Irreal

LWN.net is reporting on a Debian bug report complaining that Chromium, Google’s open source version of their Chrome Browser, was downloading a binary blob after it started. The responsible Debian maintainers did not have access to the code for the blob and had no way of knowing what it did. After a bit of investigation, it appears that the blob—called Chrome Hotword—turns on the computer’s microphone and enables audio capture.

Doubtless, this is to support Google’s OK Google feature that enables audio searching but its stealth installation and the initial absence of a way of disabling it raised serious questions. Even now, the function is enabled by default and the user has to find the—reportedly obscure—control for opting out of the system.

Google says that while the blob is installed and the microphone is turned on, no audio data is transmitted to Google unless the “OK Google” feature in explicitly turned on in the browser. That’s almost surely true too but consider: Google gets a secret warrant from some 3-letter agency and suddenly the government is listening to everything you say. Pre-Snowden that might have been considered paranoid but now we know better.

Falkvinge has a more muscular objection over at Private Internet Access. He explicitly makes the same point: after Snowden, we should trust no one with the ability to listen in on our conversations. Even if the organization providing the capability is completely trustworthy, there is no reason to believe that it won’t be coerced into spying for the government. Nor is there any guarantee that the capability won’t be exploited by criminal elements.

You’d think Google would understand all this and realize that audio searches just aren’t worth the danger to privacy that comes with them. Apparently not.

Glenn Greenwald has a blistering evisceration of the recent (UK) Sunday Times front page article claiming that the Russians and Chinese have cracked the Top Secret cache of Snowden documents and that MI6 is pulling out their officers to prevent them from being killed. One Home Official official even claimed that Snowden had blood on his hands although the government admits that there is no evidence of anyone being harmed.

I.F. Stone famously said, “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” This appears to be a case in point. The article depends entirely on anonymous British officials without a shred of evidence for their lurid claims.

Although Greenwald’s diatribe is mainly aimed at what he considers journalistic malfeasance, he does describe many of the factual problems with the article. First, Snowden has always insisted that when he left Hong Kong he took no documents with him specifically so that the couldn’t be forced to turn them over to hostile governments. He gave the documents to Greenwald and Laura Poitras but kept no copies for himself.

Then they claim that David Miranda, Greenwald’s spouse, was seized at Heathrow Airport with 58,000 stolen documents after he visited Snowden in Moscow in 2013. The problem is that Miranda hadn’t been in Moscow in 2013 and, in fact, had been stopped at Heathrow after he visited Poitras in Germany.

They also report that Snowden stole 1.7 million documents but even the NSA says that they don’t know how many he took. The 1.7 million figure is an estimate of what he had access to, not what he took.

Greenwald’s article is a fascinating read and well worth your time, especially if you need your eyes opened as to the veracity of what passes for reporting on the Snowden matter.

As they say on those television offers, “But wait; there’s more!” Craig Murray, who has extensive experience in these matters, has an outstanding post on Five Reasons the MI6 Story is a Lie. The most important of these are that the quotes from “knowledgeable sources” use incorrect terminology that a real intelligence officer simply wouldn’t use and that the whole premise of MI6 officers being in danger is simply nonsense. That’s because 99% of such officers operate under diplomatic cover and are well known to the the Russians and Chinese. Furthermore, no officer has been killed by the Russians or Chinese in 50 years.

If you want to read a devastating takedown of the Sunday Times’ article, be sure to read Murray’s piece. It’s terrific.

UPDATE: MI-5 → MI6