Don’t believe no one (yourself included) George Orwell - "If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself." --- I will leave the jokes by side and i'll tell this just once (phrased in the form of a question) what I really think (too old, too tired to hush about this crap) about mr. Snowden : If someone is (become) a traitor once, how will anyone (any country or department) be sure, that same person will not going to do the same thing again?
Hey, i've read all the topic, and i found many interesting things for myself ), but i wanna share my way of protection ^^. I learned, that one of the best ways to protect ur privacy its using openvpn services, for today i've tried many of them, paid and free, such as expressvpn, foxy, hidemyass and others... And several months i stumbled on http://shadeyou.com/, and i was shocked, it gives the same service as others, but free of charge! I havefree access to VPN with no time limit and no trial period, safety and other features of this service without paying anything. So, if u'd like to test it i want to hear ur opinion^^
The NSA and their abilities are also overestimated by some. They say forget what you do to protect yourself, the NSA knows anything already. Or they talk bad about security measures, because 'they do not work' or the data are sold if needed or handed out. There is a huge imbalance, yes the USA has too much influence on the web. The others missed to get more involved. Now you actually use an US service when accessing the net. That is the major issue to me. The only thing one can do is to beat them at their own game. Means to use what they use or what they have created. The onion routing has been developed by the US Navy. And it is now used by the tor network. The NSA has NOT the possibilities to access it as they want! There are too many end nodes and the URL and route changes rapidly. There are many 'experts' saying they know any 'vulnerability' of 'seemingly' secure networks without to have own real tech knowledge and try to demotivate others to use them. "Forget Tor, the NSA is watching it and have all the data, one is not safe at tor". Onion routing is actually safe and PGP IS safe. In other words it is as safe as safely one deals with it! For instance the latest news about 'dark net', which are found at the web are about seizure of a [drug] selling platform, make clear: The feds had no way to close down the platform by getting into the onion network. They had to let run the platform since 2011. They only could register there as a potential seller / buyer. Only thing the FBI did is to sell drugs by themselves to catch some potential buyers. Such double standards are typical for US authorities. They seized the 'stored' money of all registered users even though the platform sold legal stuff as well. Affected are people around the world. The sloppy behaviour of the seemingly owner then made them possible to close down the road...and the feds struggle with to get his money. It is vanished behind cryptography. What remains is the criminal touch of those who are using secure measures (the US officials included ). Oh well so it means using secure / privacy enhancing measures = realizing own ideas of laws / privacy = criminal intent. http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkon...owner-known-as-dread-pirate-roberts-arrested/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-took-down-the-dread-pirate-roberts/
It's all fine for the experts to say Tor is safe but in practice it isn't have a look here ... Aussie cops: Silk Road TOR anonymity 'not guaranteed' There is no guarantee of anonymity for Australian buyers and sellers of illicit drugs on the TOR-encrypted e-commerce platform Silk Road, according to the Australian Federal Police and Australian Customers and Border Protection. The pair released a joint statement Wednesday pointing to the arrest of one Melbourne man who allegedly imported narcotics via Silk Road. “Criminals are attempting to exploit the international mail system through online networks, but the recent arrest demonstrates that we are one step ahead of them,” said AFP Manager Crime Operations Peter Sykora. Sykora said it was aware Silk Road was operated from an offshore location, but warned Australian users were within the reach of the AFP’s powers. The site can only be accessed via TOR, which masks IP address details that could otherwise be stored by an ISP and associated with a user account. Silk Road trade relies on the virtual currency BitCoin for transactions. Alana Sullivan, acting national of Custom’s cargo and maritime targeting branch, said it monitors Silk Road along with other illicit-drug sites and was aware of the Australian presence on Silk Road as both sellers and buyers. “Persons who buy or sell through online market places, on so-called ‘anonymous’ networks should understand that they are not guaranteed anonymity,” said Sullivan. The statement follows a recent comment by Chris McDonald, an associate professor in computer science at the University of Western Australia and Dartmouth College in the US, that the federal government has “no chance of beating” TOR encryption, The Age reported in in April. Law enforcement may not be able to beat TOR’s encryption. However, it did not prevent US authorities in April arresting eight men accused of operating The Farmer’s Market -- another service that used the TOR anonymiser to facilitate trade. Undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents had infiltrated the organisation after becoming trusted buyers over several years of investigation. There were no Australian arrests, however the indictment pointed to funds funnelled through that operation that were sourced from Australia via Western Union. Source
You should not forget that this article is about to fight a [drug] offering platform that uses onion routing!!! To sell [drugs] itself is a self made problem and hence it is called crime (war on drugs) and the laws are not uniform when comparing different countries. Their opinion is biased and their primary intention is to have success. One measure is to start a scare campaign. They use all measures which they can get even to offer drugs by themselves there to be able to have a little success on newspapers. I presume we are not talking about those who are interested in illegal transactions. People who just use tor to remain anonymous are no target for them. And there is no reported case where the onion / tor encryption technology itself had been 'cracked'. Sure some say some end nodes are owned by govt. But there is no evidence. The platform ran 3 years and had one million accounts. The FBI had been involved since November 2011. If tor would be easy to 'crack' they had closed it down far earlier.
As the article states the agents defeated Tor by becoming a part of the system. Now Tor on its' own is fine and secure, but when you as the end user start accessing services that may be compromised, for example mail or social networking then that's the weak point. It's not easy to get the info, but the FBI can if they want to badly enough. It's like walking around all day with disguises and on the streets you're anonymous, but when at the end of the day you go home to x house on y street owned by z person (an email or facebook account) then you really can't hide anymore. The info is there for the taking unless you plan from the beginning to use fake info for everything you have, which is most likely not the case.
No personal interests per se. Quite the opposite. From general interest POV... In Sweden whistle-blowers are protected by law! Journalists are forbidden to give out their sources etc. But that's a civilised country...
The Swedish National Authority for Signals Intelligence (FRA) checks all Internet communication originating in Sweden, terminating in Sweden and going through Sweden. Civilized?
Browser: PirateBrowser http://piratebrowser.com/ Is still in beta, but a good alternative to Tor. Use multiple operating systems Linux is a breakthrough.
Gathering intelligence via legal means is one thing. I would think there is judicial and parliamentary scrutiny etc. I can't see it being wanton, completely paranoid lunacy, American type, sorry... Answer my previous point: can a journalist give out his/her source in or out of Court, if ordered to do so by an "authority"?
Your point is as noteworthy as an ingrown toenail on an Ebola patient. Why should the "authority" order a journalist to disclose what is already known to the "authority"?
One of the two things Buddha said before his "death" were: 1. Know no authority outside one's self Hence all authorities outside one's self are false and evil ...lol 2. All things are impermanent Hence all false and evil authorities must be temporary in nature
You will find the answer in the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act [Tryckfrihetsförordning (1949:105)] chapter 3 paragraph 3.
Lol, concerning control of internet Sweden is as bad as US and the British (research the history of internet and you come to the conclusion)...hint: "Sardine", "Tempora"...to speak of 'civilised' because they are doing it better in one aspect is....to me not reasonable. (And the high taxes there also...)