”, or “product development.”

Assume for a minute, though, that Do Not Track actually meant what it says, and that every online company agreed to play along. There is still something inherently wrong with a system that automatically assumes you want to be spied on until or unless you figure out where the Do Not Track button is for your browser and make the effort to enable it.

The Internet operates on some sort of reverse moral code that says if you don’t make it implicitly clear that you don’t want something to happen, then--ipso facto--you have given implied consent for that something to occur.

What if other areas of life worked that way? Most people expect others not to randomly walk up and kick them without having to wear a sign that says “Do Not Kick.” They assume that nobody will throw rocks through their windows without the need for a sign that says “Do Not Stone.” They are confident that strangers won’t come up and start screaming in their face without having to display a “Do Not Yell” sign.

Why is it, then, that when we go online it becomes OK for companies to do things they know cross the line simply because they choose to pretend the line doesn’t exist unless you explicitly remind them? It doesn’t make any sense.

All tracking should be specifically opt-in. Companies should state up front what types of information they want to track, and what benefits that tracking will potentially provide for the online experience, and request consent before monitoring online activity and user behavior.

Source

Web star born: Kony video gets millions of views

Posted: Thu, Mar. 8, 2012, 7:46 AM

RODNEY MUHUMUZA and JASON STRAZIUSO
The Associated Press



In this Saturday, July 9, 2011 file photo released by Invisible Children, the antenna installation of one of Invisible Children's 14 high frequency radios used in their Early Warning Radio Network to help track the Lord's Resistance Army is seen in Haut Uele, Congo. A video by the advocacy group Invisible Children about the atrocities carried out by jungle militia leader Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army is rocketing into viral video territory and is racking up millions of page views seemingly by the hour. (AP Photo/Invisible Children, File)



KAMPALA, Uganda - If Joseph Kony lived in relative anonymity before this week, he's an Internet star now.

A video about the atrocities carried out by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army has gone viral, racking up millions more views seemingly by the hour.

The marketing campaign is an effort by the advocacy group Invisible Children to vastly increase awareness about a jungle militia leader who is wanted for atrocities by the International Criminal Court and is being hunted by 100 U.S. Special Forces advisers and local troops in four Central African countries.

The group's 30-minute video, which was released Monday, had more than 32 million views on YouTube by Thursday. The movie is part of an effort called KONY 2012 that targets Kony and the LRA.

"Kony is a monster. He deserves to be prosecuted and hanged," said Col. Felix Kulayigye, the spokesman for Uganda's military.

But Kulayigye said that Kony's forces , once thousands strong , have been so degraded that he no longer considers Kony a threat to the region. Because of the intensified hunt for Kony, his forces split into smaller groups that can travel the jungle more easily.

Experts estimate that the LRA now has only about 250 fighters. Still, the militia abducts children, forcing them to serve as soldiers or sex slaves, and even to kill their parents or each other to survive. The LRA now operates in Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

Uganda, Invisible Children and (hash)stopkony were among the top 10 trending terms on Twitter among both the worldwide and U.S. audience on Wednesday night, ranking higher than New iPad or Peyton Manning. Twitter's top trends more commonly include celebrities than fugitive militants.

Jolly Okot was abducted in 1986 by the militia group that later became the LRA. The then-18-year-old could speak English so was valuable to the militants. She was also forced to have sex.

Today, Okot is the Uganda country director for Invisible Children, in charge of 105 employees. She said the group is helping 800 people affected by LRA violence to attend high school and university. She said the program has given hope to kids who previously dropped out of the education system.

"The most exciting thing about this film is that I'm so grateful that the world has been able to pay attention to an issue that has long been neglected," Okot said. "I think it is an eye-opener and I think this will push for Joseph Kony to be apprehended, and I think justice will get to him."

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said it has been hard to raise public awareness about Kony since issuing his warrant in 2005.

"Kony is difficult, he is not killing people in Paris or in New York. Kony is killing people in Central African Republic, no one cares about him," he said. "These young people from California mobilizing this effort is incredible, exactly what we need."

He praised the group that made the film.

"They are not fighting, they are just putting the right focus: stopping the crimes, arresting Kony, helping people," he said. "Perfect."

Ben Keesey, Invisible Children's 28-year-old chief executive officer, said the viral success shows their message resonates and that viewers feel empowered to force change. It was released on the website http://www.kony2012.com.

The burst of attention has also brought with it some criticism on Internet sites of Invisible Children's work, including the ratio of the group's spending on direct aid, its rating by the site Charity Navigator, and a 2008 photo of three Invisible Children members holding guns alongside troops from the country now known as South Sudan.

Invisible Children posted rebuttals to the criticism on its website, saying that it has spent about 80 percent of its funds on programs that further its mission, about 16 percent on administration and management, and about 3 percent on fundraising. The group said its accountability and transparency score is currently low because it has four independent voting members on its board of directors and not five, but that it is seeking to add a fifth. The group said the three workers in the photo thought it would be a good "joke" photo for family and friends.

Kony's Ugandan rebel group is blamed for tens of thousands of mutilations and killings over the last 26 years.

Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey, the top U.S. special operations commander for Africa, told reporters last month that U.S. troops are now stationed in bases in Uganda, Congo, South Sudan and Central African Republic as part of the anti-LRA fight. Losey said there's been a decrease in the lethality of LRA activities attributable to U.S. and partner nation efforts.

Ruhakana Rugunda, the Ugandan diplomat who led the country's failed peace negotiations with Kony in 2006, said the work of organizations such as Invisible Children preserves the memory of an insurgency whose brutal legacy should never be forgotten. The talks with Kony, mediated by South Sudan, ended in 2008 after the rebel leader refused to sign the final peace agreement, saying he could not guarantee his security once he left the bush.

The last known images of Kony show him shaking hands, and sometimes smiling, with dignitaries visiting his camp. Some images showed him wearing a suit and shiny black shoes.

"Kony gives you the impression that he is harmless, that he cannot catch a fly," Rugunda said, recalling his conversations with Kony, who was an altar boy before he became an elusive rebel leader.

Rugunda last saw Kony in a forested camp in eastern Congo before the rebel leader and his men fled to the Central African Republic, where they have retained the capacity to harass villagers for food.

Rugunda said that capturing Kony alive would set in motion a "full accountability mechanism" in which the world would get to know how it came to be that Kony committed the many crimes he is accused of.

,,,

Straziuso reported from Nairobi, Kenya. Associated Press reporters Elliot Spagat contributed from San Diego and Mike Corder from The Hague.

,,,

On the Internet:

http://www.kony2012.com

Invisible Children's reaction to blog accusations: http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html

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