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Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven?
An anonymous reader writes "Now that the Swedish government (in its infinite wisdom) has passed a law allowing them to monitor email traffic, a question that I think a lot of people are asking (or at least should be asking) is: 'What can I do to improve my privacy?' The answer is not obvious.
So, what are the best solutions for seamless email encryption, search privacy, etc? What are your experiences with PGP vs GPG vs ...? In this day and age, why is the use of this type of privacy technologies still so limited? Why isn't there a larger movement promoting the use of privacy tools? Also, what is in your opinion the largest privacy concern? Search tracking? Email transfer?
I believe this is an interesting question not only for Swedes, but for everyone. Lots of traffic is passing through Sweden, but more importantly, the Swedish government is not alone in using this type of surveillance."
Reader j1976 writes with a related question: "For most users with email addresses within large organizations, implementing their own email encryption scheme is not feasible, partly because of the technological aspects, but also since users in organizations often do not have administrative access to their workstations. What can an organization do, centrally, to lift the burden of encryption from the users? Are there any transparent schemes for email encryption which could be installed for the organization as a whole?"
Many of the financial service companies I contracted for have only been sending sensitive mail to maybe a half dozen clients. It's reasonably easy if the two IT departments get together to establish secure tunnels at the organisation level for transferring mail between them. Doesn't protect the mail outside these of course but it's a reasonably quick solution and effective if enforced with policies within the workgroup about what is and isn't permissible in an email. Requires no extra software and is easy to set up and manage.
One of the things we need to add is SMTP over SSL. It won't prevent all snooping, but at least between 2 people that trust each other, no snooping happens on the path between.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
...(Of all places) there was a pretty good segment this morning regarding email encryption, even including a short interview with Phil Zimmerman. What was VERY interesting about it, to me, was the attitudes of the "man / woman in the internet cafe'" interviews they did, and how most people just "didn't care" about privacy issues regarding email. One fellow naively stated "I try to live my life in such a way that no one would have an issue with what I do." In my opinion, though, what YOU or I might consider innocuous might garner unwanted attention from government. As we are headed seemingly toward a more "European" philosophy here in the USA where the government assumes the duties of "personal watchdog" over your "lifestyle," what you eat, what you drink or smoke, what you teach your kids, etc., this would seem to be a foolhardy attitude.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Because no matter what country you live in some of your Internet traffic is likely to pass through Sweden. They snoop and tell your government about your stash of __________ (insert your own illegal/grey market goods etc. here). Wala - your government has "proof" you are engaged in illegal activity and busts down your door. Moreover, you apparently haven't been watching the news regarding the change in behavior people exhibit when they know/think they are being watched.
I think we're rather naïve if we believe, that Sweden is the only country in the Western world to do this. They're just (one of) the first to be honest about it.
As the submitter points out, you cannot be sure where your data is being sent on the route between you and your recipient. For all you know your "Dear Mom" email might go through Sweden, the US, the UK, Denmark, Russia and China even though you live within 50 km of eachother.
And your Skype call? Well, that's likely to do the same thing with its routing feature.
Your SSL connection isn't any safer from snooping - not sure about MitM attacks, but if you're just listening in, do you really need to be a MitM?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Linus is from Finland,/a>.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I use s/mime and gpg. I have for years.. but I believe this is too much of a hassle for people who can't even figure out Yahoo Mail or tell the difference between Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Some time ago I suggested someone write a thunderbird extension that was a "one click" encryption setup. On clicking "encrypt" it would create a gpg key > send the pub key to a key server > and if it does not have someone elses key it can suggest thunderbird and itself to that person.
I know this is not a good way to do this, but I can't see people using pgp/gpg it any other way.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
It's too complex for most. If it were as simple as me putting code on my machine and sending encrypted emails to my family and friends I would do it. Sadly, I have to step them ALL though putting GPG or PGP onto their machines, creating a pair of keys then sending my and all of their friends their public key. Want to place bets how many of them would send their private key themselves?
