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MIT Project Reveals What PRISM Knows About You

judgecorp writes "MIT's Immersion project sifts your Gmail, and constructs a map of your associations. Without opening a single message, it gives a clear view of who you connect with. It's a glimpse of some of what the NSA PRISM can do. From the article: 'You can assume that if the NSA is looking at your email, the information in Immersion is similar to what they will see. Consider that they probably see all of your email addresses (and not just Gmail) and that the metadata is examined along with the metadata from everyone you’ve corresponded with, and you can see just how much can be inferred from this data alone.'"

156 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Just askin... by Xest · · Score: 2

    I'm guessing MIT haven't tapped Google's fibre like the NSA so are doing it on a consent based basis, but no, I haven't read TFA.

  2. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One has your consent, the other doesn't?

  3. Re:Just askin... by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1, Interesting

    They're both wasting government funds, I don't see the difference.

  4. Re: Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They use a tool that you have to knowingly run, which is fairly different than what the nsa does

  5. Meta by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Uh... Your email is plain te t. Th NSA has a fuckton more than just metadata... They have your entire contents.

    1. Re:Meta by Marillion · · Score: 1

      Most modern mail server administrators don't install TLS certificates.

      --
      This is a boring sig
    2. Re:Meta by arth1 · · Score: 1

      The last few times I have set up e-mail servers, the first time startup has generated a self-signed key pair. It's not proof against main-in-the-middle attacks[*], but it does help reduce passive snooping.

      [*]: Then again, even with a paid for cert, you're not safe against main-in-the-middle attacks if the security agency in question has access to the signing keys from the root CA company. And it would be foolish to think that three letter agencies in the US don't have access to many of them.

  6. Immersion Project? by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

    What now? Are they water-boarding people for information?

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Immersion Project? by brian0918 · · Score: 5, Funny

      That would be submersion...

    2. Re:Immersion Project? by mcgrew · · Score: 2

      Both words are synonyms. Waterboarding is neither immersion nor submersion. With waterboarding the victim is made to think he's immersed/submerged but he's getting water poured on him. It's the difference between Catholic baptism and Protestant baptism.

      Not a bad joke, though.

    3. Re:Immersion Project? by cold+fjord · · Score: 2

      That would be submersion...

      I've heard intelligence agencies were concerned about their sources. I guess this would be a clearcase.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    4. Re:Immersion Project? by sjames · · Score: 1

      Actually it's closer to getting your face shoved into a sink full of water until you nearly drown, over and over.

  7. Re:Just askin... by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One of them is opt-in. One of them is not.

  8. Re:Just askin... by Elbereth · · Score: 1

    There's a difference between opt-in and covert actions taken without permission.

    However, I don't see why anyone would let MIT have access to their e-mail account, just so that they can simulate having the civil liberties violated. But, then again, I don't see the point to a lot of things that get posted to Slashdot.

  9. Reverse honeypot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I always thought it would be interesting way to figure out a way to seed surveillance and information gathering networks with unique information you could then watch for to see where it "leaks out". For all the worry about NSA surveillance, my real fear is that is that it's actually a front for commercial operations. (My theory is that the NSA is mostly a headless monster of a "Security Industrial Complex" that lives off of milking the public for money in exchange for useless services and general industrial espionage. It's really the perfect scam because you can avoid any investigation of conflict of interest with 'state secrets' privilege) It would be a real coup to find your honeypot information leaking in to commercial databases.

    More than a decade ago I registered a few domains with bogus names. To this day I still get offers in the mail for "Longdong McPorksword", even though mining whois data for commercial purposes has always been supposedly illegial (well, a terms of service violation at least)

    1. Re:Reverse honeypot by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      For all the worry about NSA surveillance, my real fear is that is that it's actually a front for commercial operations.

      That's deep theory.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Reverse honeypot by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      Hell companies figured that out long ago and don't need the NSA to do it for them. Every company out there seems to offer a store brand credit card, savings card, or some other program that is free to join and offers some token benefit. People snap them up to save $0.06 on a case of soda every 3 months. Now toss in that there are cross promotions between multiple companies and you can gather all sorts of info. For example in my area there is a grocery chain that has a rewards card that provided you with a fuel discount at one chain of gas stations that also happens to accept the store credit card (with additional fuel discount) of the regional home improvement store. This is one of the more open cases where the connections between the various vendors is basically out in the open but how many share data in a much more opaque manner.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    3. Re:Reverse honeypot by bmk67 · · Score: 2

      I always thought it would be interesting way to figure out a way to seed surveillance and information gathering networks with unique information you could then watch for to see where it "leaks out".

      Unsurprisingly, you aren't the first to think of this.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap

    4. Re:Reverse honeypot by arth1 · · Score: 1

      Not really. The US of A government is commercial by nature, and ironically I think this is at least somewhat caused by all the legislation designed to keep the government from competing with business. Because income is harder to get openly, the government has to be inventive in acquiring remuneration.

    5. Re:Reverse honeypot by ThunderBird89 · · Score: 1

      Spammers might just be using a database that was built upon an old one that still had your pseudonym in it, and since the emails don't bounce, they keep sending them. You'd need to "reseed the system" to detect any new leaks, I guess...

      --
      Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
    6. Re:Reverse honeypot by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

      It's also recursive.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    7. Re:Reverse honeypot by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Who really controls it all?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  10. Absolutely Nothing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Their analysis comes up completely blank.

    Why?

    Because I use POP3 rather than the bullshit IMAP for my mail access. There is nothing on the server, so there is nothing to analyze.

    1. Re:Absolutely Nothing by mjr167 · · Score: 1, Informative

      Um... so your emails don't go through the internets? How does that work? Even though you tell the server to delete it, it still passes through the server...

    2. Re:Absolutely Nothing by DigiShaman · · Score: 2

      I thought places like Google and Yahoo retain e-mail for several years in order to facilitate all future subpoenas. Who's to say the NSA doesn't have access to a shadowcopy of these e-mails directly on the server/s?

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    3. Re:Absolutely Nothing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2

      "Um... so your emails don't go through the internets? How does that work? Even though you tell the server to delete it, it still passes through the server..."

      I knew somebody would bring this up. :)

      No, of course the email goes through the 'net. But consider: trying to separately store and analyze each separate event takes vastly more resources than doing periodic static analysis of the contents of your email folder.

      Conclusion: they probably don't. Almost certainly, they simple take periodic snapshots. While they may analyze traffic too, that's still not the same thing.

    4. Re:Absolutely Nothing by mjr167 · · Score: 1

      You don't store the email unless it is 'interesting'. You store the metadata about the email in order to establish relationships. Facebook does this kind of processing and even provides an API to access their graphs. I think you vastly over estimate how hard this is.

    5. Re:Absolutely Nothing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "You don't store the email unless it is 'interesting'. You store the metadata about the email in order to establish relationships. Facebook does this kind of processing and even provides an API to access their graphs. I think you vastly over estimate how hard this is."

      I didn't say it was difficult. My statement was that it was costly. Two different things.

      If it is worth their while, maybe they do it.

