Can You Hide Anything from the NSA?

[Guest]

If you try to protect your privacy online, or you worry about people spying on your data, then you've made yourself a suspect. In light of this revelation, is it even worth trying to protect your privacy online?

Can You Hide Anything from the NSA? : Read more

 

[sicofante]

Why do you put so much emphasis on the issue of American citizens? I know this is an American website, but it makes it seem like it's OK for you to spy on anyone else in the world.

Also, the meme that "encryption will put more attention on you" is only true while only a few encrypt their communications. The industry should make efforts to make encryption default. There's no excuse for the behavior of the USA and the rest of the world needs to wake up and show you Americans a huge encrypted finger.

 

[Jill Scharr]

Hi, sicofante, thanks for your comment! You're right that this article emphasizes the issue of NSA spying on American citizens. The reason for that is there are laws in place saying that NSA should not spy on "U.S. persons." The laws around non-U.S. persons are a lot more wide-open, unfortunately, because international espionage is loosely policed by the U.N. so the U.S. has a lot more leeway to act. I did not mean to imply in the article that it's "OK" for the U.S. to spy on any one else in the world. If it came off that way, then I apologize.

Your second point about how encryption is only attention-grabbing while a few are doing it is also absolutely true! The problem is training people to know what encryption is, how it works and how to implement it for their personal data. Something like PGP, for example, only works if both the sender and receiver of a message are using PGP to encrypt/decrypt messages. I don't think that's the corporate sector's job, if that's what you mean by "industry." It has to come from education and personal volition. We've done articles on how to encrypt data before and it's certainly going to be a continuing area of focus in the future.

 

[baracubra]

I love how even Jill managed to double post!

 

[KelvinTy]

You probably can't hide you stuffs from the NSA if they are determined to get you... With all those server racks they put in ISPs... Man in the middle attack is probably unavoidable. Many traditional methods work but the metadata is really difficult to be covered since the protocol didn't take in account of that level of encryption...
IEEE, copying Cisco proprietary protocols and make it own. I guess it's up to Cisco to develop some new protocol. XD

 

[Jill Scharr]

@baracubra I know, I double-posted, I'm so ashamed. I hit 'refresh' and it just happened

 

[pocketdrummer]

Wake up sicofante, do you honestly think the US government ISN'T spying on Americans simply because they said so? How naive.

Here's a big fleshy middle finger from Americans to you.

Instead of being a douche, why not work WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE in pushing for encryption in nearly everything. We don't want our government snooping on us OR YOU! However, it doesn't seem that our elected politicians care what the people want.

Also, I'm assuming you're in the UK, possibly Australia... your government is in on this too, so stop the self-righteous bullshit.

 

[Bud Mulqueeney]

All this technical stuff and NOT one mention of prison time for those who consistently VIOLATE our Bill of Rights of PRIVACY (under the guise of "national security!!! " A new euphemism of the elitists in the in, around the beltway and soon in Utah too, of "screw you, Mr/Mrs. America, we are the modern-day Gestapo and can do anything and everything we want !!!