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The NSA Has Inserted Its Code Into Android OS, Or Three Quarters Of All Smartphones
Over a decade ago, it was discovered that the NSA embedded backdoor access into Windows 95, and likely into virtually all other subsequent internet connected, desktop-based operating systems. However, with the passage of time, more and more people went "mobile", and as a result the NSA had to adapt. And adapt they have: as Bloomberg reports, "The NSA is quietly writing code for Google’s Android OS."
Is it ironic that the same "don't be evil" Google which went to such great lengths in the aftermath of the Snowden scandal to wash its hands of snooping on its customers and even filed a request with the secretive FISA court asking permission to disclose more information about the government’s data requests, is embedding NSA code into its mobile operating system, which according to IDC runs on three-quarters of all smartphones shipped in the first quarter? Yes, yes it is.
Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano confirms that the company has already inserted some of the NSA’s programming in Android OS. "All Android code and contributors are publicly available for review at source.android.com." Scigliano says, declining to comment further.
From Bloomberg:
Through its open-source Android project, Google has agreed to incorporate code, first developed by the agency in 2011, into future versions of its mobile operating system, which according to market researcher IDC runs on three-quarters of the smartphones shipped globally in the first quarter. NSA officials say their code, known as Security Enhancements for Android, isolates apps to prevent hackers and marketers from gaining access to personal or corporate data stored on a device. Eventually all new phones, tablets, televisions, cars, and other devices that rely on Android will include NSA code, agency spokeswoman Vanee’ Vines said in an e-mailed statement. NSA researcher Stephen Smalley, who works on the program, says, “Our goal is to raise the bar in the security of commodity mobile devices.”
See, there's no need to worry: the reason the NSA is generously providing the source code for every Google-based smartphone is for your own security. Oh but it's open-sourced, so someone else will intercept any and all attempts at malice. We forgot.
The story continues:
In a 2011 presentation obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek, Smalley listed among the benefits of the program that it’s “normally invisible to users.” The program’s top goal, according to that presentation: “Improve our understanding of Android security.”
Well one wouldn't want their bug to be visible to users now, would one...
Vines wouldn’t say whether the agency’s work on Android and other software is part of or helps with Prism. “The source code is publicly available for anyone to use, and that includes the ability to review the code line by line,” she said in her statement. Most of the NSA’s suggested additions to the operating system can already be found buried in Google’s latest release—on newer devices including Sony’s Xperia Z, HTC’s One, and Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S4. Although the features are not turned on by default, according to agency documentation, future versions will be. In May the Pentagon approved the use of smartphones and tablets that run Samsung’s mobile enterprise software, Knox, which also includes NSA programming, the company wrote in a June white paper. Sony, HTC, and Samsung declined to comment.
Apple appears to be immune from this unprecedented breach of customer loyalty, if only for now, although open-sourced Linux may not be as lucky:
“Apple (AAPL) does not accept source code from any government agencies for any of our operating systems or other products,” says Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for the company. It’s not known if any other proprietary operating systems are using NSA code. SE for Android is an offshoot of a long-running NSA project called Security-Enhanced Linux. That code was integrated a decade ago into the main version of the open-source operating system, the server platform of choice for Internet leaders including Google, Facebook (FB), and Yahoo! (YHOO). Jeff Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, says the NSA didn’t add any obvious means of eavesdropping. “This code was peer-reviewed by a lot of people,” he says.
But that's not all:
The NSA developed a separate Android project because Google’s mobile OS required markedly different programming, according to Smalley’s 2011 presentation. Brian Honan, an information technology consultant in Dublin, says his clients in European governments and multinational corporations are worried about how vulnerable their data are when dealing with U.S. companies. The information security world had been preoccupied with Chinese hacking until recently, Honan says. “With Prism, the same accusations can be laid against the U.S. government.”
In short: the (big brother supervised) fun never stops in Stasi 2.0 world. Just buy your 100 P/E stocks, eat your burgers, watch your Dancing With The Stars, pay your taxes, and engage in as much internet contact with other internet-addicted organisms as possible and all shall be well.
Oh, and from this...
