General Category > Blog
Terrorism, web sites, games and privacy (anonymity)
ratty redemption [RIP]:
interesting. i wish i could say i was shocked to learn the manufacturers are involved but i'm not at all surprised.
kat:
This is big. It's been going on for a while and has been known, but the actual depth of this is staggering and something we should all be concerned about (but not necessarily paranoid).
--- Quote from: Guardian ---Th[e] methods [used] include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with "brute force", and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.
--- End quote ---
This affects any service secured by SSL or other types of encryption, mail, bank access, medical records access, shopping carts (from KatsBits store to Amazon.com and iTunes.com).
So what can be done? Not sure yet this might be a place to start (usual liability disclaimer for anything downloaded blah blah, so-on and so-forth).
Further reading
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23981291
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/05/nsa-snowden-encryption-cracked/2772721/
kat:
NSA tracks Google ads to find Tor users CNet.
Here's the problem. The way around this 'loophole' is for sites to not use any form of third party tracked advert over which they have no control, i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo adverts. However, this typically means taking a hit on passive income, which on some site can be quite a significant loss on their revenue streams. In such circumstances how does the site maintain it's income level without switching to subscription models or asking users to cough up cash to keep a site alive?
So on one hand we decry the use of all this spying and the ease with which it seems to be occurring, but on the other do very little as a whole to support sites so they can keep going in way that might means employing approaches that would mitigate it. Catch 22?.
Further Reading
"NSA and GCHQ target Tor network that protects anonymity of web users" The Guardian
"How does Tor protect against an attacker just running thousands of nodes?" Stack Exchange (this isn't a problem restricted to Tor but any network using publicly available access nodes (points of entry/exit), although one can be accessing a node or collection of nodes relatively anonymously it doesn't mean data transmission isn't being tracked by the entity running said nodes)
ratty redemption [RIP]:
good point kat, and interesting article.
kat:
"We don't spy, we just collect data points" [CBS]. If that's a good enough reason for General Alexander of the NSA, then it's good enough for Microsoft to explain their data-collection policy for XBox One as well [Develop].
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