If MS would simplify it and make all of this just happen. I bet that there would be a big gaping hole for the gov't to make use of. Not to mention the security holes that would go along with it as well.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
And CC all of your email to the everyone in charge of this agency. Any good patriot should do this, just be sure the nation is secure even if the email monitoring system goes down.
There is no "seamless" encryption method that will give you enough protection. Sorry.
However, there are plenty of options if you're willing to do just a little work.
Install GPG or PGP. I use GPG because I can give it away legally to my friends who are less technically saavy and it works on Linux, OS X, and Windows.
Enigmail will integrate nicely into Mozilla's emailer and automate nearly everything once you have the person's public key. It will even notice who your recipient is and automatically pick the correct key.
There is something similar for the OS X Mail application (and I have it installed) but I don't remember the name of the application. It's not as bright as Enigmail and won't figure out who the recepient is automatically and pick the correct key.
FireGPG is a plug-in for FireFox (and it works for "Mozilla" because the web browser _is_ FireFox) that will allow you to use GPG with GMail.
I have an email account in which _all_ of the traffic is encrypted because I use these tools. I never send anything unencrypted on that account.
It's not seamless, but it's not that hard and it is not very intrusive.
I do not know if I should pity you because of your government reading your emails or if I should at least feel happy for you that they are honest enough to admit it (supposedly) before starting. Either way, I doubt things are any better here in the USA.
I find it amusing that the CAPTCHA is "incided", as in this new law inciting a riot.
The reason PGP, and GPG as well, fail is because PKI is just too difficult to setup and maintain. I'm sure some nerd who lives in his mom's basement is going to contest this but the fact remains it's too difficult to do in most corporations let alone end users. Making a key, remembering the password, managing keys, revoking keys, it's all just a total pain in the ass. If you truly want secure email for the masses it has to be transparent. This is just a given. People are not going to do PKI. This is the main reason we don't have mass adoption of PGP encrypted email.
The second reason and it's to a lesser extent but still a strong motivator IMO for the lack of secure options for communication are that corporations and governments don't WANT secure applications being adopted. How else can the government spy on you or corporations steal secrets from each other if things are encrypted. This isn't paranoid fantasy land I live in. I don't think any intelligent person today doesn't know especially over the last 8 years that the governments are doing everything they can to spy on you, record you, monitor you and track you. Wether its the TSA, DHS, warrant-less wiretapping whatever we are living in a 1984'esqe society. Seamless and mass adoption of strong encryption and anonymity by the masses would *seriously* curtail their ability to spy on you and find dissidents and evil doers who read catcher in the rye. So IMO these are the two strongest compelling reasons we don't have encryption for the masses yet. Phil's ZFone project is a good step in the right direction though.
More people need to use these. Operating without a centralized Certificate Authority, GPG really depends on there being sufficient users to establish a web of trust.
I think people (in the US at least) either don't understand the simplicity of sniffing cleartext, or don't think they care. The aggravating part is that GPG can be really easy to use. Apps like Seahorse make key and keyring management trivial. There's a great Thunderbird plugin that makes signing and/or encrypting your mail no harder than it was before. (Yes, I know not everyone uses Linux and Thunderbird, but I trust GPG tools exist for other OSs/email clients)
Given a safe and ubiquitous encryption scheme, I can't think any reasons for sending text/data in the clear. Now all we need is a ubiquitous encryption scheme.
I can't remember the last time I forgot anything.
You make a fundamental assumption that there are no stupid criminals or stupid terrorists. Yes, *some* terrorists and criminals are smart enough to encrypt their emails. But I'm sure there really are people out there stupid enough to talk about their criminal plans/exploits in plaintext email, or plaintext IMs, because they are just stupid. The Swedish government, will, no doubt catch some of those stupid criminals through such spying on email, then point to those cases whenever they talk to the media/public about why this is a 'good thing'.
As with any invasive authoritarian law, the government can always present anecdotal examples of it 'working', and so 'justify' the law, despite the fact that it's fundamentally a bad law, and probably not necessary.
It is an unhappy prime.
