Topic: PRISM - Who else is disgusted by this? - page 3. (Read 41153 times)

Did you even read the article???
FYI the headline is:

Tor is 'run by the feds' to the extent that they provide the operating expenses.  I seem to be the only one who finds the 'we run it to help Iranian dissidents' line a little hard to swallow.  It also is not necessarily completely effective against correlation attacks by an adversary who has an array of network taps (such as 'the feds' as, thanks to Snowden, a lot more people are now aware.)

I'd say that Tor is the cat's pajamas for protection against entities who don't have a in with the 'five eyes' folks.  Even here I would not be not at all surprised if the NSA did a bit of horse-trading of intel data with 'our enemies' (Russia, China) in something akin to a prisoner exchange program.  Both sides would gain much more then they would lose in such an arrangement.

Tor is still safe. Tormail was run by feds, so it doesn't matter.

Ya know what's kind of interesting?  Nary a peep about Booz, Allen, Hamilton for a while now.  A few weeks ago there were some 'official leaks' saying 'Oh, Snowden got info when he worked at Dell' and very little about BAH for a while now.  Early on it was reported that he took a job there specifically because it offered the possibility to get his hands on material.  I think that came right from the horse's mouth.  So BAH should be a major part of this story yet and there should be some interest in knowing why they had what they had and how they let it get away.  It's very interesting to me that there does not seem to be.  Hmmm.

If that were true, and I am not largely in agreement with you, then Snowden is the cause of such social control, not the agencies which worked in secret, as he evoked the knowledge of always being watched which changed our behavior and stifled our descent....

I couldn't agree more. The end result is that it stifles debate, criticism and dissent and undermines any hope of democracy and social justice.  History shows that governments cannot be trusted and all it takes is the next McCarthy to justify spying on the (insert your fear here) in our midst for things to go horribly wrong.

I'd argue that several approaches are required. 

1) Encryption of personal data,
2) Far greater transparency and accountability
3) The dismantling of the overreaching and intrusive systems now in use.
4) Governments committed to the protection of personal privacy and  freedom and the economic well-being of all peoples rather than a select few regardless of culture/religion/genes/race/sex/colour/location. 

Bernard,

Of course I share your concerns about the potential for tyranny made possible by the surveillance system.  I do not think that mass use of cryptography is even a partial answer though.  Among the reasons, it could relatively easily and relatively effectively be banned.  Another is that it is completely true that most people, and particularly most people who are not power-players really do have nothing to hide.  So any inconvenience at all is a usually a show-stopper.

'We' supposedly said no to 'carnivour' back in the early 2000's.  The powers that be said 'ah, OK', and turned around and did exactly what they planned on doing vis-a-vis 'total information awareness.'  So, legislation banning surveillance of innocent people is a proven loser.  Counterproductive, in fact, as it cause the 'good guys' to take their eyes off the ball.

To me the answer lies in a high level of transparancy.  We may (or may not) be able to make true transparency fly.  And an extra level of transparency as it relates to our corp/gov minders might even be possible.  The reason for this is that almost anyone with a warm breath is aware of the problems associated with influence peddling in our government.

It is completely legitimate and logical that individuals should be able to query themselves.  The various types of data and identity theft make it quite easy to me mis-tagged, and the ramification of ending up on the wrong list are genuinely scary.  For these reason it may be possible to induce greater transparency into the data base that has already been collected.

The argument that the 'terrorist' will know our surveillance methods was always bunk, but is not completely off the table thanks in large part to Snowden.  There is really no compelling argument to keep secret data on innocent people so it may be possible to change that.  Changing it by throwing away the dossiers is probably not the way to go since it is unlikely that they will be discarded, and entirely unlikely that deletion could be verified.  Changing it by making the secret dossiers non-secret has a chance of working.

The end result of my idea of providing a much higher level of transparency, and particularly when it comes to people who earn a livelihood off the backs of the taxpayers, is that either less information is hoovered up or the genuine miscreants who abuse our society are discovered.  I'll take either one.

Call from Riseup:

It is a mistake to frame the recent US and European massive surveillance revelations in terms of the privacy of individuals. What is at stake is not privacy at all, but the power of the state over its citizenry.

