A North Carolina family is demanding answers.

North Carolina prosecutors promised Monday to get to the truth — “wherever the truth leads”—  in the death of a mentally ill teenager whose family claims police shot him in cold blood over the weekend.

Keith Vidal, 18, of Boiling Springs Lakes, was shot and killed Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

At least three law enforcement agencies responded after the family called for help just after noon, saying Vidal was in the midst of a schizophrenic episode.

Vidal was declared dead of a gunshot wound at a hospital.

Jerry Dove, chief of the Southport police, one of the responding agencies, said at a news conference that Detective Byron Vassey, a nine-year veteran of the department, had been placed on administrative leave. He wouldn’t say whether Vassey was believed to be the officer who fired the shot.

[ … ]

Mark Wilsey, the young man’s stepfather, told reporters that the family called police to help subdue Vidal because he was holding a small screwdriver and threatening to fight his mother during a schizophrenic episode.

But the situation appeared to be under control, with two officers restraining the 90-pound Vidal, when the third officer arrived and shot Vidal point-blank, Wilsey contended.

“Then all of a sudden, this Southport cop came, walked in the house [and said]: ‘I don’t have time for this. Tase him. Let’s get him out of here,'” Wilsey said.

An officer used a stun gun on Vidal, “he hit the ground [and] this guy shot him,” Wilsey said.

Wilsey said that when he demanded to know why his stepson had been shot, the officer replied, “‘Well, I’m protecting my officers.'”

According to a report at The Daily Caller, Vidal was pinned on the ground by two officers when the third said “we don’t have time for this,” and shot him.  There was never any report to dispatchers of a problem.

The first unit on scene reported a confrontation in the hallway, but told Brunswick County Dispatchers several times that everything was OK. Unit 104 from Southport arrived on the scene at 12:48:41, fourteen minutes after the first officer had already been on scene. Seventy seconds later, Unit 104 radioed out that he had to fire shots at the subject in order to defend himself.

The event report mirrors what family members told the media. Wilsey said his family called the police to help with his schizophrenic son Keith Vidal who had a small screwdriver in his hand. Officers used at Taser on Vidal and then shot him, according to Wilsey.

Wilsey said officers came into their home after they called for backup help when Vidal was having a schizophrenic incident.

Wilsey said officers had his son down on the ground after the teen was tased a few times and an officer said, “we don’t have time for this.” That’s when Wilsey says the officer shot in between the officers holding the teen down, killing his son.

This report is even more detailed.  Two officers had him down on the floor, and the third officer, despite his claiming to think of the safety of “his” officers, shot in between the two officers who were holding Vidal down.  And just as a reminder, Vidal was a mere 90 pounds, only ten more than my dog.  The only person I ever knew who was 90 pounds had anorexia.

This has all the marks of cold blooded murder (at least second degree murder).  Yet I expect the blue wall to close in behind the officer who fired the shot, the flow of information to dry up, and no charges ever filed even if the officers lose their jobs.

We’ll see and I will continue to track this.  But this is the sort of thing people are coming to expect from police.  We already know never to talk to the police.  People generally learn the hard way, but learn they will.  Do not call the police even when you need help.  You just might die or get some innocent person shot.

At least, that’s the message being sent by law enforcement all over America.

NJ.com:

Gov. Chris Christie continues to support New Jersey’s gun-control laws, a spokesman said today, even as his attorney general declines to defend one of the toughest laws of all in a major case before the state Supreme Court.

Twice last year, the Republican governor’s administration did not defend a state law on handgun permits that was being challenged in state appellate courts, attorneys in the cases and court officials told The Star-Ledger today.

Instead, Christie left it to county prosecutors to defend the state’s handgun law against constitutional challenges — a legal move that experts say is rare in New Jersey.

One of the cases, a lawsuit brought by Richard Pantano of Monmouth County, is now pending before the state Supreme Court. Christie’s attorney general — who usually defends all state laws in civil cases — is not participating in that case.

A spokesman for the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office today confirmed they will defend the law instead of the attorney general.

