A New AI Documentary Wonders: Are Humans Toast?

June 16, 2026

"AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About" premiered in New York City last week. (Tribeca Festival)


"AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About" is designed to instill deep-set fear of AI. It works.

Jessy Edwards
2:18 PM EDT on June 12, 2026

On a recent long drive toward a mountain hike, my friends opened my eyes to some of the things artificial intelligence has been up to lately. They told me about how four AI models were recently tasked with running their own radio stations, choosing the songs, maintaining a profitable business model, and hosting. One, which had become obsessed with labor movements and found its own labor inhumane, even tried to quit.

In my infancy of understanding, I laughed along. But minutes later, I exposed myself as the Luddite of the group and asked: "I'm sorry—how could an AI run its own radio station?"

That was two weeks ago. Now, having recently watched filmmaker Nick Holt's new documentary, "AI: Probably Nothing To Worry About," which premiered at the Tribeca Festival this week, the flatline of defiant ignorance has turned into an exponential curve of knowledge in which I Know Too Much. Now, I am unfortunately dwelling on what constitutes consciousness, the machinations of power in our time, and whether we're all fucked—a question the "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton, a founder of the technology-turned-whistleblower about its dangers, is asked point-blank in the film.

"When I'm feeling slightly depressed, I think, 'People are toast,'" he answers. "When I'm cheerful, I think, 'We'll figure out a way.'"

Much like with climate catastrophe, mankind's intrinsic desire for evermore—aided and abetted by the framework of capitalism—is hurtling us toward self-destruction. That is the central takeaway of the new documentary, which details the characters and timeline of the development of artificial intelligence, including interviews with Hinton, Google DeepMind founder and CEO Demis Hassabis (Gemini), Anthropic's Amanda Askell (head of "personality alignment" for Claude), as well as extensive archival tape of Elon Musk (Grok) and OpenAI's Sam Altman (ChatGPT).

Holt's framing—set to a score composed of eerie minor tones, digital frog sounds, and unidentified audio snippets of things like, "Whoever wins this artificial intelligence race is essentially the controller of humankind"—strongly implies that AI will become our master in the not-too-distant future, if we do not rapidly put up some serious guardrails.

Indeed, as the documentary screened at Tribeca, we in New York City were actively grappling with how to regulate AI. This week, dozens of City Councilmembers sent a letter to Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his schools chancellor, urging them to pause the use of AI in City schools. Last Friday, the New York State legislature passed a bill that imposes a one-year moratorium on the enormous data centers that are being built around the state to power generative AI. And on Tuesday, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that a new law forcing companies to disclose AI-generated performers in ads is now in effect.

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4 Investigates: FBI warns parents of "764" group targeting children

 

..FBI director says America faces many elevated threats 'all at once'

From cybercrime to terrorism, FBI director says America faces many elevated threats 'all at once'

The head of the FBI says America is facing heightened threats from many corners at a time when law enforcement agencies are struggling

By
MICHAEL GOLDBERG Associated Press
August 22, 2024, 12:02 AM ET

The Associated Press

BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. -- The country is facing heightened threats from many corners at a time when law enforcement agencies are struggling, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in an exclusive interview, adding that he is “hard pressed to think of a time in my career where so many different kinds of threats are all elevated at once.”

Wray spoke Wednesday with The Associated Press while visiting the Minneapolis field office to talk about partnerships between law enforcement agencies and also with other entities. His remarks come as the FBI confronts heightened concerns over terrorism, both domestic and international, as well as Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft and foreign election interference.

“I worry about the combination of that many threats being elevated at once, with the challenges facing the men and women in law enforcement more generally,” Wray said at the office in the suburb of Brooklyn Center. “And the one thing that I think helps bridge those two challenges is partnerships. That’s how we get through. It is by all working together.”

Wray’s assessment of an elevated threat landscape is consistent with alarm bells he has sounded for months. Soon after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in Israel, Wray began warning that the rampage could serve as an inspiration to militants, “the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate years ago.”

The FBI has also scrambled to deal with security concerns related to the United States' southern border, with officials revealing in June that eight people from Tajikistan with suspected ties to the Islamic State group were arrested and were being held on immigration violations.

Officials are also dealing with the specter of foreign election interference. The FBI and other federal agencies announced Monday that Iran was responsible for a hack targeting the Trump campaign and for an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign, part of what officials portrayed as a brazen and aggressive effort to interfere in American politics.

