New subject: BAD IDEA Re: Opt out of PRISM

12 Jun 2013

I'm mystified how any of this helps.

Even in a fully encrypted world, the destination ip and where it came from
is not encrypted. Like with phone numbers, if you make a peer-to-peer
connection and they can correlate it with any other information
(geotagging, etc) they don't need to decrypt or even know what the two
people are talking about.

I strongly suspect that the decoding of content, while it may be of use, is
not sufficiently advanced. There's no agreed protocol for semantic network
evaluation. "The crow flies at midnight" still is (and will likely be,
forever) a completely secure form of communication because it requires a
realm of shared meaning. It means just as much to a NLP computer as "darmok
and jelad at tanagra"

But connections are already neatly encoded. Lumeta has nailed this, and I
saw early prototypes of their Internet networking mapping before this was
spun off from Lucent in the mid 1990's, and you can see the results of this
work  at http://www.cheswick.com/ches/map/

Think about it. Do you think, just from types of cars (no license plates,
no text or color info, just (sedan, hatchback, pickup, SUV) moving between
addresses, you couldn't figure out who worked for a particular corporation?
While big business is still stumbling around in the dark, the creation of
accurate, time-dependent maps of all electronic networks tells more about
people than any other piece of information, because it is not subject to
translation error during the process of encoding and analyzing semantic
content. And the precious content which is protected by these tools doesn't
even need to be decoded. They can do that later, after the arrest, to
retconn a story about how they knew.

Putting together lists like this of "what you can do" just makes n00bs that
much easier to track by their metadata. If Ford and GM put tracking chips
in all their cars and you reacted by driving around only Yugos, DeLoreans,
or a DIY car, doesn't that make your metadata easier to track?

So, for my vote, following recommendations like this is a terrible idea.

Matt.

On Wednesday, June 12, 2013, Andrew wrote:

...
  this is an awesome list of great software. I also
think it's important
 that people understand that privacy, anonymity, and securing require more
 than just switching to Ubuntu, using Firefox, etc... It requires real
 changes in behavior, as well as technical solutions. For example, you can
 use encrypted email all you want, but if the person you are communicating
 with doesn't also have good security practices they can be compromised and
 all your communications can be made available to anyone with access to
 their computer.

 Also keep in mind that these technical solutions will never be enough. For
 example,  keyloggers are easy to trick someone in to installing or can even
 be placed in to "legitimate" via automatic updates without the user
 knowing. At any moment Apple, Microsoft, and Google could switch on a
 network of spying computers unprecedented in American history, (are you
 sure you and everyone you are communicating with are using 0% software from
 these companies?).

 The point is that this is not a technical problem. And, so far it's still
 very difficult for the NSA to gain human intelligence, so if you want to
 share secrets, the best way to do it is over drinks at your friends house
 surrounded by people you trust.

 --Andrew

 On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 10:46 AM, Eddan Katz <eddan@clear.net<javascript:_e({},
'cvml', &#39;eddan(a)clear.net&#39;);&gt;
  wrote: 
  "Opt out of PRISM, the NSA’s global data
surveillance program. Stop
 reporting your online activities to the American government with these free
 alternatives to proprietary software."

 http://prism-break.org/

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 Andrew Lowe
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