That is the meanest-looking bird I have ever seen.
Original image available through EFF's flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hughelectronic/3531668253/
AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
81–90 of 233 posts
Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
the issue is that the client runtime environment is poisoned as well
Suspecting as much
Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why people are upvoting your comment. Actually, I do know why. It's a depressing disenchantment with government. They don't understand that government is not going anywhere, and that government can be as good as it can be bad. The quote zmblum posted is brilliant, and it is an example of what Good Government is capable of. It is not just for your 5th grade civics class. It's for RIGHT NOW. Read the quote…
They don't understand that government is not going anywhere, and that government can be as good as it can be bad. No way in hell. Where, in either the future or the history books, is the saintly leader who will counterbalance a Stalin or a Mao?
I think the point is government that is not necessarily led by a single person. Though the president of the US is the 'leader,' he does share power with the Supreme Court and Congress. Just because everyone likes to point to the president when things go wrong doesn't mean there aren't others that share in the blame...
The current problem with the system is that: 1) the Federal government has grown too large, and 2) the US is ruled by only two political parties that are both (at their core) about the status quo and not all that different from each other.
Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Besides using SSH and VPN more, the only thing I can do is avoid ATT. I was on T-Mobile for years (out of ATT spite) until Verizon got the iPhone and I jumped within the week. I also spent a lot more money on internet using alternatives to ATT DSL (although I doubt my information was more secure from that choice).
Try doing a trace route to several different sites on the internet, you'll find that -- so long as your traffic is hitting the US at some point -- your information is crossing AT&T's networks.
Not to nitpick but the article says that the sniffing is on "traffic to and from AT&T customers".
So it is not clear whether this applies to all traffic through AT&T routers, or only traffic to and from AT&T customers.
Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
#85This is literally years-old information. I was aware of and hollering about this at people as a highschooler at debate and speech tournaments. Same thing then as now, no one cares, or those that do care don't care enough. Besides, who cares if you have nothing to hide. Right?
In principal it's quite wrong and scary, but in reality I have to believe the government is too incompetent to actually do anything with their mountains of AT&T collected data.
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Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
#86One thing I see people saying on here is that people should care....and I do...but I don't know _what_ to do with it! Can someone show/tell me what I, an average person, can do? It feels a bit overwhelming and things like this point out how powerless we really are. I hope I'm wrong and there are things we can do...I just don't know what they are. EDIT - Asking two more specific questions: 1. What can we do technicall…
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Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
#872005 called, it wants its news back.
Call recorded by NSA.
Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
#88What you can do:
1. Support the EFF, CDT and other orgs that work on technology and civil liberties.
2. For truly private data and activity get religion with PGP, TrueCrypt, Tor and other tools. For the non-private stuff, take some sensible measures (see below)
3. Consider sandboxing/compartmentalizing your online activity across disparate ids, browsers, machines, phones and locations. Definitely run Ad Blockers/Filters.
4. Stay current with EFF/CDT and related twitter feeds. There will be another privacy debate at a policy level. Get educated, push for the good guys.
Here's an overview resource: http://amzn.to/etLNze
Mark was given an award by the EFF a couple of years ago for his bravery.
Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
In which other countries, exactly, does that happen? UK? Canada? Sweden?
Actually, yes...all those minus Sweden. The US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all cooperate together. See the Ecehlon program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_%28signals_intelligence...
The Swedish state has been engaged in widespread wiretapping for many years. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law
Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're trying too hard. There are existing protocols (S/MIME, PGP, Jabber, etc.) for transferring messages in a secure manner. I'd pick the one that fits your scenario and wrap it up in a shiny app. AFAIK, there are several IM apps that could support encryption, but I don't think they are actually doing so (and if they are, they aren't advertising it). As it is, end-end secure communications is not (I think)…
You may be right, however one advantage of this method is that any messages and files are seen as exactly the same: a secure truecrypt encrypted file transfer. No differentiation between a txt or file...
Truecrypt is a container for storing a collection of files. Unless you're interested in the deniability aspects of Truecrypt where an alternate passphrase yields decoy data, off-the-shelf SSL with sufficiently large keys is more than adequate to secure the transport layer. I suspect your biggest challenge there would revolve around key authentication to prevent MITM attacks.