To this (courtesy of @paradism_)
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It's only just beginning
from ProPublica and these dudes are so far left they're right
https://twitter.com/txtianmiller/statuses/354779529845276674
Pentagon policy to filter #FOIA requests that might "generate media interest" in DOD senior leadership or Obama
Been on line since 1991
Always assumed that, as I could access other computers, other computers could access mine.
You only need to know more about systems than the security guy at the other end.
Act accordingly.
BTW - people give me a hard time regarding the two pieces of tape on my laptop (mike & camera) - WTF?
first thing with a new PC is tape on the cam - but i've never much bothered with the mic
as mofo effing mofo ahles effers is pretty much the extent of the vocab here in the crawlspace
but taping that effing cam - just effing do it even if you've disabled it
Or stand in front of it closely scratching your nutsack.
Just more of the same old orwellian shit from control freak psychopaths
If it is not a company it is their criminal partners sucking up everything they can to spy on you or sell
http://blogs.computerworld.com/smartphones/22435/motorola-secretly-spies-droid-phone-users-every-9-minutes-collects-personal-data
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T17XQI_AYNo
It will never end until enough people stand up and say no
Don't hold your breath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UoM3MAHxcs (:15-:23 is a +10. It is all downhill after)
my understanding is that GOOG (and likely FB) was seeded by CIA.
What a bunch of assholes. Leave people the phuck alone.
If you are really serious about security then the 'One Time Pad' is your best friend.
Done properly, UNCRACKABLE, in the true sense of the word.
Series of outtakes from Orwell's 1984 - Sick in how acutely accurate they were:
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
"Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain."
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
"The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering—a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons—a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—three hundred million people all with the same face." 'hope and change, hope and change' (odd Orwell said 300 million, the approximate population of the United States)
"A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."
"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
And this is why i don't give a shit. That pretty girl? A plant. Your mother? Captured. Ain't nothing to be done but be made fun of for crazy, so might as will go all out.
Who wants to play a game of pool? I'm paying.
duckduckgo.com is a good search engine. i do not trust google ANYTHING
The whole world is watched! The whole world is watched!
[does chicken little have an iPhone?]
"Skype Provided Backdoor Access to the NSA Before Microsoft Takeover" http://news.softpedia.com/news/Skype-Provided-Backdoor-Access-to-the-NSA-Before-Microsoft-Takeover-NYT-362384.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype ***2003? Voip/Android?!
(a surreal mala?ropism of a Nixonian 4th`Estate MSM- Kennelesque symbiotic manifesto... a plausible deniability misfeasance of a half-century fuzzy-etymology-doublethink... constructive ambiguity?)
When I read the first paragraph quoted from the Bloomberg article I did a double take to make sure the story wasn't quoting The Onion. The NSA is developing code for Android to protect Android users' privacy? Does anyone expect anyone to belive that? You would think with that enormous budget someone would be able to come up with a better cover story.
Still think open source code means BitCoin is safe from your sweetheart govt?
Oh and you forgot to put tin foil over the computer screen!!!
I used to have open source Audacity, a free recorder, on my computer till I saw its graph spike with the same amplitude when I was recording with the mic jack covered as compared to uncovered. I tried covering every opening on my computer but the graph showed the same response to the same volume level as when all openings were uncovered.
And the fact that Audacity let you see that was the problem? It's an audio recorder, and it was telling what it was hearing. What you're describing has nothing to do with code, it's hardware.
Perhaps the govt makes the hardware component and it needs to hook into software that won't be discovered by software engineers at Microsoft or Apple. I've wondered since it is bypassing the mic would the software writers of Audacity have to know the hardware is there.
SELinux is nothing to worry about. Most administrators turn it off, actually. It might help a tiny bit, like the Maginot Line.
If you want to know the unsolved vulnerability in open source inspection, search for "ken thompson hack"; it is very stealthy, but slow and fragile.
Much more prevalent: spear-phishing (individual targeting, a favorite of "unit 61398") and DNS vulnerabilities that lead to substituted server certificates issued by corrupt CAs (certificate authorities) for man-in-the-middle that can see https/SSL/TLS traffic to specific sites (Libya under Gaddafi, Iran).
They have devices in all US hubs so they don't need DNS vulnerabilities.
It does blow away all the CA based security though. Byby SSL/TLS.