In a separate case decided Monday, an appeals court upheld two gun-control measures and noted the attorney general “regrettably” declined to defend the state’s laws despite being the state’s “chief law enforcement officer.” The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office defended them instead.

“The governor supports New Jersey’s already tough gun laws,” Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said today …

Pantano’s case is probably the most important gun rights case ever brought in New Jersey, and concerns the state of New Jersey being a may-issue state and whether a citizen must prove to the CLEO that there is documented peril before getting a concealed carry permit.

Absent.  That’s where Chris Christie’s attorney general is.  Absent without leave, or if you wish UA (unauthorized absence).  Oh, the attorney general has the approval from Christie to be absent, but not the electorate.

Remember, this is the man who would be running for President of the U.S.  He supports New Jersey’s strong gun laws, but he doesn’t want to show the rest of red state America that he does by giving the progressive media a chance to highlight his gun grabber credentials before the world.

He is a coward, and his cowardliness doesn’t change the fact that he is a gun grabber from way back.  He made is fame in New Jersey pushing tough gun laws.  America should remember his duplicity when it comes time to enter the voting booth.

Prior: Chris Christie On Guns Tag

We’ve already discussed a couple of horrible embarrassments uncovered in the ruling on the New York SAFE Act gun ban recently issued by Judge Skretny, but more on that in a moment.

My brother Keith is a graduate of Emory Law School and practicing attorney in Georgia, and clerked for a federal judge.  I know that he has fealty to scholarship and takes his commitment to study, hard work and defensible and logical prose very seriously.  That said, lawyers take it on the chin, and properly so, and my brother once told me the best lawyer joke I ever heard (“99.99% of all lawyers give the rest of us a bad name”).  We’ll come back to this later.

David Codrea is covering John Lott’s analysis of the ruling by Judge Skretny, and has some excerpts and observations that warrant our attention.

“The decision relied heavily on testimony by George Mason University criminology professor Chris Koper, who argued ‘that the criminal use of assault weapons declined after the federal assault-weapons ban was enacted in 1994, independently of trends in gun crime,’” Lott wrote. “But Koper’s two studies on the 1994 federal assault-weapons ban don’t support his claims.”

They state:

“[T]he evidence is not strong enough for us to conclude that there was any meaningful effect [of the weapons ban],” the initial study reported.

“[W]e cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence,” the second study concluded. “And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

John Lott and I had an odd run-in several months ago, and he has with Mike Vanderboegh as well.  But not being trifling or holding grudges, let’s observe that Lott’s analysis is important.  So one important feature of the analysis is that the very studies cited by the Judge do not bear out the claims.  But then there is this gem.  The ruling also cites the online magazine Mother Jones.  Just so that you heard that, let’s repeat it.  Judge Skretny’s ruling uses information from … Mother … Jones!

Earlier we learned from Kurt Hofmann that there is logical contradiction in the ruling.  The very logical process the Judge uses to deem the magazine cartridge limit in the SAFE law “arbitrary” isn’t applied to the guns themselves, and should have been.  Furthermore, we’ve seen that the Judge Skretny’s ruling invokes the ridiculous and laughable notion of spray firing from the hip (for semiautomatic weapons, no less) to rule pistol grips on long guns to be legitimately within the sweep of the law, ignoring (or simply not learning) that no one, not military or civilian, spray fires from the hip, and such a practice would not only be the most ineffective thing a rogue shooter could do, it would get you permanently kicked out of every range in America, and for very good reason.

So the list of silly, ridiculous, sophomoric stunts in the ruling is growing.  First, there is the notion of pistol grips and spray firing from the hip; second, the failure to consistently apply the same logic to guns as he does magazines; third, misinterpretation of the very studies he cites to support his conclusions.  Finally, the use of anything from Mother Jones in a legal ruling certainly must be a tacit admission of bankruptcy of thought and ability to do analysis (and for the record, even with my admittedly incomplete assessment of mass shootings, I do take issue with the completeness of the Mother Jones assessment which leaves out the Hartford Beer Distributors shooting, the Geneva County massacre, the Texas Tower shooting [Charles Whitman, who used bolt action long guns] due to the dates of inclusion, and others).

