Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Nemesis6 on November 09, 2013, 06:27:13 pm
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Since privacy is all the rage these days, I was wondering what steps -- if any -- you guys have taken.
I pretty much use a VPN all the time with the only exception being when I game, and I've switched away from Chrome over to the "Iron", and since then to a firefox variant. I've installed a few addons that messes up referrer tracking, force http everywhere, and self-destruct any cookies unless I've allowed them. So the list basically goes Adblock, Ghostery, HTTPS Everywhere, Referrer Control, and Self-Destructing Cookies, along with a few misc. steps steps like disabling all plugins except flash, and even that much be enabled by me before it loads. A tiny, relatively insignificant step I've taken is spoofing my referrer to that of the Tor Browser, which I also use. All of this is topped off by using a VPN.
The latest step I've taken is mangling my hosts.lm file to redirect any attempt by me to visit google to startpage.com, an alternative search site that does not log user activity. Their sister-site ixquick.com has gotten recognition some recognition by the EU here: https://ixquick.com/eng/press/eu-privacy-seal.html
An alternative to that is DuckDuckGo, but they are apparently based in he United States, and so can be compelled to not only log through the CALEA law, but also to keep quiet about it, lest they be punished under provisions of the latest Patriot Act extension signed by Obama, so I'd say avoid them.
One last thing I've started doing is whenever I sign up to services, I sign up with junk-email accounts.
I've based a lot of this off of this page here: http://ip-check.info/
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you realise the NSA are accumulating metadata from all of your traffic that they can intercept? if anything doing all these things will make you slightly more prominent on their heuristics, although they still do not give a **** about anything you actually do
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you realise the NSA are accumulating metadata from all of your traffic that they can intercept? if anything doing all these things will make you slightly more prominent on their heuristics, although they still do not give a **** about anything you actually do
That is indeed a problem I've also looked a bit at -- For example, initially one would assume that something like referrer spoofing would be a good idea, but if you give your browser a unique referrer like by changing browser version numbers to something out of the ordinary, you've accomplished exactly the opposite of what you're trying to do as you imply.
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i already used adblock and ghostery. will continue to use them, although I'm starting to notice that sites are starting to break when using one or both of them more frequently.
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if a government agency of any country was interested in me enough to "do something about it" I would be more worried about the police coming to arrest and try or extradite me than "covering my tracks". I mean hell this is not some conspiracy novel guys, except in a few cases government is not something to be paranoid about, seriously they have more to worry about than to abuse their powers and destroy my insignificant life.
Seriously if you think the NSA is that interested in you then
(http://www.stellamaesplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/keep-calm-and-dream-on-219.png)
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I don't particularly care
If the NSA wants to watch me watch porn, good on them
I only recently installed adblocker because ****ing ads are annoying
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if a government agency of any country was interested in me enough to "do something about it" I would be more worried about the police coming to arrest and try or extradite me than "covering my tracks". I mean hell this is not some conspiracy novel guys, except in a few cases government is not something to be paranoid about, seriously they have more to worry about than to abuse their powers and destroy my insignificant life.
Seriously if you think the NSA is that interested in you then
//http://www.stellamaesplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/keep-calm-and-dream-on-219.png
For me it's not really the NSA I worry about, it's just the general idea of preserving what privacy I can. There are indeed some people out there are delusional enough to think that they themselves are targets, but I'm not one of them, thank god. If I really worried that much, I would use stuff like NoScript, but I can't forego that much functionality; There's got to be a balance between functionality and privacy. Rather, it's the mass-surveillance stuff that I take offense to, and that's what I'm responding to, not the idea that black helicopters are coming to take me away at night! :)
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If you object to the mass surveillance by the government, I suggest you ditch all this nonsense and just get involved with whatever means of social activism you think will make a difference. It's not a problem that can be solved by technological means. If you want to get away from the day-to-day and up-front tracking of your activities by commercial organisations (which perturbs me far more in my daily life than some far-off stats in the archives of some intelligence agency) then the stuff you're using is a great salve, but don't kid yourself about what it's accomplishing.
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What have I done?
Absolutely nothing. I don't have anything particularly useful to hide except financial information, and if the government is after that they'll just take it and tell me to shut the **** up. Porn isn't illegal, talking on the internet isn't illegal, and I go out of my way to buy or otherwise legally acquire everything I consume with regards to digital media.
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i thought i should further weigh in that my main concern is far more about corporate tracking and data gathering than the government. i don't like that they collect and store everything everywhere, but i don't think this is a problem to me individually, and the angle to stop this is to make it illegal, not try to shield myself.
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I haven't found anything i should do yet other than attempting to preserve online anonymity in some way. Beware which other email account you let your main email use in the event you get locked out. And the oh so evil "login with facebook instead" buttons as opposed to typing in your username and password at other sites.
In other words, you could easily have an email you believe to be anonymous that you didn't quite realize can be traced back to your facebook or other stuff online. In the guise of convenience to "login with facebook" it's a great way to tie faces, name, and information to most places you have an account on the internet.
I'm worrying about this first and will see if i can come up with a good strategy to help mitigate or effectively take care of this issue of the destroying of anonymity on the internet before i worry about the other stuff. In other words, start by staying anonymous first before you go all crazy about this lack of privacy on the internet anymore.
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if a government agency of any country was interested in me enough to "do something about it" I would be more worried about the police coming to arrest and try or extradite me than "covering my tracks". I mean hell this is not some conspiracy novel guys, except in a few cases government is not something to be paranoid about, seriously they have more to worry about than to abuse their powers and destroy my insignificant life.
I can't speak for everyone of course, but for me the point is that if something unforeseeable should happen which would lead to me being involved in something that governments and intelligence services are interested in, then having access to all my electronic communications would mean that they'd be much more able to use that information against me and my interests in all sorts of unfair and illegal ways. They don't care about me now, but that doesn't mean that they never will.