      But as for Facebook: again, I doubt they make shadow copies of everything. Instead they analyze what is in place. Metadata? I suppose. But the bodies of the emails (in the case of Gmail) probably aren't stored. Analyzed for content when they go through? Perhaps.

    6. Re:Absolutely Nothing by xaxa · · Score: 2

      Well, the earlier /. story mentioned that GCHQ (UK) stores *three days* worth of data flowing through Britain (where almost all the high-speed cross-Atlantic cables terminate), and the metadata from that for 30 days.

      A shadow copy of all the text in email or Facebook is easy. Adding the media is more costly, but not that much.

    7. Re:Absolutely Nothing by Charliemopps · · Score: 1

      I didn't say it was difficult. My statement was that it was costly. Two different things.

      It's too costly now. The real problem isn't what they are doing with this system at the moment. It may very well be that they are doing things we'd consider evil, but it's not like we're getting thrown into camps for complaining about it yet. The real problem is what they will eventually use this for. The un-checked power this gives the government is terrifying. It's like they're holding a gun to everyones head, just in case they turn out to be a terrorist and you're arguing that bullets are too expensive for them to shoot everyone. Well, prices are going to come down on these particular bullets, and future administrations may decided that terrorists aren't the only ones that deserve a bullet to the head.

      Whenever there's a question of weather the government should have the ability to do something, the test is simple. Think of the worst, most despicable dictator/king/whatever in human history (this will be different for everyone based on their political ideology) then think "Would I be ok with that person being president and having the ability to do this...." Because, given enough time, we will elect a president that's that bad. Currently we seem to be stuck in a trend of electing barely competent idiots into office over and over again, but that wont last forever. It's only a matter of time before we get our own Stalin, Pol-pot or Hitler.

    8. Re:Absolutely Nothing by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      At the end of the day nothing anybody can do or say will change the fact that the threats we are looking at now is not something the guys who originally built the Internet even imagined so no shit its easy, the thought of having to worry about big brother, billion dollar malware orgs, rogue governments and cyber attacks? never even crossed their minds!

      Its the same arguments I've been making for HTML, you have this thing that was NEVER designed to do anything close to what its doing now and instead just kinda grew like a fungus, with shit being bolted on here and there so of course its gonna be vulnerable and of course its gonna be risky and leaky, its doing a job it wasn't meant to do! The Internet as originally designed was for these colleges and think tanks to share data and research, and that was pretty much it. I mean why do you think they went with 32bit addressing? Because the thought that 4 billion would ever want to use the thing wasn't even a possibility, in their wildest dreams they figured at most a couple of hundred thousand colleges and think tanks planet wide AT MOST. And because you were dealing with think tanks and colleges the idea of actually protecting or hardening anything? Never crossed their minds, they were more concerned with making it so it wouldn't fall down if Paul the janitor knocked out a power cord in the lab, security wasn't even on the agenda.

      So what we really need is a new design focused on protecting the end user but sadly it'll never come to be,like HTML the monster has grown to large and is in too many places to ever be changed, the best we can do is try to bolt more shit on top in the hope we can band aid our way out of the mess. But the fact that so much private info is just floating around out there in plain text really shouldn't be surprising, it just wasn't built with security as a priority or even a concern,again no different than HTML.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    9. Re:Absolutely Nothing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "Both of your statements are obviously wrong."

      Hahahahahahahaha.

    10. Re:Absolutely Nothing by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      This argument is a bit like saying 'writing was never designed for privacy, we should build a language that obfuscates by default.' There is nothing wrong with sending in plain-text by default, as long as you have methods to go private when necessary. Its a trust issue, not a technological one.

      --
      Good-bye
    11. Re:Absolutely Nothing by chill · · Score: 2

      Actually...Google provides 15 Gb of storage for standard, free Gmail accounts. Unless you're attaching movies or large numbers of music files, that is enough to retain years worth of e-mail.

      I know, I have years worth of e-mail in my Gmail box. 8 years, to be exact, and I'm using less than 10% of that 15 Gb.

      The money is spent.

      And as a side note. I once went thru and started deleting large quantities of older e-mail, that I had no reason to keep. After about 15 minutes the little "advertising" strip on the top of Gmail switched to "We have a sale going on tin-foil hats" and stayed there until I logged out..

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    12. Re:Absolutely Nothing by Wraithlyn · · Score: 2

      trying to separately store and analyze each separate event takes vastly more resources than doing periodic static analysis of the contents of your email folder

      Scanning the 10,000 pieces of email in my inbox, over and over again, is more efficient than tracking each individual piece as it comes in? That doesn't really follow.

      --
      "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
    13. Re:Absolutely Nothing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "Well, the earlier /. story mentioned that GCHQ (UK) stores *three days* worth of data flowing through Britain (where almost all the high-speed cross-Atlantic cables terminate), and the metadata from that for 30 days."

      But "the data flowing through Britain" is not the same as emails in your gmail account.

      I repeat: it would be much more problematic to try to store and analyze relationships "on the fly", than it is to do it via static snapshots of your email correspondence.

      I wasn't saying it can't be (or even isn't) done. But I highly doubt the stuff that is captured en masse is as easy to analyze for relationships as the stuff MIT is capturing via your gmail account as in the example given.

    14. Re:Absolutely Nothing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "Actually...Google provides 15 Gb of storage for standard, free Gmail accounts. Unless you're attaching movies or large numbers of music files, that is enough to retain years worth of e-mail."

      Yes, but that's YOU keeping mail stored in your mailboxes. That's not Google keeping separate copies to give to the government, which is what GP's comment was about.

    15. Re:Absolutely Nothing by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Noooo, its like saying "we already have language so there is no need for cryptography, we can just add Pig Latin onto regular language and it'll be good enough".

      You can bolt shit on all damned day but you can't turn a Brewster Buffalo into a mach 3 fighter, and likewise you can bolt shit on all damned day long but you aren't gonna take a thing that was never meant to be used by millions and never designed with even the slightest bit of security in mind into a truly locked down and secure system, because to do so you'll have to rip out so much of the old shit backwards compatibility will be thrown out the window and you might as well start over.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    16. Re:Absolutely Nothing by chill · · Score: 1

      They're digital. There doesn't need to be a "separate" copy. That was my point.

      The majority of Google's Gmail users just hit "archive" and the mail "goes away". Google did that on purpose. Out of sight, out of mind. Then THEY have vast quantities to mine for data. Giving it to the government is incidental.

      You're thinking about Google keeping a separate set of archive systems for something like this. I'm saying *they don't need to* for the vast majority of it. It happens that way naturally.

      Yes, you can POP it down but the bulk of their customers just live with the tyranny of the default. The result is the same.

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    17. Re:Absolutely Nothing by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

      in order to establish relationships

      This is what they have been interested in, the structure and financing of political groups (all of them not just the violent ones). Who talks to who, the chain of command, financial backers, internal factions, etc. Metadata maps an opponents organization and it's structural weaknesses in a way that simply reading emails cannot. Less powerful versions of these tools were very useful in the dismantling the IRA and have their roots in WW2 and people like Turing (who was himself brutally oppressed by modern standards).