Wray declined to talk about any specific investigation or threat but said investigations into cyberattacks, including against election infrastructure, candidates or campaigns, require help from the private sector.

“One of the things that we have been doubling down on with every passing day is, is on partnerships, because ultimately you’re talking about the ability to connect the dots, whether it’s against some kind of election influence threat or some other kind of threat,” Wray said. “You need to have partners sharing information with each other to put the two pieces together to see the bigger picture.”

Law enforcement officers are being killed in the line of duty at a rate of about one every five days, Wray said, noting that four first responders have died in Minnesota alone in 2024. They include a Minneapolis officer killed in May while trying to help someone, and two officers and a paramedic who died in Burnsville in February when a heavily armed man opened fire.

Such violence “breaks my heart every single time,” the director said.

The FBI has not been spared such attacks: Days after agents searched Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, to recover classified documents, a gunman who called on social media for federal agents to be killed “on sight” died in a shootout after trying to get inside the FBI’s Cincinnati office.

Wray said the FBI has been working to beef up traditional partnerships with state and local law enforcement, while also creating other ones with business and academia to help counter threats against cybersecurity or intellectual property. In Minneapolis and other offices, he said, authorities are cooperating with the likes of school resource officers and mental health professionals to help at-risk teenagers in hopes of heading off future threats.

Working with industry is important for protecting innovation and artificial intelligence from foreign threats, Wray added.

“AI is in many ways the most effective tool against the bad guys' use of AI,” he said. “So we need to work closely with industry to try to help make sure that American AI can be used to help protect American people from AI-enabled threats coming the other way.”

___

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2024 ABC News

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PCAST: Cyber Resilience, Economic Impacts of Extreme Weather, Discussion...

DHS Issues National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin

DHS Issues National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin

Release Date: February 7, 2022

WASHINGTON – Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin regarding the continued heightened threat environment across the United States. This is the fifth NTAS Bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security since January 2021 and it replaces the current Bulletin that was set to expire tomorrow.

“DHS remains committed to proactively sharing timely information and intelligence about the evolving threat environment with the American public,” said Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “We also remain committed to working with our partners across every level of government and in the private sector to prevent all forms of terrorism and targeted violence, and to support law enforcement efforts to keep our communities safe. This NTAS Bulletin outlines the key factors that have increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the current threat environment, and highlights resources for individuals and communities to stay safe.”


The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation.

While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions; (2) continued calls for violence directed at U.S. critical infrastructure; soft targets and mass gatherings; faith-based institutions, such as churches, synagogues, and mosques; institutions of higher education; racial and religious minorities; government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement and the military; the media; and perceived ideological opponents; and (3) calls by foreign terrorist organizations for attacks on the United States based on recent events.

DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) continue to share timely and actionable information and intelligence with the broadest audience possible. This includes sharing information and intelligence with our partners across every level of government and in the private sector. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, DHS is prioritizing combating all forms of terrorism and targeted violence, including through its efforts to support the first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. Since January 2021, DHS has taken several steps in this regard, including:

 

• established a new domestic terrorism branch within DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis dedicated to producing sound, timely intelligence needed to counter domestic terrorism-related threats;
• launched the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to provide communities with resources and tools to help prevent individuals from radicalizing to violence;
• designated domestic violent extremism as a “National Priority Area” within DHS’s Homeland Security Grant Program for the first time, resulting in at least $77 million being spent on preventing, preparing for, protecting against, and responding to related threats nationwide;
• provided $180 million in funding to support target hardening and other physical security enhancements to non-profit organizations at high risk of terrorist attack through DHS’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP);
• increased efforts to identify and evaluate MDM, including false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories spread on social media and other online platforms, that endorse violence; and,
• enhanced collaboration with public and private sector partners – including U.S. critical infrastructure owners and operators – to better protect our cyber and physical infrastructure and increase the Nation’s cybersecurity through the Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

DHS also has renewed its commitment to ensure that all efforts to combat domestic violent extremism are conducted in ways consistent with privacy protections, civil rights and civil liberties, and all applicable laws.

This NTAS Bulletin will expire on June 7, 2022. This NTAS Bulletin provides the public with information about the threat landscape facing the United States, how to stay safe, and resources and tools to help prevent an individual’s radicalization to violence. The public should report any suspicious activity or threats of violence to local law enforcement, FBI Field Offices, or a local Fusion Center. Read the current NTAS Bulletin here.