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A lot of you are still conflating the surveillance carried out by intelligence agencies with the corporate trade in data. You can hide yourself from the latter with a bit of effort, but the former is functionally inescapable; the people doing it have direct access to the basic infrastructure and are monitoring it on a very basic level.
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This is why i like to say people worrying about privacy haven't put thing into perspective. Internet anonymity is being destroyed. You should all be worried about that (most people won't realize that they do rely on internet anonymity in some form).
The other thing is, the i do no wrong. Let this bull**** keep spying on me. Well, what happens when you do try to do something that's not illegal say like in my country like, owning a gun. You see spying on everyone servers more than one purpose. Spying on people for the sake of spying on people (believing that you have nothing to hide is as equally retarded). There's a reason for spying. People are looking for stuff.
Spying happens for two main reasons. To know what people are doing. And, the main biggie, sizing people up. Doing daily life in your interests sizes you up. Most idiots would like to think this applies to all. Well, it does and it doesn't. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you will be sized up proportionately less than someone who doesn't and buys and owns guns and ammo. That may be an extreme sizing up example, but i present it in that way to show off the difference between people who will be monitored more than the ones who will be monitored less. When you get sized up according to who, what you are, and what you have, you get treated differently. In this case of spying, expect all of that treatment to be in the negative for "national security/bull****".
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I haven't found anything i should do yet other than attempting to preserve online anonymity in some way. Beware which other email account you let your main email use in the event you get locked out. And the oh so evil "login with facebook instead" buttons as opposed to typing in your username and password at other sites.
In other words, you could easily have an email you believe to be anonymous that you didn't quite realize can be traced back to your facebook or other stuff online. In the guise of convenience to "login with facebook" it's a great way to tie faces, name, and information to most places you have an account on the internet.
I'm worrying about this first and will see if i can come up with a good strategy to help mitigate or effectively take care of this issue of the destroying of anonymity on the internet before i worry about the other stuff. In other words, start by staying anonymous first before you go all crazy about this lack of privacy on the internet anymore.
The answer is simple. Baleet Facebook. Can't log in with an account you no longer have!
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fun fact, if you repeatedly attempt to log into facebook with an email address and an invalid password it will actually show you the account associated with that address and ask you if it's yours, no frills attached
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Online privacy is a myth.
Accept when you connect a computer to the internet that anything you do online - and quite possibly a number of things on your computer - are intercepted and tracked by someone, somewhere, and then realize the chances of that information being used to actually harm you are infinitesimally small.
I have used Adblock, NoScript, and HTTPSEverywhere since I discovered them years ago. The spying revelations haven't changed any of my behaviour. I sincerely do look at it this way: aside from letting my financial logins into the hands of someone who would use it to abuse it, I have literally nothing to hide. I know popular thought is that I'm supposed to be all up in arms about the spying revelations, but I seriously cannot be bothered. Every advanced country on the planet has electronic espionage programs that capture every scrap of information they can... the fact that my data gets captured by everyone elses really has no bearing. It's not like a person actually looks at this stuff - it's all subjected to computerized analysis.
As someone else - Phantom? - said, if anything using elaborate security measures is MORE likely to get your information closely scrutinized than less. You need to worry about online privacy when it comes to hackers/phishers/scriptkiddies that will try to pry out financial and personal info to USE. Government programs are pretty much unbeatable, and aren't going to use your information in ways that will harm you anyway - unless you deserve it.
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What have I done?
Absolutely nothing.
Unless you are, say, Russian, in which case you find that your rights as, say, a gay person, are getting eroded bit by bit, and then suddenly, you actually do have stuff to hide.
Then again, if you live in a country where stuff like that happens, there's probably nothing you can do about it anyway... :(
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That, along with the fact that if such a thing occurred, I would happily and without nary a second thought move somewhere less ****ty if it meant selling the shirt off my back to do it.
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The answer is simple. Baleet Facebook. Can't log in with an account you no longer have!
Actually, no, the answer is more complicated. Facebook wasn't my only example, there was also email, not to mention the many different ways to attatch a name and face to any kind of internet account.
But, another great way is giving a website your cell number.
Google, yahoo, microsoft, badoo, etc. millions give their cell numbers too. Now, backtracking on people not quite watching what their doing can also be done. Say like joe blow has a youtube account, and he actually let youtube have his number, that number just got associated with youtube (even google). It also got associated with the email address for his youtube/google account. Now, joe blow was smart with his email provider allowing an easy way to reset his account by sending a reset password email to another of his emails. Now, that number is tied to two email addresses, and so on.
This is what i mean by internet anonymity being destroyed on the internet. You can still be anonymous, it's just no where near as easy in the modern day on the net.
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facebook is notoriously unwilling to let users delete accounts, actually.
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Yeah, the deactive my account link on there is just a logout button.
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Government programs are pretty much unbeatable, and aren't going to use your information in ways that will harm you anyway - unless you deserve it.
Omnipotent, omniscient, and just!
<3 Government!
Trust at level 10!
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It's a good approach to the issue, actually. :) It's not like we can actually do anything about government surveillance, so we'd better hope that they're not going to abuse this. You can consider yourself lucky if you live in a country where this is not an absurd assumption. While I did hear about a few cases in America of this stuff being indeed abused (mostly travel restrictions and the like), it's generally got a good record about it compared to, say, Russia.
Of course, you can always live in a country where most people in the government are old geezers too incompetent to even make their electronic document exchange system run smoothly (though I'll give it to them, when it is not broken, it's a great improvement over traditional paperwork). This has it's own drawbacks, though, as my frequent complaints about Polish politics can attest. :)
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Good thing I was highly paranoid when it comes to social media, even before all these PRISM things comes around. I never update my status on facebook, I only snark at people's posts. I always assume that anything I put on Facebook can be seen by everyone, so I only let people see what I want them to see. Still, the webcam on my laptop now makes me feel uneasy, perhaps I should cover it with duct tape.