      Disclaimer: I fully realize they are tools of oppression but you can't just undiscovered logistics anymore than you can undiscover atomic theory.. The practical questions are: who is being oppressed, in what way are they being oppressed, and for what reason?

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    18. Re:Absolutely Nothing by bug1 · · Score: 1

      I have stuff on their servers and mine is blank too.

      I am disapoint ?

    19. Re:Absolutely Nothing by MadMaverick9 · · Score: 1

      Yahoo and Google have both publicly stated that they do NOT do this.

      Yeah, they said that, all right. They also said that artificial sweeteners were safe, and WMDs were in Iraq, and Anna Nicole married for love!

    20. Re:Absolutely Nothing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "The majority of Google's Gmail users just hit "archive" and the mail "goes away". Google did that on purpose. Out of sight, out of mind."

      That doesn't negate my point at all. That's still YOU doing it. It's not a separate copy made by Google. Google isn't "keeping archives", YOU are.

      "You're thinking about Google keeping a separate set of archive systems for something like this."

      No, I wasn't "thinking" about anything of the sort. It's what GP wrote.

  11. Re:Just askin... by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Of course it's okay that the NSA does it, and next year's election results will reflect that. It's no use arguing whether it's 'right' or 'wrong'. We just need to figure a way neutralize it. All this philosophizing is a big waste of time and energy.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  12. Re:Just askin... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 5, Funny

    The government, by definition, has the consent of the governed. Otherwise, it would be long gone.

  13. is MIT doing PR work for the NSA? by 0111+1110 · · Score: 2

    So the purpose of this is what? To reassure us that the NSA is telling the truth and that they really do only view metadata? I think at this point it is quite safe to assume that any official announcement from the NSA is a lie. If MIT really wants to simulate seeing what the NSA can see then they should give you a view of every form of online communication plus any voice communication. The content. Not just the fucking metadata.

    --
    Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
  14. MIT not the only one by swimboy · · Score: 1

    Wolfram Alpha does similar analysis with your Facebook data. Those bubble charts reveal some amazing insights on seemingly insufficient amounts of data.

    --
    Ask me how the Heisenberg Principle may or may not have saved my life.
    1. Re:MIT not the only one by akluge · · Score: 1

      An interesting project. I assembled an explanation of how this type of graph works a while back – well before it became a media sensation – that is intended for the basis of a lesson plan for high school students. The idea was to foster interesting cross discipline instruction. This one touches on mathematics, physics, computer simulations, computer visualization, and raises awareness that sometimes unexpected information can be extracted for our footprint in social media and other communications. The algorithm executes dynamically in the web browser, and you can watch the system evolve into a stable configuration. It's amazing what you can do with a modern web browser :)

  15. In other words by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    The Immersion Project is PRISM... nice

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  16. Trust Us. by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    Again, I am not very concerned if Google thinks I may want to buy Pampers, Depends, or both.

    Iam concerned with government wondering who I talk with who may be political. As it turns out, no one. But many people do do this, and some of them would be of interest to corrupted officials.

    Therefore this mechanism, if it is to exist, needs good logging and forbearance mechanisms without warrant or, if in an "emergency", logging with mandatory followup with FISA or other court, and regular review by Congress.

    "It's such an emergency we can't even do that after 12 years" that is the fraudulent, anti-freedom activity.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    1. Re:Trust Us. by Feyshtey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So... The government secretly developed, deployed, and has been illegally managing this mechanism enabling them to spy on every citizen and foreign national that has passed data or made phone calls through the US. And you recognize how it could easily be used to intimidate, coerce or blackmail.

      Your solution then is to allow the program to continue and feel safe from it's potential abuse by asking the same people who illegally developed, deployed and are managing it, to follow the rules? Pretty please?

      What could possibly go wrong?

      --
      "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
    2. Re:Trust Us. by Feyshtey · · Score: 1

      Says the anonymous coward. Are you too uncomfortable associating even a pseudonym with your position? Don't want to share any personal information with a long-standing, reputable online community?

      --
      "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
  17. NSA knows i reloaded my starbucks card by alen · · Score: 1

    last week
    they also know i follow the NYC sports teams and the email alerts i receive from fatwallet and slickdeals
    along with my ereaderIQ author alerts for kindle books price drops

    that's why i didn't buy that Orson Scott Card book over the weekend. the NSA would have found out

    1. Re:NSA knows i reloaded my starbucks card by timeOday · · Score: 2

      Do they also know whether you're paying taxes on your mail order purchases and side-job income? (I mean, not that they would have gone to all the trouble of collecting the data just for that, but now that it's sitting right there...)

    2. Re:NSA knows i reloaded my starbucks card by alen · · Score: 1

      NSA collected evidence cannot be used in court. judges have thrown out evidence collected with a lot more legality behind it

    3. Re:NSA knows i reloaded my starbucks card by spleendamage · · Score: 1

      Says the Anonymous Coward.
      No, the privacy "nuts" are up in arms about someone having every email conversation you have had being tracked and read for zero reason.
      If you would like the NSA to read all of your email, bind a BCC rule for admin@nsa.gov to all your outgoing.

    4. Re:NSA knows i reloaded my starbucks card by timeOday · · Score: 1

      Proving who collected the evidence that started an investigation down a certain path is like proving that a job candidate was turned down for age discrimination. For example, a politically-interested insider could make an anonymous tip to a newspaper reporter about a candidate in an election. The reporter confirms the tip by interviewing somebody who they otherwise wouldn't have known to talk to, and so on... I think there is a general problem that a society with too many one-way mirrors becomes lopsided as it allows insiders to consolidate their power permanently.

    5. Re:NSA knows i reloaded my starbucks card by alen · · Score: 1

      that's not a court of law you idiot
      in a court of law there is something called chain of custody for criminal cases. you have to prove the evidence was collected legally

      NSA has been doing this for decades. so far they haven't politicized any data they collect. probably because their money comes from congress and they have to testify to congress on a regular schedule

    6. Re:NSA knows i reloaded my starbucks card by timeOday · · Score: 2
      Most wielding of power doesn't occur in a court of law. And when it does, how much of the backstory actually comes to light?

      Look at insider trading, what percent of occurrences do you think are actually discovered and successfully prosecuted? Proving where information came from - such as the idea to look at a few disparate sources and put them together in a certain way - can be accomplished only to a certain degree.

      If you look at past corrupt officials that did a lot of damage with much less powerful tools at their disposal, such as J Edgar Hoover or Senator McCarthy or President Nixon, the admissibility of evidence in court really had very little to do with anything.

      As for Congress, Clapper was caught in a bald-faced lie to them. After being caught, he said sorry, so apparently that's the end of that. For that matter, under Bush similar activities were carried out without any notification of Congress or the courts. They were caught eventually, and nothing happened. It's a real shame, because integrity is everything when you're dealing in secrecy and cannot directly verify the facts. All we know for sure, now, is that they're making up secret rules for themselves as they go along.

