We Have No Privacy, We Are Always Being Watched.

@parados,

Quote:

Your ISP and NSA know you are sending your traffic to a TOR node. DUH..... How stupid are you compared to them?

You can not be that stupid the ISP and NSA do not know what is in that traffic or where that traffic will end up.

The traffic disappear into the tor network not to emerged until being bounce around the world at random by three nodes that are likely to be in three nations and with no means for the emerging traffic to be trace back to it source.

I could be going to able2know or sending a message by tor mail to someone I am plotting the overthrow of the government with either way neither my ISP or NSA will ever know and that is the point of the network.

Quote:

Spending time on the internet is no indication of a crime so the government won't look at what I am sending in clear text by your argument.

Using tor is not a crime and it end stop anyone from knowing anything about your traffic other then you are sending traffic by way of the tor network.

Quote:

Don't worry. The government can't break encryption and they won't monitor your traffic. (At least they won't tell you unless someone leaks it.)

I know you think that the government have supernatural powers however some of the best mathematicians in the world had look at the encryption and declared that there is no likely/known means of breaking it short of a few billions years of using high speed computers on the project.

That might not set your mind at rest but it does mine and the people who have far better understanding then either one of us have concerning the subject.

Footnote the government itself use the tor network to protected it traffic and it was the US naval who first developed the software.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Quote:

You can not be that stupid the ISP and NSA do not know what is in that traffic or where that traffic will end up.

They only know it is going to the TOR network which is a reason to flag it and record it. It's rather easy to just save the packet and every other packet on a drive some where. It costs practically nothing for them to do so.

Quote:

I know you think that the government have supernatural powers however some of the best mathematicians in the world had look at the encryption and declared that there is no likely/known means of breaking it short of a few billions years of using high speed computers on the project.

That's if they were required to test EVERY possible combination before they find the right one. That makes some very faulty assumptions. A brute force attack only needs to attack until such time that the password is discovered. If one knows the length of the password or the approximate length you have reduced down the number of possible combinations dramatically. You have bragged quite openly about the type and length of your passwords which reduces the starting point for a brute force attack.

No one trying to really break an AES-256 encryption would bother with high speed CPUs these days when GPUs are thousands time faster and are easily used in parallel.

Also -
1. Under the Patriot Act, the FISA court can issue a secret warrant for the authorities to enter your house, computer, etc and not tell you about it. They could easily find your passwords with a simple keylogger attached to your computer or a video camera pointed at your keyboard.
You assume that the NSA would actually be required to present real evidence to a FISA court and the FISA court would have to be discerning enough to require such real evidence.

1 Reply

@parados,

Quote:

They only know it is going to the TOR network which is a reason to flag it and record it. It's rather easy to just save the packet and every other packet on a drive some where. It costs practically nothing for them to do so.

Be my guess in saving it as it can not be broken by any known means in a time shorter then the likely remaining lifetime of the universe.

Quote:

Also -
1. Under the Patriot Act, the FISA court can issue a secret warrant for the authorities to enter your house, computer, etc and not tell you about it. They could easily find your passwords with a simple keylogger attached to your computer or a video camera pointed at your keyboard.

My computers are all protected by layers of security of all kinds and not even the US government have the resources to go into a million or so homes of people using tor to try to plant keyloggers in the US alone.

Next as far as hardware keyloggers are concern knowing the weight of your computer down to the 1/1oo of an oz will detected any added hardware no matter how skillfully added and to placed a software keylogger you need to break the whole encryption disks of the hard drives first.and there are means to even deal with an evil maid attacked of adding software in your boot sector that is not encrypted.

In any case to sum up there are indeed possible attacks such as video cameras aim at your keyboard however they can not be used against more then a few very very very high value targets not the millions on millions of people that are using tor.

Unless they think that you are about to bring in a nuke to the US or some such using tor will end stop any attempts to trace your internet traffic as the cost of all the attacks you are talking about would break even the US government bank account if widely apply.

1 Reply

Cartoon of the day at the New Yorker magazine:

http://www.newyorker.com/images/2013/06/17/p465/130617_daily-cartoon-monday_p465.jpg

1 Reply

There is a very good debate on this issue in the NY Times.

Quote:

Secrecy and Freedom

Last week’s disclosures about government surveillance of communications show how 12 years after 9/11, efforts to fight terrorism continue to raise questions about morality, legality and effectiveness. Is government surveillance a threat to our democracy?

Debaters:

Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, is the co-author of "Terror in the Balance" and "The Executive Unbound."

Jameel Jaffer is a fellow at the Open Society Foundations and deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/06/09/is-the-nsa-surveillance-threat-real-or-imagined?hp

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@ossobuco,

Did you know that for some reason everything pawn at a pawn shop anywhere in the US get reported to homeland security under federal law.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Quote:

Next as far as hardware keyloggers are concern knowing the weight of your computer down to the 1/1oo of an oz will detected any added hardware no matter how skillfully added

Of course. You WEIGH your computer every day. Laughing

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@BillRM,

No, really?

