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Why the NSA Piggybacks On Consumer Tracking
An anonymous reader writes "'Snooping on the Internet is tricky. The network is diffuse, global, and packed with potential targets. There's no central system for identifying or locating individuals, so it's hard to keep track of who is online and what they're up to. What's a spy agency to do?' In a Slate op-ed, Ed Felten explains how consumer tracking makes the NSA's job much easier. Felten was the first-ever Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, serving as the agency's lead technical expert on privacy issues. Now back in academia, he argues that the NSA gets a 'free ride on the private sector,' from distinguishing users, to pinpointing geolocation, to slurping up network traffic."
NSA's PR strikes back. They could be far less obvious and a little bit more effective if they are not putting their PR here so often.
Requestpolicy, Noscript & Lightbeam are all Mozilla Firefox addons may well give you a hint of commercial snooping but what other measures can you take to keep your browsing habits and data safe from the eyes of others?
Opinions on each of these, slashdotters?
AdBlock (or cat block) with EasyPrivacy
DoNotTrack
The no-tracking bit on web browsers
Denying 3rd party cookies
Denying traffic on ports other than 80/2083
Not using Google services (I mean c'mon people)
Allegedly private search engines like ixquick
Not using or logging out of social media
Proxy servers (but how do you know if a proxy is run by the NSA?)
I meant port 443, not 2083.
(Guess I use cPanel a lot.)
But to say it "gets a 'free ride on the private sector'" ignores the fact that the reverse is (possibly) even more the case. We paid for the Internet and did so with the expectation that we would receive and keep certain rights. Instead, Verizon, Comcast and their ilk do everything in their power to clamp down on Internet access and usage either directly (through their greed) or by worming their way back and forth into and out of lobbyist and politically appointed government positions. Add to that the MPAA and RIAA with their (what in a sane world would be illegal) demands that people spend more time in prison for "piracy" than for murder and you see everyone but the public getting a "free ride" for something we already bought.
Bark less. Wag more.
I never understand claims like that. Do you know how incredibly cheap storage is? Now what if you had government-sized money. How hard would it be to store all data forever?
Even if it is exabytes. Who cares? They don't sound like the kind of people to let stuff go just to save a few bucks. And to them, it really is just a few bucks.
Even ISP routers are being used to get in our private networks, our VPN and even our Tor connections. In NSA/GCHQ sources and methods uncovered there are some suggestions to improve things a bit.
I'm always amazed at how the Firefox crew manages to fuck up their browser's UI more and more with each release, includes unnecessary crap like a slow-as-fuck PDF reader, remove the easy-to-access preferences option for disabling JavaScript, and wastes time with asm.js, while simultaneously not including by default useful functionality like that offered by those addons.
The functionality offered by those addons you listed, and others like HTTPS Everywhere and Ghostery, should be included by default. Make users forcibly disable them, if they aren't wanted. But no sensible person would do that, and those who don't know better just wouldn't be able to.
I don't expect Google to do the right thing with Chrome, given their other interests. But damn it all, I do expect better from the Mozilla team (even if their past performance indicates that I probably shouldn't).
it doesnt matter who made it or how much information it gathers. if it provides more information, they are going to use it. it's just like how microsoft copies google search results via Internet Explorer search bar to put into Bing. is it an asshole move, yeah. are they still going to do it even though they have been caught, yeah.
why is this even a question?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
A recent foia request by propublica for emails between NSA employees and employees of the National Geographic Channel over a time period that the TV station had aired a friendly documentary on the NSA resulted in the following response from the NSA (the supercomputing powerhouse) "There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately.... [the system is] a little antiquated and archaic." A former employee of the department of labor statistics said that the department's entire data set fits on a single hard drive. Note that in the 90’s the IRS was still using vacuum tube technology. The National Security Agency in the last couple of years just started building modern data centers in Utah. There is abundant evidence provided by the Thomas Drake prosecution and the 9-11 commission report that information management is a problem in the intelligence community. Does google have better information management technology than the NSA? If corporations do have better data on the U.S. economy and population than the U.S. government doesn't it make sense to be governed by these corporations, ie government sachs? Is it not true that he who has the information has the power? And of course doesn't that create a clear “moral hazard”and “regulatory capture” situation as the corporations are regulated by the gov? Regulatory capture is basically when the cops and judges are owned, the book "13 bankers" goes over the issue for wall street. Isn’t corporate control of government part of what occupy wall street activists protested?