  18. Re:Just askin... by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The murderer an the rapist have the consent of the victim, otherwise these crimes simply would not happen.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  19. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This. In the West, I am less scared of the government (in its public capacity) than any other entity. They have the most openness and democratic oversight of any organisation. The thing I fear most about the government is the extent to which it partners with private organisations which are more interested in furthering special interests of small groups - usually the bank accounts of the wealthy.

    The information GCHQ/NSA has on me CAN be used to exploit me - if insufficient regulation allows corruption to set in. The information private entities have about me WILL be used to exploit me - by design.

  20. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They have the consent of the governed only if they follow the constitution which gives them the power to do what they do.
    Since they are wiping their rear ends with the constitution on this matter however, they do not have any consent at all.

  21. ...gone by jkflying · · Score: 1

    Aaannnd it's Slashdotted.

    --
    Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
  22. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The NSA has the consent of the American people. It's written in the PATRIOT Act.

  23. Re:Just askin... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The simulator helps you understand how your civil liberties are being violated. It helps make vague understandings more concrete.

  24. Re:Just askin... by mcgrew · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How, when both of the only two parties the corporate media dare mention are both all for a surveillance state? Remember, a vote for a candidate who doesn't want your loved ones in jail for pot and doesn't want a police state (e.g., Green and Libertarian, both on enough ballots to win) is a wasted vote? All the newspapers and TV stations agree, we need to have a surveillance state and we need to jail your loved ones!

    And nobody seems to realize how stupid their vote is, corporate media keep us in the dark.

  25. Re:Just askin... by Feyshtey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In today's America, the government has less the consent, and more the apathy of the governed. The fact that the populace is so disengaged and ill-informed is the only reason there aren't many more protests in the streets.

    --
    "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
  26. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Consent requires information. If the government does not provide any information what they are doing, there can be no consent. Additionally, any implied consent is bounded by the constitution, and it does not appear that the government of the US has any intent whatsoever to abide by those restrictions.

  27. Far from it by timeOday · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The power of an integrating capability isn't what it can glean from ONE source (gmail), but rather the cross product of combining MULTIPLE sources. (gmail, facebook, phone records, credit report, amazon purchases? banking transactions?...) This cross-cutting capability is really the only portion that is unique/specific to government. (Except there is also a vast and shadowy industry of buying and selling the same personal information on private markets which we also know very little about).

  28. Re:Just askin... by Score+Whore · · Score: 1

    Now that they've gotten linked from here, they have a lot more access to gmail data than they did before. People giving MIT access to their email is no different than people giving Google access to their email. This is the problem: users extend too much trust in exchange for something sweet.

  29. Re:Just askin... by Antipater · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Interesting points about openness and democratic oversight in government as opposed to the corporate world.

    So shouldn't you be up in arms about the lack of both openness and democratic oversight shown in the NSA affair? You can't defend the virtues of one system over another, then turn a blind eye when it reneges on those virtues.

    --
    Everything is better with chainsaws.
  30. Misleading title by swillden · · Score: 1

    The tool shows what the NSA could know about you if they had access to your gmail. However, Google rather staunchly maintains that the NSA does not have any access to Google user data, with the exception of specific information about specific individuals when proper legal documentation has been provided and reviewed by Google's legal team, and even then the NSA does not have access to Google's servers; Google retrieves the specific data requested by the order and delivers it to the requestor.

    In addition to the previous public statements, David Drummond just published the following op-ed in faz.net (in German): http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/gastbeitrag-von-david-drummond-gleichgewicht-zwischen-sicherheit-und-buergerrechten-12272710.html. Here's a Google+ post that contains an English translation: https://plus.google.com/u/0/105603626919803672092/posts/bT7ndyhJmUk

    Unless Google is flat-out lying of course. I don't believe that is true; I don't think Google could be legally compelled to lie, and I don't think the CEO and legal counsel legally can lie to the public, but you have to make your own evaluation on that point.

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    1. Re:Misleading title by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem is that now, thanks to the PRISM leaks, no one believes Google. Not even a little bit. And yes, they can be legally compelled to lie and if they are so compelled they will be shielded from any consequences of those lies, just like the phone companies were the first time a massive warrantless wiretapping program leaked 5 years ago.

    2. Re:Misleading title by xaxa · · Score: 2

      I don't think Google could be legally compelled to lie

      I'm not so optimistic, but in any case there's plenty of scope for carefully hiding the truth.

      "we do not provide any government, including the US government, with access to our systems. Nor do we allow goverments to install equipment on our networks or property that gives them access to user data."

      What about equipment "just outside" their networks, or accessing whatever Google considers non-user data?

      I'd be surprised if (unknown to Google) they aren't employing some people who also work for the NSA.

      "Third, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law."

      Through a secret court?

      Hopefully we can get more transparency, and it's good that Google are pushing for that.

    3. Re:Misleading title by swillden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is that now, thanks to the PRISM leaks, no one believes Google. Not even a little bit.

      That is a problem, indeed. It's why Google has filed suit against the DoJ, because Google can't provide the details needed to defend itself.

      And yes, they can be legally compelled to lie and if they are so compelled they will be shielded from any consequences of those lies

      Cite? As far as I know, the telecoms never lied. They refused to answer, and then eventually admitted to it. I could be wrong, however, since my memories of the details are fuzzy. But a few web searches seem to support my recollections. Yes, they definitely were shielded from any legal consequences.

      But even if Google were shielded from legal consequences, Google could not be shielded from the extremely severe and irreparable PR consequences. Google might be able to recover from proof of the allegations by coming clean and promising to do better, but proof that the allegations were true and that Google lied would be disastrous for a company with Google's current business model. Remember that unlike the telecoms which have local monopolies, a national oligopoly and fairly high switching costs, Google's competition is just a click away.

      I see three options:

      1. Google is telling the truth.
      2. Google is lying and is absolutely certain that it can never, ever be proven.
      3. Google's executives are idiots.

      I know 3 is false, and arguably it would have to be true for Google's execs to believe that their lies could never be proven, per 2. I think they're telling the truth.

      (Disclaimer: I should mention that I work for Google. However, if the PRISM allegations were supported, I probably wouldn't be working for Google much longer, and neither would an awful lot of other people, including many who are far more talented and valuable than I am.)

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    4. Re:Misleading title by swillden · · Score: 2

      What about equipment "just outside" their networks, or accessing whatever Google considers non-user data?

      Well, since nearly all Google traffic is encrypted, equipment just outside their networks wouldn't do much good. And Google considers all data in any way related to users to be user data

      I'd be surprised if (unknown to Google) they aren't employing some people who also work for the NSA.

      That could certainly be. However, Google security is pretty deep, and focuses at least as much on securing against insider threats as outsider threats. Those NSA employees would have to be extremely well-placed. (I work for Google, on security infrastructure, which means I know whereof I speak, but also that I can't provide much detail.)

      Through a secret court?

      Where that's what the law says, then yes. I think it's very clear that we have some deep public policy problems. However, Google's claim is that the number of requests they receive is small and affects only a tiny number of users. Unfortunately, the law doesn't allow them to be more specific, which is why they're suing.

      Hopefully we can get more transparency, and it's good that Google are pushing for that.

