Digital Rights #2: How to disappear (digitally), PRC spies on Tibetan activists, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's view on 2020
Encryption, cryptocurrency, privacy-preserving tools, digital rights
Welcome to another edition of the Digital Rights newsletter, where I share a few links and resources around encryption, personal cybersecurity, and cryptocurrency, often with an international context. Hit reply if you have any questions or feedback :)
News
EFF Director Cindy Cohn On Warrantless Surveillance, Encryption And Financial Privacy With Bitcoin
I had the privilege of sitting down with Cindy Cohn for an exclusive interview with Forbes. Cindy is the director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation — she has been a leading technology+policy figure protecting digital rights for more than three decades.
She spoke to me about preserving end-to-end encryption against various threats, how the EFF is thinking about the current digital rights environment, the relationship between bitcoin and financial privacy, and finally, an update on Jewel vs. NSA, the marquee case challenging warrantless surveillance in the United States — for which she serves as counsel.
TA413 Leverages New FriarFox Browser Extension to Target the Gmail Accounts of Global Tibetan Organizations
An advanced state-driven organization, TA413, believed to be tied to the People’s Republic of China, has been caught phishing the Tibetan dispora. The goal was to get Tibetan activists to download an extension through Firefox that would essentially give the threat actors complete control over an inbox — from accessing emails to sending emails from compromised accounts.
It’s a constant reminder that certain communities are held to higher levels of scrutiny due to geopolitical circumstances — and to remain vigilant against well-resourced attackers who might attack anything from your browser to your devices.
Human Rights Foundation Announces $70,000 In Bitcoin Development Grants
An important consideration in the Bitcoin ecosystem are the developers who are maintaining the open-source code that powers the entire system — often underpaid and strongly principled, Bitcoin’s developers are critically responsible for its ability to guarantee security and (some) degree of privacy to transactions.
The Human Rights Foundation, a non-for-profit focused on human rights advocacy and blending new technologies, has been supporting Bitcoin developers with grants — the latest series focuses on bitcoin privacy content, Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs) — a way to implement smart-contract like logic to Bitcoin, and open-source key management for Bitcoin.
Resources
The Privacy, Security and OSInt Show
Michael Bazzell is fascinated with becoming digitally invisible. His podcast is a bite-size version of his 500-page reference guide on how to defend against a comprehensive suite of digital threats — though it’s very focused on US-based threat models, there are helpful resources on everything from open source intelligence gathering online, to problems with VPNs.