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In my own opinion. The nsa has too much power; it wasn't so much built to be abused as it is also an abuse itself. Then again a lot of it's abusing has already been happening, just i don't know why people haven't been calling the lot of it abuse.
Right now the nsa is gathering dirt on everybody, which sizes them up and then some. I foresee a lot of blackmail, misrepresentation of fact and people, and even fabricated information. You know, the bad things that happen when abuse increases.
But, fabricated information about people would be easy for the nsa to get away with. The nsa collects real data about everyone on everything. There's this, but who's going to know any different when they start fabricating details about a person if they were to do so (i'll put it more realistically; if they were ordered to do so)? For whatever purpose, it doesn't matter, but a good one i can think of is someone in the population that fits the beliefs, lifestyle, education, etc. that can be re-invented into an enemy of the country on paper and then purported as such through more misinformation on other mediums. You know, for another tragic event to happen that will make people scared again to allow for **** like security cameras in your house that big brother watches or implanted chips (it doesn't matter, it's alright, because i guess it's not so bad people figure). Right now i would say my government is far from truthful.
Spying is great after 911. What's weird (yes i can spell that word correctly now) is people not minding this ****. Now of course there was spying before 911, but not the kind of police state we have today involving that. So, i see it as everyone went from having virgin buttholes that could break glass if farted, to tragic event that triggers everyone to be forced to have a buttplug fudge packed way up there. And people are saying "i have nothing to hide, this isn't too bad to deal with" and the buttplug gets bigger as time goes on. In a nutshell, it's really odd running into people who don't mind being ****ed, ****ed again, and again (people that don't mind a steadily worsening situation that directly affects them when nothing had to get worse in the first place). Bad stuff is happening that is very bad and is happening to people directly and it keeps getting worse. And it is worrisome thinking about the nsa's very likely potential for more active abuse as they keep existing encouraged by a government that put it there that isn't much better. But yeah, the "i don't have anything to hide" crowd doesn't mind buttplugs. I say we all don't want to find out when the buttplugs become obsolete in favor of an upgrade to penises.
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S-99
you honestly believe that in this time of nations struggling to fund themselves (referring to the US's recent budgeting issues as a highlight of this but not restricted to this) in nations renown for cutting back where possible on public spending that the intelligence agencies generally have to time to dick about in the lives of private citizens for the hell of it when they have to locate threats from multiple sources, both nation states and private organisations running multiple operations that could threaten the countries in question, hidden amongst the billions of people occupying this planet, a sizable proportion of which are involved in transmitting hundreds of electronic signals per day....
need i continue?
seriously while it is possible and there are times when power is abused, outside of the usual suspects of nations government or private entity abuse of national intelligence resources and or data is rare enough that the risk percentage is not worth calculating thus i refer you to my earlier post. If you live in a country where this sort of abuse is frequent then by all means take a stand but I advise if you do that you have an exit strategy in place.
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Let me point you guys something more interesting. One of the things Edward Snowden leaked was that NSA put various bug devices here and there. The US actually smart enough that they put those surveillance centers not in any buildings that belong to them, but rather those that belong to their allies that are in better relationship to the country in question. For example, they use embassies of their allies as surveillance centers, most notably British and Australian embassies and consulates, hardly ever in their own so that they can wash their hands if they ever get caught. In my country, while they do spy on terrorists threats and all, what the NSA is the most interested in are the political stuff, like whether the government officials they bribed held their end of their bargain or not, or some locals are attempting a crackdown on one of their companies. Our government officials are not trustworthy, to say the least.
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Government programs are pretty much unbeatable, and aren't going to use your information in ways that will harm you anyway - unless you deserve it.
Omnipotent, omniscient, and just!
<3 Government!
Trust at level 10!
You should be reading what I wrote as cynicism, not trust. Frankly, most government programs aren't competent enough to mount a concerted conspiracy. For anyone not doing anything nefarious, the chances of them ever catching the attention of the various international espionage programs are slim and none.
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i think we'd all be shocked at how competent the government can be when serving its own ends instead of ours.
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Good thing I was highly paranoid when it comes to social media, even before all these PRISM things comes around. I never update my status on facebook, I only snark at people's posts. I always assume that anything I put on Facebook can be seen by everyone, so I only let people see what I want them to see. Still, the webcam on my laptop now makes me feel uneasy, perhaps I should cover it with duct tape.
We've been over this! Doing all that accomplished nothing, because that's not how PRISM works! It doesn't read the actual content of your messages, it monitors your overall traffic habits: snarking on other people's statuses actually gives it MORE information on you.
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You should be reading what I wrote as cynicism, not trust. Frankly, most government programs aren't competent enough to mount a concerted conspiracy. For anyone not doing anything nefarious, the chances of them ever catching the attention of the various international espionage programs are slim and none.
I don't think any conspiracy is required for programs like this to result in serious abuses of power. All you need is a nebulously defined global conflict, an institutional culture based around finding hidden enemies, and a lack of meaningful oversight. Bonus points if your country is willing to indefinitely detain and/or assassinate civilians. Major bonus points if you have convinced your populace that there's nothing they can do about it but they're safe as long as they keep their heads down.
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S-99
you honestly believe that in this time of nations struggling to fund themselves (referring to the US's recent budgeting issues as a highlight of this but not restricted to this) in nations renown for cutting back where possible on public spending that the intelligence agencies generally have to time to dick about in the lives of private citizens for the hell of it when they have to locate threats from multiple sources, both nation states and private organisations running multiple operations that could threaten the countries in question, hidden amongst the billions of people occupying this planet, a sizable proportion of which are involved in transmitting hundreds of electronic signals per day....
need i continue?
seriously while it is possible and there are times when power is abused, outside of the usual suspects of nations government or private entity abuse of national intelligence resources and or data is rare enough that the risk percentage is not worth calculating thus i refer you to my earlier post. If you live in a country where this sort of abuse is frequent then by all means take a stand but I advise if you do that you have an exit strategy in place.