      Agreed. We absolutely need more transparency, and it's great that a company with the clout and resources of Google is pushing for it. It doesn't even matter whether they're pushing for it because they think it's a good thing in general or because the allegations are damaging to their business model.

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    5. Re:Misleading title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You forgot 4., which is what is under discussion: Google is compelled to lie. Given that the US government is apparently happy to use secret interpretations of the law, made by secret courts, you have no way to know how far the government believes that it can legally go. Since interpretation of the law is akin to writing the law anew, you've effectively got secret laws. It's entirely possible that Google is compelled to give full access to all information and also compelled to lie about it. In which case that really sucks for Google, because they are going to take a PR hit for something that they had no responsibility for.

    6. Re:Misleading title by chill · · Score: 1

      4. Google is compelled by law to lie.
      5. The NSA is tapping the routers one step up from Google's data centers and Google's hands are clean, but the NSA has all the data anyway.

      #5 would be my guess, but should be stymied by always using an SSL/TLS connection to Google. Of course, I doubt the *SMTP* connections delivering mail to/from Google servers are all encrypted, regardless of the webmail interface.

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    7. Re:Misleading title by swillden · · Score: 1

      4. Google is compelled by law to lie.

      I don't believe that's possible, and I'm certain that Google would fight it, hard, because of the potential for damage to Google's business.

      I doubt the *SMTP* connections delivering mail to/from Google servers are all encrypted, regardless of the webmail interface.

      Google uses SMTP over TLS whenever possible. Unfortunately, most other mail providers don't support it, so I believe SMTP traffic to and from Google is often unencrypted. Email from one Google account to another doesn't have that problem, of course.

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    8. Re:Misleading title by swillden · · Score: 1

      I don't believe it's possible for Google to be legally compelled to lie, but I could be wrong.

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    9. Re:Misleading title by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

      Probably #4.

      GW Bush issued a presidential order that companies are immune from the consequences of breaking any laws that the data-sharing orders might compel them to commit.

    10. Re:Misleading title by tokencode · · Score: 1

      They don't need access to the servers to be able to read your gmail at all. They are making a whole-sale copy of they internet, you simply compel google to give up their certs, replicate their infrastructure and software and have a real-time copy of the same info under your control being fed by shadow copy of the Internet. All google did then was provide the government with the software capabilities to run a gmail infrastructure and not the content, government gets access to content.

    11. Re:Misleading title by swillden · · Score: 1

      They are making a whole-sale copy of they internet, you simply compel google to give up their certs, replicate their infrastructure and software and have a real-time copy of the same info under your control being fed by shadow copy of the Internet

      First, having certs does no good -- which is good because those are public information which Google sends to every browser that asks for them. Perhaps you meant private keys? Giving those keys would constitute providing indirect access, which Google has specifically said it does not do. Google's disclaimers have been pretty thorough; there aren't any significant loopholes. Either Google is lying, the NSA does not actually have access to gmail data, or the NSA has achieved a tremendous espionage coup and managed to keep it secret from Google.

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  31. Re:Just askin... by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    ...corporate media keep us in the dark.

    We can always light a candle...

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  32. Re:Just askin... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 2

    Additionally, any implied consent is bounded by the constitution, and it does not appear that the government of the US has any intent whatsoever to abide by those restrictions.

    Au contraire. Secret court rulings have confirmed that the US is abiding by the constitution. Please do not attempt to disprove this, as slashdot is not cleared to receive classified information.

    Trust the Computer. The Computer is Your Friend.

  33. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 2

    I'm guessing MIT haven't tapped Google's fibre like the NSA so are doing it on a consent based basis, but no, I haven't read TFA.

    I don't think tapping Google's fiber would do the NSA that much good. All traffic between gmail servers and gmail users is encrypted. They could get traffic between Google's SMTP servers and other mail providers, because although Google uses SMTP over TLS when talking to any other provider that supports it, few do, but messages between gmail accounts are never transmitted in cleartext.

    If you argue that the NSA can lean on certificate authorities to let them spoof Google certs, I think that approach is unlikely to succeed. First, even if CAs cooperated the NSA would need to use it sparingly, because it's likely that eventually someone would notice that they're getting different -- though apparently valid -- certs, especially since all valid certs from Google should be issued by Google's CA. Second, the fact that Chrome pins all Google certs by default makes the odds of discovery even higher. In fact, that's how the DigiNotar compromise was surfaced; someone tried to use the compromised signing key to spoof a Google cert and Chrome threw up big red error pages.

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  34. Re:Just askin... by PraiseBob · · Score: 2

    Democratic leaders have the one-time approval of 51% of the governed. They certainly don't have the consent of ALL of the governed at any point. Generally speaking governments don't always have consent, they do however, have the most soldiers and weapons.

  35. Re:Just askin... by Guru80 · · Score: 1

    Oh god....that is exactly the definition government workers want the good sheeple to go by. "You elected me so I have your consent to do whatever I want without your approval, for your security and protection of course...so bah like a good boy".

  36. Re:Just askin... by Cenan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Your premise is wrong if it's "government is an entity that follows laws", because this completely ignores the fact that government is made up of individuals, with personal agendas. The data they collect may not be used against you right now, but that's only because you're not in someone's way yet. Once you step into the crosshairs of someone in power, do you still think all that data is innocent and inert? Do you think regulation is going to save you? Are you willing to accept a society where you cannot poke your head up too high, unless you're of a chosen breed and have greased the right palms?

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  37. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The equivalent of saying that there is no such thing as rape as anyone that does not successfully get away has consented.

  38. Re:No it does not! by sribe · · Score: 1

    You can trust MIT exactly as far as you can throw any one of their buildings. MIT employs the most despicable state propagandist in US history, Noam Chomsky...

    Rant, rant, rant. Dude, seriously, almost nobody pays any attention to Chomsky. He just spews for his own egomaniacal self-pleasure, and a to impress a small number of awed groupies.

  39. And yet they suggest Chrome by YurB · · Score: 1

    If you visit the page using Firefox with JavaScript disabled, they suggest you to download Google's Chrome, i.e. to give even more of your data to NSA. We should at least recommend Chromium (the open-source part of Chrome) in such cases instead of the binary distribution from Google.

  40. Favourite line - naivity by csubi · · Score: 2

    At least the NSA says it doesn’t read the contents of your email. Google does, and it admits that it does.

    Like I believe NSA does not look at the contents... If it weren't for Snowden, we would still not know about PRISM.

  41. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    Apparently entering searches in the search bar sent them in the clear

    That's certainly possible. It depends on how Firefox's default search engine is configured. If you want to be sure your searches are encrypted, go change the setting to use https://google.com./

    Apparently entering searches in the search bar sent them in the clear and certain keywords could trigger a new certificate. Put in the same keyword and nothing happens you need to find a new keyword to trigger a new certificate. I used one of those lists with supposedly sensitive keywords.

    That's impossible. The session encryption negotiation is done prior to any data being sent, so the certificate provided by the server, and used to encrypt the session key, is delivered to the browser before Google receives any keywords.

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  42. Re:Just askin... by RenderSeven · · Score: 4, Funny

    the government has] the most openness and democratic oversight of any organisation

    Ha ha ha ha ha!!!! That was a good one!

