Can the FBI turn on the web cams of linux users?

[josipva]

And yet nearly every scientist will tell you that a lack of evidence is not proof of non existence. At one time, it was nearly taken as scientific fact that the sun revolved around the earth and the earth is flat. Every bit of science starts out as a theory, often without a shred of tangible proof with the hopes that someday they may be proven right within our limited understanding of how things work.

Not correct. Scientific theories may start without tangible proof, that doesn't mean there wasn't a crapload of math suggesting the idea was possible beforehand, or a mountain of fossils that indirectly point to the same conclusion. In real world, for a theory to become anything more than someone's fantasy requires a lot of work. No proper scientist goes: Hey, I think it may be possible I have a unicorn watching over me every night! Let's call it a theory and start researching!

[reCAPTCHA]

If you're asking if I was there to witness it, no I wasn't - and neither were the nearly 3 billion Christians today in person to witness the resurrected Christ. You get absolute, unmistakable knowledge of Christ when you surrender to Him.

The question most people have is - why should I surrender to Christ? My life is just fine without him - then they turn back and dive right into their sin... pride.... greed... lust.... anger....gluttony.... envy.... laziness.... These map into specific realities when they take form... popular among geeks would be enjoyment of pornography.... for instance, tagged along by masturbation. Some are married and cheat on their spouses.... Others are obese...

When you sin long enough, it becomes normal, and then we become resigned and desensitized to it to the point of being angry and defensive (skeptical, intellectual, whoring for agreement/admiration, etc,, is part of this too), just like you and a whole lot of others here are who would much rather enjoy their sin until death, and go straight to hell than turn away from it and enjoy eternal life with God, by accepting Christ's payment for sin, His atonement for all of humanity, by faith and repentance.

So if it looks like your life is "just fine" without surrendering to God (i.e. radical transformation of your identity/behavior)... that's something to ponder on (or not).

THAT is how you will find out whether Christ is a myth or not. And of course, you can try and overcome sin by surrendering to Muhammed, Allah (a moon god, nothing to do with God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), "Thor" (heheheheheh!), Zeus, Manitou (good one, didn't think of the native indians ).... or you can just create your own version of god... like the homosexuals did when they created the Queen James Bible . Heck, if I don't like the rules - I'm just gonna rewrite them!

You are pretty well disinformed. If you check basic information about Islam from Britannica, or wherever, except your silly sources, you'll find the totally different description of Allah. Muslims for example do not paint or imagine Allah (it is forbidden), and do not imagine him as a human or material being. Moon? He is actually described as a creator of everything. Like gravity, matter, the good, and the evil. Also he creates, and decides what is moral, and does whatever he wants.

Question to the administraion, and OP. What any of this has to do with cams and FBI? If you want to discuss moral, or what you like or don't, please open another thread. I also jumped in regrettably, so feel free to delete my off topic posts.

[steveriley]

... the topic of animal sacrifice ... animal sacrifices have ended ... Jesus Christ was the ultimate and perfect sacrifice ... the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world ... since the animals did no wrong, they died in place of the one performing the sacrifice to atone for the sins of men ... Jesus Christ also did no wrong but willingly gave Himself to die for the sins of mankind ... Jesus Christ took our sin upon Himself and died in our place ... God made him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God ... accomplished on the cross, we can receive forgiveness ... Animal sacrifices were commanded by God so that the individual could experience forgiveness of sin ... the animal died in place of the sinner, but only temporarily, which is why the sacrifices needed to be offered over and over ... Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrificial substitute once for all time ...

Why do religious people always seemed so obsessed with death? I just don't get it. Death, death, death. Ugh!

[dee.]

Question to the administraion, and OP. What any of this has to do with cams and FBI?

You must be new here...

[cbgoding]

Just because you can gather agreement with others, doesn't make it untrue.

I know, I know. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Insert burden of proof argument here. However... The majority of atheists I've met, myself included, are agnostic atheists. Gnostic = knowing, agnostic = not knowing. We don't claim to know that there isn't a god, but we see no evidence of one, and live our lives accordingly.

Same goes for souls, ghosts, heaven, hell, unicorns, magic, etc.

[Luke]

We now know how the NSA reflashes BIOS's on shipped computers

Check this story out:

Ex-Official Says FBI Can Secretly Activate an Individual?s Webcam Without the Indicator Light Turning On

?The FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer?s camera - without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording - for several years, and has used that technique mainly in terrorism cases or the most serious criminal investigations.?

Back on subject...

Much as I have suspected, many BIOS/firmware exploits against pre-chosen computers are done the old fashoned way: intercept the computer in shipment and reflash the BIOS. The NSA's "Tailored Access Operation" or TAO is confirmed to be intercepting computers being shipped to known customers, and to prefer BIOS modifications to software/hardware changes when modding shipped computers.

http://techreport.com/news/25828/report-nsa-intercepts-computer-shipments-plants-malware

The countermeasure to this is obvious: Never order any device containing firmware or processors by mail/delivery. Always buy it off a store shelf, even if you are an embassy needing twenty machines. In addition, never download a BIOS update to any IP address you can be predicted to be using-unless you honeypotting, seeking to reverse-engineer the code to catch the NSA or their (still-unproven) buddies at the FBI in the act instead of using the code.

Hell I ought to learn some Assembly and do exactly that..

[curaga]

...or wait for libbeauty to get better and have a to-C decompiler

[Luke]

With a to-C decompiler this would get soo easy

...or wait for libbeauty to get better and have a to-C decompiler

Once you have something like C decompilation, it would be so easy to open the code in gedit or pluma and just do a string search on "http," "ftp" and then check all numbers long enough to be an IP address for any suspicious code around them. No programming knowledge would be needed, only an extracted copy of your BIOS and the decompiler. This would be to catch phone-home software of ANY type.

Locally cached stuff could be found by digging out references to writing to any disk, needing some programming knowledge to do but not much.

[ACiD]

Once you have something like C decompilation, it would be so easy to open the code in gedit or pluma and just do a string search on "http," "ftp" and then check all numbers long enough to be an IP address for any suspicious code around them. No programming knowledge would be needed, only an extracted copy of your BIOS and the decompiler. This would be to catch phone-home software of ANY type.

Locally cached stuff could be found by digging out references to writing to any disk, needing some programming knowledge to do but not much.

The only problem is that the urls can be encoded to thwart obvious attempts like that. Plus who has time to start decompiling and searching through all of the code. You? Tell me when you reach 1% stage next year, I'll tell you to start from beginning again

Even in open source BSD had a hidden backdoor for two decades.

[MartinN]

I know, I know. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Insert burden of proof argument here. However... The majority of atheists I've met, myself included, are agnostic atheists. Gnostic = knowing, agnostic = not knowing. We don't claim to know that there isn't a god, but we see no evidence of one, and live our lives accordingly.

Same goes for souls, ghosts, heaven, hell, unicorns, magic, etc.

Right. And you probably think we evolved from an amoeba.