The ruling is quickly becoming a laughingstock.  I am wondering if these Judges just turn over their hardest work to juvenile clerks who get their news from Jon Stewart, Daily Kos and Mother Jones?  So returning to the joke my brother told me, there is sometimes profound truth in humor, no?

Related:

Guns And The Mentally Ill: A Professional Assessment

New York, Pistol Grips And Spray Firing

Kurt Hofmann, In Upholding NY’s SAFE Act, Judge Makes Surprising Inadvertent Admission

David Codrea, Federal Judge Upholding SAFE Act Gun Ban Relied On Unsupported Assumptions

NBC:

The Obama administration is proposing two more executive actions that it says will help prevent individuals who are prohibited from having a gun for mental health reasons from obtaining a firearm.

The Department of Justice, arguing that current federal law contains terminology about mental health issues that is too vague,  proposed a regulation that would clarify who is ineligible to possess a firearm for specific situations related to mental health, like commitment to a mental institution. “In addition to providing general guidance on federal law, these clarifications will help states determine what information should be made accessible to the federal background check system, which will, in turn, strengthen the system’s reliability and effectiveness,” the administration said in a fact sheet distributed to reporters.

The second executive action, proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, would allow some medical organizations more leeway to report “limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands” to the federal background check system. “The proposed rule will not change the fact that seeking help for mental health problems or getting treatment does not make someone legally prohibited from having a firearm,” the White House added.

Because, you know, mental health professionals can use their skills so well as a predictor of propensity to violence, oh, er, uh, because mass shootings are a function of mentally unstable people who just suddenly snap, oh, er, well, whatever.  Everybody just shut up.  At least they’re doing something about something.  And that’s what we all want our government to do, right?  Something?

Eugene Volokh:

Laws that ban so-called “assault weapons” often define them with reference to various features, such as a rifle’s having a bayonet mount or “a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon” (to quote the New York assault weapon ban upheld by N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Cuomo (W.D.N.Y. Dec. 31, 2013)). One reason given for focusing on rifles with such pistol grips is that, in the words of the court, this “feature[] aid shooters when ‘spray firing’ from the hip.” … I’m not an expert on firearms tactics, but I’m very skeptical of this.

Eugene isn’t merely asking the question in a vacuum.  It’s right there in the ruling:

But for the contested features, like a pistol grip and thumbhole stock, New York points to evidence that these features aid shooters when “spray firing” from the hip. (Bruen Decl., ¶ 19); see Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1262–63 (quoting Siebel Testimony, supra). As the Second Circuit has held, “This factor aims to identify those rifles whose pistol grips are designed to make such spray firing from the hip particularly easy.”

Eugene is skeptical because that’s one of the stupidest things I have ever read anywhere, not just in a legal ruling.  Spray firing from the hip.  And the ruling seems to rely on that explanation – and not just for real assault rifles (the formal definition of which we have discussed, including selective fire), but for semi-automatic weapons.  Semi-automatic weapons!  Spray firing from the hip.

This is not intended or taught in any tactical maneuver in any branch of the military that I’m aware of, including and most of all Marine Corps squad rushes.  It would be a stupid, juvenile waste of ammunition and would get people killed (friendly more than anyone else).  Furthermore, a rogue shooter in America wouldn’t hit anything (except by accident) with such a tactic.  It would be the least effective thing a rogue shooter could possibly do.

The Weapons Warrant Officer for Marine Corps 2/6 wouldn’t allow their deployment to Iraq in 2007 (where my son was a SAW gunner) without the SAWs being equipped with optics.  And this judge relied on the notion of “spray firing” to make his ruling, marking one of the dumbest things ever to go down in the annals of legal history.

Moron.  Next time just ask somebody who knows this stuff.

David Codrea:

Much of the current mess we find ourselves in can be attributed, at least in part, to gun owner detachment, apathy, and unwillingness to personally share in the burdens of gun rights activism. That’s a shame, because it really doesn’t require a lot of effort to get and stay engaged, and the personal rewards and friendships made can be invaluable.