  43. Re:Just askin... by mcgrew · · Score: 2

    We have the internet now, but thanks to the NRA our candle is a searchlight pointing at us. Vote Libbie or Green!

  44. Re:Just askin... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 5, Funny

    perhaps it's not "rape rape" but "spousal rape."

  45. Re:Just askin... by GargamelSpaceman · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I mean anyone with anything to hide will be using Tor. Are people too stupid to use Tor really a threat that the NSA needs to be brought to bear to worry about? The only ones who lose are private citizens. Unless you go to extraordinary lengths you won't be able to keep the NSA from connecting an old slashdot post with your real name. Who cares right? Not me, but the Internet isn't just about about now, what you say is for all time. If an evil dictator comes to power you can't quit saying stuff that might piss them off and go about your business. Anything you've already said when it was still OK to do so can be used against you.

    --
    ...
  46. Re:Just askin... by AdamThor · · Score: 2

    What would be OK is if they posted some code to run and then let you save and browse the result all on your own machine.

    --
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  47. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This. In the West, I am less scared of the government (in its public capacity) than any other entity. They have the most openness and democratic oversight of any organisation. The thing I fear most about the government is the extent to which it partners with private organisations which are more interested in furthering special interests of small groups - usually the bank accounts of the wealthy.

    The information GCHQ/NSA has on me CAN be used to exploit me - if insufficient regulation allows corruption to set in. The information private entities have about me WILL be used to exploit me - by design.

    You are a fool. While corporations do exploit people, they're less likely to do so with extreme prejudice. Most of the Hollywood-style abuses that corporations commit are Hollywood fiction.

    Governments, on the other hand, do this kind of stuff all day long.

    When a government can pass a few "hints" along and divert a Head of State on an international mission, THAT's something to be very, very worried about. Granted, the particular head of state isn't in charge of a well-regarded government, but it is still a legitimate government. Today Bolivia, tomorrow France.

    If they can do that the the President of a nation, it's not hard to imagine what they can do to you. Who needs to imagine when there's Guantanamo? If you're lucky.

  48. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    Do you have any example keywords? Also, are you located in China?

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  49. Re:Just askin... by Jawnn · · Score: 1

    In today's America, the government has less the consent, and more the apathy of the governed. The fact that the populace is so disengaged and ill-informed is the only reason there aren't many more protests in the streets.

    Yeah? So? As long as we can not be scared of teh terrorists and as long as new episodes of Survivor, American Idol, and Tia and Tamera keep coming out, we're happy.

  50. Re:Just askin... by gary_7vn · · Score: 1

    Can MIT render you or kill you in a drone strike? And I guess you missed the "voluntary" part.

  51. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ...but no, I haven't read TFA.

    Don't worry, NSA already did.

  52. Similar to Node XL by ideonexus · · Score: 2

    I allowed Immersion to review my gmail, and I don't think it really reflects what PRISM is accessing in any way. All it did was go through my emails and build a standard social network map out of my emails based on who was in the address lines. My understanding is that PRISM is actually analyzing the content of my emails. Immersion is neat, but it really seems like the developers are trying to promote their own software by attaching it to the surveillance scandal.

    As for Immersion itself. It is a neat application and it's fun to see a chart of everyone you interact with an how they are all networked together. If you're interested in seeing your Facebook and Twitter networks modeled in a similar way, you can use the open-source NodeXL plugin for Excel, which let's you harvest your data from these social networks and build your own visualizations. It's actually much much more robust than Immersion and you don't have to give a third-party access to your accounts since you run it from your local machine yourself.

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    1. Re:Similar to Node XL by darkmeridian · · Score: 1

      PRISM is supposedly not reading the contents of your mail. Forget the honor system; it's just that there isn't enough computing power to store and review all of it. (There are reports that England stores all domestic data for a rolling three day period, but I don't think the US can do it because of how fucking huge its portion of the Internet is.)

      PRISM is supposed to build a spiderweb of everyone you talk to, and who they talk to, etc. out of every fucking sort of data system that the NSA can get their grubby little hands on. It is the overlay of these data nets that is so fucking scary. I am 100% certain that PRISM has access to banking information. You know how American Express calls you with a suspicious activity alert because they know you have never bought $50.00 in burritos from Chipotle before? Imagine that information, the link from the AMEX account to your personal email, the address, etc. etc. etc.

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  53. Re:Just askin... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 2

    Two words. "Spousal Rape."

    I think you'll find that this is a relatively recent concept, and some can condemn other forms of rape, while having a difficult time understanding how rape can possibly exist with the confines of marriage.

    You assume an antagonistic relationship between the people and the state. This is not necessarily a good assumption to make when trying to understand why NSA wiretapping is still accepted by significant segments of the population.

  54. Re:Just askin... by dos1 · · Score: 1

    All of the people who give MIT access to their email already gave it to Google, because that tool from MIT supports only GMail accounts at the moment.

  55. Re:Just askin... by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't think it's apathy, I think it's surrender of the governed.

    For example, Congress currently has an approval rating of 7%, and a disapproval rating of 65% (Rasmussen). If there's one thing Americans agree on, it's that our elected leadership is, on average, terrible. And yet early polling suggests that of 435 Congressmen, only about 50 are likely to be replaced.

    The fastest-growing party affiliation in America is independent. That strongly suggests that neither major party is representing the citizens. And yet there are only 3 independents holding federal elected office, and 1 of those independents (Joe Lieberman) is really a Democrat in disguise because his party supported him over the candidate chosen by voters in Connecticut in the primary.

    So this leads to the argument that Americans are paying attention, think their elected leaders and political parties are horrible, and vote for them anyways because they think the alternatives are even worse.

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  56. Re:Just askin... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2

    I don't think tapping Google's fiber would do the NSA that much good. All traffic between gmail servers and gmail users is encrypted.

    Unless the NSA has the private key for the certificate. There's no need to spoof a certificate if all you want is to listen. Just get hold of the private key, and the data could as well have been sent in cleartext. Since the browser will get the original certificate, there's nothing raising suspicion.

    Indeed, even Google may be unaware of the NSA having the key, if they got it through an inofficial way (either bribing/threatening someone who has access to give it to them, or put an undercover agent in to get the key, or maybe even use a not publicly known vulnerability on the certificate generating computer's operating system to break in).

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  57. Re:Just askin... by tgd · · Score: 2

    One has your consent, the other doesn't?

    One needs your consent. One just needs a courts consent.

    One has no legal oversight, one does.

    The thing I find puzzling about the PRISM uproar is that there's not actually any allegations by Snowden that the NSA ever looks at records without a court order. Only employees with superuser-level access who commit felonies have.

    At least there are laws to appropriately punish people like Snowden who step well beyond the legal limits of their roles and violate privacy. Do you think there's anything protecting your personal information at ATT or Verizon from any schmuck who wants to do the same thing? Do you think, even if PRISM wasn't there, that an analyst who is willing to break federal law couldn't do the exact same thing, anyway?