There is scope for some real productivity gains and cost cutting measures as well. Imagine if the help desk for most of these devices was run by the NSA instead of the various companies.
Bring back the pigeons, even if it means pigeon shit all over my letterbox.
Then again how about our own little personalised drones (the size of a pigeon)?
If pigeons stuff up you can at least make pigeon pie.
All this reminds me of the story where an old farmer was writing to his son in jail that with him not around it was not possible to plant the tomatoes in the front yard. The son wrote back telling him not to dig up the front yard because that was where the dead bodies had been placed.
A week later the father writes to the son that a whole lot of nice policeman came and dug up the front yard and he could then plant the tomatoes but that they did not find any bodies.
The son writes back that it was the least he could do.
But not many people care. If they did they would get rid of their cell phones.
I'm thinking that the only reason we still have the 2nd Amendment is to facilitate the rules of engagement for the law enforcement. They know we present little or no threat against their armored vehicles, machine guns, armed helicopters and drones. All they need is an excuse to legitimize the use of deadly force based on a contemplated threat. In a country where guns are legal "suspicion" is as good as a warrant, and unfortunately, the rule only works one way.
And the "Threat" will be of their making as well. All contingencies will be accounted for until they aren't
I laugh when I read these stories on ZH now as I was thoroughly insulted by many ZHers when I wrote the same in some of my comments many months and years ago. What's really funny is that this info about NSA code insertion, in fact the internet is the NSA, was freely and widely available for many years. But, some "uneducated geek" tells the story and suddenly everyone is surprised. That part I don't get.
Keep calm and slave on, suckers.
links?
Simple countermeasure.
Install a custom, with carefully chosen source code, kernel ( termed unrooting ), and enjoy the true freedom of software.
After having a root access, just run whatever attacking software against whatever site you want and make a counter punch.
The NSA Has Inserted Its Code Into Android OS, Or Three Quarters Of All Smartphones
BULLSHIT!
Tyler apparently doesn't understand what open-source means. Which of those two words does he not understand? It's very sad to see this alarmist nonsense here, of all places. And it's sad to see so many people acting like zombies mindlessly "following their leader" and repeating his mindless drivel. Sig Heil, Tyler Durden!
In total opposition to Windoze phones, and proprietaries like Apple and Blackberry, the only spyware in an Android smartphone is what the owner allows to be in there.
Android is just Linux for phones, which means that whoever installs the software in it has TOTAL CONTROL of the machine. And any phone owner is free to do whatever they want with it, and tinkering with the software violates no patents or terms of service, or anything. How do ya think people write apps for it if they can't tinker with it?
If you don't have the capability to do this yourself, and you really want that phone regardless of the security risks, then hire a trustworthy competent Linux security geek and they can do it for you.
The NSA can listen to you at your phone company's switch, or over their fiber or microwaves, but there is no fucking way that they can listen to an Android phone itself UNLESS YOU INSTALL SPYWARE.
Any portable cell phone can have its location tracked, more or less, by triangulating on cell towers, but you can just take out the battery if you have a spyware infested OS and then you can't be tracked.
99% of users have zero knowledge on how to control their smart phone and having had my skype calls monitored personally I say BS they aren't monitoring people. They are recording every damn word.
The NSA and other Federal watchers failed to prevent the Boston bombs, although they were told about the dubious Chechen brothers by Russia well beforehand.
So. The USA tax funded security apparatus is incompetent or complicit. Traitors or eejits, either way one views it.
Kerry is a two faced money grubbing liar, like Cliton before him. O'bomba and McCain are useless overpaid House cats.
They are on their own now. Good. Let them sink in their own lies. Traitors and incompetents. Overfed House cats.
This all seems like they are breaking it to us gently. The old frog in the water scenario whereby, if they let out all that they were doing at once, people would go berserk. Instead, they are dripping out bit by bit what they really are doing behind the scenes so as not to panic the herd. I'm sure all the folks in the psyops division are monitoring reactions very closely and, so far, we are giving them no cause for alarm
So android zealots, still want to mock those apple fanboys?
You are fool if you think Apple is not in a Club .
When is the class action suit against Google by its customers.? The Google contract never said anything about using my data to tarck me down. The contarct never said anything about giving the NSA access to it.
A huge suit must be forthcoming with criminal and civil charges against Eric Schmidt.
I kinew that Blackberry was good for something. I don't think that they allowed NSA access.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/09/196211/linchpin-for-obamas-plan-to-predict.html#.Udz21aFDtdU
The really positive aspect to Governments and globalists is that they never learn and they have never one. Where there is a will there is a way is the modern myth of man --C. G. Jung
I am happy with my decision to be a writer. I have little need for any modern junk. No TV. No FaceBook. No smart phone or any phone. No mass hysteria for me.
Not, I'm a man not an animal, but, I am a king not a man.
Chill out and watch the show. By the way, who's got the acid.
I don't understand this hacker bullshit. We know the NSA already collects all the phone data directly from the carrier so why do they need to put spyware directly on the phone? And how does the phone transmit this data back to the NSA?
Is this so they can just bypass Verizon, Sprint etc and collect the data directly themselves?
It's from the Department of Redundancy Department at NSA. Just in case you are a big enough genius to bypass their corporate crony servers.
Finally had to give up my flip phone because it simply died. My I phone username is cunt...Those who can access it are also called cunt 1. If you would like to contact me , I have plenty of contacts left...lol You can be cunt#2.3,4,5,6 ect....warriors come out to play.. GPS that bitchez...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRM2YcGpmxg
What amazes me is that somehow this is news. Like we didnt know this already. Cmon yer killin me. Anyone who doesnt understand that the web we all know and love started out as ARPANET created by DARPA has got some serious zoloft issues. OF FUCKING COURSE "smart" phones are called "smart" because they are smart for the intel agencies collecting your data now that youve ponied up your half-grand on your shiny trendy new pocket spy device you take with you EVERYWHERE. Just as smart as the "smart" cars that flatten like pancakes when you sneeze on them. Buyer beware: any product marketed as "smart" is doing so under the assumption you have accepted for yourself that you are an imbecile, and you are cool with that.
STUPID KILLS.
Waiting for Reggie to show up and tell me this is bullish for Google.
What the NSA is doing is proof that most hacking is an inside job. They needed access to abuse. And every hole they put in your system is going to be accessable by the Chinese because the people in the industry who are not Snowden do sell us out to the Chinese daily.
THIS STATEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE NSA REVIEW:
Dear Janet Nipplepotato... I love you. I am currently nude and soon will be fantasizing about your 300 lbs of fleshy girth, boyish haircut, and size 20 feet.
As I peel off your thong with the aid of backhoe (financed by Jamie Dimon), I am immediately smitten with the forest before me. But to get to the "love cave" underneath I must first send in my hired team of lumberjacks to "clear cut" a path for my further fantasy.
After the crews leave, I bring out my secretion weapon that I know will rock your world. I (lloyd)blankfold you to heighten your quivering arousal... while applying suction to your hockey puck-like nipples with a used Shop-Vac I got from Craigslist. I then begin applying stimulus to your ample ass cheeks using a 55 gallon drum of diesel oil and a canoe paddle. Butt there's more... you hot BitCh...
I program my GPS to navigage around your huge circumference to get to the money spotshot where lumberjacks feared to tread. As I orbit your girth I gaze down again at your mountainous size 20 feet.... and see the entire White House crammed up your snizz with General Keith acting as valet parking.
I guess I'm late to the party.... Valerie Jar-tits hoovered up all the canapes and a couple of lesbians while shooting an innocent waiter in the face for walking in on her. Barecrack was too coked up to notice as he watched videos of Sheriff Joe and his team investigate his birth certificate.
Life in the Whet House...
during soviet era soviets were reverse-engeneering western hardware literally slicing chips and phototshoping them.
In the eighties westerners started creating self-destruct chips that upon cracking them blew themselves up
So the talk you see now about NSA is just a tip of an iceberg :)
Who will guard the guards?
Who will spy on the spies who are spying on the spies?
Google is evil too.
This has been obvious for some time.
Seemingly every large corporation is evil now.
Face some facts. The president sets the tone of the country.
That is just an excuse that evil people use to justify their evil actions.
What next? I-bomb, i- gas. Cheaper than drones.
