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Use Tor, Get Targeted By the NSA
An anonymous reader sends this news from Ars Technica:
"Using online anonymity services such as Tor or sending encrypted e-mail and instant messages are grounds for U.S.-based communications to be retained by the National Security Agency, even when they're collected inadvertently, according to a secret government document published Thursday. ...The memos outline procedures NSA analysts must follow to ensure they stay within the mandate of minimizing data collected on U.S. citizens and residents. While the documents make clear that data collection and interception must cease immediately once it's determined a target is within the U.S., they still provide analysts with a fair amount of leeway. And that leeway seems to work to the disadvantage of people who take steps to protect their Internet communications from prying eyes. For instance, a person whose physical location is unknown—which more often than not is the case when someone uses anonymity software from the Tor Project—"will not be treated as a United States person, unless such person can be positively identified as such, or the nature or circumstances of the person's communications give rise to a reasonable belief that such person is a United States person," the secret document stated.'"
So we just need to write a Spam Generator that sends out billions of encrypted stuff to US-citizens to create government jobs?
Nice!
Given the recent revelations about the NSA dragnets of literally every single email, call, text, and pretty much any other form of electronic communication, it's pretty much a given that the best way to attract the NSA's attention is fog a mirror.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
You are supposed to use HTTPS only over Tor anyway and transmit no identifying data in other cases, respectively. Tor already assumes the existence of such an adversary as the NSA, so what's the story here?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
They keep stretching the parameters and scope of what they can do. Of course that is only after they have been caught lying about the scope to begin with. Does anyone still believe them? I imagine quite soon they will start declaring that they need to have a back door to all encryption just in case you might do something wrong.
Combining the fragments of leaked information that are now public related to the NSA's programs and the legal authorities affirmed by the FISA courts and Attorney General Eric Holder, it's clear that the US government's surveillance apparatus has the potential to monitor a significant portion of US citizens' communications.
Several reputable reports, including PBS' Frontline and NOW, have detailed the construction and operation of telecommunication interception facilities such as Room 641A. These types of facilities, which were deployed by 2003 and revealed to the general public by 2006, provide the NSA with the opportunity to access a large volume of telecommunications traffic. To use an analogy, imagine that several major mail sorting hubs in the US had "secret" rooms controlled by the NSA that all mail passed through.
A significant portion of Internet traffic is encrypted. Online banking, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc. utilize standard SSL encryption to provide security. To continue the analogy, while some internet traffic is unencrypted in much the same way that postcards are mailed all the time with their messages clearly visible, many "sensitive" online communications such as the aforementioned banking and social networking services encrypt communications, similar to the way that sensitive mail communications like bank statements are usually sent in envelopes and not on postcards.
It is not politically palatable to suggest that US government agencies can and should surveil US citizens' telecommunications in any indiscriminate fashion, and there is no clear legal authority that would permit them to do so. In an interview with Charlie Rose that aired June 17, 2013, President Barack Obama said "...if you're a U.S. person then NSA is not listening to your phone calls and it's not targeting your e-mails unless it's getting an individualized court order."
Under the original provisions of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the US government does have authority to conduct surveillance of communications without a court order if the parties communicating are not United States persons. More recent amendments to FISA since September 11, 2001 have expanded the government's authority to conduct surveillance.
It can be difficult to identify the geographic origin of telecommunications traffic. Tor, Virtual Private Networking, and Internet proxies provide ways for Internet users to "hide" their return addresses. There are all sorts of legal, legitimate uses for these technologies. For example, the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is widely interpreted to require hospitals to use encryption technologies such as Virtual Private Networks to protect confidential medical information if it is transmitted electronically between medical facilities.
It is also incredibly difficult to determine the nationality of a user of a telecommunications network. For example, two non-US persons could be visiting the US and using a telecommunications network in the country or a US citizen could utilize a telecommunications network when traveling outside the US.
There's an area where it helps to extend the envelopes vs. postcards analogy a bit: encryption is, in some ways, more like mailing a letter in a combination safe where only the sender, receiver, and safe company know the combination. The whole point of encryption is that it secures communications in such a way that even if someone intercepted an encrypted message, they couldn't read it unless they knew the secret combination to decode it.
This leads to a couple of questions:
" Where the NSA has no specific information on a person's location, analysts are free to presume they are overseas, the document continues."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant
use TOR to send copies of 1984
Yes, using Tor is going to attract attention. That's why we need as many people as possible to use Tor, to decrease the signal to noise ratio. If you have nothing to hide, you should be using Tor to help protect those who do.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That's such a comfort to the rest of us.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
I think this is reasonable in the context of communications monitoring. TOR exit nodes are often not in the U.S., and it's reasonable to expect that traffic coming out of a TOR exit node may not originate from the U.S. I don't support this massive data collection in general, but I don't see why TOR traffic wouldn't be expected to raise red flags.
That having been said, I'm not sure where the fire is. Unless you're stupid enough to log into your own accounts (which contain identifying information) via TOR, they can collect all they want, but they'll never tie it back to you.
Now, could they theoretically track your traffic back to its origin if they have a complete picture of the network? It's possible, but they can only do a positive ID when there's not much TOR traffic, especially near your physical location, to begin with. That's where security by obscurity comes into play.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
In other words, since they don't know who you are and can't positively confirm that you are a U.S. citizen, then they claim they are not bound to uphold your Fourth Amendment rights despite the fact that they are likely able to confirm that you are currently located in the U.S. I'm not sure that logic would hold up in court and I hope they are challenged on this.
Aren't they violating the millennium act? I suppose that's only if they try to circumvent an encryption scheme....
It's the government doing this. That makes it legal, sorta. At least it is sorta legal if you wanna bag them terrorrorrorrorrists.
Personally, I think the terrorrorrorrorrists already won.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
yeah, the encrypted data bit is interesting (who doesn't use opportunistic TLS on SMTP these days?) but here's the bigger problem:
That's it, no questions left, the NSA is involved in domestic surveillance of US Citizens for law enforcement purposes. It's as if the Church Committee never existed.
Considering the ease of writing those two required letters and the current state of law breaking in the United States, it's easy to see how bureaucrats could take the guidelines as written and 'reasonably determine' that all domestic communications need to be stored in perpetuity.
Assuming anything else is to assume a level of generosity and restraint on the part of the intelligence agencies that each day we find ourselves more foolish to do.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- wYwDnjZmSa5jm10BA/9tq+tFZW7ZTwWorCU2PJ5RWkhiefDCt0GCxVlg1MPa zkj6bUvN99JdyZZtbsQ3xxz7ugvNPL3cydtnX6Hwn9I/BGqZDYB7ki6UBaY1 uT1T5ZQd28WhLd5Bs4JRr5kc9WCuQf5KdZa9WCO/9UItlsmCakYglJxmVSNy 0XHuJrl3k9JiAR8cYQurOOe3LWKMf8Ytewx4iZquuh0wLwrUs14Zy8G+dkcP C66rRlOIw8S0TqeLd8CoHcEaYPu9osnR5+V3Nz31AoOTgYV5FbkRsV6c6HIs 7byyAyg87jk9Hfu9Zbajfec= =MgO6 -----END PGP MESSAGE-----
NSA agents are not allowed to eat cookies. However, they may take items from the cookie jar and place them in their mouths to determine whether they are cookies. Any cookies which are inadvertently swallowed may be retained.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
As a naturalized US citizen who actually took a small quiz on this, I am honor-bound to point out that the fine quotation you have provided is actually from the Declaration of Independence, and not the Constitution. While it certainly reflects the aspirations of the founders, and may well represent my or your best hopes, it's not actually the law of the land. The constitution is clearer about its jurisdiction.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
After 9/11 there were things done that made sense such as equipping airliners with armored cockpit doors, not allowing knives or axes or chainsaws in carry on, but collectively we should have kept a stiff upper lip, rebuilt the damn towers 1 story higher and said "It's going to take more than that to change us". Instead we went whining and cowering to the corner and those seeking more power ceased the opportunity telling us "they'd make us safe". I've read that line in enough history books to know whenever those in power start making that claim, bad things happen. Really bad things.
If you want to live in a free and open society the consequence of such is that sometimes people do bad things. That is the price of such a society. I think in my parents and certainly my grand parents generation they understood this. I put a lot of people off when I say this: but 3000 people die when bad guys crash planes into buildings. Well maybe we should look at things like the cockpit doors and explore air marshal programs. But the Patriot Act? No thanks. If it means 3000 people have to die now and then compared to having to live in a surveillance state, then so be it. 3000 people have to die. It's the price of the very freedoms we claim we so desire. So when bad guys do bad things, lets as a society help those directly effected the best ways we can, but we're never going to be safe. It's a dangerous world. And we as a society in the US don't seem to want to wake up to that reality.
Now I look around and wonder if Hobbes wasn't right: people are stupid and need to be ruled over by Kings. Because that what it seems like people have been "wanting" these past 12 years...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.