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

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

#81

Post by ippisl »

mpyne wrote: post #34
gt565k wrote: post #14

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.

It makes sense for the NSA to run exit nodes for the same reason it makes sense for the U.S. Office of Naval Research to have funded its creation and for the U.S. State Dept. to heavily fund its upkeep. There is a vested U.S. national security interest in residents of hostile regimes to be able to freely access the Internet without being traced, even with the knowledge that it may be used to make it more difficult fo…

If you look at the history of anonymity networks, you'll notice that tor totally replaced mixing networks. Considering the fact that mixing nets are more secure against government, with regards to email, it is interesting that the u.s only invests in and promotes tor.

But in a world where individuals have access to extremely powerfull tech, something has to be done.

I think the solution for privacy might look like something different. Maybe the government could read everything, but there would be some good transparency tools, ensuring proper usage.

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

#82

Post by lelandbatey »

bigiain wrote: post #19
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 o…

This reminds me of something that I thought of late one night that I feel needs to happen: tor, or something like it, distributed as the payload of a virus. Hopefully a very serious one.

Then, even if things get patched, it's mere existence and prevelence among the layman gives you a tremendous amount of plausible deniability while also increasing the strength of the network.

However, it's quite morally wrong to do so. I guess it's just one of those late-night thoughts.

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

#83

Post by hnha »

newman314 wrote: post #68
dfc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why we should (and we should encourage everybody we can to) regularly do the most mundane of browsing using TOR. And that's why I encourage everybody I can to run a tor node https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en

What is the current number of Tor nodes? What's to say that all tor nodes are now monitored? It's possibly a smaller task than storing all voice calls etc.

It might seem a smaller task in terms of needed servers but your suspicion fails with the simple fact that anyone can add a relay to the network and thus counter the surveillance. I run a non-exit node on every webserver I got because it's cheap and feels good.

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

#84

Post by joeyo »

icebraining wrote: post #75
dfc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I will start GPG encrypting email to anybody I know who will be able to deal with it" As sad as it is to say, lets be honest and admit that this is a fairly small number. How long do you think it will be till your less committed friends get tired of decrypting your emails and just ignore what you send? Make sure you only pick people that use actual email clients because gpg and Gmail is no fun. As far as the "Thomas…

It seems someone has written a PGP extension for Chrome/GMail: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mymail-crypt-for-g...

I've just started using mailvelope, which works with several webmail providers and also has a firefox extension:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mailvelope/kajibbe...

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

#85

Post by swombat »

joeyo wrote: post #84
icebraining wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems someone has written a PGP extension for Chrome/GMail: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mymail-crypt-for-g...

I've just started using mailvelope, which works with several webmail providers and also has a firefox extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mailvelope/kajibbe...

It looks like Mailvelope only supports RSA encryption (up to 4096bit), not any of the other types of algorithms for PGP. It lists RSA/RSA and RSA/ElGamal but doesn't allow me to select them. Can someone who knows their shit about encryption chime in as to whether that's sufficient?

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

#86

Post by tokenizerrr »

lelandbatey wrote: post #82
bigiain wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

This reminds me of something that I thought of late one night that I feel needs to happen: tor, or something like it, distributed as the payload of a virus. Hopefully a very serious one. Then, even if things get patched, it's mere existence and prevelence among the layman gives you a tremendous amount of plausible deniability while also increasing the strength of the network. However, it's quite morally wrong to do s…

Definitely would be a "good" thing for the tor network if a virus started infecting machines as relays.

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

#87

Post by _djo_ »

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…

It's less of a big deal because states spy on other states, even their allies. It has been that way since the beginning and everyone usually turns a blind eye unless it either gets leaked and causes embarrassment or it results in a real security risk as in the case of Pollard.

Every one of the countries currently lodging complaints over the story of the UK's GCHQ hacking G20 delegates possesses a communications intelligence organisation whose mandate is to spy on foreign states and on foreign people. That includes my own country, which has complained loudly while conveniently forgetting about the National Communications Centre whose purpose is to do exactly that sort of thing. They've also forgotten about some surveillance equipment that was discovered outside the German embassy about a decade ago.

So it's the way things are and have always been. You spy on your allies (very discreetly!) because that's how you maintain confidence in them remaining your allies.

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

#88

Post by wiml »

tsotha wrote: post #66
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.

Yes. I can't imagine someone smart enough to encrypt their traffic wouldn't realize it makes them look dodgy to people who get paid to be paranoid.

I'm pretty sure any professional paranoid would have been thinking I was dodgy for decades now, for things like using the internet (back when that was suspicious) or encrypting my logins with ssh (back when that was suspicious) or my websites with SSL (back when that was suspicious) or running weirdo commie unix-derivatives on my machines instead of honest commercial OSes (back when that was... well, unusual). This putative paranoid gaze has not affected my actual life in the least. I'm sure the paranoids are well aware that most opportunistic encryptors are, like me, random geeks with a slight antiauthoritarian streak and nothing whatsoever of interest to national security. I'm happy to help move the Overton window in the direction of greater privacy and ensure that the people who do actually need anonymity and security can get it.

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

#89

Post by wiml »

gt565k wrote: post #71
fixxer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you cite your source regarding the NSA operated Tor exit? I do not mean this to be snarky -- if you have a legitimate source other than hearsay, I'd love to see it.

No I cannot, because this individual stated that "a 3 letter federal agency" operates the node. Thus never really saying it was the NSA. Given the recent news though, one can only guess it was the NSA. Is it really that hard to believe? Considering that the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) gets mostly DoD contracts and research grants and a lot of those contracts are for classified projects.

The US Office of Naval Research (ONR) is a three-letter agency...

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

#90

Post by slacka »

bigiain wrote: post #19
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 o…

If you are a big Tor user, I hope you consider donating bandwidth to help offset your usage. Recently they made an announcement that they were short on relay nodes.

Here's some info on how to help: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/support-tor-network-donate-...

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