    Hell, I'd comfortably argue there is vastly less of a privacy risk having all of that data in NSA systems, than having the NSA one-off requests for each and every bit of data. Assuming an analyst isn't breaking the law, no one but the NSA knows if I'm being investigated. And when it comes to nothing, no one is the wiser. If I happened to be standing too close to a terrorist suspect, and the NSA wanted to verify I hadn't had any contact with that individual, and that request was sent to ATT, my local Telco, maybe my financial institutions -- under a court order, just as legal as with PRISM -- now every one of those institutions knows I was being investigated *and there's no controls about the ramifications of it*. It also reduces the risk of my personal information to social engineering.

    Hell, the history of organized crime in the US makes it pretty clear why its a problem for a Telco to know about a wiretap -- because it wasn't at all uncommon to have the telephone engineers who had to do them on the take, not 20 or 30 years ago.

    I honestly am baffled how any reasonably intelligent person who has spent more than ten seconds thinking about it is up in arms about PRISM. Its just bizarre.

  58. Re:Just askin... by tgd · · Score: 1

    Interesting points about openness and democratic oversight in government as opposed to the corporate world.

    So shouldn't you be up in arms about the lack of both openness and democratic oversight shown in the NSA affair? You can't defend the virtues of one system over another, then turn a blind eye when it reneges on those virtues.

    The US isn't a democracy. Its a republic, and the people who have been elected into positions to provide that oversight did. They are elected to make those decisions precisely because the "mindless masses" don't have the collective intelligence to make the right ones. (Like "the best way to do covert surveillance is to make sure everyone knows its happening"!)

  59. Re:Just askin... by tgd · · Score: 1

    Your premise is wrong if it's "government is an entity that follows laws", because this completely ignores the fact that government is made up of individuals, with personal agendas. The data they collect may not be used against you right now, but that's only because you're not in someone's way yet. Once you step into the crosshairs of someone in power, do you still think all that data is innocent and inert? Do you think regulation is going to save you? Are you willing to accept a society where you cannot poke your head up too high, unless you're of a chosen breed and have greased the right palms?

    And do you honestly think someone who could bypass the access controls at the *NSA* would have the slightest problem doing so directly with the companies involved? Hell, when younger and stupider, I'm sure lots of people on Slashdot socially engineered their way to getting information they shouldn't have had. Its not rocket science.

    If you've pissed off someone who can do that with the NSA, you've probably got bigger problems than the records of your calls to some tranny chatline or something.

  60. I am connected to... by mha · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...a lot of rich Nigerians, quite a few Viagra and p. enlargement sellers, a number of individuals who know jobs that pay thousands of dollars that you can do from home, a handful of real estate executives, and more.

  61. Re:Just askin... by gmuslera · · Score: 1

    Could be a republic for you, at least if you are named Lester. Else you just agree with who the Lesters previously choose.

  62. Re:Just askin... by gmuslera · · Score: 1

    Corporations don't kill so much people. They just corrupt their governments so they do the dirty work for them. Or just blackmail them, having access to most of world's private mail surely makes it easy.

  63. Re:Just askin... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

    At least you didn't invoke sheeple

  64. Re:Just askin... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

    And yet there are only 3 independents holding federal elected office, and 1 of those independents (Joe Lieberman) is really a Democrat in disguise because his party supported him over the candidate chosen by voters in Connecticut in the primary.

    My independent views are mine alone. They are unlikely to mesh with the independent views of those other than me.

  65. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    Not impossible, but I happen to know quite a bit about how Google's private keys are stored and distributed to the front-end reverse proxy servers... and it would be difficult. They'd have to compromise one of a small number of people who would be fairly resistant to the idea.

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  66. Re:Just askin... by Mathinker · · Score: 1

    > Snowden who step well beyond the legal limits of their roles and violate privacy

    Did I miss something? Who's privacy did Snowden violate?

  67. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well it depends if it's 'regular doubling' or 'doubling doubling'.

  68. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    I just tested it, and an unencrypted search for GOSIP does not redirect to an encrypted session, so no certificate at all. The reason I asked about China is because I think I read something about Google choosing to redirect some searches to HTTPS in order to defeat filtering by the Great Firewall.

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  69. Re:Just askin... by Antipater · · Score: 3, Insightful

    and the people who have been elected into positions to provide that oversight did.

    Did they? I'd be interested to hear how you know that, given that the court opinions are secret. Is there actually oversight, or are the information requests simply rubber-stamped? We don't know, and that's the problem.

    The funny thing about covert surveillance is that you can get a warrant for it. The process is not secret, and it happens all the time. The warrant is then shown in court along with the acquired evidence. That's completely public knowledge, and it hasn't seemed to "tip off" the criminals any. Do criminals not use cars because of license plate cameras, or not use phones because of wiretapping?

    The "revealing its existence will compromise security" argument is so wrongheaded as to be laughable.

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  70. Re:Just askin... by Radiophobic · · Score: 1

    That's like equating any kind of social situation to rape by virtue of the fact that people are socializing. Government in and of itself isn't a positive or negative thing. It's what these governments do that matters.

  71. Re:Just askin... by Anachragnome · · Score: 1

    Shawn, you should probably mention--for those that haven't figured it out already--that you work for Google.

    You know, full-disclosure and all that.

  72. Re:No it does not! by omnichad · · Score: 1

    Well - here's the RFID in tires:
    http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269

    But the reader would not be in the tire. That would be installed on the road. Or in public buildings or in other cars driving by. RFID chips operate passively from the reader.

  73. Re:Just askin... by dkleinsc · · Score: 1

    My independent views are mine alone. They are unlikely to mesh with the independent views of those other than me.

    Let's say there are about 15 issues you really care about, and most of them amount to a Yes/No answer (e.g. "Should marijuana be legal?"). That means that on average, 1 in 33000 people would answer the same way you did. Since there are roughly 70 million independents in the US, that means that there's a good chance at least 2000 people agree with you.

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    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  74. Re:Just askin... by Feyshtey · · Score: 1

    Based on the debates I have tried to have with people it appears to me that most don't have the slightest clue whats going on. They are blissfully ignorant. What's worse, they think they are informed. They will snap to with the latest catchphrase and regurgitate the position from the first paragraph of some hack reporter's article that was on the front page of a mainstream media site and fully believe that it is based in fact and encompasses the whole of the topic. They don't validate sources or positions, they don't attempt to read the view of the opposition (which assumes that they know there IS an opposition). They worship at the alter of Glenn Beck or Rachel Maddow (or insert your activist "journalist") without ever questioning or considering any other possible truth.

    The real root of the issue here being that they were never taught how to think. They were merely taught what to think.

    --
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  75. Re:Just askin... by tgd · · Score: 1

    Did they? I'd be interested to hear how you know that, given that the court opinions are secret. Is there actually oversight, or are the information requests simply rubber-stamped? We don't know, and that's the problem.

    I can read. Details of the process, as well as the count of times that warrants were issued with and without changes are public record.

  76. Re:Just askin... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

    and 2000 votes may be enough to elect a new dog catcher.

  77. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    I have, several times. Perhaps I missed it in this thread. It's on my /. profile.

