Encrypt your Facebook sessions to protect data when it takes the scenic route through China

Originally published 3/25/11 on lubbockonline.com/glasshouses

CIO Online reports that Facebook traffic coming from AT&T servers was accidentally routed through China and North Korea. This might not be a concern, but unless you're connecting to Facebook using an encrypted connection everything that you do can be monitored by network operators. China is known for spying on it's users, and once your data is on the Chinese network, it's just like any Chinese users data. Any data you look at on Facebook could be monitored and/or saved for later analysis as it goes through China.

But if you encrypt your data, the network operators can't see it. Encrypting your login to Facebook is easy. Just make sure your Facebook bookmark is set to "https://www.facebook.com" and everytime you login your username and password will be encrypted. But once you login Facebook defaults back to an unencrypted connection. Facebook does realize that you may want to have everything you do on Facebook encrypted, and have a setting to allow that. Go to the 'Account' menu,select 'Account Settings' and scroll down to 'Account Security' then click on 'change'. Check the "Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible" box.

It's almost always a good idea to use encryption on the web. It doesn't use much processing overhead and protects your information as it goes from point 'A' to point 'B'. If you use Firefox there's even an add-on called "https everywhere" that will use https to connect to any website that support https.

Encrypt your Facebook sessions to protect data when it takes the scenic route through China

Originally published 3/25/11 on lubbockonline.com/glasshouses

CIO Online reports that Facebook traffic coming from AT&T servers was accidentally routed through China and North Korea. This might not be a concern, but unless you're connecting to Facebook using an encrypted connection everything that you do can be monitored by network operators. China is known for spying on it's users, and once your data is on the Chinese network, it's just like any Chinese users data. Any data you look at on Facebook could be monitored and/or saved for later analysis as it goes through China.

But if you encrypt your data, the network operators can't see it. Encrypting your login to Facebook is easy. Just make sure your Facebook bookmark is set to "https://www.facebook.com" and everytime you login your username and password will be encrypted. But once you login Facebook defaults back to an unencrypted connection. Facebook does realize that you may want to have everything you do on Facebook encrypted, and have a setting to allow that. Go to the 'Account' menu,select 'Account Settings' and scroll down to 'Account Security' then click on 'change'. Check the "Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible" box.

It's almost always a good idea to use encryption on the web. It doesn't use much processing overhead and protects your information as it goes from point 'A' to point 'B'. If you use Firefox there's even an add-on called "https everywhere" that will use https to connect to any website that support https.

Wikileaks: What happened to freedom of speech?

Wikileaks publishing of 250,000+ diplomatic cables is a defining moment for the Western world. A young soldier allegedly stole volumes of classified and secret information from the U.S. government. The documents were acquired by Wikileaks, who is in the process of putting them all on the web.

Why do I call this a defining moment? Because now the United States' dirty laundry is being aired, and how we deal with it will say much about our ideals and our realities. I said we, and I said it for a reason. We, the citizens of the U.S., now have access to some very damning diplomatic cables sent by our government. We see our government pressuring other governments to arrest and imprison the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks. Pressuring businesses to stop hosting Wikileaks.

From the cables we see that the U.S. is pushing to influence the internal policies of other countries. That could be considered an act of war.

So how are we going to react to our governments actions? Both those revealed in the cables and those revealed in our governments response to it? Are we going to sit back because there is nothing we can do, or are we going to make our voices heard and tell our elected representatives that we expect them to act in accordance with the finest ideals of our nation, not like playground bullies?

I strongly believe that just releasing the cables was irresponsible. But I also know that Mr. Assange is not a U.S. citizen and Wikileaks is not a U.S. company. He did not hire the soldier to get him secret U.S. documents. He didn't steal them himself. He runs a whistleblower site in a foreign country. The documents he received contained things that needed to be revealed. He revealed them. He did what whistleblowers do.

John Naughton of guardian.co.uk tells us that governments are going to have to learn to Live with the Wikileakable world or shut down the net. He reminds us that Hillary Clinton just last January gave a speech on the importance of the free flow of information is for citizens to hold governments accountable. I wonder if she sees the irony in our governments response to Wikileaks?

Yahoo operates using 'situational rights'

David Kravets of the 'Threat Level' blog at Wired.com reports that Yahoo is "arguing out of both sides of its web portal" in it's response to a suit filed by Chinese dissidents whose information was surrendered to Chinese authorities by Yahoo - resulting in their arrest and torture.

Yahoo is claiming that all it did is follow Chinese law - and that the First Amendment protects its right to deal with the Chinese government. Yahoo further argues that U.S. courts are not the proper place for the case, despite a U.S. statute allowing exactly this type of case. Kravets quotes Yahoo as saying:

"This is a lawsuit by citizens of China imprisoned for using the Internet in China to express political views in violation of China law. It is a political case challenging the laws and actions of the Chinese government," Yahoo told the court. "It has no place in the American courts."

That sounds legitimate, I suppose, from a corporate standpoint. If you ignore the fact that they would not have been imprisoned, or at least not as soon, if Yahoo hadn't ratted, er, provided the Chinese government with the information needed to locate them. It looks worse when Kravets provides a little background info on Yahoo's fress speech claims:

Yet two years ago, while citing the First Amendment, Yahoo went to the U.S. courts in a bid to prevent it from having to pay millions in fines levied by a French court for allowing French citizens to barter Nazi paraphernalia on its auction site _ a practice against French law.

That sounds like Yahoo wants to argue that free speech should be protected if you're selling stuff on their site, but not if you're complaining against your repressive government. Ignoring problems I have with the idea that selling = free speech, it sounds to me like Yahoo is having a serious case of corporate double standard. What do you think?