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Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

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Re: Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

#101

Post by chiefalchemist »

dx034 wrote: post #88
chiefalchemist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to get off topic but there's a part of me that suspect the Equifax hack has the NSA (or will ultimately filter back to them). When I read Dragnet Nation a couple years ago one of the things that left an impression on me was the fact that the gov can buy "private" personal data on the open market just like anyone else can. That is, it's not spying (and a violate of right / laws) if the data is on the free market.…

The accessed data at Equifax are SSNs, DOB and address. Why should the state hack a company to access data they already have? After all, SSN is state-issued and addresses at Equifax will be known to at least one agency (probably IRS).

That's a good question. My reply would be I'm not sure the intelligence community / legal profession can collect and hoard such things without legal approval.

Certainly Equifax has other data. Maybe they didn't get what they wanted? Maybe Equifax isn't being transparent? Maybe they don't know?

Re: Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

#102

Post by chiefalchemist »

albinofrenchy wrote: post #69
chiefalchemist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to get off topic but there's a part of me that suspect the Equifax hack has the NSA (or will ultimately filter back to them). When I read Dragnet Nation a couple years ago one of the things that left an impression on me was the fact that the gov can buy "private" personal data on the open market just like anyone else can. That is, it's not spying (and a violate of right / laws) if the data is on the free market.…

This vaguely reminds me of the time a paranoid coworker told me not to store tax documents on the cloud because the government could get at it.

You're missing the point. That is it's possible, if not probable (per books like Dragnet Nation, Snowden, etc.) that data is being collected and you have no idea why, who, etc.

I'm not saying i think that's what happened. I'm saying there's a part of me that has good reason it it's possible it could be that. Crazy? Not more than some of things we know the intelligence community has done or tried to do.

Re: Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

#103

Post by tskaiser »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #101
dx034 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The accessed data at Equifax are SSNs, DOB and address. Why should the state hack a company to access data they already have? After all, SSN is state-issued and addresses at Equifax will be known to at least one agency (probably IRS).

That's a good question. My reply would be I'm not sure the intelligence community / legal profession can collect and hoard such things without legal approval. Certainly Equifax has other data. Maybe they didn't get what they wanted? Maybe Equifax isn't being transparent? Maybe they don't know?

That's a lot of maybes to support an already unlikely scenario.

Re: Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

#104

Post by dredmorbius »

pmoriarty wrote: post #12
belorn wrote: post #5

Most of the points is arguing that NSA could compel the company Duck Duck Go, Inc to install equipment and then forbidding the company from disclosing that fact. Doing so does carry quite a bit of political risk. There have been quite a few lawsuits from EFF and ACLU in regard to do so, and as the comment from CEO of Duck Duck Go says in the comment thread, all existing cases has been about turning over records. Goin…

I'm not sure if they really need to compel DDG in the first place. I know if I was a three letter agency, I'd start a "secure" service like DDG myself as kind of a honeypot. Not that I'm saying that such an agency is actually behind DDG -- I have no way of knowing. But I would be very surprised if a large number of services promising "security" and "privacy" weren't run by such agencies or their agents. That's why I…

The hard part of being a search company isn't starting the company, it's attracting users. Which is almost completely a crapshoot.

Far more viable to let someone else take those risks, then provide a compelling case for them to assist you in your inquries and/or interests.

Re: Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

#105

Post by dredmorbius »

bad_user wrote: post #76

Duck Duck Go is a company that I want to succeed, as they are clearly making a stand on user privacy. However it never made sense to me why people would use those DDG bangs. I mean privacy is the main selling point, so why in the world would you send the searches you make on other websites to DDG, when the browser is perfectly capable of being configured for " search keywords ". In Firefox, go to amazon.com (or any w…

Not all browsers are configurable to search keywords (particularly on mobile).

DDG is consistent across hosts / browsers / OSes.

DDG maintain (and fix) the bang searches as they break (which ... happens).

I appreciate being able to !bang away in my Android browser(s) navbars. There are other options. Surfraw (a Linux CLI utility) is an example, though my problem is that 1) I can't remember the aliases and 2) they interfere with other commands I use (there are ... a lot of surfraw elvi).

Re: Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

#107

Post by Quiark »

coldtea wrote: post #97
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was a response to a guardian article that ultimately cited https://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/06/14/duckduckgo-the-pris... > “By not storing any useful information, DuckDuckGo simply isn’t useful to these surveillance programs,” says Weinberg. “We literally do not store personally identifiable user data, so if the NSA were to get a hold of all our data, it would not be useful to them since it is all truly…

> But what if DuckDuckGo provided a splitter-feed to the NSA? DuckDuckGo can claim without lying that they store no personal information, but that speaks nothing of a collaborating partner storing it. Not to mention they don't need to provide anything themselves. Unless DDG has their own cables to users homes, after DDG connect to the internet backbone and before the user connects to DDG, the various agencies have al…

Can you be a bit more specific on your claim that the various agencies can break TLS?

Re: Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

#108

Post by sdwisely »

coldtea wrote: post #97
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was a response to a guardian article that ultimately cited https://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/06/14/duckduckgo-the-pris... > “By not storing any useful information, DuckDuckGo simply isn’t useful to these surveillance programs,” says Weinberg. “We literally do not store personally identifiable user data, so if the NSA were to get a hold of all our data, it would not be useful to them since it is all truly…

> But what if DuckDuckGo provided a splitter-feed to the NSA? DuckDuckGo can claim without lying that they store no personal information, but that speaks nothing of a collaborating partner storing it. Not to mention they don't need to provide anything themselves. Unless DDG has their own cables to users homes, after DDG connect to the internet backbone and before the user connects to DDG, the various agencies have al…

They provide a tor hidden service.

3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion

Re: Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

#109

Post by djsumdog »

Quiark wrote: post #107
coldtea wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what if DuckDuckGo provided a splitter-feed to the NSA? DuckDuckGo can claim without lying that they store no personal information, but that speaks nothing of a collaborating partner storing it. Not to mention they don't need to provide anything themselves. Unless DDG has their own cables to users homes, after DDG connect to the internet backbone and before the user connects to DDG, the various agencies have al…

Can you be a bit more specific on your claim that the various agencies can break TLS?

They don't have to DDG runs on AWS. In theory, court orders could grant access to the underlying VMs via Amazon without DDG even being notified.

Re: Duck Duck Go: Illusion of Privacy (2013)

#110

Post by djsumdog »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #99
uabstraction wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's a part of me that suspect the Equifax hack has the NSA This is ridiculous. It makes no sense why the NSA or any other members of the US Intelligence Community would cause this sort of reputational damage and nationwide outrage to a company when they could simply walk up to them with one of those fancy national security letters with a built in gag order and take the information with much less of a fuss. Othe…

Ridiculous? Not at all. In the context of the history of the CIA and NSA it's standard procedure. And that's just the stuff we know about. Certainly Snowden taught us anything is possible, that they have no restraint. B On the other hand, politely asking an outfit like Equifax for (just about) ALL their data with no real reason would be out of character. Why bother? Why go on record? It's pretty simple. Why would the…

> Snowden

Snowden, a man who worked from home in Hawaii as an NSA contractor making over $200k a year with his smoking hot girlfriend, who suddenly decided he had a moral compass, was able to download tons of classified files over VPN to his laptops and run off to meet Greenwald et. al. to divulge all this information, then flee to Russia where he sends out anti-Russian tweets.

Meanwhile, nothing has happened. The NSA is still spying. PRISM seems to be something everyone has forgotten about (did it even exist? Most companies denied it). His evidence were all rededicated power point slides.

Question the narratives that are given to you.

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