In my country power is obviously being abused. And it's even obvious. The conspiracy is not very hidden. Either way, the point being scaring the populace and instituting new "security" seems to be the norm over here. The last thing is when something has so much power, you tend to evaluate upon it's potential for delivering abuse further (even above and beyond) when whatever has the power to do so. It gets down to in a situation like that you better expect abuse. In fact, it's guaranteed. And in reality was it abuse when so much power was given to anything? Yes.
When my health insurance rates double, and i can't pay that because of the income inequality (even though a college graduate i could only find work where i live as a burger flipper, and i was lucky to get that because the other applicants didn't speak english). Then i get to pay a punitive fee which increases. This will lead to more and more people who will get to choose paying for food, bills, and mortgage/rent. This is called ****ing people, and i'm feeling pretty ****ed for knowing how close to this reality i myself and others are you dick.
If you think for once that my government is operating in the interests of it's people. I'll tell you to go snort more hallucinegens.
I can't currently trust my government to work in the interests of it's own people, it's obvious i can't. They are all greedy in the end. And my government is greedy because it believes it can take it out on the people instead of paying off it's debts and do nothing but massive spending. Even as a government worker i am still ****ed because of the furlough, then the extended furlough from the shutdown. And lastly the government shutdown that was postponed until february. Hey, the government thinks i should handle more than a 20% decrease in pay a year. How much farther should that buttplug be further pilfering for chocolate man?
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You should be reading what I wrote as cynicism, not trust. Frankly, most government programs aren't competent enough to mount a concerted conspiracy. For anyone not doing anything nefarious, the chances of them ever catching the attention of the various international espionage programs are slim and none.
I don't think any conspiracy is required for programs like this to result in serious abuses of power. All you need is a nebulously defined global conflict, an institutional culture based around finding hidden enemies, and a lack of meaningful oversight. Bonus points if your country is willing to indefinitely detain and/or assassinate civilians. Major bonus points if you have convinced your populace that there's nothing they can do about it but they're safe as long as they keep their heads down.
This. All of this.
I wish I was that articulate the last time someone accused me of being a "conspiracy theorist." No conspiracy is required or even necessarily likely. I wish to God that more people understood this. This is a systemic problem, emergent in nature. A conspiracy is something that can be defeated by exposure. This is far more difficult to deal with.
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If you use VPN or tor the government will generally not be able to spy on you, NSA included. Of course, that may not be true of the first thing you do is log on to Facebook and various easily tracked online accounts or begin to divulge personal information (I believe thats how they got the Silk Road dude) . Also if you are a really high profile target then almost anything is possible..
The issue is that VPNs and tor tend to slow down my browsing a lot, and good VPNs usualy cost money while you can never be 100% sure they dont log info. If anyone has tips how to solve these downsides I am all ears.
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Using VPNs or Tor is pretty much screaming "I have something to hide, come find out what it is" to the NSA.
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The easiest and most reliable way of avoiding NSA knowing about stuff you don't want them to know about is not to put it on the internet in the first place. Meaning nothing private on Facebook (they'd actually be better off reading the "movies I like" list in my profile. There are some darn good movies in there :)) and on the internet in general. The only sensitive info I ever entered into my browser was meant for my bank, which is pretty much unavoidable these days, I'm afraid. Not to mention if they really wanted this info, they probably have ways of bullying the bank into giving them up (there was a story with UBS getting a court order to divulge info about their customers in US). While this is one area that could potentially be a problem, but as far as I know, banks are perhaps the only places on the internet with decent security. If they can't prevent the government from getting your sensitive data, probably nothing can.
Trivial stuff such as date of birth and my middle name is no secret anyway (it's the stuff I'd probably tell you if asked politely), and I'd actually want the government to store this kind of info in some central register somewhere. As it stands, I have to fill in those same data every darn time I need to fill out paperwork. Same with postal address, while I'd probably not tell it to a random guy on the street, the government, of all organizations, really should know this already.
If I ever wanted something about me to stay hidden, I'd simply give no hint about it whatsoever on the internet. Criminals posting their crimes on YouTube shouldn't be surprised if the police knocks on their doors.
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The easiest and most reliable way of avoiding NSA knowing about stuff you don't want them to know about is not to put it on the internet in the first place. Meaning nothing private on Facebook (they'd actually be better off reading the "movies I like" list in my profile. There are some darn good movies in there :)) and on the internet in general.
how many ****ing times to i have to say that THE NSA IS NOT READING YOUR ****ING FACEBOOK
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Probably many more times than I should have to say calm down.
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Using VPNs or Tor is pretty much screaming "I have something to hide, come find out what it is" to the NSA.
Nah, they are used by millions so it is not very suspicious. NSA does not have the resources nor an interest to spy on average Tor and VPN users, thats if it is even possible.
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they have even less resources to spy on people who don't use those things!
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The easiest and most reliable way of avoiding NSA knowing about stuff you don't want them to know about is not to put it on the internet in the first place. Meaning nothing private on Facebook (they'd actually be better off reading the "movies I like" list in my profile. There are some darn good movies in there :)) and on the internet in general.
how many ****ing times to i have to say that THE NSA IS NOT READING YOUR ****ING FACEBOOK
how on earth can you possibly know this. are you the director of the NSA? they very well could be collecting facebook posts. unless you're just playing the semantics game and mean they aren't actively reading vice collecting/storing data, you cannot definitively state that they aren't.
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well you know we have all those leaked NSA documents giving fairly broad coverage of their electronic surveillance efforts
but i guess we can ditch all that and basic common sense besides and pretend they're probably listening to everything ever, sure
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The easiest and most reliable way of avoiding NSA knowing about stuff you don't want them to know about is not to put it on the internet in the first place. Meaning nothing private on Facebook (they'd actually be better off reading the "movies I like" list in my profile. There are some darn good movies in there :)) and on the internet in general.
how many ****ing times to i have to say that THE NSA IS NOT READING YOUR ****ING FACEBOOK
contrary to my earlier stance
the NSA might not be but the Department for work and pensions is in the UK, especially if you are on disability or job seeker benefits
but then.... when i was on Job seekers i was above board so no need to worry there and I rarely actually post anything anyway so it made and makes no difference to me anyway, read about my non life as much as you want,
though again iirc it is run under of lets monitor this batch of people for a bit and then move onto the next batch
well you know we have all those leaked NSA documents giving fairly broad coverage of their electronic surveillance efforts
but i guess we can ditch all that and basic common sense besides and pretend they're probably listening to everything ever, sure
indeed the the money needed to actively monitor every citizen in a nation is basically not there in most societies, you have to actually do something to red flag yourself a few times to be worth a human even looking at your data and even then the first step is to look at it in terms of "are you a false positive?"
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The easiest and most reliable way of avoiding NSA knowing about stuff you don't want them to know about is not to put it on the internet in the first place. Meaning nothing private on Facebook (they'd actually be better off reading the "movies I like" list in my profile. There are some darn good movies in there :)) and on the internet in general.
how many ****ing times to i have to say that THE NSA IS NOT READING YOUR ****ING FACEBOOK
Why not? It's the first place any self-respecting data mining company goes to. It'd be really foolish of them to ignore Facebook, so it's hard to believe they're not monitoring it in any way. Same with Google+. Why use elaborate programs, e-mail interception and the like when most people will flat out tell you everything via Facebook? Also, even if NSA isn't doing it (unlikely as it is), there are several more suspicious organizations (the aforementioned data mining companies, for example) who do it for a living.
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You should be reading what I wrote as cynicism, not trust. Frankly, most government programs aren't competent enough to mount a concerted conspiracy. For anyone not doing anything nefarious, the chances of them ever catching the attention of the various international espionage programs are slim and none.
I don't think any conspiracy is required for programs like this to result in serious abuses of power. All you need is a nebulously defined global conflict, an institutional culture based around finding hidden enemies, and a lack of meaningful oversight. Bonus points if your country is willing to indefinitely detain and/or assassinate civilians. Major bonus points if you have convinced your populace that there's nothing they can do about it but they're safe as long as they keep their heads down.
This. All of this.
I wish I was that articulate the last time someone accused me of being a "conspiracy theorist." No conspiracy is required or even necessarily likely. I wish to God that more people understood this. This is a systemic problem, emergent in nature. A conspiracy is something that can be defeated by exposure. This is far more difficult to deal with.
I would love if someone could come up with an actual plausible scenario of an ordinary person being affected in any way by international espionage programs collecting their data and usage information.
It doesn't make the spying right, but the idea that any one individual who is NOT involved in some seriously nefarious goings-on will be specifically targeted by these programs and have the rather broad-strokes patterns used against them is absolutely laughable.
As is the idea that using VPNs or Tor somehow protects you. The very notion of privacy on the Internet is a false premise from its start.
If the recent leaks - which are but a tiny fraction of the picture that is international signals intercept - are any indication, basically every scrap of information that is transmitted or received can be and is intercepted. That's being used for pattern analysis, not pulling individual data. Unless one of you has a secret and exotic criminal career going, it's pretty safe to say that all of our information is just noise. No one and nothing has the capability to do a deep analysis of everything that's collected; it's being chosen by pattern analysis and then a tiny, tiny fraction is looked at by real people.
Seriously - if any of these NSA revelations actually trouble you and have you installing security measures to combat them, unplug your PC and take every Internet-connected and connectable device and burn them right now, because that is the ONLY way that your actions are not being monitored in some way... of course, your government still stores much of its information online anyway and all of the records OF you are stored that way as well, so you still have an online presence whether you control it or not. Point is - the idea of trying to secure oneself against signals intercept is flawed from the outset - no one, and I do mean NO ONE, has the capability to do it even partially. If you think using Tor/VPN/browser plugins, etc etc are going to protect you, I have some lovely oceanfront property for sale in Alberta for one hell of a deal that you might be interested in.
(Note: the "you's" above are directed at a general audience and not the quoted posters.)
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If you think using Tor/VPN/browser plugins, etc etc are going to protect you, I have some lovely oceanfront property for sale in Alberta for one hell of a deal that you might be interested in.
They actually do protect you well enough. Breaking through tor or VPN usualy requires some hardcore traffic analysis and data requests for other agencies all over the world, if it is even possible at all. NSA cannot just read everything you transmit through them like its an open book. More importantly, they also protect you from even being flagged in the first place, since all the NSA would get is encrypted data coming from anonymised source with no distinguishing attributes, and there is plenty of that all over the net. If you already are a high profile target then anything is possible, including real world interventions and the abovementioned, but otherwise they are enough to protect from spying for 99% of people.
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I would love if someone could come up with an actual plausible scenario of an ordinary person being affected in any way by international espionage programs collecting their data and usage information.
I don't know what you mean by ordinary people but I'll assume it excludes all the ordinary people who are considered potential threats by the US government. Beyond them, the current way of doing business has certainly fostered an environment of distrust and paranoia given some of the reactions I've seen, and I can't say I'd be surprised if it contributed to a rise in our (the USA's) own domestic right wing terrorists activity, in which case certainly ordinary people would be affected because they or their loved ones would be dead. I can think up other scenarios of varying levels of plausibility later but my dog is being cute right now.
I agree that trying to evade government surveillance in one's day-to-day life is silly.
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I would love if someone could come up with an actual plausible scenario of an ordinary person being affected in any way by international espionage programs collecting their data and usage information.
I don't know what you mean by ordinary people but I'll assume it excludes all the ordinary people who are considered potential threats by the US government. Beyond them, the current way of doing business has certainly fostered an environment of distrust and paranoia given some of the reactions I've seen, and I can't say I'd be surprised if it contributed to a rise in our (the USA's) own domestic right wing terrorists activity, in which case certainly ordinary people would be affected because they or their loved ones would be dead. I can think up other scenarios of varying levels of plausibility later but my dog is being cute right now.
I agree that trying to evade government surveillance in one's day-to-day life is silly.
even then you are still engaged in the kind of activity that the government needs to know about, thus the computers red flag you and you are then monitored actively by a person.
up to the point where you have done something to make you a person of interest all you are is a statistic on a computer, the raw data from which is one of millions/billions of similar data sets on said computers. the shear amount of data that is national electronic communications let alone international sources means that you have to filter it through a computer just to find the stuff you are looking for, the rest is automatically cataloged and stored in case you become interesting at some point in the future. Seriously unless you are a terrorist, freedom fighter, intelligence officer, traitor or international criminal, you are just not worth the attention of a human.
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I think for the social media spying stuff, Edward Snowden already mentioned that part. I am not sure that made you worried or not. Obviously they didn't have the time to read everyone's facebook wall. Rather, it worked in reverse. They just plugged your wall to their monitoring equipments and generally don't bother to read it unless they are too bored. Only when certain topics or words comes up, then the machine gives them a ping, only then, they may start looking at your page.
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I don't know what you mean by ordinary people but I'll assume it excludes all the ordinary people who are considered potential threats by the US government. Beyond them, the current way of doing business has certainly fostered an environment of distrust and paranoia given some of the reactions I've seen, and I can't say I'd be surprised if it contributed to a rise in our (the USA's) own domestic right wing terrorists activity, in which case certainly ordinary people would be affected because they or their loved ones would be dead. I can think up other scenarios of varying levels of plausibility later but my dog is being cute right now.
I agree that trying to evade government surveillance in one's day-to-day life is silly.
Ordinary people like whom? I have yet to see a single example of a case where the collected data has been used improperly to affect people who were otherwise innocent of any wrongdoing. And that is the point - with the exception of a very few types of activities and individuals, the simple truth is that no one in signals-intercept cares about what 99.999% of the population has posted on their Facebook wall, emailed to their friends, or chatted about online generally. They don't even care what your banking information is, though no doubt a lot of that also gets captured in the intercepts.
[/quote] If you think using Tor/VPN/browser plugins, etc etc are going to protect you, I have some lovely oceanfront property for sale in Alberta for one hell of a deal that you might be interested in.
They actually do protect you well enough. Breaking through tor or VPN usualy requires some hardcore traffic analysis and data requests for other agencies all over the world, if it is even possible at all. NSA cannot just read everything you transmit through them like its an open book. More importantly, they also protect you from even being flagged in the first place, since all the NSA would get is encrypted data coming from anonymised source with no distinguishing attributes, and there is plenty of that all over the net. If you already are a high profile target then anything is possible, including real world interventions and the abovementioned, but otherwise they are enough to protect from spying for 99% of people.
If the data coming from the anonymised source is high profile enough to warrant the attention of signals-intercept, then it will be read (also, neither Tor nor VPN encrypt outbound information, it's just encrypted between points on the network). Multiple signals-intercept agencies have demonstrated surprising past capability for breaking encryption methods thought to be near-unbreakable.
If it's not then it won't.
No different than if you didn't bother using Tor or VPN in the first place!
In other words, though it is exceptionally cliche and goes against rights-based discussion, for all practical purposes the only people who should care about spying are the people who are targeted by it because they are up to no good and they know it. The rest of us are collateral damage.
TL;DR - None of this is worth getting worked up about.
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"If you don't have nothing to hide, you should not fear anything. Now open up your dear privacy to us and let us work flawlessly for your own good. It won't hurt. Much"
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"If you don't have nothing to hide, you should not fear anything. Now open up your dear privacy to us and let us work flawlessly for your own good. It won't hurt. Much"
You'd be wise to note that I have only commented about the practical reality of the situation, not its ethics or legitimacy.
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The ethics and legitimacy of it are so obvious to us because we do have fictional and non-fictional precedents for it and we *do* know that the practicalities of these situations often degenerate towards sistemic abuse against individuals, even if such abuse wasn't intended or planned.
The very fact that we do *know* of these watchmen who are increasingly more artificial than human is already making a toll on netizenship and the internet in general. It's making the world a worse place just because it exists.
And I'm really pessimistic over this issue. I think it will only get worse and worse and every single nation will have the ability to this kind of stuff to their populace in ways we don't yet imagine even possible today.
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...which is why I've never said it is ethical, legitimate, or even necessary.
What I have said is that it's net effect on the average person is so negligible that it does not need any technological response from the average user, and that any response you can take is worthless in all practical respects.
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If the data coming from the anonymised source is high profile enough to warrant the attention of signals-intercept, then it will be read (also, neither Tor nor VPN encrypt outbound information, it's just encrypted between points on the network). Multiple signals-intercept agencies have demonstrated surprising past capability for breaking encryption methods thought to be near-unbreakable.
If it's not then it won't.
No different than if you didn't bother using Tor or VPN in the first place!
Outbound anonymised information is normally not encrypted and can be read, but that merely means that you should not transmit something that reveals your identity (your original ip adress, logging in to FB or any other accounts linked to you etc). Otherwise you should be safe. Every good encryption is unbreakable unless you somehow obtain the password, does not matter what computing power you throw at it.
It is quite different. Without tor or VPN, NSA can theoretically and often practically read your data like an open book. With tor or VPN, they cannot do this unless they get lucky, you do something dumb and reveal your identity or they throw large resources at the problem with results still not guaranteed (and I mean resources only big terrorists, other nations and such are worth, not your average cyber criminal). So for all practical purposes, it is an effective solution to prevent NSA spying for 99% of people wishing to do so.
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I don't know what you mean by ordinary people but I'll assume it excludes all the ordinary people who are considered potential threats by the US government. Beyond them, the current way of doing business has certainly fostered an environment of distrust and paranoia given some of the reactions I've seen, and I can't say I'd be surprised if it contributed to a rise in our (the USA's) own domestic right wing terrorists activity, in which case certainly ordinary people would be affected because they or their loved ones would be dead. I can think up other scenarios of varying levels of plausibility later but my dog is being cute right now.
I agree that trying to evade government surveillance in one's day-to-day life is silly.
Ordinary people like whom? I have yet to see a single example of a case where the collected data has been used improperly to affect people who were otherwise innocent of any wrongdoing. And that is the point - with the exception of a very few types of activities and individuals, the simple truth is that no one in signals-intercept cares about what 99.999% of the population has posted on their Facebook wall, emailed to their friends, or chatted about online generally. They don't even care what your banking information is, though no doubt a lot of that also gets captured in the intercepts.
I was thinking of ordinary people like people who might be related to a terror suspect or have gone to the same mosque or lived in the same town or whatever. Any number of totally innocent people who haven't done anything to warrant the NSA reading their mail.
In regards to your first point, none of us would have seen a case where the data was "used improperly" because our governments all lied about the existence of these programs prior to the leak. That doesn't mean it necessarily was misused, but they certainly didn't have any reason to let us know about it if it was.
It's entirely plausible that information gathered in this way was used to detain innocent people or put them on no-fly lists. It's also possible that it was used in the cases where the feds have duped young muslim men into carrying out elaborately staged fake bombings. Hell, it might also get used to help authorize missile strikes in which we outright murder whoever happens to be in the same place at the same time as the person we suspect of being a criminal. No way of knowing because they lied about the whole thing for years.
Sure, gathering the data doesn't harm anyone directly (we're just looking after all), but it enables and tempts governments to do things that can do great harm. I'm also concerned about the secondary danger that comes when the veil is lifted and people realize that they are being treated like the enemy. So while I don't feel like big brother is out to get us, I do think that his actions are making us less safe. In conclusion, I think it's fair to get worked up about this. So I will:
WAKKAWOOOOGAMBINDINGOLOOPERUUUUUUUNEY!!!!!!1
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MP-Ryan, don't you work at US Air Force Intelligence?
Or there was some other member who does, can't recall.
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Well considering he's Canadian.......
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Sleeper agent.
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I don't know what you mean by ordinary people but I'll assume it excludes all the ordinary people who are considered potential threats by the US government. Beyond them, the current way of doing business has certainly fostered an environment of distrust and paranoia given some of the reactions I've seen, and I can't say I'd be surprised if it contributed to a rise in our (the USA's) own domestic right wing terrorists activity, in which case certainly ordinary people would be affected because they or their loved ones would be dead. I can think up other scenarios of varying levels of plausibility later but my dog is being cute right now.
I agree that trying to evade government surveillance in one's day-to-day life is silly.
Ordinary people like whom? I have yet to see a single example of a case where the collected data has been used improperly to affect people who were otherwise innocent of any wrongdoing. And that is the point - with the exception of a very few types of activities and individuals, the simple truth is that no one in signals-intercept cares about what 99.999% of the population has posted on their Facebook wall, emailed to their friends, or chatted about online generally. They don't even care what your banking information is, though no doubt a lot of that also gets captured in the intercepts.
I was thinking of ordinary people like people who might be related to a terror suspect or have gone to the same mosque or lived in the same town or whatever. Any number of totally innocent people who haven't done anything to warrant the NSA reading their mail.
In regards to your first point, none of us would have seen a case where the data was "used improperly" because our governments all lied about the existence of these programs prior to the leak. That doesn't mean it necessarily was misused, but they certainly didn't have any reason to let us know about it if it was.
It's entirely plausible that information gathered in this way was used to detain innocent people or put them on no-fly lists. It's also possible that it was used in the cases where the feds have duped young muslim men into carrying out elaborately staged fake bombings. Hell, it might also get used to help authorize missile strikes in which we outright murder whoever happens to be in the same place at the same time as the person we suspect of being a criminal. No way of knowing because they lied about the whole thing for years.
Sure, gathering the data doesn't harm anyone directly (we're just looking after all), but it enables and tempts governments to do things that can do great harm. I'm also concerned about the secondary danger that comes when the veil is lifted and people realize that they are being treated like the enemy. So while I don't feel like big brother is out to get us, I do think that his actions are making us less safe. In conclusion, I think it's fair to get worked up about this. So I will:
WAKKAWOOOOGAMBINDINGOLOOPERUUUUUUUNEY!!!!!!1
so we need to be upset that government staff are reading personal communications of complete strangers and then storing most if not all of it in the folder marked "inconsequential" (and will probably never be read again) just because they know or are loosely linked to a terror suspect
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I'm not saying anyone has to be upset about anything, just that granting privileged access to all internet data to people whose job is to find hidden enemies could potentially result in civil rights abuses without any need for a conspiracy, and that knowledge of that spying activity leaking out (which it now has) could lead to decreased trust in government and increased violence from people who are already convinced that it is teh satan.
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I'm not saying anyone has to be upset about anything, just that granting privileged access to all internet data to people whose job is to find hidden enemies could potentially result in civil rights abuses without any need for a conspiracy, and that knowledge of that spying activity leaking out (which it now has) could lead to decreased trust in government and increased violence from people who are already convinced that it is teh satan.
All of which we file under "possible outcomes," right next to the scenario where there are no consequences at all.
Anyway, we digress - the premise of my argument was not that these programs are right and just etc, but rather that there is no technological possibility of avoiding them at the end-user level, Tor/VPN included. Because, maslo, the only point of trying to mask your traffic patterns is if you're accessing sites of consequence - e.g. email, Facebook, Twitter, and a myriad of other things. Our online activities are tracked from the basic structures of the Internet. Which is why I said earlier - if anyone is going to start taking security measures "because NSA" then they might as well incinerate any connected devices they own, because that is quite literally the only way you're avoiding signals-intercept in this era. In terms of encryption, encryption is only as strong as the passwords that hold it (discounting backdoors, of course) and most people can't pick a password worth a ****.
Instead of taking security measures to bypass it (which don't work and are generally pointless besides providing a false sense of security), people would find their energies better spent on taking their elected officials to task for allowing signals-intercept to reach the state of affairs its presently in, and reign it back. Either that, or provide some serious oversight.
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What I have said is that it's net effect on the average person is so negligible that it does not need any technological response from the average user, and that any response you can take is worthless in all practical respects.
I agree with that with a caveat. What we can as average users do is make noise. Lots of it. (and I know, you agree with this!)
To be numb about this is to invite further fascism. And yes, I am using that word.
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On a personal level, I don't care what NSA, GCHQ, BND et al know about me or are able to infer from their data about me. I certainly see no reason to change my habits or use additional security measures beyond those I am already using. There are far more relevant threats around that encourage good IT security than those organizations.
That being said, on a societal level, these things need to be fought and addressed. The horse needs to be beaten to a pulp on this one until no scrap of it remains, and noone even dares to go near these things again. I am not one normally given to antiauthoritarian or libertarian rhetoric, but the Governments need to be reminded once more that they're only serving at the pleasure of the people, and that the people are not at all pleased.
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I once heard David Brin (the usual optimist) say something around these lines: that the problem of 1984 wasn't one of lack of privacy or that the government was always aware of what common people were doing. The fundamental problem was that this transparency only worked in one direction, and that if the government's (and governor's) actions became as transparent as our general pop did, the 1984 problem would solve itself pretty rapidly.
I am not as optimistic as he is, but I can see his point, and we should all thank the "traitors" that gave us this gov transparency back. Even countries like Brasil had to confess they also spy on others, etc.
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On a personal level, I don't care what NSA, GCHQ, BND et al know about me or are able to infer from their data about me. I certainly see no reason to change my habits or use additional security measures beyond those I am already using. There are far more relevant threats around that encourage good IT security than those organizations.
That being said, on a societal level, these things need to be fought and addressed. The horse needs to be beaten to a pulp on this one until no scrap of it remains, and noone even dares to go near these things again. I am not one normally given to antiauthoritarian or libertarian rhetoric, but the Governments need to be reminded once more that they're only serving at the pleasure of the people, and that the people are not at all pleased.
I fully agree with this. The only specific point I wanted to object to is the assertion that these programs do not affect most people because we have no way of knowing how the information has been (or will be) used.
I'm also wary of any downplaying of aspects of the spying issue (even if they are factually accurate) that doesn't come with the explicit caveat that the programs themselves are definitely something to be concerned about. Given that our governments have presumed the authority to launch these programs in secret, the tone and clarity of our responses are extremely important because there is already a huge social cue out there saying "it's fine, you can't do anything about it, go with it."
I didn't think MP was actually trying to endorse the governments' actions in any way, but considering how integral the "this doesn't affect you unless you are doing something bad" argument is to the authoritarian stance, yes, I felt the need to flog the horse. Sorry if it seemed like I was badgering you, MP. Here is some Devo:
When a problem comes along
You must whip it
Before the cream sits out too long
You must whip it
When something's going wrong
You must whip it
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I know i had a wierd way of putting it. But, it's surprising how many people don't mind buttplugs.
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If everyone had a buttplug there would be no war.
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i now plan my overthrow and subsequent destruction of the world in private and off the grid. hi nsa! nothing to see here, move along.
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New revelation to the nsa. I'm actually a talking dog. In before obama changes health coverage to include the productive middle class dog.
If everyone had a buttplug there would be no war.
ARF
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If everyone had a buttplug there would be no war.
give this guy a custom title. "Buttplugs for Peace!"
you will see that plan backfire when i seize control of the world's supply of personal lubricants. muahahahaha!
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Doesn't change my perception the current regime is burning cash on spying when monies could be better spent elsewhere, like disassembling Obamacare piece by piece. (Personally I've got a giant bovine about the "personal mandate" but also I'm deeply concerned about the Obamacare's depth of information snooping ON medical records to bank accounts).
Or giving Ann Coulter a fleabath.
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Anything the yanks do badly, we could do much worse. At least what is happening around here, the government officials are drunk with bribes.
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Seriously if you think the NSA is that interested in you then
Leaving all conspiracy theories aside...
There is still the problem that human beings work at the NSA.
There is that fact that a certain percentage of human beings are a) perverts b) pedophiles c) general ass**** that like to mess with people.
It always happens in any organisation, why should the NSA be different? Hence you can definitely make an argument that having that much power available is not a good thing for any organisation.
In any case it definitely is not a good idea to give access to such data to any human being, especially not with questionable or non existent oversight - no matter who that human being works for.
Thanks to what NSA is doing ... it really only takes one lunatic with a grudge and the will to commit the credit card / hacking / identity theft of the century.
(Or worse... an intelligent being with a lack of morals to commit thousands of little crimes that never become known.)
I mean... isn't that one of the very reasons why we have (or had? lol) privacy laws and huge limitations and hurdles to jump before anyone can be wiretapped by the police?
Anything will be abused if it is at all possible. So indeed, why should the NSA be different? Their power will be abused and very likely has been abused countless times already.
Also makes for a great tool for any kind of would be dictator who intends to abolish democracy who may ever get ahold of it who knows how many years in the future.
We Germans have a little history in that regard as well, as you may recall (not just referring to the totalitarian regime that brought about WW2 but also to East Germany during "DDR" times) ... and generally it is agreed in our country that you just don't do some things - and one of the biggest nono's is to establish systems with the potential to allow, further down the line, a future totalitarian party/regime/dictator to effectively establish a police state. Maybe countries without that history just don't realize how quickly such a thing can turn bad .....
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If everyone had a buttplug there would be no war.
give this guy a custom title. "Buttplugs for Peace!"
you will see that plan backfire when i seize control of the world's supply of personal lubricants. muahahahaha!
There would be no war because everyone would be in too much anal pain.