Of course, he’s right, and this could be extrapolated to lack of involvement in education (I am an advocate of home schooling for reasons I will explain at some point in the future), lack of involvement in the politics of wealth redistribution, and so on down the line.  I have chosen to spend at least some of my free time (there isn’t much of it) on gun rights.  As I’ve said, I write until I cannot do it any more since I have a day job, and annoy many of my closest friends by shamelessly pimping my content (sometimes I wonder why I still have any friends).  But just when it seems that it’s all a waste, we need a sermon like the one David is preaching.  Go read his piece.

One more thing concerning David.  All I can say is “come South, young man, come South.”

Kurt Hofmann:

And again, Judge Skretny clearly knows that a law requiring that magazines not be loaded with more than seven rounds gives a clear tactical advantage to the criminal willing to violate that law, over the “law abiding gun owner” who is not willing to do so, but seems somehow to have failed to realize that a law banning “assault weapons” similarly favors the criminal who ignores the law.

Oh, this is rich.  Kurt is doing what he does best.  He points out that the very reasoning the stupid judge uses to deem the magazine cartridge limit “arbitrary” isn’t applied to the guns themselves, and should have been.  And this judge is supposed to be a degreed lawyer with judgment and wisdom.  Yea, not so much.  Kurt is a better one that he is.  Read Kurt’s assessment here.  I’ll have more observations on this ruling later.

Mike Vanderboegh is still pressing ahead with his toys for totalitarians program.

Looney said he was informed by Capitol Police Sgt. Timothy Boyle of the present late Monday.

The majority leader said he didn’t accept it and a spokesman for the police said the three empty magazines have been turned over to the Connecticut State Police major crime squad.

Sorry, but this doesn’t do it for me.  Someone took possession of it, and I want to know who?  And why aren’t they being prosecuted under the new law?  I repeat: someone took possession prior to the police.  If they don’t prosecute, they are ignoring enforcement of the law.  I want to see a Connecticut resident in prison for it – preferably someone associated with making the law to begin with.

Instapundit:

Concealed carry means fewer murders, says new study.

Of course, but the first thing to remember when reading these studies and citing them is that they will be followed by another “study” done by some progressive group of researchers, and regardless of what the data proves, we have God-given rights to possess weapons.  My rights do not depend on data to substantiate or undergird them.

I had said before that The Daily Caller gun pieces annoy me.  Here is another example of why.  The world’s greatest hunting rifle.  They’ve found it.  The … world’s … greatest!  Ever!  It reads like they’re shilling for the company which produces it (and I won’t even mention it by name, regardless of how good it is supposed to be).  Folks, when I purchase a gun or ammunition I’ll give the low down – the good, the bad and the ugly (I like Rock River Arms, but I hate their customer service, and I love my Springfield Armory XDm and their customer service, but I had an out of round barrel on my .45 after 2000-3000 rounds, and I absolutely hate Armscor ammunition because of the bad manufacturing tolerances, and I have a review coming soon on my Kel-Tec PMR-30 that will have both good and bad, etc.).  Because I don’t shill for anybody.

Infowars has a piece on the U.S. government purchasing Potassium-Iodine tablets for Fukushima fallout in order to block the uptake of radioactive iodine to the thyroid.  But there’s a problem.  The longest-lived radioactive iodine isotope is I-131 which is about 8 days.  The radioactive iodine from Fukushima is all gone (unless it is a daughter product from the decay of Tellurium, but that is mostly gone too).  Folks, don’t ever put anything in your mouth and swallow it because the government says to.

Washington Times:

Magpul Industries, a firearms-accessories maker, announced Thursday that it will relocate its extensive manufacturing facilities to Texas and Wyoming, in angry response to the Colorado legislature’s passage of sweeping gun-control legislation in 2013.

