NSA has "a perfect right" to monitor your email!

[Quartus]

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040406.gtterror06/BNStory/Technology/

Not only is Big Brother watching, but he "has a perfect right" to do so!

"Foreign traffic that comes through the U.S. is subject to U.S. laws, and the NSA has a perfect right to monitor all Internet traffic," said Mr. Farber, who has also been a technical adviser to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

I'm thinking Jefferson might have taken a different view.

:barf:

 

[larvatus]

Investigators could program their supercomputers to flag packets of information that met certain criteria, such as a certain IP number, a certain traffic pattern or a certain kind of content. As soon as a packet is flagged, investigators would apply for warrants to assemble the packets and read the messages' contents.

This is no different from the rules applied to surveillance in any other medium. Why get yourself all riled up, as if Internet traffic were privileged over all other forms of communication?

 

[mvpel]

Time to start encrypting all our e-mail, and converting all our sites to Secure HTTP.

 

[Quartus]

This is no different from the rules applied to surveillance in any other medium. Why get yourself all riled up, as if Internet traffic were privileged over all other forms of communication?

Oh, just a little thing called the 4th Amendment. Nothing to worry about. We really don't need it.







I smell boiled frog.

 

[Tamara]

Quartus,

As soon as a packet is flagged, investigators would apply for warrants to assemble the packets and read the messages' contents.

I think the key words are in bold.

Personally, I've always believed that one should never say anything over the 'net or over the phone that one would not say to a police officer.

 

[dadavis]

I never expected any privacy on the internet anyway. I only figured it as another way for hackers to expand their identity theft and perverts to view porn. I think that if some overworked cop wants to read what I'm writing to Grandma, he's probably got more problems than I do and needs a vacation or something. I don't think the internet falls under a reasonable expectation of privacy, although I admit I don't want everything I do on the internet to be public knowledge, i.e. the privacy of my home = using the internet privately. But I think we've all been victim of the adds that mysteriously get sent to our emails from some unknown company we never subscribed to. Is the Gov. doing any thing different than the hackers, other than being held to the standard of reasonable suspicion and having to apply for a warrant.

 

[tyme]

Headers also pick up the numeric or Internet Protocol (IP) address of all the computers a packet touches as it travels from its originating machine all the way to its destination. Every computerized device connected to the Internet has its own unique IP number.

Wrong. It only does this if the sender specifically sets the "record route" option on the ip header. That's not practical or necessary, and it's almost never set for normal internet traffic.

Furthermore, lots of devices share IP addresses. Then there's tunnelling. There's no assurance that ip traffic came from where it says it did, and there's no assurance that the final destination of an ip packet corresponds to the packet's destination address.

Investigators could program their supercomputers to flag packets of information that met certain criteria, such as a certain IP number, a certain traffic pattern or a certain kind of content. As soon as a packet is flagged, investigators would apply for warrants to assemble the packets and read the messages' contents.

Not really. As far as I know it's impractical to get a backbone provider to mirror traffic to a remote ip. The NSA would have to put a fast machine in the traffic path in order to grab traffic, or would have to get an ISP to send copies of all emails to some NSA server. It's not as if the NSA owns all internet infrastructure and can just grab traffic at will.

The article pegs my BS meter. I don't believe most of it; the author appears to be technologically illiterate. If you're worried, use pgp.

 

[Quartus]

A technologically illiterate reporter? Whoda thunk?


But the important thing here is the attitude displayed.

 

[cool hand luke 22:36]

Time to start encrypting all our e-mail, and converting all our sites to Secure HTTP

Which encryption algorithm are you planning to use that the NSA doesn't have back doors built into (DES) or doesn't find trivial to surmount?

 

[tyme]

The NSA can trivially crack rijndael, CAST, twofish, blowfish, RC6, etc.? Where are you getting your information?

In most situations, the algorithm is irrelevant. They'd just break into your house and install a keylogger.