Article

2018-12-04 Science & Technology

[Defense One] Worried about the NSA monitoring you? If you take certain steps to mask your identity online, such as using the encryption service TOR, or even investigating an alternative to the buggy Windows operating system, you’re all but asking for "deep" monitoring by the NSA.

TOR is an encryption network developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in the 1990s. The military’s hope was to enable government workers to search the web without exposing their locations and identities. The system today is widely available, runs on open source code and is popular among privacy advocates as a more secure alternative to open Internet surfing, particularly in countries with repressive regimes. It works by encrypting the user’s address and routing the traffic through servers that are located around the world (so-called "onion routing.") How does the NSA access it? Through a computer system called XKeyscore, one of the various agency surveillance tools that NSA leaker Edward Snowden disclosed last summer.

According to a recent report from the German media outlet Tagesschau, a group of TOR affiliates working with Tagesschau looked into the source code for XKeyscore. They found that nine servers running TOR, including one at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, were under constant NSA surveillance. The code also revealed some of the behaviors that users could undertake to immediately be tagged or "fingerprinted" for so-called deep packet inspection, an investigation into the content of data packages you send across the Internet, such as emails, web searches and browsing history.

If you are located outside of the U.S., Canada, the U.K. or one of the so-called Five Eyes countries partnering with the NSA in its surveillance efforts, then visiting the TOR website triggers an automatic fingerprinting. In other words, simply investigating privacy-enhancing methods from outside of the United States is an act worthy of scrutiny and surveillance according to rules that make XKeyscore run. Another infraction: hating Windows.

If you visit the forum page for the popular Linux Journal, dedicated to the open-source operating system Linux, you could be fingerprinted regardless of where you live because the XKeystore source code designates the Linux Journal as an "extremist forum." Searching for the Tails, operating system, another Windows alternative popular among human rights watchers, will also land you on the deep-packet inspectee list.

Science fiction author Cory Doctorow, an editor at the popular technology blog Boing Boing, was quick to take exception to the findings, questioning not only the propriety of the tactics revealed in the researchers’ report but also their utility.

Posted by Besoeker 2018-12-04 02:01|| || Front Page|| [9 views ] Top

#1 Then why can't they help shutdown the SPAM-bots?

Posted by magpie 2018-12-04 05:04|| 2018-12-04 05:04|| Front Page Top

#2 The NSA uses Linux so why treat the Linux Journal like high explosives?

Posted by 3dc 2018-12-04 06:33|| 2018-12-04 06:33|| Front Page Top

#3 >If You Do This, the NSA Will Spy on You
Breathing?

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2018-12-04 06:48|| 2018-12-04 06:48|| Front Page Top

#4 Everyone should use TOR and overwhelm the system.

Posted by jvalentour 2018-12-04 07:20|| 2018-12-04 07:20|| Front Page Top

#5 The old editor unix 'emacs' used to have an actual command, I believe it was called 'spook' or 'meta-X spook', which would insert the 7 words which would guarantee that your file would be read by the NSA.
emacs had all sorts of easter-eggs like that.

Posted by CrazyFool 2018-12-04 08:01|| 2018-12-04 08:01|| Front Page Top

#6 Missed - posting on the Burg?

Hi there boys!

Posted by Procopius2k 2018-12-04 08:15|| 2018-12-04 08:15|| Front Page Top

#7 Missed - posting on the Burg?
Hi there boys!

Rips up in-basket DA Form-31.

Posted by Besoeker 2018-12-04 08:38|| 2018-12-04 08:38|| Front Page Top

#8 Fuck you, NSA.

There, now I'm on their list.

Posted by DarthVader 2018-12-04 09:06|| 2018-12-04 09:06|| Front Page Top

#9 Back in the day, I had a Libertarian friend who liked to start a phone call with "Revolution, Revolution, Revolution, ♫Hello, NSA!♫" before going on to talk about a tabletop RPG game...

Posted by magpie 2018-12-04 11:18|| 2018-12-04 11:18|| Front Page Top

#10 My sympathies for the poor darlings watching over me — they must be bored to tears.

Posted by trailing wife 2018-12-04 11:35|| 2018-12-04 11:35|| Front Page Top

#11 My servers used to get vulnerability probes from TOR...until I blocked all traffic from TOR.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2018-12-04 12:23|| 2018-12-04 12:23|| Front Page Top

#12 My sympathies for the poor darlings watching over me — they must be bored to tears.

But on a positive note, if you ever go all Sudden Jihad Syndrome, they can pull out their Known Wolf folder and go "Yep, there she is".

I do wonder what sort of watch lists you could end up on from browsing various jihadi and strange news sites.

Posted by SteveS 2018-12-04 13:16|| 2018-12-04 13:16|| Front Page Top

#13 Not just TOR but any VPN. Somewhere, Thomas Jefferson is shaking his head.

Posted by Glesh B. Hayes2295 2018-12-04 17:19|| 2018-12-04 17:19|| Front Page Top

#14 Old BS.

Posted by KBK 2018-12-04 18:54|| 2018-12-04 18:54|| Front Page Top

#15 if you ever go all Sudden Jihad Syndrome

If I ever do, scan me for a second brain tumour — the first one hasn’t been enough to cause that kind of problem. ;-)

Posted by trailing wife 2018-12-04 20:25|| 2018-12-04 20:25|| Front Page Top

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