What surveillance really is, at its root, is a highly effective form of social control. The knowledge of always being watched changes our behavior and stifles dissent. The inability to associate secretly means there is no longer any possibility for free association. The inability to whisper means there is no longer any speech that is truly free of coercion, real or implied. Most profoundly, pervasive surveillance threatens to eliminate the most vital element of both democracy and social movements: the mental space for people to form dissenting and unpopular views.

Many commentators, and Edward Snowden himself, have noted that these surveillance programs represent an existential threat to democracy. This understates the problem. The universal surveillance programs in place now are not simply a potential threat, they are certain to destroy democracy if left unchecked. Democracy, even the shadow of democracy we currently practice, rests on the bedrock foundation of free association, free speech, and dissent. The consequence of the coercive power of surveillance is to subvert this foundation and undermine everything democracy rests on.

Within social movements, there is a temptation to say that nothing is really different. After all, governments have always targeted activist groups with surveillance and disruption, especially the successful ones.

But this new surveillance is different. What the US government and European allies have built is an infrastructure for perfect social control. By automating the process of surveillance, they have created the ability to effortlessly peer into the lives of everyone, all the time, and thus create a system with unprecedented potential for controlling how we behave and think.

True, this infrastructure is not currently used in this way, but it is a technical tool-kit that can easily be used for totalitarian ends.

Those who imagine a government can be trusted to police itself when given the ominous power of precise insight into the inner workings of everyday life are betting the future on the ability of a secretive government to show proper self-restraint in the use of their ever-expanding power. If history has shown us anything, it is that the powerful will always use their full power unless they are forced to stop.

So, how exactly are we planning on stopping them? We support people working through the legal system or applying political pressure, but we feel our best hope of stopping the technology of surveillance is the technology of encryption. Why? Because the forces that have created this brave new world are unlikely to be uprooted before it is too late to halt the advance of surveillance.

Unfortunately, most existing encryption technology is counterproductive. Many people are pushing technology that is proprietary, relies on a central authority, or is hopelessly difficult for the common user. The only technology that has a chance to resist the rise of surveillance will be open source, federated, and incredibly easy to use. In the long run, decentralized peer-to-peer tools might meet this criteria, but for the foreseeable future these tools will not have the features or usability that people have grown accustomed to.

In the coming months, the Riseup birds plan to begin rolling out a series of radically new services, starting with encrypted internet, encrypted email, and encrypted chat. These services will be based on 100% open source and open protocols, will be easy to use, and will protect your data from everyone, even Riseup. This is a massive undertaking, made in concert over the last year with several other organizations, and will only work with your support. We need programmers, particularly those experienced in Python, C, Ruby, and Android development, and sysadmins interested in starting their own secure service providers.

We also need money. Donations from our amazing Riseup users keep us running on our current infrastructure. But in order to be able to graduate to a new generation of truly secure and easy to use communication technology, we are going to need a lot more money than our users are able to donate. If you have deep pockets and an interest in building this new generation of communication, then we need to hear from you. If you have friends or family who care about the future of democracy and who have deep pockets, we need to hear from them, too.

At Riseup, we have felt for the last few years that the window of opportunity to counter the rise of universal surveillance is slowly shrinking. Now is our chance to establish a new reality where mass numbers of people are using encryption on a daily basis.

If you have the skills or the money, now is the time to step up and help make this reality come true. Please contact [email protected]

Bitcoins accepted: https://help.riseup.net/en/donate

Agreed.  A steady drip of leaks, pardon the expression. It's being kept in the public eye at just about the right level, although the UK police seem to have a perfectly timed own goal on this occasion.

I'm hoping that Greenwald stays careful and deliberate.  Being emotional or in a hurry tends to lead to mistakes, and any mis-step in the game they are playing could be fatal.  Literally.

Snowden seems to me to have a mission to inform his fellow citizens about how their governments are operating and the steps he has taken are directed at doing so most efficiently.  Greenwald/Poitras also seems to have shown a lot of restraint in the timings and choices of what is released.  Every time the government and media shills take some bogus defense or produce some talking point, info is released which shoots it down.  And the frequency of the releases seems to be keeping people interested but not overloading them so they have time to think about the issues.  If these guys jump the gun or act out of anger or spite I would expect that their performance will suffer.

