Proxy internet?

Does the government have the ability to be the destination of the web site you are seeking in all of your meanderings?

An intranet that is somewhat a duplicate, so as to be unnoticed to the end user, of the internet. How about just the top 100 searches in any one category?

 

GREAT question

I would say yes and not just .GOV etc.

DNS poisoning springs to mind for a start !

So how to combat/detect such things in real time ?

 

What is an intranet? (I be noob)

 

Lets start a sticky called paranoia 101, 102, 103

 

There is a practical application for doing this, so no need for associating an inflammatory comment of category.

If there were a large scale all out cyber war the government has proposed to disable or turn off the internet. As bad as that sounds it is not in the governments best interest, with respect to commerce, to just stop the web in America.

Instead of a firewall that would block communication they could produce duplicates seamlessly on an intranet not available outside America or whatever zones they determine. Those surfing from within the intranet of America would be less likely to notice this alteration. The websites would provide most of the services that the foreign sites provide. Because you are visiting the intranet there is no longer any foreign threat and the general public continues for a time until the government decides on an action.

 

Right. Last month or so, the US took down a bunch of file sharing sites, simply by changing the DNS lookups to a "takedown warning" page. They could just as easily have substituted their own pages -- for example, to log user information, or serve malware.

See, for example, http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/petnames/IntroPetNames.html.

 

@ Searching_ _ _

Re duplicates

I agree they could, maybe they have and/or do ?

Not just for cyber war though, but as a means to control the public and what info they can access etc, and who they can communicate with. Also as a means for spying etc and "potentially" altering what we see, or NOT.

@ hierophant

Re substituted their own pages etc

Agreed and a very good example.

Thanks for the http://www.skyhunter.com link some interesting pages/links on there about secure OS's etc i'd never heard of !

 

I think it could become even more sinister than just spying and giving you malwares.
If they can redirect the user away from pirated material they can redirect you to an intranet.

Let's say I'm a patriot and decide to become more involved in patriotic causes. Instead of seeking an online outlet I choose to find services or meet ups locally of similar minded people via the web. When I begin to look for these services or meet ups online I get redirected to a web duplicate of a real organization and decide to visit a local meeting. Instead of the real members I meet with 3 letter motivators, unknown to me.

The freedom I expected to receive because of the internet is really tightly controlled in the above example.
The government has publically demonstrated their ability to redirect users enmasse.
The example above provides for a level of stealth, Would they set a record for the longest undetected redirections?

The large scale harvesting of data on every citizen is exactly what an entity would need inorder for them to accomplish what I have proposed in this thread and maintain a high degree of stealth to the end user.

You don't have to be paranoid to see that it's possible but you will be called paranoid if you say it's probable.

@ CloneRanger

re: duplicates

I didn't attempt to create multiple threads of one post, I had an issue with the browser and the edit function and .json files surviving Sandboxie.

@hierophant

Thanks for the link, pretty cool.

 

@ Searching_ _ _

Indeed, i agree.

About my Re duplicates. I was referring to what you wrote in Post # 6

Not anything else

 

TLS isn't only about encrypting the connection to prevent snooping but also offers a way to make sure the other end is really who they pretend to be.
The only problem, government can force cert authorities to cooperate...

The best thing we got is the web of trust and key signing parties of PGP and p2p networks based on strong crypto.