61–70 of 125 posts
If you want to have data storage that's secure from the NSA then you are going to need to do client side encryption. Moving your data to a company/country that promises not to access it isn't going to cut it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to agree. The user needs control over their encryption. Taking advantage of Norway's laws is fine, until the day that those laws go sour on you.
Don't you need a combination of encryption AND no law forcing you to reveal the key?
For any person who is not being forced into giving their keys up, encrypting their own files must be safer than hoping a cloud provider won't freely hand them over to the US government.
This is especially true for non-US citizens, who seem to have no protection at all. Even the earlier whistle-blowers don't consider us anything but open season: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowd...
Fine. If you're foreign, encrypt your files and store them anywhere you like. If you're a US citizen, do the same and know that the government only has them when they force you to hand the keys over.
(Barring them being able to hack them some other way, e.g. simply grabbing your keys off your machine.)
What is the best country that you know of to store data safely in?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
tarsnap
From their website, it seems that tarsnap can't be counted as OSS: "The Tarsnap client code is built around the open source libarchive archive handling library. While the Tarsnap code is not distributed under an open source license..."
s1kx's caveat ("Of course you will have to trust CloudBerry not to put a backdoor in their Software") therefore doesn't apply (as strongly, anyway) to Tarsnap.
I'm moving away from Dropbox today. Thanks for this jensen2k.
If you crypt, Dropbox is fine. People need to use encryption. Every popular computer language has encryption routines, scroll through the source code until you find something accessible, twiddle something to personalize it while keeping it functional, perhaps convince yourself it will remain secure, etc, of course be cautious about that. Or simply, there's double encryption, fold it again. Know big 100 meg, gigabyte…
As a Norwegian, let me just say: Yeah, right. 1. The Norwegian security services have a long history of violating Norwegian law (and when, for example, extensive illegal politically motivated surveillance of mostly left wing politicians was uncovered in the 90's they then had the gall to place an MP and member of the committee investigating them under surveillance while he was working on the report about their illega…
Is there a jurisdiction on the planet where data is safe from domestic wiretapping [1] (i.e. international espionage not withstanding)? Serious question. 1. Clarification: I mean warrantless wiretapping.
I'm moving away from Dropbox today. Thanks for this jensen2k.
If you crypt, Dropbox is fine. People need to use encryption. Every popular computer language has encryption routines, scroll through the source code until you find something accessible, twiddle something to personalize it while keeping it functional, perhaps convince yourself it will remain secure, etc, of course be cautious about that. Or simply, there's double encryption, fold it again. Know big 100 meg, gigabyte…
If you want to have data storage that's secure from the NSA then you are going to need to do client side encryption. Moving your data to a company/country that promises not to access it isn't going to cut it.
http://www.jottacloud.com/faq/
"Yes, all datatraffic between your computer and Jottacloud is encrypted with 256 bits AES high grade encryption, which makes it virtually impossible for unauthorized persons to use the information being sent."
If you have encrypted files, there must have been or still be a key to decrypt it. You will be asked for the key. You will either given them the key, say no, or say you don't have it. The first two are no good, so all you have is the denial that you have the key. If government cant find the key, you will be asked to hand it over.
And that's the crux.
What then does the government do? All it can then do is make it an offence to withhold a key. How do they prove you have the key, if they themselves can't find it? You then have to prove the impossible, that you do not have the key, a negative. Which, even if you are telling the complete god's truth, you can never, ever, prove.
So, having an encrypted file, that you cannot or will not decrypt on demand is or will become a criminal offence. All encryption does, in the eyes of government, act as evidence of guilt. The suspect has an encrypted file, we can verify its contents, she wont give us the key, there for she has "something to hide", and there for must be guilty.
I can well imagine encrypted files being stored like athletes blood samples, waiting to be tested or decrypted by future methods.
We can not win unless we accept so risk and stop expecting our governments to do everything to stop the bad people. If a bomb goes off in Whatevercity, we must not be angry if it happened because the NSA were NOT collecting mass data, or something similar. We must make it clear to government that we are prepared to trade the risk of being blown up for our privacy and freedom, and that if that freedom contributed to the attack, we MUST accept that, and not suddenly switch and blame government. And the NSA, and the likes, must be allowed to say, "look we could have acted, here is the evidence, but we had to respect freedom and privacy", and not be lambasted for it. We have to reply, "OK, fair enough, we understand and accept that." Equally, of course, we need to know they did everything else legally and morally possible.
Question is, are we as a people able to do that? Or do we expect zero risk lives?
And all that is assuming there is zero risk from the powers government wants. Such laws and thinking creates a whole new avenue of risk.
Which is why I for one am quite prepared to say to government, cool it down, back off, set some limits, respect those limits, and if you fail because of that, I both accept it and forgive you, because I want to be free.
BTW, one of the few countries I have been to is Norway. Beautiful, stunning, country and fantastic people. If I wanted to or had to leave the UK, it would be one of the first places I would consider. I'd love Norway to be the savior of privacy and freedom, but I sadly cant see it.