I'm hoping Greenwald/Snowdon release more information on GCHQ, they seem to have been let off lightly compared to all the NSA revelations. 

It may be that the detention of Miranda is going to become a significant milestone in the concerns about  mission creep occurring around the UK terrorism laws if the reaction is anything to go by.   I see that Glenn Greenwald is taking it personally too, damn right.  I hope he has something that can really embarrass the Establishment among the items passed by Snowden.  Let's spare a thought for Poitras too, who has to put up with this sort of thing relentlessly on the USA side.

I put up with over 4 years of this kind of shit at huge personal cost and huge cost to the British tax payer before a certain QC called out the UK authorities on it and it ended.  I still won't get into the USA, but that's on the same level as choosing to visit Mordor as far as I'm concerned.

I could say a great deal more about what fundamentally amoral, hypocritical, dishonest, duplicitous, manipulative, vindictive little shits the authorities and individuals involved showed themselves to be and I thoroughly documented it in its entirety for the protection of myself and those closest to me.   I'm thrilled that they've now gone and done it in a rather conspicuous way.

Go Glenn

The detention of David Miranda by the Brits is an interesting observation.  They held him right up to the 9 hour limit and made chit-chat to kill time.  One can only guess that they were still working on the encryption that he was using and didn't get it in the 9 hours they had.  One suspects that a significant percentage of the processing power of probably all of the 'five-eyes' was likely working on the problem.  Or at least the US and UK since it seems possible to me that AU, CA, and NZ defer putting much money into such systems and outsource to the US and UK when there is a pressing need for code cracking.  In fact, it could be the case by this time that the UK themselves simply serves as a US tool for specialized task and also lack the big guns (in a compute resource sense.)

Anyway, if my conjecture is accurate, I would say it's a safe bet that the Greenwald side has some competent technical talent at their disposal by now.

Well, i happen to like small potatoes.  Like the ones served as an appetizer in New Orleanz.  Small red potatoes.  Now those NSA potateoes, they have a rather bitter taste.

I don't know what ass end of what animal they came from.  May a variant of the giant Tasmanian rat which has been known to thrive in the District of Criminals?

what about encrypting a SMS?
edit:
oops 
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms&hl=en

There are plenty other classified programs within the NSA that'll make you lose your lunch, this is small potatoes.

Tor and TorMail infiltrated too:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/
Until now they made changes slowly so people dont notice, but now it seems they have thrown all caution overboard.

More revelations from No Secrecy Allowed

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/nsa-loophole-warrantless-searches-email-calls

Silent Circle is also closing its mail service, time to start encrypting everything.

Yeah, try the domain record.  Unless it's cloaked there should be a contact listed.  Actually and rather curiously, I suspect you have a legal cause of action against them for this behavior of theirs and the harm it caused you.  That their actions in resisting the jack booted storm troopers of the Evil Empire are understandable does not change this.

Also, note that the past records of the website, which would include contact info, are available on the 'wayback machine' through archive.org.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.lavabit.com

Looking at this, i find "lavabit llc" is the company, so they would have a record in the state of origin.  Looking at the terms of use, here is some wording:

Lavabit does not actively monitor, censor or restrict its users. Lavabit does not claim any responsibility for the actions of its users. However, if presented with evidence that a particular user has violated this Abuse Policy, we will take appropriate action, including but not limited to:

    Locking the user’s account.
    Referring the submitter of the evidence to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
    Surrendering any applicable records to authorities if presented with a properly formed court order.


Therefore I would assume that whatever the authorities wanted from Lavabit did not involve a "Properly formed court order", in the opinion of the site owner.

Also interesting, Lavabit said they had 350,000 users.  All vanished just like that?  All their records and emails?  That's a house to house search of a pretty fair sized city.  Why is it I don't expect any mention of this in the mainstream media?

Okay, so here is one more factoid.  Here is the "Lavabit defense fund page."

And you know what?  I'd like to contribute.  With bitcoins.  Not with Paypal.  Because I know THEY are watching....

https://lavabit.com/contact.html‎ -- 404 not found...not sure how we can contact them... anyone here knows how to get it touch with them?  There's a AMA request on Reddit for Ladar Levison am  looking forward to that...