Murdering in America is tricky. The streets are packed with concerned citizens, some of which are armed, and there's local police to avoid. There's no central system for murdering or stowing dead individuals, so it's hard to keep track of who been murdered and where their dead body is. What's a murder to do?
There, that puts it into perspective. I wonder how many goddamned NSA stories slashdot is going to pump into today's atmosphere.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Two words: plausible deniability
C|N>K
should make a record of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbYWwaIhHFM
no defense for bad manners http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLO3NmGJuHg counting us down from every direction
Because they can, next question!
When we allowed the commercialization of the internet - and by WE, I mean the hundreds of millions who got here after the Eternal September who tolerated the internet's descent into advertising and data-mining and behavior harvesting, rather than the intolerance with with that had always been met before - the course was set. It was clear what would happen.
Nobody was bothered. Now we get to eat the dish we have carefully prepared. Enjoy!
What could be "Tricky" about forcing security and encryption standards to include back doors? It is a bit disheartening that they cheated, I thought these guys were the best and the brightest when it came to hacking, I never included social engineering to actually part of that.
... forming a great partnership. I for one do not doublt one minute that either money, or services, or data (meta or otherwise [there is no 'metadata-as-opposed-to-real' data) has gone from NSA to Google. Truth will out.
After reading GitHubs problems with C Free Speech, the DOS made me do it. :-)
Hosts do more w/ less (1 file) @ a faster level (ring 0) vs redundant browser addons (slowing up slower ring 3 browsers) via filtering 4 the IP stack (coded in C, loads w/ OS, & 1st net resolver queried w\ 45++ yrs.of optimization):
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APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ 32/64-bit:
http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5851:apk-hosts-file-engine-64bit-version&catid=26:64bit-security-software&Itemid=74
(Details of hosts' benefits enumerated in link)
Summary:
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A. ) Hosts do more than AdBlock ("souled-out" 2 Google/Crippled by default) + Ghostery (Advertiser owned) - "Fox guards henhouse", or Request Policy -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4127345&cid=44701775
B. ) Hosts add reliability vs. downed or redirected DNS + secure vs. known malicious domains too -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3985079&cid=44310431 w/ less added "moving parts" complexity + room 4 breakdown,
C. ) Hosts files yield more speed (blocks ads & hardcodes fav sites - faster than remote DNS), security (vs. malicious domains serving mal-content + block spam/phish), reliability (vs. downed or Kaminsky redirect vulnerable DNS, 99% = unpatched vs. it & worst @ ISP level + weak vs FastFlux + DynDNS botnets), & anonymity (vs. dns request logs + DNSBL's).
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Addons are more complex + slowup browsers in message passing (use a few concurrently - you'll see) - Addons slowdown SLOWER usermode browsers layering on MORE: I work w/ what you have in kernelmode, via hosts ( A tightly integrated PART of the IP stack itself )
APK
P.S.=> * "A fool makes things bigger + more complex: It takes a touch of genius & a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." - Einstein
** "Less is more" = GOOD engineering!
*** "The premise is, quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work FOR the body, rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen "I AM LEGEND"
...apk
They can't prove me wrong - if anything they do the opposite...
* You FAIL (to the downmodder) - & you KNOW it!
APK
P.S.=> Since "the best you got" = "hit & run" unjustifiable downmods (instead of disproving my points on custom hosts files value in added speed, security, reliability, & even anonymity for end-users of them).
... apk