At the same time, the company plans to maintain a toehold in Colorado in order to continue to fight the gun bills passed by the Democratic-dominated state legislature and signed in March by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

“Moving operations to states that support our culture of individual liberties and personal responsibility is important,” said Magpul CEO Richard Fitzpatrick, who started the privately-held company in 1999 from the basement of his home in Longmont, Colo. “This relocation will also improve business operations and logistics as we utilize the strengths of Texas and Wyoming in our expansion.”

Magpul officials plan to split up the company’s corporate and manufacturing arms, both of which are now located in Erie, Colo. The corporate headquarters will relocate to Texas, and a site-selection committee has narrowed the final destination to three locations in the state’s north-central region.

Meanwhile, Magpul’s manufacturing and distribution facility will move about 80 miles north to Cheyenne, Wyo. Company officials say they plan to lease a 58,000-square-foot building for two to three years while they construct a 100,000-square-foot custom facility in the Cheyenne Business Parkway.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, a Republican, said in a statement that “Wyoming and Magpul are a great match.”

“Bringing an innovative and growing manufacturing operating to Wyoming is a significant step for the state,” Mr. Mead said. “We offer Magpul an attractive tax environment, stable and reasonable regulations, not to mention a firm commitment to uphold the Second Amendment.”

Magpul must have gotten some deal on taxes to have decided to split the manufaturing and corporate offices like this.  Unless I knew the details, it sounds like an odd move.

Trust me when I say that we’ve been watching.  Magpul promised to leave, and we would have been furious with them if they had broken that promise.  My next rifle is a Winchester Model 70 Sporter, .270, made right down the road from me in Columbia, S.C., at the FN plant.  It’s on order and paid for.  I liked what I saw, but one factor in my decision was to avoid purchasing a Remington from New York, first because of the union shop, and second because I won’t reward a communist state like New York.

We gun owners are patient, but diligent to reward those with whom we agree.  Hopefully, all other gun and parts manufacturers are watching.

First in dealing with this subject, a bit of background is in order for my readers who were not around for my military coverage and commentary.  My son Daniel was in the 2/6 Marines and conducted a combat tour of Iraq in 2007 to Fallujah.  At this time, the foreign fighters were retreating from Ramadi due to robust Marine Corps (and other) operations there combined with the so-called tribal awakening.  Fallujah was a bad place, and the baddest of the fighters had ensconced themselves there.

The people were so aligned with the insurgents that upon the initial patrols by the Marine Corps, the Marines found themselves to be surrounded by the children of the city, carrying black balloons, the balloons being used to assist the insurgents to sight mortar fire.  As I said, it was a bad, bad place.  The people were willing to send their children out to assist the insurgents.  My son was a SAW gunner, and in addition to patrols and other city-wide operations, he shot insurgents crossing the Euphrates river attempting to enter Fallujah.

Robert Bateman isn’t limited to one idiotic article (indeed, he has written a multitude of them) – he has penned yet another one.

Way back in 2007, I personally invited Wayne LaPierre, the director of the National Rifle Association, to live in Baghdad. I had been there, less than 24 months earlier, and I thought LaPierre might appreciate the opportunity to live in a society which lived up to his standards. Surprisingly, he never took this offer up, nor did he ever visit the troops in Iraq, or Afghanistan for that matter, which is, well, normal for him. He likes his guns, but he is really not cool with being surrounded by them, like he would have been, had he ever visited our troops in Baghdad, or Helmand, or Kabul…or basically anywhere.

In Iraq, every single household (with a male that is) may have one assault rifle. This seems to be Mr. Wayne LaPierre’s ideal. And interestingly, we have a country (a couple, actually) where his vision exists. Iraq and Afghanistan.

This article isn’t really about Wayne LaPierre so much as it’s about Bateman’s false presuppositions.  So I talked with Daniel today and he gives me the following assessment.

Bateman is a dumb ass.  The insurgency in Fallujah ended because we locked down the city and made it to where the people had to deal with it or live in utter isolation from everyone else and with no means of transportation, with two ways into and out of the city.