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  78. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    Already addressed in my comments about certificates and certificate pinning, see above.

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  79. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    Can you reproduce?

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  80. Re:Just askin... by fufufang · · Score: 1

    Au contraire. Secret court rulings have confirmed that the US is abiding by the constitution. Please do not attempt to disprove this, as slashdot is not cleared to receive classified information.

    Trust the Computer. The Computer is Your Friend.

    As a person who lives in Britain. Sometimes I feel not enough attention is given to the international side of the issue. I can now certainly understand why some countries hate the US so much.

    The US has violated many other allies' trust, no matter whether the constitution is violated. I have the feeling that the US government is currently run by a bunch of insensitive clods.

  81. Re:Favourite line - naivity by darkmeridian · · Score: 1

    We already knew about PRISM since 2006. Or rather, we knew about the giant government wiretapping program that worked in conjunction with telecoms to steal our data. There was a lawsuit and a documentary about the whole thing.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

    Snowden isn't a hero. If he only revealed PRISM, I'd root for him, but his disclosures about Stuxnet, hacking against China, etc. make me think that the guy is just a deluded, self-important loon who gives zero shits about America.

    --
    A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
  82. Re:Just askin... by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1

    You have to give MIT permission to do it for you. I just visited the page, and I gave a thought or two to giving Immersion permission to do it's thing. I haven't done so. I may, at some later time.

    With the NSA, they don't ask any permissions. They assume permission from the government. Sneaking around behind everyone's back, building their data bases, then keeping the data secret.

    There is no comparison between MIT and NSA.

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  83. Re:Just askin... by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

    Nitpick: Government workers are hired, politicians are elected.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  84. Re:Just askin... by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

    Do you know him?

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  85. Re:Just askin... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    If you happen to be a member of a conservative group, then the US government has already used the IRS against you. If you were a major contributor to the Republican party, then you have probably been audited several times already.

    Wal-Mart can't haul you out of the bed in the middle of the night and hold you for "questioning" just because you posted a video on YouTube. The US Government can (and has). Google can't send a drone to kill American citizens without due process. The US Government can (and has). Apple can't order Verizon to give them access to all phone records. The US Government can (and has).

    If you are more scared of private organizations than you are of the government, then you clearly have not been paying attention.

  86. Re:Just askin... by srichard25 · · Score: 1

    I agree with you, but I don't think the problem is that they were never taught how to think. It takes real effort to keep up with politics and to understand the complex issues. I believe most Americans are just too damn lazy.

  87. That tool is pretty cool though by dead_user · · Score: 1

    As creepy as it is, it was fascinating to see that the analysis it ran on my recipients was totally accurate. It knew who people were by how I knew them better than I did. Groups like family were in different colors. It was a detailed overhead view of my little personal electronic world.

  88. Re:Plenty of jobs are legally compelled to lie by swillden · · Score: 1

    Did you have a legal duty to be truthful, as in you could be prosecuted for lying to the public? Officers of publicly-traded companies do.

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  89. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    Possibly, but that certainly wouldn't be related to what you searched for.

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  90. Re:Just askin... by Dunbal · · Score: 1

    Take your politically correct ass out of here. People are trying to have a normal conversation. Thank you.

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  91. Re:Just askin... by Branciforte · · Score: 1

    The transmission is encrypted with ECDHE, an Elliptical Curve Diffie-Hellman Exchange. Each connection is encrypted with a separate secret number which is dynamically generated and known only to the endpoints of the connection. The NSA or anyone else might be able to watch all the traffic, but it will still take anyone years to brute force it.

    Do you understand how ECDHE works?

  92. Re:Just askin... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

    Are you really arguing that the analogy between the act of rape and the act of wiretapping is appropriate, but the use of what others interpret as humor is out of bounds?

    Please stop trying to constrain our discourse.

  93. Re:Just askin... by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 1

    Damn! Yesterday I had mod points. You'd have got a +1 funny :-)

    --
    "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
  94. Re:Just askin... by Dextrously · · Score: 1

    I don't think this has anything to do with Google though, unless I am misunderstanding what you are saying. I also have HTTPS Everywhere installed, I opened up Wireshark, set my filter to watch TCP ports 80 and 443 outbound, and then attempted to reproduce your issue without any success. HTTPS Everywhere caught the connection before it ever left my machine. My first outbound connection was always a SYN packet to 74.125.224.211 on port 443, except in cases where a session remained open when I typed in a new keyword, in that case, the same session was reused. I tried this with several different searches, and immediately after closing and re-opening Firefox without a variance in results.

    Maybe this used to be a bug in the HTTP Everywhere add-on, and it has since been fixed? It doesn't appear to still exist though, unless you can provide more details on how to reproduce it.

  95. Re:Just askin... by peawormsworth · · Score: 1

    When I search for GOSSIP using https, google directs me to a results page that has GET data in the url. One of the entries in the get request is: "q=GOSSIP". Im not sure, but I dont think that GET data embeded in the URL is encrypted, just the content of POST requests and the response data from the server. Maybe I am wrong, but I think this shows that it is non-trivial to see exactly what you type directly to search in the https://google.com/ homepage.

  96. Re:Just askin... by peawormsworth · · Score: 1

    I would just like to know why google blocks so many of my search requests while using TOR? Often it will not even let me type into a captcha in order to prove I am human to continue. Is Google worried about the fake top level SSL certs that were handed out improperly and that I may be using an old browser without an updated blacklist and redirected to false search results by a deviant TOR exit node??

    because if google wants to be the monopoly search portal, which I think it should want to, then they should support users who do not wish to broadcast to the world which search terms that are entering into Google's search forms.

  97. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    I don't know anything about interaction with TOR. However, it's worth pointing out that if you're accessing Google via HTTPS (without TOR), your search terms are encrypted in transit.

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  98. Re:Just askin... by swillden · · Score: 1

    I dont think that GET data embeded in the URL is encrypted

    It is.

    SSL/TLS creates an encrypted stream on top of the TCP stream, and the HTTP data is all transported over that. So URL, headers, body... everything is all secured.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security

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  99. Re:Just askin... by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Well, there you go. With the NRA on our side, we have something to shoot out the searchlight. The thing is this, if the voters remain so easily manipulated by bullshit, then it's time to rethink the validity of majority rule, which under the present circumstances is a dictatorship no better than any other. We should never let our rights be put up to a vote. But since we all got 'mouths to feed and bills to pay', we will continue to appease authority every morning when we go to work.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  100. Re:Just askin... by mcgrew · · Score: 1

    Typo. I meant to type NSA not NRA.

  101. Re:Just askin... by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    In that case, use a mirror. Reflect the light back at them. I'm just not interested in all this bleating on how 'helpless' we are. We are not. It is a conditioned response.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  102. Re: Just askin... by Feyshtey · · Score: 1

    If they listen to one station, and take anything that station says as the one set of facts, and they vote based on that information alone without ever attempting to validate anything they heard, yes. It's wrong.

    If you're too lazy/stupid/busy to educate yourself from more than one perspective, then you are too lazy/stupid/busy to vote. So stop.

    --
    "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi