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That 'something unhealthy' is called privilege, and most people assume that it will protect them from government atrocities.

Little do they know that privilege is given at the behest of the oppressor, and can be revoked instantaneously.

I suspect that US tech companies who are complicit in dragnet surveillance - and PRISM specifically - are already understanding this.

> I suspect that US tech companies who are complicit in dragnet surveillance - and PRISM specifically - are already understanding this.

Absolutely. Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam.

(And that is doesn't make that much of a difference if they store their data with Google, Apple, or directly with the NSA. If the blueprints of PRISM can't be kept from leaking, then subsets of the actual data will leak as well. Five or ten years from know, you'll have a huge grey market of -- medium to low quality, outdated, etc. -- surveillance data.)

There's no evidence the blueprints of PRISM were leaked, just training slides for analysts. There's also no evidence that actual surveillance data was leaked.

This particular slippery slope argument seems weaker because one would expect the government to place tighter controls on the data or the blueprints.

I was using the term "blueprints" colloquially, meaning "plans" or "details". Quite a few of the leaked slides are exactly the type of material that one would expect the government to have "tighter controls on", compared to petabytes of mostly useless data.

I disagree. Training documents are meant to be shared to a much wider audience than the developers of the system. Data coming from the system is meant to be used in a report.

If no actual surveillance data was leaked, though, that's likely because Snowden is an idealist. It seems that he had access to that data. If the next leaker just wants some cash, things could change. (Or, hell, maybe the previous leaker--maybe spy is a better word here--who didn't get caught because s/he didn't go public, or was purely the victim of an ultra-sophisticated phishing attempt!)

Which is precisely what I was hinting at. The idea that the NSA would be capable of keeping this data absolutely confidential is ludicrous. And that's why in the future (most likely already today) it will be relatively safe to assume that there are other parties, be it individuals or organizations, that have access to some aspect of your private communication.

Bruce Schneier already posted last week on how the NSA 'slipped up' thousands of times every year since 2008 leaking this wholesale vacuumed data all over the place. He advocates for corporations to fight the NSA instead of bending over for them because it's them who will get screwed in the end when their data ends up leaked too

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_nsa_is_com...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1... ..

At this point, you and I are just speculating on which outcome is more likely. I'm arguing there are probably significant data controls. You're arguing that the data was accessible but not leaked because he was an idealist. Until there's evidence pointing either way, this is just speculation.

I would argue that the most direct way to prove the extent of spying would be to actually expose the data that was gathered. Therefore, after weighing the privacy of the unfortunate soul versus demonstrating to the world the power and pervasiveness of this system, he might have an incentive to leak the actual data, if he had access to it.

Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam.

And the year when we understand that we are all lemmings. I remember the 90s when people were afraid of putting their credit cards on ecommerce sites, and now they put their whole lifes and assets online.

My hope would be that at least corporations are not lemmings.

For a non-US company that does anything remotely sensitive or competitive on an international level, it's simply insane to use, say, Google's cloud services.

I don't know to what extent Google depends on foreign corporate clients -- but I'd be surprised if this wasn't something they were very seriously concerned about.

(And the recent revelations about the NSA are really just the icing on the cake. If there is high demand for some confidential data, it's likely that there will be supply.)

The beauty of corporations is that they are still accountable to a much greater degree than than the NSA. Those who run Google have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Up until a few months ago this always meant to many that if there was anything fishy going on at Google that they would quickly resolve the problem by firing the individuals guilty of any transgression and quickly instituting security policies to make sure something like that doesn't happen again. After all, individuals can mount class action suits, as can shareholders and the FTC or other some other regulator can come down on them.

The problem with what we discovered a few months ago is that the government can use fiduciary duty of the officers of these companies against the companies and they can do so in a way that guarantees that the executives won't talk about the abuse. They made demands for access and every corporation in the world knows that when push comes to shove, you don't want to piss off any organization that can unleash the IRS on your bookkeeping. And if someone does push back, its possible that there were additional threats of jail time for obstructing justice or contempt of court. Add to that the ability to gag anyone with an NSL and you have a situation that is wide open to abuse.

Unlike corporations, the people don't really have real recourse for transgressions of the NSA, CIA or LEO in general when it involves secrets that we are not privileged to, especially not any recourse within the capabilities of the common man (unless you are a common man within those institutions and you're willing to give up everything to whistleblow). Most attempts to sue get thrown out on state secrets grounds. All we have left is the ability to vote, but its pretty clear from some of the facts that that is unlikely to make any difference for most voters since the only people who knew what was going on were on the intelligence committees and even then both the ICs in both houses and the FISA court have admitted that they don't have any real oversight.

Facing this reality, I'm not entirely surprised people like pj at groklaw and ll at lavabit are checking out.

"Just as 2013 is the year where "ordinary people" have begun to understand that "the cloud" is a scam."