Lt. Col. William F. Mullen (now Col. Mullen) was the unmitigated sovereign of the city.  Nothing happened without his approval.  The Iraqis may have had a right to automobiles too, but we took them away.  If Mullen had wanted to confiscate AK-47s from the folk we could have done that.  The chain of command in Baghdad left us alone, and we did what we wanted to do.

Every family had a fully functional, fully automatic AK-47.  It wasn’t a problem.  I was never shot at except by the insurgents, and mainly the foreign fighters – bad people from Syria, Egypt, Iran, blacks from Africa, and some fighters with slanted eyes from the Far East.  I looked in the face of every man I killed, and some of them had slanted eyes and were of Far Eastern descent.

We did confiscate some weapons caches, but only the ones hidden by the insurgents when the people gave us the intel.  The AK-47s were used by some of the people to fight the insurgents, but they weren’t used on us.  We were fighting the insurgents, and mainly foreign fighters.  We were not afraid of the AK-47s owned by the families.  The families helped us shut down the insurgency when we made it clear that they had to do that.

Now, it may be that this experience doesn’t apply to Baghdad, but that’s the point, isn’t it?  Guns are just machines, and can be used for good or ill.  Because Bateman cannot control people like he wishes (as the good social planner we wants to be, given that the Army has turned into a cadre of fruitcakes and social “scientists” – I use the word sarcastically), he wants to control their machines.

But this doesn’t work either.  The foreign fighters brought their own weapons with them.  The families would have been left utterly defenseless without their own AK-47s, which is the way Bateman wants us left.  Bateman wants us defenseless because that’s what the state wants.  The concern to them isn’t our own protection – it is the protection of the state from it’s people.

So that summarizes a brief conversation with my son.  Much more could be said, but I’ll leave it there.  Oh, and to Mr. Bateman, Daniel thinks you’re a dumb ass.  Or did I mention that already?

NYT:

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that New York’s strict new gun laws, including an expanded ban on assault weapons, were constitutional, but struck down a provision forbidding gun owners to load more than seven rounds into a magazine.

The ruling offered a victory to gun control advocates at the end of a year in which efforts to pass new legislation on the federal level suffered a high-profile defeat in Congress, although some new restrictions were approved in state capitals.

The judge, William M. Skretny of Federal District Court in Buffalo, said expanded bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines were legally sound because they served to “further the state’s important interest in public safety.”

Mike Vanderboegh is also covering this.  I’ve told you guys before – really, I’ve told you before – that it is a mistake to look to federal courts and the Second Amendment to protect your rights at the state level.  It’s the wrong strategy.  All politics is local, and that includes gun politics.

Kurt Homfmann resolves to be a gun criminal.  What will the gun owners of New York do?

I’m going to provide a running list of recent reports concerning NSA spying on Americans, and then some commentary at the end.

The NSA Back Door to NIST:

Through the Snowden disclosures, the NIST standard for pseudo-random number generation has fallen into disrepute. Here I describe the back door to the NIST standard for pseudo-random number generation in elementary and mathematically precise terms. The NIST standard offers three methods for pseudo-random number generation [NIST]. My remarks are limited to the third of the three methods, which is based on elliptic curves.

This is a scholarly paper, and I simply don’t have the time to explain how random number generators work (I have seen the coding and have several algorithms).  I also don’t have the time to explain public and private encryption keys and how they work.  Any attempt to explain this would run way past the usual time Site Meter shows that I have readers.  But suffice it to say that random number generators are compromised.  Thus, any communication you use in which you depend on such methods has also been compromised and isn’t reliable.

ExtremeTech:

Security researchers have successfully broken one of the most secure encryption algorithms, 4096-bit RSA, by listening – yes, with a microphone — to a computer as it decrypts some encrypted data. The attack is fairly simple and can be carried out with rudimentary hardware. The repercussions for the average computer user are minimal, but if you’re a secret agent, power user, or some other kind of encryption-using miscreant, you may want to reach for the Rammstein when decrypting your data.