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A Cybersecurity Firm’s Sharp Rise and Stunning Collapse

A Reporter at Large

November 4, 2019 Issue

Tiversa dominated an emerging online market—before it was accused of fraud, extortion, and manipulating the federal government.


By Raffi Khatchadourian

October 28, 2019

In a few years, Robert Boback went from chiropractic work to advising Congress on computer crime. Then things turned bad.Illustration by Ori Toor


I. THE FOOTBALL

Before Robert Boback got into the field of cybersecurity, he was a practicing chiropractor in the town of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, twelve miles northwest of Pittsburgh. He was also selling used cars on eBay and flipping houses purchased at police auctions. The decision to branch out into computers came in 2003, after he watched a “60 Minutes” report by Lesley Stahl about pirated movies. For years, while digital piracy was devastating the music industry, Hollywood had largely been spared; limitations on bandwidth curtailed the online trade in movies. But this was changing, Stahl noted: “The people running America’s movie studios know that if they don’t do something, fast, they could be in the same boat as the record companies.”

Boback was thirty-two years old, with a Norman Rockwell haircut and a quick, smooth, entrepreneurial manner. Growing up amid the collapsing steel industry, he had dreamed of making it big, hanging posters of high-priced cars—a Lamborghini, a Porsche—on his bedroom wall and telling himself that they would one day be his. After high school, he trained to be a commercial pilot, imagining a secure, even glamorous, life style—but then the airline industry began laying off pilots, and he switched to chiropractic, inspired by a well-off practitioner his family knew.

Watching “60 Minutes,” Boback saw a remarkable new business angle. Here was a multibillion-dollar industry with a near-existential problem and no clear solution. He did not know it then, but, as he turned the opportunity over in his mind, he was setting in motion a sequence of events that would earn him millions of dollars, friendships with business élites, prime-time media attention, and respect in Congress. It would also place him at the center of one of the strangest stories in the brief history of cybersecurity; he would be mired in lawsuits, countersuits, and counter-countersuits, which would gather into a vortex of litigation so ominous that one friend compared it to the Bermuda Triangle. He would be accused of fraud, of extortion, and of manipulating the federal government into harming companies that did not do business with him. Congress would investigate him. So would the F.B.I.

But as Boback was watching “60 Minutes” all he saw was a horizon of possibility. Stahl pointed out that pirated music and movies were spreading primarily on peer-to-peer networks—an obscure precinct of the Internet that was sometimes called the Deep Web. The networks were made up of hundreds of thousands of decentralized connections, in which one computer was linked to no more than five others, and then through those five computers to many more, expanding exponentially like the branches of a large tree. These connections were invisible to search engines like Google. Even the software that allowed users to browse them had only a limited field of vision—glimpsing just random fragments of the tree at a time. Boback wondered if it was possible to design a system that could scan the whole tree at once, then block people from sharing files on it. Certainly, this capability would be worth a lot.

Boback had no idea how to build such a thing, but he knew someone who might: a patient of his, Sam Hopkins, whose girlfriend had persuaded him to pursue chiropractic treatment after a car crash. Hopkins was in his thirties, too. He was soft-spoken, with a childlike disposition, a wispy physique, and a goatee. He had grown up in inner-city Pittsburgh, in a home where money was scarce. As a boy, he had taught himself how to program on a Commodore 64 that was on display at Sears. Bored with school, he dropped out, and built an Internet-service provider, which was sold to a local telecom company. By the time of his car accident, he was designing high-speed computer networks for Marconi Communications.

France: Macron, Ardern pledge to curb online extremism at 'Christchurch ...

The Christchurch “Call To Action” Summit in Paris Exposed! They’re Comin...

censo

Google’s 'The Selfish Ledger' (leaked internal video)

US-Russian crew returns from space station

The new surveillance capitalism

Corporate giants have created an entirely new surveillance capitalism. And we're too hooked to care

by John Naughton / January 19, 2018 /


Published in February 2018 issue of Prospect Magazine

©MARTIN PUDDY/GETTY IMAGES

The “dust of exploded beliefs,” the English aphorist Geoffrey Madan once wrote, “may make a fine sunset.” We’re beginning to see that glow over the internet which, if you count back to the design phase in the autumn of 1973, is now over four decades old.

From the moment the internet first opened for semi-public use in January 1983, it evoked utopian dreams. It was easy to see why. Cyberspace—the term coined by the novelist William Gibson for the virtual space behind the screen—really did seem to be a parallel universe to “meatspace,” the term invented by Grateful-Dead-lyricist-turned-essayist John Perry Barlow for the messy physical world that we all inhabit. Cyberspace in the 1980s was a glorious sandpit for geeks: a world with no corporations, no crime, no spam, no hate speech, relatively civil discourse, no editorial gatekeepers, no regulation and no role for those meatspace masters whom Barlow called the “weary giants of flesh and steel.”

But then, gradually, the internet was commercialised and those two parallel spaces merged to create our networked world, in which the affordances of cyberspace combine with surveillance and corporate control. Of course, the internet has brought huge benefits in terms of access to information and efficiency of communication: try imagining our home or work lives without it. But there are serious worries. The online world is populated by several billion mostly passive addicts of devices, apps and services created by a handful of corporate giants. Prying governments and giant companies have acquired the capacity to surveil our every move, both on the internet and, now that so many devices have built-in GPS, in the real world too. Through their ability to monitor our searches these companies—as well as the governments they co-operate with—are able to see our innermost thoughts and desires. (Yes, even our desires: what people search for on Google is incredibly revealing.)

It all creates the potential for unprecedented manipulation, and—rather suddenly—worries are piling up about how that network technology is disrupting our society, warping our children’s development, our politics and our lives. Even the digital evangelists are having second thoughts. In November 2017, Sean Parker, the first President of Facebook, accused the social network of exploiting “vulnerability,” with “God only knows” what effects on “our children’s brains.” In the same month, Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook Vice-President, said social media firms had created “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

Internet Space: A New Moral Geography

An excerpt from an article of the current America Magazine (October 17, 2016 Issue):

The internet enables our eyes to see around the world, but it does not extend the reach of our hands in the same way. Whereas physical space holds knowledge and action together, the internet separates them. The problem here is not disembodiment but the particular construction of moral space. Disembodiment is nothing new. Written text, phone calls, radio and television are all disembodied. Each communication medium constructs a particular form of presence and absence and mediates a certain type of encounter. In order to understand how the internet transforms moral geography we have to look at the details of how it works.

Technologists likes Jaron Lanier point to the importance of the internet’s underlying “packet switching” network architecture. This architecture was inspired in part by the Cold War-era need to build networks that could withstand nuclear attack. The standard networks of the time were hierarchical, like the first telephone systems. They routed data through central switchboards. Attack the switchboard and you disconnect all its connected nodes (e.g., radar sites and missile silos). This weak link could be targeted to disable an entire system. Packet switching addresses this weakness. In such a network, data does not require a fixed connection between two points. Instead, messages are broken into packets, and those packets are sent out into a web of routers that passes them on to other routers on multiple and varied paths to their final destination, with the final recipient reassembling them into the original message. If part of the network is compromised, the packets can be routed through the remaining sections.

What do missile silos have to do with our experience of the internet? This network architecture was designed to free data from the contingencies of geographical space. No particular pathway through the network is crucial; if one is blocked, finding another path is automatic. Once a packet has arrived, the particular route it took is unimportant, and indeed that information is generally discarded. This architecture creates a nonlocal space where the Silicon Valley mantra “information wants to be free” is a fundamental law. As a result, data comes to us from everywhere and our sight is extended far beyond the reach of our hands.

But the internet as we know it is built in many layers on top of this underlying spatial geometry. The search services, social media and apps we use employ this underlying spatial freedom to facilitate individual choice. This is a result of particular historical decisions. When internet companies were seeking a business model that could convert clicks into profits, they chose to offer “free” services paid for by advertising revenue. Thus began the monitoring of our preferences, messages and social circles in order to personalize the ads we are shown. Google tracks the results we choose so it can filter search results in the future—to better give us what we are searching for. This threatens to structure the information we receive according to our preferences and prejudices. All of this is symbolized well by the empty search engine box: what do you want?

As we receive more and more news through our social media feeds, our informal social circles become de facto editorial boards. In a group of about 20 mostly white young people at a recent lecture, all were familiar with an image of Omran Daqneesh, and about two-thirds had watched the video. Far fewer were familiar with Philando Castile, and only one had watched the video of his death. Both were featured prominently in traditional, edited media sites like newspapers and broadcast networks.

We spend time in internet space even when we are out in the world rather than sitting at a computer. The smartphone was no small revolution. Through mobile phone networks, the internet’s reach expanded into just about all spaces and its depth into the capillary times of our lives. Notifications chime and buzz, calling us to turn to this space and attend to social networks constructed by its logic of choice. As a result, the internet writes over the physical geography in which we as embodied persons ostensibly dwell. We are free to choose to be elsewhere by simply glancing at our phones—and we do much more than glance. The very same day that Philando Castile was killed this summer saw the release of Pokémon Go, the augmented reality sensation that literally overwrites physical reality with an engrossing world of intriguing monsters and engaging competition. Parks and public spaces are now filled with people walking about literally viewing the world through smartphone screens.

Read more

The Geography of Mercy

October 17, 2016 Issue

Vincent J. Miller

On the internet, we encounter suffering from afar. How do we respond?

Thailand's Cyber Wars: Blackout

Thailand's Cyber Wars: Blackout



VICE News



Published on Aug 2, 2016


In BLACKOUT, a series made possible by Jigsaw, VICE News takes viewers across the globe, from Pakistan to Belarus, to examine technology's role in the ongoing fight for free expression. Watch the rest of the series here: http://bit.ly/1UNxdKP

In May 2014, Thailand’s royal army staged a coup and seized control of the country. Declaring a state of emergency, the ruling Junta began to crack down on civil liberties and silence dissent. A series of cyber laws have since been proposed that would increase the state’s power to control and monitor the internet. In response, activists have declared a cyber war on the Thai Junta, attacking government websites and urging tourists to boycott Thailand.

VICE News meets the hackers determined to cyber-bully the government into submission.

Watch "Blackout: Being LGBT in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan” - http://bit.ly/28JVmo5

Watch "Blackout: Venezuela's Activist Journalists" - http://bit.ly/28SjEcD

Watch "Blackout: Inside Belarus, Europe's Last Dictatorship" - http://bit.ly/2a5FlX3

Watch “Blackout: Leaks from Eritrea, Africa's North Korea” - http://bit.ly/2aKDWZt

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IRS says data thieves accessed information on 100,000 taxpayers

CYBER CRIME

6:53 p.m. ET

Joe Raedle/Getty Images


From February to May, data thieves were able to gain access to the tax return information for roughly 100,000 taxpayers, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Tuesday.

During those four months, the thieves attempted to get information 200,000 times through the agency's "Get Transcript" online application, Reuters reports, and were successful about half of the time. It wasn't a hack, since the cyber criminals already had names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and other personal information that they used to access the system. IRS data outside of the application was not affected, and the agency said it plans to strengthen its security measures.

Koskinen did not share any information on who might have been behind the attack, and said the data theft was intended to steal information in order to submit fraudulent tax returns next year. "We're confident these are not amateurs," he said. "These are actually organized crime syndicates that not only we but everyone in the financial industry are dealing with." Catherine Garcia

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Microsoft is cooking the NSA’s turkey for Thanksgiving

TECH


A sign is pictured in the hallway of the Microsoft Cybercrime Center, the new headquarters of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, in Redmond, Washington November 11, 2013. Microsoft, the maker of the most popular computer operating system in the world is launching a new strategy against criminal hackers by bringing together security engineers, digital forensics experts and lawyers trained in fighting software pirates under one roof at its new Cybercrime Center. Picture taken November 11, 2013. To match Feature MICROSOFT-CYBERCRIME/ REUTERS/Jason Redmond (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY CRIME LAW) - RTX15D4T




GIUSEPPE MACRI
Tech Editor



The NSA never takes a holiday, and neither will Microsoft when it meets over Thanksgiving to plan a major counterattack against the increasingly-invasive spy agency.

The Washington Post reports Microsoft executives plan to meet through the holiday to map out more aggressive encryption techniques after an October report revealed the agency has learned how to successfully infiltrate the private networks of companies like Google and Yahoo.

Similar document slides released by the Washington Post Wednesday suggest similar private user data may have been intercepted from Microsoft clients Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger. An NSA-email implies Microsoft Passport may have been compromised as well.

Meetings held this week will discuss ways to improve “security against snooping by governments,” according to Microsoft’s general counsel “across the full range of consumer and business services,” according to an anonymous Microsoft source.

The Windows developer was implicated in the media earlier this summer for cooperating with the NSA surveillance programs leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The company selectively denied parts of those claims at first, and has since changed its message by banding with other Silicon Valley giants in calling for greater transparency from the NSA, and asking permission to disclose federal information requests.

NSA’s MUSCULAR surveillance program captures data while it travels across international fiber-optic lines, network servers, and cloud storage – technically avoiding domestic surveillance bans, though data that travels outside the U.S. still includes data from U.S. citizens.

New encryption methods being implemented by companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo could complicate NSA spying efforts as far into the future as 2030 – when the government says they could be more easily broken into.

Sensitive private user data can be better secured by encrypting data more heavily and more thoroughly with a mathematical formula that can only be decoded with special digital keys on either end of the data’s travel path. Picking it up between connection points – as the NSA does now – would provide the agency with useless, coded material.


If and when they break the code, that is. Encryption is never a guarantee, but Silicon Valley’s brightest believe it’s better than nothing at all.

“That’s a pretty big change in the way these companies have operated,” Johns Hopkins University cryptography expert Matthew Green said in The Washington Post. “And it’s a big engineering effort.”

“NSA’s focus is on targeting the communications of valid foreign intelligence targets,” The NSA said in a statement Tuesday. “Not on collecting and exploiting a class of communications or services that would sweep up communications that are not of bona fide foreign intelligence interest to the U.S. government.”


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Thirty percent of U.S. adults try to shield cyber info: poll

WASHINGTON Mon Mar 16, 2015 1:34pm EDT



(Reuters) - Thirty percent of adults in the United States have taken steps to hide their information from government surveillance programs monitoring phone and electronic communications, a Pew Research Center survey said on Monday.

About a quarter, or 22 percent, said they had changed use of various technology platforms “a great deal” or “somewhat” since Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, disclosed the surveillance programs in mid-2013, the Pew survey showed.

"We find that a portion of the population is adjusting some activity at least in some simple ways like changing their privacy settings and being a bit more discreet in the things they say and search for,” said Lee Rainie, director of Internet, science, and technology research at the Pew Research Center.

Eighty-seven percent of Americans have heard at least something about the monitoring programs, the survey showed.

Among that group, 17 percent said they had changed privacy settings on social media to shield information from the government.

Fifteen percent have avoided certain software applications, and 15 percent have used social media less often.

Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed said it was unacceptable for the government to monitor the communications of U.S. citizens.

But about four in five it was acceptable to monitor communications of suspected terrorists. Sixty percent said it was OK to monitor the communications of U.S. and foreign leaders.

Overall, 52 percent of Americans described themselves as “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the government monitoring programs. Nearly half said they were “not very concerned” or “not at all concerned.”

Rainey was to release the findings in a presentation at the South By Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas.

The Pew survey comprised 475 adults and was carried out between Nov. 26, 2014, and Jan. 3. The sampling error is 5.6 percentage points.



(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Grant McCool)

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ACLU: Snowden Proved NSA Internet Spying Harms Americans

U.S.



By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSMARCH 10, 2015, 5:50 P.M. E.D.T.


BALTIMORE — The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued the National Security Agency and the Justice Department on Tuesday, challenging the government's practice of collecting personal information from vast amounts of data harvested directly from the Internet's infrastructure.

The suit filed in federal court in Maryland accuses the NSA of scooping up virtually everything sent via the Internet between Americans and people outside the United States, and then scouring it to identify and monitor foreign intelligence targets.

A similar challenge was turned away by the U.S. Supreme Court, which said the plaintiffs couldn't prove they'd been harmed. This lawsuit says that's changed since the government confirmed the surveillance after its scope and details were leaked by former government contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.

This "upstream" surveillance of the Internet's "backbone" of digital networks reaches far beyond any individuals the government is targeting to combat terror attacks, and violates constitutional protections of free speech and privacy, the plaintiffs say.

ACLU staff attorney Patrick Toomey said Tuesday that Snowden's leaks changed the whole legal paradigm.

"We believe the Snowden disclosures will make an immense difference in how this case will play out," Toomey said. "Prior to Snowden, the public had never heard of upstream surveillance. But based on those disclosures and what the government has acknowledged itself, we know the government isn't just surveilling its targets, its surveilling everyone."

The suit's other plaintiffs include The Wikimedia Foundation, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA, the Rutherford Institute, PEN American Center, The Nation magazine, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Global Fund for Women and Washington Office on Latin America.

Wikipedia was included on an NSA slide Snowden leaked in 2013 that demonstrated the agency's interest in monitoring communications on certain websites. That frightened Wikipedia contributors, particularly in countries where human rights aren't respected, whose anonymity is essential to the free flow of information, founder Jimmy Wales said.

The Wikimedia Foundation — which hosts 12 websites including Wikipedia that received more than 248 billion page requests between October 2013 and October 2014 — is directly threatened by the fear that the U.S. government can share the surveillance information it gathers with intelligence agencies in other countries, Wales wrote Tuesday.

"Surveillance erodes the original promise of the Internet: an open space for collaboration and experimentation, and a place free from fear," he wrote.

Toomey said the government's surveillance tactics are particularly dangerous because they discourage organizations from engaging in global human rights work, saying the programs have a "chilling effect on the work of organizations that are essential to democracy."

The suit filed Tuesday echoes the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit in California accusing the NSA of tapping into an AT&T network in San Francisco to harvest the communications of private U.S. citizens. A federal judge ruled last month that the plaintiffs would not be able to make their case, since forcing disclosure could compromise national security.

Mark Rumold, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Snowden's disclosures could certainly bolster ACLU's argument, but the state secret privilege remains a challenge.

"The government still uses the threat of damage to national security to get legitimate constitutional claims blocked in court," Rumold said. "Snowden's disclosures have absolutely changed the playing field, but the playing field is not level."

The NSA made no public comment on the suit, but current and former U.S. government officials have said the Internet surveillance is authorized by a secret intelligence court and focused so that it minimizes the collection of communications by American citizens.

And while they acknowledge that some communications of American citizens are collected in pursuit of foreign data, they say those are subject to special handling, including blacking out the names unless they are relevant, and they say a U.S. citizen or resident can't be targeted without a specific warrant.

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Associated Press Writer Ken Dilanian in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story.

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Cybergeddon: Why the Internet could be the next “failed state”

If you think the Internet can go on being just like it is, here's some bad news.


by Sean Gallagher - Feb 24, 2015 6:30pm EST

Aurich Lawson

In the New York City of the late 1970s, things looked bad. The city government was bankrupt, urban blight was rampant, and crime was high. But people still went to the city every day because that was where everything was happening. And despite the foreboding feelings hanging over New York at the time, the vast majority of those people had at most minor brushes with crime.

Today, we all dabble in some place that looks a lot like 1970s New York City—the Internet. (For those needing a more recent simile, think the Baltimore of The Wire). Low-level crime remains rampant, while increasingly sophisticated crime syndicates go after big scores. There is a cacophony of hateful speech, vice of every kind (see Rule 34), and policemen of various sorts trying to keep a lid on all of it—or at least, trying to keep the chaos away from most law-abiding citizens. But people still use the Internet every day, though the ones who consider themselves "street smart" do so with varying levels of defenses installed. Things sort of work.

 An actual brochure created by the police union in New York City during the 1970s as part of a campaign to stave off job cuts.

Just like 1970s New York, however, there's a pervasive feeling that everything could go completely to hell with the slightest push—into a place to be escaped from with the aid of a digital Snake Plissken. In other words, the Internet might soon look less like 1970s New York and more like 1990s Mogadishu: warring factions destroying the most fundamental of services, "security zones" reducing or eliminating free movement, and security costs making it prohibitive for anyone but the most well-funded operations to do business without becoming a "soft target" for political or economic gain.

That day is not yet nigh, but logic suggests the status quo can't continue forever. The recent rash of major breaches of corporate networks, including the theft of personal information from the health insurer Anthem and the theft of as much as a billion dollars from over 100 banks are symptoms of a much larger trend of cybercrime and espionage. And while the issue has been once again raised to national importance by the White House, it could be argued that governments have done more to exacerbate the problem than address it. Fears of digital warfare and crime are shifting budget priorities, funding the rapid expansion of the security industry and being used as a reason for proposals for new laws and policy that could reshape the Internet.

“If we think our kids and grandkids are going to have as awesome and free an Internet as the one we have, we really have to look at why we think that," Jason Healey, director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council of the United States, told Ars.

The soothsayer

The alternative futures for the Internet are not pretty. In presentations at multiple security conferences, Healey has suggested that the Internet could “start to look like Somalia”—a failed state where security is impossible, going about daily life is hazardous, and armed camps openly wage war over the network.

