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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

#11

Post by trothamel »

pavanred wrote: post #5

If one uses Tor, the article states that the person will not be treated as a United States person unless "proven" otherwise. If that's the case, all the traffic from a Tor exit node will be considered as traffic from non U.S. persons and all data will be stored. Doesn't make sense to me because if you are using Tor right, then requests cannot be traced back to you. How does that help?

I'd assume there's some chance that the person will screw up - even a little.

The NSA is very good at exploiting very small mistakes. In the Venona project, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona, they NSA realized that the soviets were re-using one time pads. By knowing A xor C and B xor C, they were able to get A xor B - and from that, they were able to decode the messages.

I could imagine things like looking at the tor traffic, and trying to match up things like writing patterns. And of course, there's the very good chance some people aren't using tor right.

I don't think that what the NSA is doing is legal - but think there's a good chance it's somewhat effective.

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

#12

Post by jlgreco »

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 heal. This is a problem for us all.

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

#13

Post by bigiain »

pavanred wrote: post #5

If one uses Tor, the article states that the person will not be treated as a United States person unless "proven" otherwise. If that's the case, all the traffic from a Tor exit node will be considered as traffic from non U.S. persons and all data will be stored. Doesn't make sense to me because if you are using Tor right, then requests cannot be traced back to you. How does that help?

It depends on what you mean by "using TOR right" - and that depends on who/where you are and what you're trying to protect yourself against.

A Chinese/Egyptian/Turkish dissident might consider it perfectly sensible to use TOR to access their gmail account - that's a perfectly valid way of hiding from your local (non-US) government and spy agencies.

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

#14

Post by gt565k »

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.

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

#15

Post by dfc »

If you want to read the documents without having to use that awful viewer or load js from every social networking site known to man: (increment the p# from 1-9)

Procedures used by NSA to target non-US persons: Exhibit A: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7166...

Procedures used by NSA to minimize data collection from US persons: Exhibit B: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7166...

It is amazing how many requests the guardian wants to make to third party sites.

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

#16

Post by D9u »

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…

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?

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

#17

Post by ewzimm »

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.

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

#18

Post by [deleted] »

bigiain wrote: post #9

Since I (and the majority of global internet users) are not "US persons", they're claiming they're entitled to intercept and store all my communications anyway - so my personal reaction to this is going to be to increase the use of tor and crypto for random everyday stuff. I'll start GPG encrypting email to anybody I know will be able ro deal with it. I might even start randomly mailing GPG encrypted mail for no reas…

[deleted]

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

#19

Post by bigiain »

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 other day-to-day things - in much the same way as I always choose to use BitTorrent for fully legal purposes when available - sure, we all know that 99% of Torrent traffic is copyright infringement, but at least _some_ of it is me grabbing the latest Ubuntu/Raspbian/GameOfThones (no, wait, not that last one...)

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

#20

Post by gundy »

bigiain wrote: post #9

Since I (and the majority of global internet users) are not "US persons", they're claiming they're entitled to intercept and store all my communications anyway - so my personal reaction to this is going to be to increase the use of tor and crypto for random everyday stuff. I'll start GPG encrypting email to anybody I know will be able ro deal with it. I might even start randomly mailing GPG encrypted mail for no reas…

If the US wants "freedom" on the internet and no internet nationalism (which just means that non-citizens get rights too), it should grant online citizenship to all people of the world. They can all be members of the empire and actually get representation rather than just the tyranny of US foreign policy.
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