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Skype Messages Monitored In China
Pickens writes "Human-rights activists have discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives Internet text conversations sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay. Researchers say the system monitors a list of politically charged words that includes words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence, the Chinese Communist Party and also words like democracy, earthquake and milk powder. The encrypted list of words inside the Tom-Skype software blocks the transmission of these words and records personal information about the customers who send the messages. Researchers say their discovery contradicts a public statement made by Skype executives in 2006 that 'full end-to-end security is preserved and there is no compromise of people's privacy.' The Chinese government is not alone in its Internet surveillance efforts. In 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency was monitoring large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of an eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. 'This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true,' says Ronald J. Deibert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. 'It's "X-Files" without the aliens.'"
Writing through a scribe over Skype from mainland China, I can confidently say that messages about Falun Gong are not being
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
All the others contained references to dehydrated breast fluids.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
...the last thing to trust is closed source implementation or even worse, proprietary protocol.
though I think real paranoid people won't trust something like Skype, right?
How is it we have 4 engies and only 1 sentry?
I use Skype to communicate with friends in the US, and to discuss politics. I am appalled to read of this invasion of privacy.
Hold on, someone is at the door...
CHINA IS A GREAT NATION THAT WOULD NEVER INVADE MY PRIVACY. THIS ARTICLE IS UNFOUNDED AND BIASED.
This is also an argument in favor of using open source software. I've been dubious in the past about claims that closes-source vendors couldn't be trusted, but apparently I was being naive.
Sounds like the FSF got this one right.
Comparing the Chinese program to the program by the NSA is completely disingenuous. They have they only similarity that they involve surveillance. That is where the similarities stop.
The NSA program was designed to listen in on US citizens talking to people on a known terrorist list. One part of the conversation was always international and one part was domestic. Telephone conversations are two ways and you kind of need to here both side to know what is going on. Now was this illegal? Maybe. Should it have happened? That's up in the air. The program was supposedly done to protect the US Citizens from another terrorist attack.
Compare and contrast this with the Chinese Program. This program exists to control the thoughts of the Chinese people. It censors them and prevents the flow of information. Then it reports on them simply because they are talking about things which in the United States are completely legal to talk about but in China are completely illegal to talk about. China has no freedom of speech. Their every move is watched to control them online. They aren't trying to track terrorists here. They are trying to play mind control. They are trying to censor the publics thoughts.
There are a couple of messaging softwares that use encryption. People tend to simply not care in the west about things like Tor, Freenet, I2P and encryption options in text messaging but if more scenarios that are NOT linked to child porn arise, maybe people will start to consider the more legitimate reasons to fight for our right to privacy?
I believe we need more crypto-anarchists in this world. Where are the cypherpunks when we need them?
'This is the worst nightmares of the conspiracy theorists around surveillance coming true,'
No. The worst nightmare would be when this comes true and no one cares.
Either open-source the Skype engine or abandon it.
Skype devices could still be manufactured only under license, so their profit stream wouldn't dry up. No doubt it's all trademarked and copyrighted and patented to hell and back by the company anyway, so open-sourcing wouldn't be giving free reign to the competition.
But if they want to retain a trusting customer base, the only option now is to open-source the Skype engine and protocol, otherwise it's end of game.
I'll certainly be letting all my friends know about this. While they may be discussing only granny's Xmas presents or their boyfriends' vital measurements, it's no business of the snoop agencies to hear it.
Meanwhile, it's not as if VoIP didn't have any open alternatives. There is no need to support a vendor that cannot be trusted.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
No, the fact of the matter is that Skype, when they stated that their software was encrypted end-to-end, lied. The question then remains, with the ongoing domestic spying operations in the United States, what is to keep software like Skype from applying such policies to all their closed-source software?
I think the poster's point is that Skype is enabling this behavior, and Skype, in case you haven't noticed, has a presence all over the world.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
Here is some information on Bavarian police interception of Skype. http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Skype_and_SSL_Interception_letters_-_Bavaria_-_Digitask
How do you know that? That's what they say, but how do you know that?
Was the program under some kind of oversight outside of the executive branch? No. Are the details of the program publicly available? No.
You don't actually know how the NSA program compares to the Chinese one. You just hope that's the way it is.
A communist from the West decides to move to USSR. He explained to his friends that he would write letters to them. Worried about freedom of mail, he explained them that if he writes anything in red ink, that would mean that reality is opposite from the written.
He moves there, and after a while, the first mail finally arrives. It says: "Everything is great here in USSR. People are happy, wealthy, there is a lot of everything in stores, freedom is enormous. The only problem I have seen here is that you cannot buy any red ink."
No sig today.
Damn foreigners.
[Todayâ(TM)s Financial Times posted a story](http://news.ft.com/cms/s/875630d4-cef9-11da-925d-0000779e2340.html) about how Skypeâ(TM)s partner TOM Online is filtering text messages in China.
Skype has a joint venture with TOM Online. As part of that venture, we provide a co-branded version of Skype called TOM-Skype, which is the version of Skype that is available in mainland China.
As part of the joint venture, TOM provides guidance to Skype about how to co-operate with local laws and regulations in China. In every country we operate in, we always work with local authorities to follow local laws and best practice.
TOM operates a text filter in TOM-Skype. The filter operates solely on text chats. The filter has a list of words which will not be displayed in Skype chats.