This acoustic cryptanalysis, carried out by Daniel Genkin, Adi Shamir (who co-invented RSA), and Eran Tromer, uses what’s known as a side channel attack. A side channel is an attack vector that is non-direct and unconventional, and thus hasn’t been properly secured. For example, your pass code prevents me from directly attacking your phone — but if I could work out your pass code by looking at the greasy smudges on your screen, that would be a side channel attack. In this case, the security researchers listen to the high-pitched (10 to 150 KHz) sounds produced by your computer as it decrypts data.

This might sound crazy, but with the right hardware it’s actually not that hard. For a start, if you know exactly what frequency to listen out for, you can use low- and high-pass filters to ensure that you only have the sounds that emanate from your PC while the CPU decrypts data. (In case you were wondering, the acoustic signal is actually generated by the CPU’s voltage regulator, as it tries to maintain a constant voltage during wildly varied and bursty loads). Then, once you have the signal, it’s time for the hard bit: Actually making sense of it.

Without going into too much detail, the researchers focused on a very specific encryption implementation: The GnuPG (an open/free version of PGP) 1.x implementation of the RSA cryptosystem. With some very clever cryptanalysis, the researchers were able to listen for telltale signs that the CPU was decrypting some data, and then listening to the following stream of sounds to divine the decryption key. The same attack would not work on different cryptosystems or different encryption software — they’d have to start back at the beginning and work out all of the tell-tale sounds from scratch.

Hard and a lot of work, but feasible.  My oldest son Joshua responds this back to me concerning this article.

Yeah, saw this on reddit. Physical security is just as important as digital. Also, the Debian distro just released a new version that fixes this by generating pink noise, although if they know the algorithm used to generate the randomness in pink noise they could still filter it.Right now they’re working on using thermal heat/noise generated by PC components as an external factor to seed random number generators.Still, the takeaway is that if the government wants access to the info, they’re going to get it one way or another. Russia just placed an order for typewriters so they could begin archiving sensitive material on paper instead of digitally because paper is more difficult to exfiltrate.

AP:

One of the slides described how the NSA can plant malicious software onto Apple Inc.’s iPhone, giving American intelligence agents the ability to turn the popular smartphone into a pocket-sized spy.

Another slide showcased a futuristic-sounding device described as a “portable continuous wave generator,” a remote-controlled device which – when paired with tiny electronic implants – can bounce invisible waves of energy off keyboards and monitors to see what is being typed, even if the target device isn’t connected to the Internet.

A third slide showcased a piece of equipment called NIGHTSTAND, which can tamper with wireless Internet connections from up to 8 miles (13 kilometers) away.

An NSA spokeswoman, Vanee Vines, said that she wasn’t aware of Appelbaum’s presentation, but that in general should would not comment on “alleged foreign intelligence activities.”

“As we’ve said before, NSA’s focus is on targeting the communications of valid foreign intelligence targets – 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.”

Spiegel (select quotes):

The insert method and other variants of QUANTUM are closely linked to a shadow network operated by the NSA alongside the Internet, with its own, well-hidden infrastructure comprised of “covert” routers and servers. It appears the NSA also incorporates routers and servers from non-NSA networks into its covert network by infecting these networks with “implants” that then allow the government hackers to control the computers remotely. (Click here to read a related article on the NSA’s “implants”.)

In this way, the intelligence service seeks to identify and track its targets based on their digital footprints. These identifiers could include certain email addresses or website cookies set on a person’s computer. Of course, a cookie doesn’t automatically identify a person, but it can if it includes additional information like an email address. In that case, a cookie becomes something like the web equivalent of a fingerprint.

Once TAO teams have gathered sufficient data on their targets’ habits, they can shift into attack mode, programming the QUANTUM systems to perform this work in a largely automated way. If a data packet featuring the email address or cookie of a target passes through a cable or router monitored by the NSA, the system sounds the alarm. It determines what website the target person is trying to access and then activates one of the intelligence service’s covert servers, known by the codename FOXACID.

