from Hacker News

NSA targets the privacy-conscious

by freejack on 7/3/14, 2:07 PM with 176 comments

  • by pessimizer on 7/3/14, 5:12 PM

    Of course this happens, and it's an obvious technique. I'm sure that not having a facebook account adds to your score, using AdBlock adds to your score, mentioning the NSA online adds to your score, refusing cookies adds to your score, using Linux adds to your score, etc.

    That's how a police state works. (XKeyScore += 5)

    My mother was involved in civil rights, so she has a file. It's fine that I have a file too. Hopefully I'll be gone before they start going door to door.

    edit: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extrem...

  • by jobu on 7/3/14, 5:01 PM

    Because anyone trying to keep anything private or secure must be hiding something bad... That's just wonderful.

    After 10 years of pervasive surveillance and not being able to catch a single terrorist I can't believe the NSA is trying to rationalize it as being a good thing. It's too bad the bill to defund the NSA didn't pass: http://defundthensa.com/

  • by caster_cp on 7/3/14, 2:54 PM

    The only way out of this, as I see it, is making privacy the default. But this require some cooperation and motivation from the big guys at silicon valley.

    Imagine if Chrome, Firefox, Safari, all of them had, just like the incognito mode, the private mode. Of course, as anonymity also depends on the behavior of the user online, other actions are needed to really ensure security and privacy. But making it the default will educate more people about the importance of privacy and, more importantly, make the point that privacy isn't only for criminals, terrorists and wrong-doers, but that "normal", law abiding citizens also should have the right to be private. And that is paramount for a democracy to work.

  • by jqm on 7/3/14, 5:28 PM

    "It also records details about visits to a popular internet journal for Linux operating system users called "the Linux Journal - the Original Magazine of the Linux Community", and calls it an "extremist forum"."

    WTF? I guess I am on a list. Who knew being an extremist was so easy?

  • by schoen on 7/3/14, 5:51 PM

    I think an even more significant thing in the XKeyScore code (in terms of the idea that "NSA targets the privacy-conscious") is the existence of a "documents/comsec/" hierarchy of fingerprints. I may have written some of the documentation that's targeted elsewhere within that hierarchy.

  • by blauwbilgorgel on 7/3/14, 5:21 PM

    I'd like to focus on:

    Merely searching the web for the privacy-enhancing software tools outlined in the XKeyscore rules causes the NSA to mark and track the IP address of the person doing the search.

    Again the media makes it sound like there exists a dragnet on (Google) searches. But this time one of the authors is J. Appelbaum.

    So which is it? Terrorist Scores based on search engine searches sounds fantastically insane to me. But unencrypted it is possible to intercept. So perhaps it is something in between: All accessible searches are monitored, and search engines do not cooperate with this directly, unless they have to legally comply with the request?

  • by afarrell on 7/3/14, 3:53 PM

    When the NSA collects evidence on someone and uses that evidence to prosecute a criminal case, they can and should file a motion to suppress that evidence.

    The NSA data is collected under search issued by a FISA court. So, during a suppression hearing, defense counsel can challenge the validity of the warrant. If their challenge is denied, they can appeal. If their appeal fails, they can petition the Supreme Court. In all these courts, the proceedings are public record and the standard for a warrant can be debated by lawyers and the public alike. We have an open process for checking the work of the humans issuing FISA court warrants; Use it.

    Even if the warrant was valid, the NSA might have overstepped its bounds. This can also be challenged when the NSA defends the admissibility of its criminal evidence in a suppression hearing. An independent judiciary can decide if the executive branch has acted outside its bounds. No, an investigator isn't punished for the overbroad evidence collection, but they are embarrassed by having a criminal get off due to their sloppiness. We have an open process for checking the work of human investigators in this country; Use it.

    It isn't as if the government just takes that evidence and unilaterally decides to blow people up. We have due process in this country; Use it.

    /s

  • by noobhacker on 7/4/14, 2:09 PM

    I feel quite ambiguous about these discriminating techniques. For example, it is okay for us to give females / older people lower insurance rate because that's what the statistics says. Likewise, it's likely that people who search for privacy-enhancing software are more likely to engage in "subversive" activity. So it's hard for me to determine which kind of discrimination is justified and which not.

  • by Istof on 7/3/14, 6:43 PM

    and the top key-word on their watch list is de-fund

  • by Create on 7/4/14, 12:23 PM

    We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.

    This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

    http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/27/-sp-privac...

  • by toddnessa on 7/4/14, 1:23 AM

    What I gleaned most from the article(s) is that it's becoming increasingly important for all of us in the tech community to take a stand ourselves along with TOR to promote online anonymity in our companies (& possibly even think about supporting the TOR Project itself in some way).

  • by antocv on 7/4/14, 8:12 AM

    Did you seriously think news.ycombinator.com doesnt increase your score and suspectibility of having your computing devices hacked into? And puts you on a very interesting NSA/CIA/Letter-Combo/For-Your-Safety list?

    Look at Ukraine. War just pops up. I wonder which list they will go by first.

  • by zby on 7/4/14, 9:21 AM

    That is why you should join the Pirate Party! We are a targeted group - we must organize.

  • by dang on 7/3/14, 4:53 PM

    Changed the url from http://boingboing.net/2014/07/03/if-you-read-boing-boing-the..., which points to this.

    There were two versions of this story on the front page. This thread has the fuller discussion, the other the original source. In such cases we usually merge them by reassigning the url and burying the other thread.

  • by jewhaseloff on 7/3/14, 4:36 PM

    Raw milk distributors.

  • by terranstyler on 7/3/14, 3:21 PM

    Warning:

    The first sentence goes "If you read Boing Boing, the NSA considers you a target for deep surveillance".

    So, if you find this interesting, maybe you shouldn't read it.