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@parados,

Quote:

Of course. You WEIGH your computer every day

No I in fact weight it once in case when traveling back into the country someday it would ever be seized during a random search request for my not allowing custom to search through the hard drive.

To be able to know if when returning it they had or have not placed some hardware device in it as they had a limit to how long they can keep it in order to try to search it without probable cause so sooner or later it would likely be return.

A matter of principles alone that I will never allowed customs to look into my computer if ask to do so.

Footnote one gentleman who had some connection to wikileak have two of his computers seized when going through US custom and felt that when they was return to him that he could not trust them for fear that something was added to them and so was force to throw then away. Weighting a computer to 1/100 of an oz take that concern away.

In any case, you take the precaution that seems to fit your risk model and if I was doing something that was illegal to the point I was under the impression that my home might be secretly broken into for devices to be added to my computer or hidden video cameras weighting the computer every day would be the least of my added precautions.

More then likely my netbook would never be out of my sight and would go with me where ever I did.

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@BillRM,

I don't take any of those sorts of precautions Bill. They can read the lot for all I care.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

What in hell do you have to hide, Bill?

I mean, if I discovered that someone had placed some sort of spy bug on my laptop, I would be very annoyed, of course, because I value my privacy and feel that no one has a right to do that. But that's all -- annoyed. I have no overwhelming reason to want to conceal anything that's on my hard drive nor to be overly concerned about anyone "listening" in on what I text. I've had various levels of govrnment clearances from time to time, but I sure wouldn't have any confidential info on my personal hardware. What's to hide?

You keep state secrets on your machine or what?

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@spendius,

Quote:

don't take any of those sorts of precautions Bill. They can read the lot for all I care.

As far as the government is concern it is the principal of the matter for me and all those security precautions means that if I would someday loss my computer in traveling for example no one who found it would have a chance of getting information from it to be able to tap into my finances.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Quote:

What in hell do you have to hide, Bill? You keep state secrets on your machine or what?

For one thing beyond the principal of the matter my computers contain accounts information and passwords and such that control almost a million dollars of both my funds and other family members funds for example.

Is that enough of a reason to have top level security on my computers in your opinion?

1 Reply

I firmly believe that most people's views on this topic are dependent upon their perception of the threat of terrorism.

If we should experience an attack similar to or worse than 9/11 or the frequency and distribution of Boston Marathon type attacks expands, just watch how we all will demand that the government take away liberties.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Imagine all the terrorists throwing the towel in. Or being rendered ineffective.

Would these facilities go away?

Not a chance imo.

In fact there's a tacit admittance that the terrorists have won. That after all the dough that has been spent on defeating a few coolies they are no nearer.

Nah--it's us they are after. Quite rightly too. Hoi polloi have always been a problem for the authorities.

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

I'm still considering what I think.

Re the internet, I feel like I've been warned for a decade and so I am not surprised, though I am somewhat about the extent (as I read, and I don't read everything, by far).

Some of this seems similar to the dna accumulation thing (at arrests for serious crimes, though I gather only with cause), data that, at present abilities, takes time and work to accrue and energy away from specific interest and by itself clogs the pores of the homeland (sic) security. On the other hand, I'm not instantly against the idea for the long run.
Or am I?

Sort of the IT version of the military industrial complex fears, which were pretty right on.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

What in hell do you have to hide, Bill?

I mean, if I discovered that someone had placed some sort of spy bug on my laptop, I would be very annoyed, of course, because I value my privacy and feel that no one has a right to do that. But that's all -- annoyed. I have no overwhelming reason to want to conceal anything that's on my hard drive nor to be overly concerned about anyone "listening" in on what I text. I've had various levels of govrnment clearances from time to time, but I sure wouldn't have any confidential info on my personal hardware. What's to hide?

You keep state secrets on your machine or what?

Well, maybe it's the fact that the country was founded on the idea that the people are the boss and the government if forbidden to do many things, including examine us at will (4th amendment). You know, we're kind of funny about letting the government deprive us of important rights that the country was founded on. If some other people want to live like ants on an ant hill, I guess that's their business.

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@ossobuco,

I should explain that - the idea I'm not immediately against for the long run is dna, not the internet stuff, which I'm so far against.

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@BillRM,

Quote:

No I in fact weight it once in case when traveling back into the country someday it would ever be seized during a random search request for my not allowing custom to search through the hard drive.

So you would be unaware if a device was inserted into your computer until you were traveled. So you are very susceptible to what you just claimed you weren't.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

For one thing beyond the principal of the matter my computers contain accounts information and passwords and such that control almost a million dollars of both my funds and other family members funds for example.

Is that enough of a reason to have top level security on my computers in your opinion?

Why on earth do you keep passwords on your computer if you are so paranoid? I guess that makes me safer than you are because I make a point of not keeping any passwords on my computer for my bank, etc.

By the way, using TOR does nothing to protect sensitive passwords that go to secure sites.

0 Replies

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