This NSA server coerces the user into connecting to NSA covert systems rather than the intended sites. In the case of Belgacom engineers, instead of reaching the LinkedIn page they were actually trying to visit, they were also directed to FOXACID servers housed on NSA networks. Undetected by the user, the manipulated page transferred malware already custom tailored to match security holes on the target person’s computer …

At the same time, it is in no way true to say that the NSA has its sights set exclusively on select individuals. Of even greater interest are entire networks and network providers, such as the fiber optic cables that direct a large share of global Internet traffic along the world’s ocean floors.

One document labeled “top secret” and “not for foreigners” describes the NSA’s success in spying on the “SEA-ME-WE-4” cable system. This massive underwater cable bundle connects Europe with North Africa and the Gulf states and then continues on through Pakistan and India, all the way to Malaysia and Thailand. The cable system originates in southern France, near Marseille. Among the companies that hold ownership stakes in it are France Telecom, now known as Orange and still partly government-owned, and Telecom Italia Sparkle.

The document proudly announces that, on Feb. 13, 2013, TAO “successfully collected network management information for the SEA-Me-We Undersea Cable Systems (SMW-4).” With the help of a “website masquerade operation,” the agency was able to “gain access to the consortium’s management website and collected Layer 2 network information that shows the circuit mapping for significant portions of the network.”

It appears the government hackers succeeded here once again using the QUANTUMINSERT method.

The document states that the TAO team hacked an internal website of the operator consortium and copied documents stored there pertaining to technical infrastructure …

Take, for example, when they intercept shipping deliveries. If a target person, agency or company orders a new computer or related accessories, for example, TAO can divert the shipping delivery to its own secret workshops. The NSA calls this method interdiction. At these so-called “load stations,” agents carefully open the package in order to load malware onto the electronics, or even install hardware components that can provide backdoor access for the intelligence agencies. All subsequent steps can then be conducted from the comfort of a remote computer.

These minor disruptions in the parcel shipping business rank among the “most productive operations” conducted by the NSA hackers, one top secret document relates in enthusiastic terms. This method, the presentation continues, allows TAO to obtain access to networks “around the world.”

Now for my own commentary.  I overheard a television commercial over Christmas state something like “we believe in helping children reach their creative potentials and then creating their own future,” or some claptrap like that.

I don’t believe that, as I’ve explained before.  The thieves stealing your information and invading your privacy were once creative children too.  Creativity can be turned towards good or evil.  The moral rot and decay in America has produced the totalitarianism under which we now suffer.  The NSA is a sign of the wickedness of our society.  I am not giving excuse to individuals inside the NSA who do this, for it is not society but individuals who do these things.  But I’m remarking on the general cultural, religious, theological and moral darkness that pervades our world.

I am not sanguine about our immediate future.  Oh yes, I have guns and ammunition.  And I know how to use them.  So do a lot of my readers.  But regardless of what happens in our near term and far term future, without addressing the moral rot that caused this situation, we cannot move forward – not with a new constitution, not with a constitutional convention, not with a new revolution.  These things don’t change the heart of man.

The nearest I can see to a solution, albeit a temporary band aid, is secession, in part because of the fact that my location, i.e., the South, has not yet so completely thrown off the garments of our orthodox Christian heritage.  This is not so much a solution for other places, which would doubtless devolve into totalitarianism and anarchy in dialectic tension in short order.

I know this is a long way from the original subject of the post, but with no hesitation and no apology, I unequivocally assert that if you believe that all of your training, all of your tactics, all of your firearms, all of your ammunition, and all of your passion for whatever you have passion, are some sort of fix for moral darkness, you are sadly mistaken, and you will eventually learn this.

This country has far greater problems than how many guns I own.  The kind of behavior we are witnessing from the NSA is consistent with Nazi Germany, Communist China, the Soviet Union and North Korea.  The America I once knew has almost faded from memory, and exists no more.  I have hope that one day it will be born anew, but I know that it will not happen within the present moral darkness and relativism.

UPDATE: The Daily Dot.  The NSA has nearly complete backdoor access to Apple’s iPhone.

UPDATE #2: Zero Hedge, How The NSA Hacks Your iPhone.