Recently the government has been infringing on our rights and privacy online globally. This doesnt just effect the United States, the NSA in the United States is and has been logging more than 50% of all internet communications. And most likely All smtp/pop/imap and webmail is probably logged and filtered for certain keywords.
I take Privacy & The freedoms we had and are now loosing seriously.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been fighting for our rights for years and needs more support. The EFF has fought the FBI for the past few years and got important information shedding light on DCS-3000 aka Red Hook. This system logs phone communications. And this is just the FBI.. The NSA has the biggest & best computer systems in the world with the most storage and could actively sort/log everything that it needs to.
NSA Affiliated IP ranges: These ip ranges are mostly Name Servers and also full isp's including qwest.net, comcast, cox, sprint, att.. to name a few.. These Ip ranges have been confirmed by thousands of sources that work in ISP's as well as whistleblowers.
I strongly suggest encrypting all your data communications online via the tor network that is sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation at tor.eff.org.
Surveillance & its Effects on society
Surveillance is a process of keeping people (such as customers and employees, as well as members of the public) under close supervision. What are the effects of surveillance? Here are two answers from an interesting blog (now called Into The Machine) whose main purpose seems to be to critique the authoritarian policies of the UK Home Secretary (past and present).
- All CCTV monitoring does is lock down the public face of our nation, allowing us in our public capacity to simply sweep aside all the factors that lead to the crime and attitude we're experiencing every day. (The Two Faces of CCTV)
- Surveillance will always produce nothing but underground revelry and a false sense of security. (The Ubiquity of Unnatural surveillance)
Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon was originally a prison so designed that the warder could watch all the prisoners at the same time. By extension, this term is used to describe any technical or institutional arrangement to watch/ monitor large numbers of people. It forms part of Foucault's analysis of discipline, and provides a useful metaphor for various modern technologies
- CCTV
- workforce monitoring
- database systems such as customer relationship management (CRM)
Besides the impact on the people being watched, the pantopticon often has an adverse effect on the watcher. The panopticon gives the illusion of transparency and completeness – so the watcher comes to believe three fallacies
- that everything visible is undistorted truth
- that everything visible is important
- that everything important is visible
Why we need Tor
Using Tor protects you against a common form of Internet surveillance known as "traffic analysis." Traffic analysis can be used to infer who is talking to whom over a public network. Knowing the source and destination of your Internet traffic allows others to track your behavior and interests. This can impact your checkbook if, for example, an e-commerce site uses price discrimination based on your country or institution of origin. It can even threaten your job and physical safety by revealing who and where you are. For example, if you're travelling abroad and you connect to your employer's computers to check or send mail, you can inadvertently reveal your national origin and professional affiliation to anyone observing the network, even if the connection is encrypted.
How does traffic analysis work? Internet data packets have two parts: a data payload and a header used for routing. The data payload is whatever is being sent, whether that's an email message, a web page, or an audio file. Even if you encrypt the data payload of your communications, traffic analysis still reveals a great deal about what you're doing and, possibly, what you're saying. That's because it focuses on the header, which discloses source, destination, size, timing, and so on.
A basic problem for the privacy minded is that the recipient of your communications can see that you sent it by looking at headers. So can authorized intermediaries like Internet service providers, and sometimes unauthorized intermediaries as well. A very simple form of traffic analysis might involve sitting somewhere between sender and recipient on the network, looking at headers.
But there are also more powerful kinds of traffic analysis. Some attackers spy on multiple parts of the Internet and use sophisticated statistical techniques to track the communications patterns of many different organizations and individuals. Encryption does not help against these attackers, since it only hides the content of Internet traffic, not the headers.
Resources:
EFF ACTION CENTER - Support EFF by writing your Congress & State Representatives online for free via fax/email
EFF DEEPLINKS
Cryptome.org - Important Information & news on Privacy & Security Threats
howto on setting up Tor and Vidalia here
Man,
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post. I hope so many people come here to see this that your server melts down. This is a HUGE issue and 90% of people don't care/can't be bothered. Sadly, the book 1984 should be retitled 2004 as Orwell was about 20 years off.
As Franklin says, "Those that would give up liberty in the pursuit of security shall have neither."
Just because I may not be doing anything illegal and therefore have nothing to hide does not excuse the fact that this is a reasonable course of action for a government to take. What if the government decides that they don't like Ubuntu users and now I become a target? What if the government decides that they don't like folks that drive Honda's and now they become targets of inquiry or "persons of interest"?
The right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath and affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized.
You can't make up something as beautiful as that. The great thing to me is that the Founding Fathers were smart enough to be specific in their language while being broad enough in their scope to allow this to apply to electronic communication as well as hard-copy communication. I consider my e-mail no different from a written letter. And so should the courts. I consider my phone conversations (whether cellular or land-line based) to be an extension of my person and so should the courts.
Secret recordings, secret dragnets of data gathering, or secret efforts to collect that data represents unreasonable search and seizure. The federal government recognized this in the 70's and set up the FISA courts to allow a check against the destruction of the Constitution that the Nixon administration wrought. What we are seeing is a return to that Nixonian era. A quick look at many of those in the current administration and their background as key members of that earlier time should come as no surprise by those that are concerned with these types of Constitutional issues.
John