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Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

arstechnica.com

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Re: Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

#31

Post by hobs »

bigiain wrote: post #19
burke wrote: post #7

This is fairly obvious. From the NSA's perspective, people that act like people who have something to hide are more likely to be hiding something. I'd be surprised if they didn't take it into account.

And this is why we should (and we should encourage everybody we can to) regularly do the most mundane of browsing using TOR. I'm making a personal effort to use TorBrowser whenever I have some trivial need to use a government website. I suspect I'd stop short of applying for a visa via TOR, but I'll happily look up my local state or federal politicians and their websites, or renew my car registration, or any of the o…

Do you just want them to store more? Because using tor to renew your car registrations seems like an obvious way to connect some dots. If that's all, then I salute you!

Re: Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

#32

Post by e3pi »

ewzimm wrote: post #17

The only long-term way to hide data is not to use public networks for communication. Eventually, quantum computers should be able to eat though any of today's crypto. It will be interesting to see what happens when everyone running for public office has their entire life on display.

>quantum computers should be able to eat though any of today's crypto

Please read:

Wikipedia:One Time Pad

or

"My crypto assumes RH(Riemann hypothesis)" if it can be broken, RH is proved. Thank you `quantum quack quack quamputer!

Or if you actually believe this

Wikipedia: The Time Machine(film)

Grrrrrrrrrrr...

Re: Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

#33

Post by gwern »

ewzimm wrote: post #17

The only long-term way to hide data is not to use public networks for communication. Eventually, quantum computers should be able to eat though any of today's crypto. It will be interesting to see what happens when everyone running for public office has their entire life on display.

> Eventually, quantum computers should be able to eat though any of today's crypto.

Not really; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography A decent chunk of today's crypto is either immune or only weakened a little bit (for example, Bitcoin is mostly immune although the SHA hashes are a little weakened and so hypothetically miners might some day move to quantum computers using Shor's algorithm to mine for matches).

Re: Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

#34

Post by mpyne »

gt565k wrote: post #14

The NSA operates a Tor exit node at Georgia Tech, and likely at other research institutes and universities. The fact of the matter is, people who use Tor are the ones trying to hide from the government, and it only makes sense for the NSA to run Tor exit nodes and analyze all traffic passing through them. You probably have more privacy by not using Tor at all.

It makes sense for the NSA to run exit nodes for the same reason it makes sense for the U.S. Office of Naval Research to have funded its creation and for the U.S. State Dept. to heavily fund its upkeep. There is a vested U.S. national security interest in residents of hostile regimes to be able to freely access the Internet without being traced, even with the knowledge that it may be used to make it more difficult for the U.S. itself to meet other security goals.

Re: Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

#35

Post by jlgreco »

D9u wrote: post #16
jlgreco wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This shouldn't be a surprise at all. Using Tor hides your location, so they assume you are foreign unless proven otherwise. That covers Tor, but not the rest... > As a European, what I find more disturbing about all the news about PRISM and related programs, is how US centric the reports Agreed. I worry that the American government has done damage to the cause of globalisation that will take a very long time to hea…

Just what is the cause of globalisation given the current political & economic climate? Is it global surveillance? Military domination? Economic centralization? Or is it something more benign?

Economic and travel freedom? Mutual understanding and the exchange of culture?

Re: Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

#36

Post by ewzimm »

e3pi wrote: post #32
ewzimm wrote: post #17

The only long-term way to hide data is not to use public networks for communication. Eventually, quantum computers should be able to eat though any of today's crypto. It will be interesting to see what happens when everyone running for public office has their entire life on display.

>quantum computers should be able to eat though any of today's crypto Please read: Wikipedia:One Time Pad or "My crypto assumes RH(Riemann hypothesis)" if it can be broken, RH is proved. Thank you `quantum quack quack quamputer! Or if you actually believe this Wikipedia: The Time Machine(film) Grrrrrrrrrrr...

Oh absolutely, but I don't know of any one-time-pad schemes that normal people use to encrypt their online activities. That means moving information outside the public network before sending messages over it.

If we can get entangled particles between parties ahead of time to exchange keys, we can do all sorts of fun things.

Re: Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

#37

Post by mpyne »

jlgreco wrote: post #12
mfwoods wrote: post #10

This shouldn't be a surprise at all. Using Tor hides your location, so they assume you are foreign unless proven otherwise. If I were to agree with the law that allows all of the snooping that the NSA does, I'd say this is pretty reasonable. As a European, what I find more disturbing about all the news about PRISM and related programs, is how US centric the reports about it are and how little other western government…

> This shouldn't be a surprise at all. Using Tor hides your location, so they assume you are foreign unless proven otherwise. That covers Tor, but not the rest... > As a European, what I find more disturbing about all the news about PRISM and related programs, is how US centric the reports Agreed. I worry that the American government has done damage to the cause of globalisation that will take a very long time to hea…

Don't take this the wrong way, but you mention the effect on globalization as if it were obvious that the damage should worry the American government. On the contrary, the U.S. has vacillated between isolationism and interacting with other nations before.

I don't know if you've been over to the U.S. but we have a stunningly large continent of people who feel that it is absolutely treasonous to give foreign aid at all to other nations (especially ones like Egypt and Pakistan) while there are still the poor within domestic boundaries.

The people worried about globalization are in large corporations. Even many of our liberals see "globalization" as a code term for "child labor" and "sweatshops".

Re: Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

#39

Post by bigiain »

hobs wrote: post #31
bigiain wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why we should (and we should encourage everybody we can to) regularly do the most mundane of browsing using TOR. I'm making a personal effort to use TorBrowser whenever I have some trivial need to use a government website. I suspect I'd stop short of applying for a visa via TOR, but I'll happily look up my local state or federal politicians and their websites, or renew my car registration, or any of the o…

Do you just want them to store more? Because using tor to renew your car registrations seems like an obvious way to connect some dots. If that's all, then I salute you!

Yeah - both store more, and have an archive of obviously non-intelligence relevant encrypted/TOR traffic. I like to think that one day someone will have burn gigawatts of cpu/gpu power subverting the TOR network and breaking TLS/SSL, only to discover I'd been looking up what day the recycling bins are next collected in my local area.

More to the point - I want the expectation of privacy and the deployment of tools to maintain privacy in the face of technological and legal "advances" in surveillance to seem closer to "technologically informed libertarian" rather than "paranoid wingnut" or "jetliner-hijacking 3rd-world-sympathiser".

Re: Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data

#40

Post by dfc »

hobs wrote: post #31
bigiain wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why we should (and we should encourage everybody we can to) regularly do the most mundane of browsing using TOR. I'm making a personal effort to use TorBrowser whenever I have some trivial need to use a government website. I suspect I'd stop short of applying for a visa via TOR, but I'll happily look up my local state or federal politicians and their websites, or renew my car registration, or any of the o…

Do you just want them to store more? Because using tor to renew your car registrations seems like an obvious way to connect some dots. If that's all, then I salute you!

You do realize that:

"A global passive adversary is the most commonly assumed threat when analyzing theoretical anonymity designs. But like all practical low-latency systems, Tor does not protect against such a strong adversary. Instead, we assume an adversary who can observe some fraction of network traffic; who can generate, modify, delete, or delay traffic; who can operate onion routers of his own; and who can compromise some fraction of the onion routers."[1]

If your attacker is not "a global passive adversary"(GPA) what dots are they going to connect if you renew your car registration? If your attacker is a GPA they are already connecting all the dots.

[1] https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-des...

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