True, but from the Swedish speaking minority of Finns.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I agree , although for most windows users if you want (free) privacy you have to install X number of programs for gpg e.g. I think for the common user this is to much of not only a hassle but a technical burden gpg for example.
1.Install gpg4win
2. Thunderbird (or equivilent free email client)
3.) Extensions for email ( case Thunderbird)
4.) make keys
5.) configure programs, get other users pub key etc etc.
This is to much for normal Joe by step 3 or 4 the normal Joe has given up.
If this would be automised or somehow integrated into a email client , I think we would see email encryption more widely used. Although through the automation process problems can arise, security hole here , and their, because all these process's have to be linked automated etc. etc
Whereas with a nix distro, most users are tech orientated, after adding the correct repos or (with some distros these things are even default installed gpg for e.g.) then the only thing left is to configure, which really is pretty painless to the tech user who knows what hes doing in the first place.
I'll go out on a limb and predict that in 5 yrs or less time, encryption will be a 'self admission of guilt' to ALL governments.
....so depressing ;(
I really hope I'm wrong. but the trend is there if you just look.
we already have people saying 'if you are not a terrorist, you should have nothing to hide'. this is just a half step away from saying 'if you DO use encryption, you MUST be hiding something that we should see'.
mark my words.
you may think that you are out-smarting the governments but they have the money, the guns and all the power. and they're NOT about to give this bit of power (over the people) up.
if you encrypt a laptop and pass thru customs, you are FORCED to reveal your password or at the least, 'open' the disk for them to view the contents of. so tell me, how did encryption help here?
don't give me that crap about truecrypt, either. how long will it take before their border people know how to detect this?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
They snoop and tell your government about your stash of _blackjack-playing, postmoking hookers_ (I'm in the US). Wala - your government has "proof" you are engaged in illegal activity and busts down your door.
Although I agree with your comment, just putting in an email, slashdot comment, or even one of my journals can't get the FBI and DEA and whatever anti-prostitution agency to break down my door. Otherwise it seems they already would have, as although I'm no gambler, my slashdot journals often feature potsmoking and hookers. Maybe I should add some blackjack.
However, adultery is NOT against the law. Do you want your wife to find the email you sent to your girlfriend because Sweden seems to be as anti-freedom as America?
(OT but related; why is it legal for me to fuck my congressman's wife, but illegal for me to pay her for it?)
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
A very good point, and so I looked it up on the Relakks website.
"RELAKKS Safe Surf enjoys the strongest legal protection possible under Swedish Law because of the service type (pre-paid flat-rate service). This means that RELAKKS do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). This is of importance if forced to hand over information.
If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information from RELAKKS (they have to be of the opinion that if convicted the user will be imprisoned â" fined not enough). .
RELAKKS then have to hand over the subscription information entered by you (but thatâ(TM)s all). RELAKKS do not store any subscribtion information about you except what you entered yourself when signing up for the RELAKKS Safe Surf service.
For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over âoetraffic dataâ including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.
Regarding inquires from other parties than Swedish authorities RELAKKS will never hand over any kind of information."
Source: https://www.relakks.com/faq/legal/
Seems they'd need more then just one red flag to get your registration info, but that would be prior to the wiretap law.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
Aside from the usual reason of apathy, we have a (relatively) new, technical problem with securing email: a lot of people are using webmail.
That development was a technological step backwards: moving from specialized client software (mail reader) that understands what it is working on, to a generic tool (web browser). It's hard for a web browser to be able to understand that this piece of an web page is a PGP block, and this part is just UI, and that's assuming that it even has the whole message to work with (i.e. the web server actually sends all the PGP/MIME attachments, instead of presenting a nice webby interface that presents the message parts separately).
I have heard of a Firefox extension (damn, I can't remember the name) that can encrypt and decrypt pieces of web pages or textareas, but that sort of thing is always going to be hacky and cumbersome compared to a real mailreader, so I think that puts us at a disadvantage, compared to the situation ten years ago.
Discourage webmail. Webmail is creating a network effect that is a barrier to securing email.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There, spelled like here (ere), indicates location.
Their, Possessive.
The're, contraction of they are.
