451–460 of 641 posts
In the first slide, there are 25 red dots in a row on the bottom.. I wonder what those are supposed to represent?
I dont want to detract from Snowden's very noble act, but I hazard a guess that Snowden knew that the documents he leaked could be traced back to him, or at a minimum a small team that he worked with.
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No javascript tracking. Very strange behaviour (therefore, less behaviour tracking). That's what I can think of.
Honestly, if the NSA wanted to know what Stallman was up to, they'd apply the $5 wrench technique ( http://xkcd.com/538/ ). All the tin-foil in the world can't prevent them from getting what they want if you're suddenly a Person of Interest.
It's an update to what was already going on.
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The technical possibility isn't the new and staggering part, it's the profound lack of morality, respect for any ideal whatsoever, and compete apathy towards the oaths these people took to serve us . They have compeley misused the power we granted them in sacred trust. We should remove it from them at once. If this has become impossible, we need to know that as soon as we can.
> The technical possibility isn't the new and staggering part, it's the profound lack of morality, respect for any ideal whatsoever, and compete apathy towards the oaths these people took to serve us. Again, I'll chime in as the resident apologist. The people working at Fort Meade are not evil. They truly believe they're doing a great service to the nation. They may be wrong, and they've certainly thrown privacy out…
Demonizing people and falsely assigning ill-intent doesn't help us address and correct the problem, even if it feels good to do so. I personally have to fight the urge constantly myself because I feel so strongly in the immorality of the net output of the programs themselves.
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Tracking can be bad for some people, it can ruin their careers, destroy their marriage, completely upend their life if that sort of information got out. However, for most of us, it's not especially valuable information and any one day will look like any other. When I engage with social networks, use a cellular phone, I'm aware of the liability. I'm making a conscious trade-off. I really would like it to be less of a…
> it can ruin their careers, destroy their marriage, completely upend their life if that sort of information got out. > I'm making a conscious trade-off. No, you're not. If you and the people who have had what you wrote happen to them (they obviously would have been more careful than you) were making conscious trade-offs, nothing bad would have happened to anyone as a result. In fact, you do not even know what inform…
I've even got Facebook's site and associated flam blocked on my computer so I'm not bombarded with their inane commenting system, "Like" buttons, tracking features, or other garbage I want nothing to do with.
I'm taking a risk by using a cellular phone, I understand thins, however I believe the down-side of using one is better than the down-side of not using one. That I'm not a politician or celebrity factors in to this decision.
I'm not even sure what Stallman's full reasoning is behind cellular phones as it's always glossed over with some kind of hand-waving about tracking.
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Yes, use HTTPS for everything. It's not a surprise that all the logos in this PowerPoint have since moved large portions of their traffic to SSL. SSL isn't perfect (you can still see what domain someone is requesting), but it does prevent a lot of the snooping outlined in the presentation (without vendor participation, it's always possible that Facebook is siphoning off their messages).
So let's assume the NSA still has these capabilities (a fairly reasonable assumption), and with SSL/HTTPS as a fairly feasible security option, how would these capabilities be possible? Either services aren't committed to and endorsing the use HTTPS/SSL and/or they are actively granting access to user information. Are those two reasonable conclusions? I'm trying to understand why services are not taking a more active…
> * Show me all the VPN startups in country X, and give me the data so I can decrypt and discover the users.
> * These events are easily browsable in XKEYSCORE
As I understand it (and I may be wrong), most encrypted VPN traffic uses SSL. Given that XKeyscore data is only held for a few days (due to the immense volume) and given how nonchalantly they just throw out that they can decrypt VPN traffic, it sounds to me like they've either got the root SSL certs and are MITM'ing every connection they can or they've somehow broken SSL, either by breaking the actual encryption used or by exploiting vulnerabilities in how browsers handle it. If that's the case, then they don't need to ask Google or anyone else for your data, they can just read anything they want.
Honest, maybe naive question, but what types of programmers actively help build and maintain systems like this? I turned down a job for a company that is less than a mile from my house because I viewed their business as immoral. Hard for me to fathom anyone taking a job, helping to build systems like this. I get that many of the components of a system like this could be seen as harmless. However, a system of this com…
bottom line is anything can be justified if you want to justify it.
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You're completely missing the point -- it's unfeasible, unpractical, and unproductive hitting millions of people on the head with $5 wrenches. This is the entire point -- they can do it easily with everyone now, they're not hitting people with wrenches -- that would invoke suspicion and retaliatory response that would curtail their legal powers to snoop around.
Maybe you're forgetting about the sorts of things that went on, are probably still going on, in various brutal military dictatorships around the world. Wrenches are just the start of what they do to people before they disappear them. It isn't impossible to beat information out of millions of people. It's been done before and it'll be done again. You say it'd invoke suspicion, but it wouldn't. If you're at the wrench…
Are including the USA in the list of 'brutal military dictatorships'? Because the USA disappears people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_el-Masri
Honest, maybe naive question, but what types of programmers actively help build and maintain systems like this? I turned down a job for a company that is less than a mile from my house because I viewed their business as immoral. Hard for me to fathom anyone taking a job, helping to build systems like this. I get that many of the components of a system like this could be seen as harmless. However, a system of this com…
I guess some people are in it for the money. Some probably like the technical challenge. But I'm sure there are also quite a few that believe this system really is preventing terrorism, following the law, and not doing anything wrong.
It's called Power.
I can now look into any person's email and whatever legally. You and I may get a squishy feeling in the stomach about this but I can tell you that 1 out of 2 people will be OK with this if they aren't called out. (like watching porn, most people won't admit in front of kids and their parents but they will do it because they think they won't get caught)
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>This is overwhelming. Even when you always hear the claims about we knew this was going on, somehow it is still shocking when you see it all laid out infront of you with screenshots and the capabilities described. It has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine recently to see self-aggrandizing comments from users around the net about how "we should have known" and "none of this is new." I'm a practically addicted news j…
The traditional media is complicit. And it isn't some grand conspiracy either, they just share the same interests as the rest of the establishment, being part of (and/or owned by) the establishment themselves. There is good independent media that has been covering the story for years though. Here's a Democracy Now story from February 2005: http://www.democracynow.org/2005/2/10/no_place_to_hide_award... Democracy Now…