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Deutsche Telekom Moves Email Traffic In-Country In Wake of PRISM
kdryer39 writes "Germany's leading telecom provider announced on Friday that it will only use German servers to handle any email traffic over its systems, citing privacy concerns arising from the recent PRISM leak and its 'public outrage over U.S. spy programs accessing citizens' private messages.' In a related move, DT has also announced that they will be providing email services over SSL to further secure their customers' communications. Sandro Gaycken, a professor of cyber security at Berlin's Free University, said 'This will make a big difference...Of course the NSA could still break in if they wanted to, but the mass encryption of emails would make it harder and more expensive for them to do so.'"
Germany is one of the hotspots for Boundless Informant. It appears that the US spies on Germany as much as it does on China.
Because this message will hit the front pages and prime time news.
Although many Europeans say they've got nothing to hide they are jstill pissed off about the warrant-less spying an outside, previously considered friendly, force is doing upon them.
I am really sad about the need for this walling off, it defeats the great idea and ideal of a world-wide network.
But it seems to be necessary, if only as a message to the perpetrators because we know nothing is unbreakable.
And please do remember this mail will still be accessible to German courts but now on their own conditions.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I find it a beautiful irony that the country that invented the gestapo and the stasi finds the nsa a little bit too much :)
I find it absolutely frightening that the citizens of the country that supposedly stands against the tyranny of organizations like the Gestapo and the Stasi not only have not overturned their government over this huge scandal, but in fact mostly agree with the surveillance program.
Americans deserve what's coming to them.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
German companies now rate U.S. as the second worst risk to industrial espionage, only second to China. Even Russia is considered a more trustworthy IT partner than the Americans. It's not only the private citizens who care for some privacy.
Dear Everyone Else
We like Canada more than America too
Sincerely
Americans
"95% of intra-German Internet communications are routed via a switch in Frankfurt."
From the EU "Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System"
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN
How will SSL be "harder and more expensive" for the NSA/GCHQ if a friendly German agency just hands over the keys again?
Seems like the West German post war telco system was designed to track Soviet/East German contacts via a few central locations.
Why would the US need to "break in" if they where in on the design and have a great generational working relationship with German telcos and intelligence agency staff?
i.e. "still doesn't prevent governments from getting information"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Americans deserve what's coming to them.
Actually we don't.
It matters not a wit who we elect, because the NSA/CIA are somehow above the law, and quickly co-opt every elected official.
We can do about as much about this as your lowly jewish shop keeper could do in 1938. We are totally screwed here, and its small comfort that you are in the same boat with your own government's spying programs.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Dear Everyone Else
We are delighted you like our norther corporate appendage more than us
That will increase its value after assimilation is complete
Sincerely
America
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
ATF uses fake drugs, big bucks to snare suspects
It's the drugs â" though non-existent â" that make that possible because federal law usually imposes tougher mandatory sentences for drugs than for guns. The more drugs the agents say are likely to be in the stash house, the longer the targets' sentence is likely to be. Conspiring to distribute 5 kilograms of cocaine usually carries a mandatory 10-year sentence â" or 20 years if the target has already been convicted of a drug crime.
That fact has not escaped judges' notice. The ATF's stings give agents "virtually unfettered ability to inflate the amount of drugs supposedly in the house and thereby obtain a greater sentence," a federal appeals court in California said in 2010. "The ease with which the government can manipulate these factors makes us wary." Still, most courts have said tough federal sentencing laws leave them powerless to grant shorter prison terms.
To the ATF, long sentences are the point. Fifteen years "is the mark," Smith said.
"You get the guy, you get him with a gun, and you can lock him up for 18 months for the gun. All you did was give this guy street creds," Smith said. "When you go in there and you stamp him out with a 15-to-life sentence, you make an impact in that community." ...
[A defendant's] lawyer, Michael Falconer, said he wouldn't be opposed to the drug-house stings if he thought the ATF could make sure they were aimed only at people who were already ripping off drug dealers. "But on some level," he said, "it's Orwellian that they have to create crime to prevent crime."
You know what the US government won't do for that same individual? Ensure they have a decent education, a basic level of care for their mental and physical health, a safe neighborhood, and a real shot at becoming a contributing member of society even though that would cost less than convicting them of thoughtcrime and throwing them in prison for fifteen years. Instead we pay for some kitted out machine gun-toting pigs to play cowboy rather than policing the streets like officers. Not incidentally, they're too chickenshit to get out of their cars in a lot of those neighborhoods. Yet they still collect their paycheck and their pension, live way out in the suburbs to avoid the desperation they help create with their cowardice, and pat themselves on the back for being heroes.
Now imagine you're an immigrant, or an Iraqi, Yemeni, Afghani, or Syrian. You're worth even less than a citizen. You're trash. You're not even a speedbump on the way to some policy goal rooted in geopolitical theories that have been dead to the rest of the world since the 80s. The kind of policy that sends a million troops and five trillion dollars to a sanctioned, isolated nation, and ends up destabilizing the entire region, massively aiding Iran, and stoking tensions between Shia and Sunni, all while avoiding a single hint of punishment for Saudi Arabia or Pakistan where all of the funding and most of the terrorists for 9/11 came from. Oh, and as a plus: where al Qaeda was unheard of before, they now have another weak state to operate from. Brilliant.
That's why the rest of the world despises the American government. It's not our freedom. It's our complete lack of principle, abject hypocrisy, and massive state violence that they hate. And with our apathetic political landscape, they're beginning to tire of Americans individually for being lazy, ignorant, wasteful, and greedy. We just sit here and take it; a nation of lolling toddlers waiting on the next innovation in fast food and reruns of Pawn Stars while our wealth is squandered in military adventurism that has killed millions of innocent people in only five decades.
PRISM is just icing on the rotting carcass that once wa
Dear Anonymous Mk II,
"Who is dicking whom."
Sincerely,
Ms. Bluebell, your sixth grade English Teacher
The NSA will probably next be cornering the market on high GPU count graphics cards.
What makes you think they don't have the private keys already, or can't get them?
At this point it's probably not unreasonable at all to assume that the NSA either has their foot in the door somehow, or simply National Security Letter's the CA into giving them any keys they want. Technically, all they'd need is the CA's keys, as that's all that protects *your* private key when it's in transit to you, since they're already snooping for everything else.
Really, the current CA system is a dream for the NSA - encryption that is controlled completely by a small group. It's now making a lot of sense why they went after Zimmerman for PGP. The peer-to-peer trust network and person-to-person encryption must've scared the shit out of them.
While we're on the subject of reasonable assumptions - it seems reasonable to assume that the NSA has worked to insert weaknesses and vulnerabilities in most open-source encryption software. Whether they've been successful or not is what we need to know. Remember the fuss a few years ago with IPSEC, OpenBSD, and the FBI?
Please help metamoderate.