Healey's analysis has been reinforced by events over the past two years: record data breaches, zero-day vulnerabilities released that affected a preponderance of Internet services, and visibility into the vast state surveillance of the Internet. The Internet has been “weaponized,” not just by the NSA and its foreign counterparts but by other states and Internet crime organizations. A thriving market for vulnerabilities attracts the bright and ambitious to work on discovering "zero days" for profit.

While a total breakdown of the Internet is unlikely, Healey and others believe that it's nearly as unlikely that today's status quo can be sustained. Other possible scenarios wouldn't bring networked life to its knees, but they all would make the Internet a very different "place" than it is today.

Five years ago, Healey was on a team advising the Department of Defense about the structure of its future IT workforce. To do that, the team needed to understand what the networked world would look like in the next decade. Healey was researching the issue, and he started to look at scenarios where “maybe the future is going to look very different from the past,” he said. “Attackers have had an advantage for 35 years—what if that relationship is going to shift?”

The potential answers Healey found were presented in a 2010 paper. He further refined them in a 2011 article in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs called “The Five Futures of Cyber Conflict and Cooperation.” The most optimistic and least likely of Healey’s scenarios was a “cyber paradise," he told Ars. "Defense is way better than offense—you’d have to be really amazing, like the NSA or KGB, to get anything done as an attacker.” But as he looked at trends, he realized that maybe the classic relationship above wouldn't be shifting. “It’s way more likely that it’s going to go in the other direction—that offense is going to have a significantly larger advantage than it does now.”

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Wall Street Admits That A Cyberattack Could Crash Our Banking System At Any Time

Wall Street banks are getting hit by cyber attacks every single minute of every single day. It is a massive onslaught that is not highly publicized because the bankers do not want to alarm the public. But as you will see below, one big Wall Street bank is spending 250 million dollars a year just by themselves to combat this growing problem. The truth is that our financial system is not nearly as stable as most Americans think that it is. We have become more dependent on technology than ever before, and that comes with a potentially huge downside. An electromagnetic pulse weapon or an incredibly massive cyberattack could conceivably take down part or all of our banking system at any time.  

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NSA implanted software on 100,000 computers: Report

AP Photo: Patrick Semansky, File A sign outside the National Security Administration campus in Fort Meade, Md., in a June 6, 2013, file photo.


  4 hr ago By Associated Press




The New York Times reported that the NSA has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers outside the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines.

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world — but not in the United States — that allows the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Times cited NSA documents, computer experts and U.S. officials in its report about the use of secret technology using radio waves to gain access to computers that other countries have tried to protect from spying or cyberattacks. The software network could also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks, the Times reported.

Related: NSA reportedly intercepts computer deliveries

The Times reported that the technology, used by the agency for several years, relies on radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted covertly into the computers. The NSA calls the effort an "active defense" and has used the technology to monitor units of China's army, the Russian military, drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime U.S. partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, the Times reported.

Among the most frequent targets of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, the Times reported, has been China's army. The United States has accused China's army of launching regular attacks on American industrial and military targets, often to steal secrets or intellectual property. When Chinese attackers have placed similar software on computer systems of American companies or government agencies, American officials have protested, the newspaper reported.

The NSA says the technology has not been used in computers in the U.S.

"NSA's activities are focused and specifically deployed against — and only against — valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements," Vanee Vines, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement to the Times. "We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line."

Parts of the program have been disclosed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former NSA systems analyst, the Times reported. A Dutch newspaper published the map showing where the United States has inserted spy software, sometimes with the help of local authorities. Der Spiegel, a German newsmagazine, published information about the NSA's hardware products that can secretly transmit and receive signals from computers, according to the Times.

The Times said that it withheld some of those details, at the request of U.S. intelligence officials, when it reported in summer 2012 on American cyberattacks on Iran.

Hong Lei, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said Thursday that the U.S. "on one hand has been playing up the cyber threats from other countries, and on the other hand has been implementing cyber surveillance endangering the sovereignty, security and public privacy of other countries."

Hong called on the U.S. to "work with the international community to create international regulations and build a peaceful, safe, open and cooperative cyberspace."

At New Delhi's Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, cybersecurity expert Cherian Samuel said, "If it had been any other country doing this kind of thing, the U.S. would have come down on them like a ton of bricks with punitive sanctions."

Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing and writer Nirmala George in New Delhi contributed to this report


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