The people wanted big intrusive government and that's what they got. Voting for elitist assholes like Pelosi, Reid, Boehner, McConnel, Nelson, Graham, Durbin etc... Term limit them yourselves by voting out every incumbent irrespective of party. The incumbents have been so entrenched in Washington for so many years they're like ticks on a dog. They've voted themselves pay raises and benefits none of the rest of us will ever enjoy. Of course they're going to vote against the people when they can to save their way of life, its been very lucrative to do so. Of course they're going exempt themselves from the laws they throw on us. That's their nature. The people gave them an inch and they took a mile. They tried to exempt themselves from gun laws and obamacare. They shot down term limits in 94. I for one am tired of working allday to go to the grocery store for my 5 staples and see a person standing in front of me with their ebt card, 4 kids in tow and a basket full of food and know I'm paying for it.
You probably won't see this in our MSM:http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/jul/09/fisa-courts-judge-nsa-surveill...
Thanks to ZH for this excellent piece of investigative journalism...
So, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Skype (owned by Microsoft), Samsung (who must know about NSA code in Android used in their SmartPhones) and a growing bunch of other corporations are well and truly in bed with the NSA to the detriment of their customers.
These relationships are not casual or trivial. They are wide and deep and have been going on for years. NONE of it is to benefit customers, yet they are paying for it thru product pricing.
And it appears that millions of various Linux desktop, tablet and mobile op/sys - who hitherto overwhelmingly believed they were protected from all the known/unknown Windows security and spying issues - are also subject to secret code embedded by NSA into their base op/sys. Millions of Linux users will feel betrayed by this.
Is it not astonishing that in almost every case, the corporations peddling this NSA infected software, attempt to flatly deny it and issue weasel pre-scripted corporate statements intended to downplay and trivialise what's happening.
Fascism is alive and well. It now wears Armani suits and dines in the best restaurants.
Military fatigues are sooo 20th century.
Linux users have known about selinux for a long time. Over a decade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux
Android users just weren't aware they were Linux users.
At the very least with Linux you get the source code and the choice to not include it, and many distributions don't. That isn't to say the NSA don't have backdoors elsewhere. It's just much more difficult to put them in undetected.
"Linux users have known about selinux for a long time."
Well, yes, but I'd guess that less than 1% of Linux *users* know of this.
Since SEL (written by the NSA) was integrated into the Linux kernel back in 2003, there is no reason for hundreds of 'distribution developers' (eg Mint) to mention it. If indeed they know about it because they use the pre-compiled kernel modules by the bucket load. Their main work is developing desktops and other additional features to produce customised end-user versions of the op/sys. They mostly use the underlying and centrally devoped kernel as their platform.
SELinux is an example of the benevolent side of the NSA. It's easy to forget that the NSA does some useful things for us that need doing, and would otherwise not get done.
Other organizations are equally suspect, IMO.
I've wondered about Nvidia and ATI for years. The unavailability of source code for their Linux drivers is suspicious. And at times, extremely annoying.
And for anyone here who's using Microsoft Windows, you have a lot more serious/real problems than the phantom vague suspicions of possible risks described in this article.
Windows? Urgh!
I have said many times that when history is written, Windows XP will be seen as the *peak* of Microsoft's op/sys products.That's not to say it was excellent, it certainly was not. But it's been down hill all the way since then. Vista was a disaster and - like Vista - Win7 originally began development with a long list of user improvements. But it was soon smashed down by MS top-brass into something which offered little more than Vista to users with a few glitzy features to distract them. Of course, I've no doubt that there were plenty of additions on behalf of the NSA et al. Win8 looks much the same. There's a techy article somewhere which lists many of the shortcomings of Win8. This partly explains why MS is trying hard to get into other platforms because it knows Windows is becoming a dead duck due to development mismanagement.
Gates ought to be hung, drawn and quartered. From the days of DOS, he never had any real interest in his users; only in positioning MS using every dirty trick possible to be in control and domination of the op/sys marketplace. That's why he fell out with IBM. His deep relationships with NSA explains why MS were never hammered under Anti-Trust laws for its unethical practices.
That is how fascism/corporatism operates.
I'm not overly concerned with code that I can download and read e.g., Android and Linux.
It's the code that I'm not allowed to read that scares me.
I vote OpenSource.
If you can't read C, C++, and Java, and you don't want to be spied upon, then sell your computing equipment and go outside. It's your only option.
I hope people boycott Android products. Fuck Google for what's it's done to the American public.
Bullshit. It's NOT open-source. I had to use an exploit to gain ./root access to my Android. Seriously. I had to literally download an exploit onto my desktop and feed it into my tablet via USB to remove the lock.
Fuck Google.
And now, when I use a Google search from my desktop, it comes up in Spanish if I am not logged in or have cookies enabled. I'll be using duckduckgo.com from now on.
If the typical user could easily gain root on their phone (any phone), then any app that user installed on that device could do the same thing. I'd be rich inside of a month, and you wouldn't notice the dollar or two I snagged from you.
Also, the typical user is a techno-moron. They would break their toy every ten minutes and demand free tech support from the vendor.
That is why root access is not automatically available: ignorance, which seems to be on parade in this article.
My Android device is completely NSA-safe, as far as its internals go. I know this because I built the software - all of it - from the source code, which I actually read.
THAT is possible only because Android is OpenSource.
I'd wager that most of these Google-bash comments were posted from Windows PCs using Internet Explorer.
The irony of that is astounding.
Good. Now get together with other specialists such as yourself and package and distribute the solution for others not specialized in this field to use, Big demand is comming soon.
Well, since you're so fond of designing & writing code, perhaps you'd explain to Google how to write proper filters that actually work for their Gmail system. The current Gmail filtering system is close to useless. And perhaps explain to them how to make the Gmail GUI user-friendly. It used to be a bit cranky until they redisigned it to make it into a dog's breakfast. I asked them if it was written by college kids on a training exercise. No response.
If you have any time left, please explain to them how to write a usable interface to Usenet newsgroups which again, used to be a bit cranky until Google got their hands on it and have made it virtually unusable.
IMHO, Google has become the new Microsoft: a giant corporation with its own agenda and little time for its customers. Dubious business tricks to gain control and dominate the marketplace is what it spends its time on.
...just my opinion :-)
This is a pretty retarded article. SE-Linux is awesome. It's not spyware.
NSA released security enhancements for generic Linux kernel a while ago and many companies use it to strengthen individual systems.
Operating system provides services like open file, write file, send packet. SELinux allos to fine tune which applications can perform which low-level operations. The user application may not be using those low level commands directly, but rather through a dependency on some librray, which would in turn use those low-level features.
Think of it as a firewall for what a program can execute, program by program.
Either the article is misdirection or the author did not bother to research what they write about.
NSA released security enhancements for generic Linux kernel a while ago and many companies use it to strengthen individual systems.
Well, we all know that anything that was done "a while ago" is OK. And we all know that the NSA is a 100% altruistic organism that spends our hard earned Benny Bux for our own good.
I think the jury's out on whether SEL introduced a back door into Linux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux
As we see with some NSA additions to Android, the intention is to make them invisible to users and to those who take the time to trawl thru the source code.
Google is now the known enemy of freedom. In the meantime the quiet growth of Anonymous continues; the unknowable and individualized army of Ones, individuals who both hold a macro understanding of reality and a micro knowledge of code. Through the growing and evolving Darknet they will allow humanity to spread the suppressed Truth and provide ancillary tools, such as bitcoin, for those individuals who mean to take their own freedom into their own hands.
Technology is just a tool like any other. It is the individual mind that deploys the tool for freedom or slavery, and it is a fervent desire for Truth, and the finding of it, that instructs the mind. The sheep still sleep but there is some bleating going on in the pen, for………
The Sheep who Sleep
Shall Gently Weep
For the Corruption of their Keep
Within whose Deep, Dark Shepherds creep
And who shall Rise, and who shall Fall
In this Failed State that keeps us all
"Google is now the known enemy of freedom."
I would say Google is ONE enemy of freedom. Microsoft is another. There are others ...
Maybe XDA developers can help out...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=43448250#post43448250
When will people learn... Google IS the government.
Surely, being spotted & open-source, there must be a way to revert back to a previous version which didn't contain this code. Or, surely, having spotted the code, a new version can be made which excludes this code. Or, given that the code is open, we can see what features of the device are used so we can figure out how else to turn those off when not needed or make a phone which can't be controlled by that code (make the code obsolete).