Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
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Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
#2Very nice. Nothing new here, but this is a great summary to share with people who are less familiar with internet architecture and want to get up to speed with this particular facet of (seemingly illegal) surveillance.
However, I want to quickly point out one omission in the discussion of the risks of allowing this kind of activity to continue:
If the NSA is effectively spying on everybody who communicates with a server outside the US, it is trivial for them (or another government agency) to fabricate traffic (presumably child pornography) in order to target someone.
The ACLU (and others similarly positioned to criticize this conduct) always rightly point to the risks to journalists and human rights activists of having their communications intercepted and accurately portrayed, but what about the ease of lying about it in order to target dissidents?
This seems like an obvious vector and deserves more attention and discussion.
Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
#3Very nice. Nothing new here, but this is a great summary to share with people who are less familiar with internet architecture and want to get up to speed with this particular facet of (seemingly illegal) surveillance. However, I want to quickly point out one omission in the discussion of the risks of allowing this kind of activity to continue: If the NSA is effectively spying on everybody who communicates with a ser…
If it were legal you could call it unconstitutional. The point is do not want. But really Google is so much worse than the NSA. We can't do anything about Google though. He's like an uninvited guest to every party. And now we have Microsoft to contend with as well.
Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
#4Very nice. Nothing new here, but this is a great summary to share with people who are less familiar with internet architecture and want to get up to speed with this particular facet of (seemingly illegal) surveillance. However, I want to quickly point out one omission in the discussion of the risks of allowing this kind of activity to continue: If the NSA is effectively spying on everybody who communicates with a ser…
Why does the USG need global surveillance capability to fabricate damning traffic?
Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
#5Very nice. Nothing new here, but this is a great summary to share with people who are less familiar with internet architecture and want to get up to speed with this particular facet of (seemingly illegal) surveillance. However, I want to quickly point out one omission in the discussion of the risks of allowing this kind of activity to continue: If the NSA is effectively spying on everybody who communicates with a ser…
Why does the USG need global surveillance capability to fabricate damning traffic?
Hey buddy. You never responded to me in the other thread. :-)
Strictly speaking, it's not a requirement. But it gives incredible cover. It makes everyone think, "well, it's possible - they know everything that goes on."
In other words, absent this sort of mass vacuuming, the individual targeting of a dissident might seem much more suspicious.
Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
#6Meanwhile: Obama Opens NSA’s Vast Trove of Warrantless Data to Entire Intelligence Community, Just in Time for Trump [1]
1. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/13/obama-opens-nsas-vast-tr...
Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
#7Very nice. Nothing new here, but this is a great summary to share with people who are less familiar with internet architecture and want to get up to speed with this particular facet of (seemingly illegal) surveillance. However, I want to quickly point out one omission in the discussion of the risks of allowing this kind of activity to continue: If the NSA is effectively spying on everybody who communicates with a ser…
If it were legal you could call it unconstitutional. The point is do not want. But really Google is so much worse than the NSA. We can't do anything about Google though. He's like an uninvited guest to every party. And now we have Microsoft to contend with as well.
We implicity permit Google to have our info. We have not given informed consent to allow our government to take this data. Therefore it is an unreasonable search and seizure of our property.
Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does the USG need global surveillance capability to fabricate damning traffic?
Hey buddy. You never responded to me in the other thread. :-) Strictly speaking, it's not a requirement. But it gives incredible cover. It makes everyone think, "well, it's possible - they know everything that goes on." In other words, absent this sort of mass vacuuming, the individual targeting of a dissident might seem much more suspicious.
Conversely, even the myth that the NSA reads all traffic also lends credibility to that theory. They don't need to read all traffic, they just need HN commenters to say they do.
Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
#9Very nice. Nothing new here, but this is a great summary to share with people who are less familiar with internet architecture and want to get up to speed with this particular facet of (seemingly illegal) surveillance. However, I want to quickly point out one omission in the discussion of the risks of allowing this kind of activity to continue: If the NSA is effectively spying on everybody who communicates with a ser…
If it were legal you could call it unconstitutional. The point is do not want. But really Google is so much worse than the NSA. We can't do anything about Google though. He's like an uninvited guest to every party. And now we have Microsoft to contend with as well.
> We can't do anything about Google though.
Yes, we can! Don't use Google, or use certain settings in the applications which enhance your privacy. The default settings are not always the best settings for the user.
Don't use Google Search. Use a search engine which respects your privacy such as the scraper DuckDuckGo (DDG).
Don't use Gmail. Use an e-mail provider which doesn't scan through your e-mail. Where you got IMAP access. Use a device where you can use GPG. Or use alternative methods of communication.
Don't use Google Maps. Use a maps application which respects your privacy such as OpenStreetMap or (arguably) Apple Maps.
Don't use Google Fit. [...]
And so on, so forth. Ask yourself the following: do I really need this? The answer is often: "not really."
You have the option to use neither. If the choice is Android or iOS you pay more for iOS devices but your privacy generally suffers less. [Ignoring the option of dumbphones] there's a third option: don't take your phone with you. It is a choice to take your Android or iOS device with you. Among others, Bruce Schneier wrote about this in his book Data And Goliath.
Re: Trying to Keep the Internet Safe from Warrantless NSA Surveillance
#10Meanwhile: Obama Opens NSA’s Vast Trove of Warrantless Data to Entire Intelligence Community, Just in Time for Trump [1] 1. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/13/obama-opens-nsas-vast-tr...
Yeah, I hate it when this starts out with Trump bashing. Obama is much more guilty. I am not an american, so I don't exactly understand what the term 'liberal' means. Spying on your own people without warrant?
More discussion here - https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/5o1ovy/with_only...