NSA has direct access to tech giants' systems for user data, secret files reveal

Normally, the Guardian would report a snippet at least, which makes me suspect a D-notice. Which, in the context of forthcoming legislation, if true, would be extremely bad.

 

Indeed, I would have expected extensive coverage in the Guardian, and at least a mention on the "Beeb", and searching turned up a single "mainstream" example which surprised me http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-Karma-Police-according-leaked-documents.html

 

https://twitter.com/Snowden

He follows just one: NSA

 

Who would've thought we'd see Snowden on Twitter. It's kind of weird, actually.

 

How do we know that it's him?

 

It looks a verified account, that means he should be him. I do not know how twitter verifies accounts, though.

More here:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/ed-snowden-joins-twitter-follows-only-the-nsa/

 

We don't Even if it's a verified account, there's no way of possibly knowing that's actually him. Unless, of course, he makes a video and states that's actually his account.

 

Regarding GCHQ's "Karma Police", apart from the indiscriminate humongous scale of it all, I see in the documents that data mining is a tasty opportunity for them.
A more certain way of unlawfully targeting the innocent and generating mountains of useless dross I cannot imagine.

 

Agreed.
My question though is if the US government is treating retweeting ISIS post as a aiding terrorism will it consider retweeting Snowden posts as aiding Treason?

My other thought is that everybody who follows Snowden has been tagged as potentially hostile to the US.

 

For sure, no?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34444233

 

As I have mentioned before; I don't think it would be worth the effort to attempt to make a smartphone "secure" by my definition of the word. I know there are forums and websites that will say otherwise, but I think its just avoiding a reality check. Sure, you can harden against a punk thief or kiddie script but not against "3 letter agencies". My .02

 

Apparently 1.36 million followers already.

 

I'm not sure if this is the right thread for it, but: http://techrights.org/2015/10/08/back-doors-msft/

 

How is NSA breaking so much crypto?

Reference: The NSA sure breaks a lot of "unbreakable" crypto. This is probably how they do it.

-- Tom

 

Dang, thanks for the heads up!

 

Always good this gets attention, but ideally people would already be aware of this. Note that this info was already available 5 months ago when the WeakDH/Logjam attack became public:

https://weakdh.org/

 

AirVpn uses a 4096 DH key and ALL primes on EVERY Air server are unique. This attack requires lots of time and money, which the Gov seems to be willing to spend. Once they break the prime and users are dumb enough to employ the same one everywhere they actually don't break your one server but millions of them. Does that make sense to use such a common prime? They are not likely to break a 4096 DH key and the return would be so small since the prime is on only one server. OH and what happens when the server prime gets swapped plus perfect forward secrecy keeps changing things anyway. Get the picture?

Website owners being lazy sometimes contributes to this stuff.

 

How to Protect Yourself from NSA Attacks on 1024-bit DH.

-- Tom

 

As I understand it, breaking a prime allows you to decrypt everything it is used for, doesn´t matter at all if forward secrecy is used. This also proves the point that forward secrecy should not be called perfect forward secrecy. Regularly regenerating an unique prime would offer more true forward secrecy with Diffie Hellman.

 

http://arstechnica.com/security/201...illions-of-encrypted-web-and-vpn-connections/

Research to understand the article (credits to CHEF-KOCH)
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/th...-connections?p=1164054&viewfull=1#post1164054

 

Apple CEO Tim Cook blasts encryption backdoors

-- Tom

 

NSA advisory sparks concern of secret advance ushering in cryptoapocalypse.

-- Tom

 

Enjoyed the read - BUT - it created more questions than answers by FAR!!

 

Use snail mail to thwart spies, Assange tells journalists

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/10/use-snail-mail-to-thwart-spies-assange-tells-journalists/