The text filter operates on the chat message content before it is encrypted for transmission, or after it has been decrypted on the receiver side. If the message is found unsuitable for displaying, it is simply discarded and not displayed or transmitted anywhere.
It is important to underline:
* The text filter does not affect in any way the security and encryption mechanisms of Skype.
* Full end-to-end security is preserved and there is no compromise of peopleâ(TM)s privacy.
* Calls, chats and all other forms of communication on Skype continue to be encrypted and secure.
* There is absolutely no filtering on voice communications.
Maybe I'm missing something, but is this necessarily evidence that the Skype client and transmission are not themselves secure? The third link indicates that TOM-Skype uses TOM-specific client software that does the filtering (which Skype knew about). Isn't it likely that that software is also what's squealing to the monitoring system (which Skype apparently didn't know about) despite the supposed end-to-end security of the actual transmission over the Skype protocol? Is there any evidence that the monitoring is going on during the transmission, rather than this being a case of the TOM software phoning home separately?
I'm not suggesting that the Skype client should be trusted even outside of China—if it's closed-source, it might as well not encrypt anything at all—and this story certainly seems to cast additional doubt on it. But nonetheless, couldn't the foul play here be limited to the "TOM" side of TOM-Skype?
Except, even IF you could comb through the code, it doesn't mean that at some higher level your security isn't compromised.
I run a VOIP server and it's ridiculously easy to monitor everything going through it despite a TLS initiated client-server session.
No, sorry no.
End-to-end has nothing to do with those application that provide some toy-protection by securing communication with the server (like IMAPS or SSL protection in stock MSN).
End-to-end means that the whole traffic is encrypted between both *end points*. A direct channel going from my software on my computer, all the way to your software on your computer. Every one else along the chain only sees crypted garbage.
You can't spy an End-to-end encrypted traffic (I mean you can record packets, but you can't understand them). If any one attempts a man-in-the-middle attack (at the server, for example), both end points will see the wrong encryption certificates. (Each end of the communication will see the middle-man's certificate, not the original one).
You could compromise the system :
- at the key exchange step the first time 2 previously unknown people get in touch (if you manage to trick each one into thinking that the key they recieved from *your* the first time they did exchange the key were their keys).
- at the end point of the communication. If something is compromised at the exit of the secure channel, no matter how the channel itself is secure.
The system could be root-kited, or the software could be not trustworthy.
How you find and trust VOIP peers is where that ideas falls apart
Building a chain of trust which tops at meeting the first key persons in real life in order to exchange keys (that as that portion of communication is secured, you can obtain further security tokens from other persons).
Or at least using a separate better trusted channel to confirm the keys' hashes.
Another idea is to encrypt/decrypt the data on the client.
Been done since ages on opensource implementations of IM clients. "Off the Record" is currently a very popular application, running on Pidgin (plugin), Adium (out-of-the-box) and several others, and functioning as a layer above the message protocol.
(If both end points are running OTR, when you type a message in your client, the plugin converts it into a cyphered text. Then that message is sent using the classical route of whatever protocol you use underneath (MSN, Jabber, Whatever), the client at the other end receive it too, and its plugin decrypts the message back before displaying it, check also if the encryption key matches.
Regadless of what is the network used, the message that transist is only something looking like line noise. Microsoft's MSN server could log it, its still meaningless.)
Encrypting the audio portion of the UDP packets would be very problematic
Been done for ages too. You should google around for ZRTP (by nothing less than the author of PGP). Supported in several project, including the open source Twinkle, support comming in Ekiga next major release too. Nothing problematic.
Running your own communications server is good too.
...as long as you use end-to-end encryption between the people.
or at least as long as everyone exclusively use secure communications from/to the server.
(but then, *they* shouldn't trust it as they don't control what's happening on the server)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The US taps phone calls in an attempt to uncover evidence of violent crimes, to prevent them from happening, and to prosecute and jail those responsible.
And the US intelligence and law enforcement agencies - at all levels and over essentially all time - have a long track record of misusing their investigations for suppressing political enemies, both individual and movements.
This happens over and over and over. (For starters look at the FBI for a number of examples, including J. Edgar Hover's political blackmail files and the COINTELPRO program.) It normally comes to light only a decade or more later, because it happens in secrecy and is only discovered through chance or later examination of records. So it always looks like "It used to be that way but we've cleaned it up now."
You have to keep a tight rein on the government at all times because such power will ALWAYS be misused.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If we're talking the NSA program to secretly mass-monitor electronic communications of US citizens **whether or not** they're guilty, and with no judicial oversight - this program was actually approved by Bush **right after he got into office in January 2001**.
http://www.truthout.org/article/jason-leopold-bush-authorized-domestic-spying-before-911
Declassified doc showing that's the case, here: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/nsa25.pdf
This is an easy mistake to make - because whenever this program is mentioned, it's always deliberately mentioned in the context of 9/11, and mentions changes made after 9/11. But that is all spin.
It's a shame that we have to look that far into the details to find out when a program was started - but with this administration we apparently do.
And as a side note, it's important to know that this was started well before 9/11 - because it also proves it did nothing to stop the 9/11 attacks. This is more proof that this kind of mass warrantless eavesdropping with no oversight doesn't even make us safer from terrorists - it only puts us in more danger from our government.
Posting this note to the original article also.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
When this ebay/skype deal went down I mentioned here on SD that is was just a way to get skype into the hands of a company under US jurisdiction. Take that a step further: Put it into the hands of a company that can be bought. I got modded interesting +3 before -- now maybe I will get +5