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An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

wired.com

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Re: An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>79DEBE35 is a key in the possession of Wired How do you know this?

The message posted on Wired is encrypted with that key. EDIT: While what I said was technically true, in that it is encrypted with the 79DEBE35 key, that's not Wired's key, it's the recipient's key.

One could say it was encrypted to the 79DEBE35 key.

Re: An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

#92
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Snowden, just remember that Kevin Poulsen and Adrian Lamo helped the US Government in catching Bradley Manning. I posted something to that effect in the article's comments. It was moderated and comments are now closed (at least for me).

I did too. All comments are gone right now, including mine. " Commenting has been disabled for this article "

'Please stop pointing out that our staffer is a dumb collaborator.'

Re: An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

#94
post #16

Snowden, just remember that Kevin Poulsen and Adrian Lamo helped the US Government in catching Bradley Manning. EDIT: Also, a pretty safe way to carry an interview would be VPN + Tor + Bitmessage. EDIT2: Users sneak and tlb claim Tor isn't safe because of timing attacks. Read below.

This is Kevin Poulsen. Just popping in to correct this. Adrian Lamo turned in Bradley Manning. All I did (being a reporter) is break the news. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/conscience/

I'm sorry you've found yourself in the crossfire. How do you feel about Snowden?

Re: An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seemed relevant from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo#Greenwald.2C_Lamo.... ): Lamo's role in the Manning case drew the ire of Glenn Greenwald, of Salon Magazine. An ardent supporter of WikiLeaks, Greenwald has been a passionate critic of Lamo, suggesting that Lamo lied to Manning by turning him in, and also lied after the fact to cover up the circumstances of Manning's confessions. Greenwal…

> Greenwald has been a passionate critic of Lamo, suggesting that Lamo lied to Manning by turning him in, and also lied after the fact to cover up the circumstances of Manning's confessions. Not sure about the second part, but the fact that Lamo lied to Manning isn't controversial. He's talked about it in a few interviews. This one was a little odd: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/03/adrian-lamo-brad...

yeah. I am a modest fan of Greenwald, but if Manning didn't want to get caught, talking to Lamo was a pretty dumb move. I mean Lamo got caught and is under (periodic, at least, probably) monitoring by the FBI. Minor disclaimer that I went to Kindergarten with Adrian Lamo.

Re: An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

#96
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not safe at all, considering the organization tracking him.

If not that, then what? If anything?

You could always rent a botnet for an hour and broadcast PGP messages to all nodes. I'm sure there'd be hacker forums in China where you could rent a mostly HK-based net.

Re: An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

#97
post #16

Snowden, just remember that Kevin Poulsen and Adrian Lamo helped the US Government in catching Bradley Manning. EDIT: Also, a pretty safe way to carry an interview would be VPN + Tor + Bitmessage. EDIT2: Users sneak and tlb claim Tor isn't safe because of timing attacks. Read below.

It's reasonable to not trust Lamo, and maybe even Kevin Poulsen (although IMO he's just reported the news in the PFC Manning case; it's Adrian who turned PFC Manning in. OTOH, if I'd been in Lamo's position (convicted felon!), I probably would have turned him in, too, thinking the whole thing was a sting or otherwise a setup since it was so fucking brazen. The only other safe option is "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE SAYING, NEITHER AGREE NOR UNDERSTAND, AND DON'T EVER CONTACT ME AGAIN.").

However, I'd trust Declan McCullagh more than any other journalist I know. He also writes for Wired. He's not uncritical of the PRISM story, but I'd trust him to be fair, and he wouldn't himself become part of the story.

Re: An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the signing key on Wired's broadcast.

So? You can download my public key and encrypt something with it... and only I'll be able to read it with my private key. It's still "my" key even though you're signing or rather encrypting a message with it.

I find all this public key and private key concept is confusing to general people. A private key is an actual key that you can use to unlock an encrypted message. A public key is actually a lock that you gave someone so that he can use to encrypt message and only you can open it.

Re: An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

#99
post #55

What more is there to glean from this bogus message? $ gpg -vvv -d letter-to-snowden.txt gpg: using character set `utf-8' gpg: WARNING: using insecure memory! gpg: please see http://www.gnupg.org/documentation/faqs.html for more information gpg: armor: BEGIN PGP MESSAGE gpg: armor header: Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.19 (Darwin) gpg: armor header: Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org :pubkey enc packet: version 3,…

There's a 'secret' URL in there that anyone able to decrypt the message will be compelled to click on, at which time the creator can claim either to have contacted Snowden, or to have empirical evidence that the NSA can crack 4096-key RSA PGP messages and none of us are safe.

Best rick-roll ever!

Re: An encrypted message to Edward Snowden

#100
post #40
post #16

Snowden, just remember that Kevin Poulsen and Adrian Lamo helped the US Government in catching Bradley Manning. EDIT: Also, a pretty safe way to carry an interview would be VPN + Tor + Bitmessage. EDIT2: Users sneak and tlb claim Tor isn't safe because of timing attacks. Read below.

Not safe at all. Timing analysis can detect correlations between data arriving at the interviewers computer with data sent by the suspect's computer. Encryption is good at keeping the contents secret, but not the source of traffic.

Snowden isn't "in hiding" from intelligence agencies, only from the news media. I assess with virtually nil probability that US and Chinese/HK intelligence don't know where he is right now (the only way one intelligence service wouldn't know details is if the other has already taken him into protection or custody).

He doesn't need to use anonymity systems now; he just needs to use a service which doesn't report IP address to the other end. A simple VPN or whatever would be fine.

If I were seriously on the run, I'd be using a system with days of latency (variable over 1-5 days), which blended in with a widespread current system. Essentially Len Sassaman's old mixmaster remailer system, which interfaces with the world over SMTP. The problem is there aren't enough mixmaster nodes to be really enough now, so you'd want to use a fairly anonymous sender too, and the old "USENET message pool" style systems don't work now that "USENET" basically means "http access to one of a few big providers", too.

Kind of a step back from where we were in 1999, which is bullshit :(

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