MoJo: There is No Such Thing As NSA-Proof Email - Just ask ultra-secure email providers.

[99th_Monkey]

There is No Such Thing As NSA-Proof Email - Just ask ultra-secure email providers.
August 17, 2013 * Mother Jones via Alternet * By Mariah Blake, Gavin Aronsen, Dana Liebelson

Since last June, when Edward Snowden tore the veil off the National Security Agency's vast data dragnet, Americans have been flocking to ultrasecure email services in the hopes of keeping the government out of their private business. Use of the most popular email encryption software, PGP, tripled between June and July, while revenue for the data-encryption company Silent Circle has shot up 400 percent.

But even these services may not be able to protect your email from government prying. That fact came into stark relief last Thursday, when Lavabit, the secure email service used by Snowden, abruptly shut down. Lavabit's 32-year-old founder, Ladar Levison, issued a statement saying he pulled the plug because he didn't want to be "complicit in crimes against the American people." He has since given up using email entirely, and he urges others to consider doing the same. "I would strongly recommend against entrusting your privacy to a company with physical ties to the United States," he told Mother Jones. "I honestly don't think it's possible to provide a secure service in this country."

Levison, who is reportedly under federal gag order, declined to elaborate (though he opined, based on his experience, that we're a "whisper's breath away" from becoming a society where all electronic communications are recorded and scrutinized by the government). But according to other industry insiders and cybersecurity experts, there's good reason to be wary of transmitting sensitive information via email—even if your provider claims to have iron-clad safeguards.

Tech giants, such as the Microsoft subsidiary Hotmail, regularly hand over data to the government. In fact, in the last eight months of 2012 (the most recent period for which data is available), Hotmail, Google, Facebook, and Twitter provided law enforcement authorities with information on more than 64,000 users. And that doesn't include responses to secret national security letters ordered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, or FISA.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/there-no-such-thing-nsa-proof-email

[last1standing]

1. It can actually be worse to use a "secure" email service...

because the government is more likely to be interested in it.

Some of the oldest tactics to avoid surveillance are still the best. If you want privacy, it's better to lose yourself in the crowd than to try to hide in a cubby hole.

[99th_Monkey]

3. Interesting point

wouldn't have thought of that, but you're probably right that
the guv-mint would be looking at "guaranteed secure" websites
first.

[leveymg]

9. Along with encrypted messages and documents.

Anyone wanna bet that most commercially available encrytion software hasn't been compromised?

[Cryptoad]

12. according what you mean by

compromised,

Any OS can capture , save and reproduce any encryption key used on it.
The question should be "have the OS developers been compromised?"

My money is on "YES"

[MADem]

22. To be a "meta data point" in a haystack of "meta data points."

Walk around looking paranoid, and people will think you are....

[dipsydoodle]

2. Not sending one probably fucks them though.

Carrier pidgeons are cool.

[99th_Monkey]

4. I hear smoke signals are enjoying a new popularity as well. eom

[dipsydoodle]

6. I hadn't thought of those

[Cryptoad]

13. Mouth to Ear ,,,,, best way

if you must involve someone besides yourself.

[hootinholler]

10. They are indeed

There's even a proposed standard.

[leveymg]

19. OMG - You're serious. And, it works. ;-)

[hootinholler]

21. An April fool's joke carried into the absurd

Of course it works. Actually there is nothing in the IP specification that deals with the physical transmission of the packets, which is why it works over Avian Carrier, or bovine carrier, or ....

Back in the day one of my mantras was "There's a lot of bandwidth in a FedEx pouch." For very large amounts of data back then FedEx beat the intertubes hands down.

[Historic NY]

5. People seem to forget the internet was a government funded,

defense initiated system. It wasn't until the late 80's that they allowed private cultivation of the internet. Email's biggest users in the 70's was the military, in fact it was encouraged.

http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/email.html

[99th_Monkey]

7. I remember

when I learned that (many years ago) I had this image of this huge room
in the basement of the Pentagonwith computers the size of houses.

[leveymg]

8. NSA has a list of 112,000 terror suspects. In addition there were 64,000 LE admin subpoenas issued

for email held by Hotmail, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Recently, we learned that about 20 million people per month are subjected to NSA profiling and get into the Agency's database because their number is called two hops out from targets. Then there are those who are entangled in the nets cast out by FISA warrants.

That's an awful lot of investigating of people in a system where Obama claimed there is "no data in there."

[Cryptoad]

14. That sounds like

GOP Math..... it just doesn't add up

[JoeyT]

15. Sure it does.

I hate cell phones and only use them when forced to and mine has 30 numbers in it. Assuming each of those have the same amount of numbers (All of them actually have far more) that's 900 people on the first hop, 27000 on the second.

That would mean they'd only need to think 75 people were of interest before they hit the 2 million mark. Two and a half people a day.

And those are absolute lowball numbers. I know people with better than two hundred numbers in their phone. At that rate it would take one person of interest every four days to hit the 2 million mark.

It would also depend on what they're calling a "hop". If a suspected terrorist called, for the sake of example, HP tech support, is everyone that called HP tech support now considered 2 hops from the terrorist? Given how much they're willing to stretch the laws, it wouldn't really surprise me.

FWIW at the rate of 30 numbers per cell phone, it would take pretty close to 10% of the number of terror suspects leveymg gave to spy on every man, woman, and child in the US. Twice that many suspects would be enough to spy on every man, woman, and child on Earth.

[Cryptoad]

20. Thats what i said ,,,,it dont add up...

as you explained gracefully with your post!

Thanks ,,,,,,,

"FWIW at the rate of 30 numbers per cell phone, it would take pretty close to 10% of the number of terror suspects leveymg gave to spy on every man, woman, and child in the US. Twice that many suspects would be enough to spy on every man, woman, and child on Earth."

[chimpymustgo]

11. K&R. No one's safe.

[LiberalFighter]

16. Snail mail might be more secure

More difficult to collect and do a fast electronic search.

[leveymg]

17. When the IC wants to send sensitive (but not classified) documents, they use the U.S. Mail :-)

which is considered relatively secure. The practice is to double-seal the contents in two envelopes to make it more difficult to scan the contents from the outside.

It's a felony to open a sealed letter in the mail without a real, court-issued warrant.

[LiberalFighter]

18. It might be a good idea for the Post Office workers to do an ad pushing it.

[underthematrix]

23. People's reaction to the NSA drip drip story exposes

the ignorance of most Americans about the origins of technology in the US and most other industrialized countries. The starting point is most often a military application that eventually moves into the commercial sphere. It makes sense that all these applications would have a surveillance capability. Set yourself free by reading instead of reacting to these so-called revelations. I have absolutely no sympathy for snowden and his crowd. They deserve whatever they get.

[blkmusclmachine]

24. .

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