GET IT RIGHT! They're, contraction of 'they are'.
The're, not a word.
GET IT RIGHT!
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
why is the use of this type of privacy technologies still so limited?
Several reasons:
Education. Most people that use email don't know what RSA, GPG or PGP is. Let alone the dozens of possible other ciphers available. These people also blissfully wandering around thinking their government is an effective, benevolent provider that keeps them safe so they don't even need encryption or privacy laws. (see: Nanny State). (Instead of the wasteful, corrupt, abusive, ignorant farce that it is.) Polls show that less than 1/4 of Americans know that there is no right to privacy (constitutionaly. The fourth amendment does not provide a right TO privacy; it only provides a right FROM search and seizure under certain conditions.) The rest of them think they have some such right and the government is upholding it, they don't need to encrypt their stuff. Besides [encryption is only for people breaking the law; if you aren't then you have nothing to hide.] lemma: People will not use something if they don't know they have a need for it or if it exists.
Ease of use. Have you ever tried to figured out how to be your own SSL Certificate Authority? or what that even means? I mean Christ, the openssl tool couldn't be any more complicated. Very few people can figure out and feel comfortable with creating, signing and maintaining keys and certificates correctly. Lemma: People will not use something that is confusing.
Guidance. Ever have a certificate/key fail to authenticate? Was the error/info helpful to somebody who doesn't understand the implementation details? No. When your VPN fails to connect or your message fails to decrypt is when I've seen some of the worst feedback presented to a user ever. We need to start practicing an intelligent feedback, one that diagnosis the problem and tells the user specifically what must be changed to solve the problem, not what the problem was. Tell people solutions, they already know a problem exists. Lemma: People will not use something that they cannot correct malfunctions with.
Standardization. PGP is not GPG. Not all mail agents support the same set of encryption capabilities. When sending a message you cannot be sure the recipient can read it no matter what you choose. As the receiver you are going to receive items that are incompatible with you. The result is pressure on ALL users not to use any encryption so that everybody is known to be using the same standard. Lemma: People will not use something [that interacts with all others] unless everybody else is using it.
Transparency. Install this, configure that, click this button, enter your password... People do not want to put this much effort into reading a piece of mail. I'm a security nut and I still hate typing my passwords the fifty times a day that I do. We need to make systems that are as transparent as possible. The user either has to never know they're using it, or they have to be expected to configure it only once and then never have to worry about it. Lemma: People will not use something that annoys them, especially repeatedly.
Too many choices. Which cipher do you want? Do you know why? Would you like RSA or DSA? How many bits? Would you like that in binary or ASCII armor? This detracts from a user's ability to be comfortable with a choice and as such they won't make one. Lemma: People will not use something if they aren't comfortable picking it.
Distribution. For PGP/GPG you need to distribute keys effectively (and transparently). This has not been solved adequately. Lemma: People will not use something that isn't available.
Economy. People do not want to pay for keys and certificates. While Verisign and others provide trusted stores where keys could be distributed the finance changes they enact are prohibitive for normal people. Yes, I know there exists free ones. But they aren't included in the root certificate databases of applications. You can add them but as I said earlier: you just crossed the line of ease of use that a user isn't going to cross
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
The "cat is out of the bag" as far as government electronic snooping is concerned.
Look at how "low-tech" the 9/11 attack was. Fake IDs and boxcutters.
Does anyone really believe that Terrorists are still using email and cellphones(other then bomb triggers)?
My guess is they have gone back to face-to-face MeatMeetings and good old SnailMail(with re-posting networks) in conjunction with simple codewords.
That being said, I seriously doubt all this Security "Theater" is aimed at Terrorists, if, indeed, it is more then theater. My guess is that it is all to head off the "revolution" by average citizens when they snap out of complacency.
17 is a cussword in Swedish. Incidentally, so is 1000. It's true, ask anyone from Sweden. In Sweden, 17 is also the most random number. If you need to make up statistics, it's traditional to use 17. Much like if you need a name for a method when discussing programming, you use "foo". I've seen university level math exams where every answer was 17. The professor had a wonderful sense of humor.
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