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Forced Exposure

groklaw.net

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Re: Forced Exposure

#221

Post by jcromartie »

pron wrote: post #39

I have said this on HN several times, and I will say this again. Dragnet surveillance of private digital correspondence by the US and other governments is wrong, and a gross, unjustified, overreaction to the real threat of terrorism. And yet, when taken as part of the whole picture that is the internet, government surveillance is little more than a drop in the ocean. While governments may collect a possibly significa…

People must understand that every interaction with an Internet service means voluntarily sending your data to them. These companies don't just "vacuum it up", the data is simply sent directly to them. Maybe you don't see it that way, but that is why the perception needs to change.

When you use Gmail you are sending your mail to Google, first, and then it is relayed to the recipients. When you search for driving directions to an address, you are sending data to Google that says "I want to know how to drive/cycle/walk to X location right now". When you search for some phrase you are sending a request to Google that says "I want to know about this".

There is no reason why they wouldn't hold onto that data. You sent it to them, because you want the response that they can provide. It's an exchange.

Re: Forced Exposure

#222

Post by rolux »

kalkin wrote: post #204
ENOTTY wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence the blueprints of PRISM were leaked, just training slides for analysts. There's also no evidence that actual surveillance data was leaked. This particular slippery slope argument seems weaker because one would expect the government to place tighter controls on the data or the blueprints.

If no actual surveillance data was leaked, though, that's likely because Snowden is an idealist. It seems that he had access to that data. If the next leaker just wants some cash, things could change. (Or, hell, maybe the previous leaker--maybe spy is a better word here--who didn't get caught because s/he didn't go public, or was purely the victim of an ultra-sophisticated phishing attempt!)

Which is precisely what I was hinting at. The idea that the NSA would be capable of keeping this data absolutely confidential is ludicrous. And that's why in the future (most likely already today) it will be relatively safe to assume that there are other parties, be it individuals or organizations, that have access to some aspect of your private communication.

Re: Forced Exposure

#223

Post by nanoscopic »

JshWright wrote: post #189
panarky wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have now gotten for myself an email there, p.jones at mykolab.com in case anyone wishes to contact me over something really important and feels squeamish about writing to an email address on a server in the US. PJ could help people understand the real issues if she explained that all plaintext mail is vulnerable. It's not only about the mail host, it's the network itself that's compromised. Switching to Kolab is fa…

> I'd love to see PJ publish her public key and encourage people to learn how to use it. That helps, but it doesn't mask the data groups like the NSA are really after (who is talking to who, and when).

I am in the process of developing a new messaging system to address exactly that issue ( anonymous communication where it is unclear who is talking to who )

The way in which it will work is having all users of the system constantly send encrypted streams to each other ( mostly gibberish ). When you want to send a real message you simply replace the encrypted gibberish with some real content.

It will implement "onion" style repeated encryption to prevent direct links from being statistically analyzed as well.

Look for it in 6 months or so. Details will be up at circleofdistrust.com in about a month or so.

Re: Forced Exposure

#224

Post by rahoulb »

cookiecaper wrote: post #151
shimonamit wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longest key in the world won't protect you from a FISA warrent.

What. A FISA warrant doesn't magically render RSA invalid. If all your comms are encrypted, they can get whatever warrants they want, and they still won't be able to read your information unless you surrender your passphrase and key.

obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/538/

Re: Forced Exposure

#225

Post by fluidcruft »

zenocon wrote: post #140
rolux wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I understand his personal reasons pj = Pamela Jones But yeah, it's devastating -- especially when it comes just one day after a editor of the Guardian states that they can no longer report on certain topics from London. It seems like we need entirely new communication protocols.

> It seems like we need entirely new communication protocols How about new government - one that isn't broken and tramples on all of our civil liberties? The first step is to dismantle the military industrial complex

BRB building cover for drone attacks.

Re: Forced Exposure

#226

Post by badman_ting »

jgg wrote: post #35

Since we weren't allowed to say it when it was relevant, and the point was muddled and trampled on in pseudo-rational debates (“Can you find evidence that they’re abusing this new legislation?”, etc.), I'll go ahead and say it now: it's happening. There's still a big world outside the Internet, and yet ironically, we live in a world where some employers are so stupid that they won't hire someone without a Facebook, m…

I'm not saying things are good in America right now, but I think our problems are due to my fellow citizens, not some evil cabal of overlords. If we're all gonna steer the plane into the ground, well, I wish we wouldn't, but from everything I see we are doing this to ourselves. We went crazy over terrorism, and we didn't come back.

Re: Forced Exposure

#227

Post by hobs »

chalst wrote: post #129
mcv wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lot of people were hoping Obama was the start of a new direction. I'm now hoping he'll be the last of the old direction. The big problem to solve is: how do you elect someone different? As long as the two parties get to decide who American can elect, democracy is a hollow gesture. And the media are all in the pocket of the main parties. Honestly, it seems like only Al-Jazeera US might be the only independent news s…

One of the Wikileaks releases contained allegations that Qatar was leaning on Al-Jazeera: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cable...

Yep, most people would say Al-Jazeera is not biased on the topics we are speaking about, but everyone has a corporate master somewhere.

Re: Forced Exposure

#228

Post by badman_ting »

quail wrote: post #68
mixmax wrote: post #20

While I understand her (1) personal reasons for shutting down Groklaw, this is an extraordinarily bad decision for privacy and democracy. In the last few weeks quite a few providers of private communications and/or freedom (for some definition of freedom) have shut down. Lavabot, Freedom Hosting, etc. If the US could shut down The Guardian they would. This leaves fewer and fewer secure channels for private communicat…

Obama continues to push hard to steal what little privacy rights US citizens have remaining. He is openly hostile about it, and lies about it constantly. Am I exaggerating here? The scary thing is I'm not. He's not done. It's going to get worse.

Sadly, I think this is part of our problem. "Obama".

Attaching his name to this just makes it so that we all vote for a Republican next year, congratulate ourselves for getting rid of the guy who loved spying on us all, and everything stays exactly the same.

I'm not trying to defend him or say he is blameless here. I'm saying that it's bigger than who is in the President's chair at the moment, and I wish we could think about these things in a more systemic way.

Re: Forced Exposure

#229

Post by mathiasben »

tzs wrote: post #121
Questioneer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden began downloading documents describing the U.S. government's electronic spying programs while he was working for Dell Inc in April 2012, almost a year earlier than previously reported, according to U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the matter. ... David Frink, a spokesman for Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, declined to comment on any aspect of Snowden's employ…

So basically Dell sells computers to the government?

They run their own version of AWS that's sold to the NSA.

Re: Forced Exposure

#230

Post by rolux »

wslh wrote: post #177
rolux wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that US tech companies who are complicit in dragnet surveillance - and PRISM specifically - are already understanding this. Absolutely. Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam. (And that is doesn't make that much of a difference if they store their data with Google, Apple, or directly with the NSA. If the blueprints of PRISM can't be kept from l…

Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam. And the year when we understand that we are all lemmings. I remember the 90s when people were afraid of putting their credit cards on ecommerce sites, and now they put their whole lifes and assets online.

My hope would be that at least corporations are not lemmings.

For a non-US company that does anything remotely sensitive or competitive on an international level, it's simply insane to use, say, Google's cloud services.

I don't know to what extent Google depends on foreign corporate clients -- but I'd be surprised if this wasn't something they were very seriously concerned about.

(And the recent revelations about the NSA are really just the icing on the cake. If there is high demand for some confidential data, it's likely that there will be supply.)

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