Hmmm... the C-Lion1 fibre optic cable that connects Helsinki in Finland & Rostock in Germany has been cut.... with suspicions falling (immediately) on Russia... The night before a similar link between Sweden & Lithuania was also cut.

So on one hand this looks like a programme of communicative disruption... but one might wonder whether its a sign of the start of something else (my old IR training leads me to pose the Q. at least).

#internet #communications #security

h/t FT

Password manager in the terminal, anyone? 🤚

🔒**passepartui**: A TUI for pass

🚀 Supports search/filtering, Vim-like navigation & OTPs

🦀 Written in Rust & built with @ratatui_rs

⭐ GitHub: github.com/kardwen/passepartui

#rustlang #ratatui #tui #pass #password #manager #terminal #commandline #security

wired.com/story/the-wired-guid…

Wired has published a guide to protecting yourself from surveillance by the US government

The guide discusses the potential increase in government surveillance under a second Trump administration and offers advice on upgrading personal privacy protections, including using end-to-end encrypted messengers and securing devices.

#privacy #security #civilrights

Hey everyone! A couple good things to remember:

Signal is your friend! signal.org/Be careful about what you post on corporate and federated social media. You don't need to self censor but you should take extra spicy discussions to something like Signal!

(people: please feel free to add hot tips for helping people keep things private!)

EDIT: It's definitely worth pointing out what I mean about "spicy". Expressing frustration in a way that could easily be misinterpreted by law enforcement? That's spicy! Planning a safe, legal protest? I'd argue that's spicy! That's the sort of thing I mean by this. No encryption or software is perfect; consider the level of risk when utilizing the tools.

But broadcasting stuff on social media can carry a lot of risk, so just... you know.

#security #secureCommunications

Signal Messenger: Speak Freely

Say "hello" to a different messaging experience. An unexpected focus on privacy, combined with all of the features you expect.

^{Signal Messenger}

You might wonder “Paco, are you sharing details about #election #security that you shouldn’t share?” I have a high regard for #Fairfax County #Virginia. They make a lot of their #voting training public. You can see the training that I was given on their YouTube channel. All the details I’m sharing are in that training.

I really think they do it right. I have no complaints about how the County does things. But sometimes I think State law is not great. So we follow the law but that can be annoying sometimes.

#electionday #election2024 #electionofficer #uspol

m.youtube.com/@fairfaxcountyel…

Fairfax County Election Officers

Election officer training videos from the Fairfax County Office of Elections

^YouTube

One of the main #election #security mechanisms is as old as time. Double ledger entry and independent verification at lots of steps.

The county knows how many ballots they sent us (1600 in this precinct). They come in shrink wrapped packs of 200. We open one pack at a time as we need to.

When we open a pack of blank ballots, even though we think the ballots were counted properly at the printer, we check. Two officers count them, then swap piles and check the count. We have high confidence in how many paper ballots really were present in the precinct.

At the end of the day, there is a thorough form we fill out that accounts for every single paper ballot in the room. Did it go into a scanner with a vote? Did it go into a provisional vote envelope? Was it spoiled? (Sometimes the machine can’t read it, or a person makes a mistake. We ask them to fill in every bubble so it isn’t clear who they might have meant to vote for. And we take that spoiled ballot and issue them a new blank) We know and must account for the disposition of every ballot.

At the end of the day, the sum of ballots in the machine + provisional ballots + spoiled ballots + blank unused ballots must add up to the total that were sent to us. It can happen that there’s a discrepancy. It’s usually something like a spoiled ballot that got thrown in the trash instead of being put in the right place.

The error rate is like 1, 2, or 3 out of 1600. We’re human, after all. But many times the error rate is 0. If you’re careful and follow instructions, it’s easy to be perfect.

#election2024 #electionday #uspol

Well, this is handy 🔥

🛡️ **nordvpn-tui**: TUI for NordVPN.

🚀 Browse, search, and select countries with Vim-like key bindings.

🦀 Written in Rust & built with @ratatui_rs

⭐ GitHub: github.com/Degra02/nordvpn-tui

#rustlang #ratatui #tui #terminal #vpn #security #network #tool #commandline

theverge.com/2024/10/25/242792…

United health group has just confirmed a data breach, with has affected over 100-Million people.

#DataBreach #privacy #Security

UnitedHealth data breach leaked info on over 100 million people

UnitedHealth’s Change Healthcare told the US Health Department it has sent over 100 million notices to people regarding the February ransomware breach.

^{Umar Shakir (The Verge)}