Disagree. So-called "ordinary people" don't really know or care about this issue. They care that "hey, my phone calendar syncs with my Google calendar!". They care that "hey, I can listen to my music on my computer, my phone AND my tablet". They care that they don't have to worry about backing up some things (Google Docs / Microsoft Office 365). They care that their pictures can be accessed by their friends without having to attach them to email. No average person is running away from the cloud for this reason--they're running towards it because overall, they still feel it makes their lives easier.

This, sadly, is the ultimate truth. We may have already lost this battle for one simple reason: the average person is too apathetic to care what their Government is doing to them.

Its not "By the people For the people" anymore. Its By those in power (who aren't elected, by the way) For those in power.

When hasn't it really been like that?

I agree. I start getting wound up, only to be gently reminded by my wife that just because I am only now discovering it for myself does not mean it hasn't been there all along...

> So-called "ordinary people" don't really know or care about this issue.

In one sense, they're right. For the most part, they really don't have anything to hide except maybe a few naughty pictures taken at a less-than-sober moment.

What people don't get (and I do not claim to be an expert, just a cynic) is the ability for others to take two pieces of information and form a previously-unthought-of conclusion. They aren't mean, nasty or suspicious enough to even think that is a possibility.

I still hew to the idea that this isn't a technical issue. We can come up with all kinds of secure protocols and systems until we're drowning in them but it still won't fix the problem that large parts of our society are just plain broken at some fundamental level.

We passed the laws that allowed this. We hired the nosy bastards that are doing this. Hell, we made the terrorists that required us to pass the laws and hire the nosy bastards. Somewhere along the line, we decided it was more profitable to set countries on fire than it was to work on conflict resolution.

We didn't need a computer to do that.

Fix the philosophical issue because all the tech in the world is just a bandaid.

No, but yesterday a friend of mine asked me how to back up her pictures from her computer. I told her to use a removable drive. My wife said: "Just store them on Facebook". I said: "The US government makes a copy of anything you upload to the internet." My wife was shocked. Our friend said: "I don't want that." (She's from Hungary). We settled on 32 GB flash drives.

Moral of the story: Just like Groklaw, the ordinary people will stop trusting the internet because people in the know (in her case lavabit founder) say not to trust it.

Ordinary people, for the most part, trust the geeks they know to guide them through the computing landscape.

Of course, the people who the NSA and GCHQ are trying to find and track will not be using email or other forms of electronic communication or storage for anything.

It remains to be seen what happens to the general marketplace. I suspect we may see a number of startups specialising in organising face to face meetings...

"The US government makes a copy of anything you upload to the internet"

So accuracy isn't really something you're all that concerned with? It is my understanding (and certainly could be wrong) that the whole PRISM thing was the ability for the government to get their hands on any data they wished, not that they're making copies of everything. I believe metadata is stored, which is an entirely different animal.

I'm just saying that "ordinary people" will follow what us geeks say, even when we're slightly wrong, because our guesses are much better than their guesses.

It's the least untruth.

That's PRISM, one of tens of programs that exist. Look up XKEYSCORE, for an example that does include mirroring "all" internet traffic. Pot and kettle; make sure you read everything, and don't get caught in their "Oh no we shut down that specific program a long time ago!" plausible deniability schemes that neglect to mention the 7 other programs they run that do the same thing.

I think it's unlikely that the NSA is actually storing all photo's uploaded to Facebook long-term, of course.

Wait, you're really gonna call BS on someone who doesn't pin their hopes on the fine line between 'can make a copy' and 'makes a copy?'

You realize the agencies have been using a bizarro definition of surveillance where they can capture everything and it's only surveillance once an agent listens to it? ( http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201... )

Snowden says they can do it. ISP sources confirm the government is trying to do it, but they are forbidden from disclosing the exact nature of what is done. You're really going to believe the people who have been busted lying about it and say anyone who doesn't is not concerned with 'accuracy?'

And what does metadata mean, anyway? If the government stores everybody you've been in a picture with, or who's looked at your pictures, but doesn't store the picture, is that really supposed to make us feel better?

At this point, it would make more sense to store data with the NSA. They have that entire, taxpayer-funded Utah Data Center full of storage. Why not just open it up for people to backup their files cheaply?

The slogan could be "It all ends up here anyway."

Absolutely, I bet someone in the govt is thinking about giving each citizen say 10GB of free space that is secure from: hackers, identity theft, foreign espionage etc.

All the ones that won't use this offer can then be even more meticulously monitored.

Dear lord. This is the darkest comment I have read in a really long time.

...and sell it as part of a internet is a right campaign.

Yeah. http://www.payer.de/kommkulturen/kultur0413.wav

10 GB? How about a terabyte. Between the photos, the movies and the music, 10 GB is much too little. Heck, make it 10 TB, then you're talking.

That reminds me of the prostitute quote "Now We're Just Haggling Over the Price" by Winston Churchill.

Just don't pretend it actually applies. You replied to a comment talking about whether such a service would actually be capable of backing up people's data, not in the slightest a discussion of price.

I can image a lot of people evaluating the price of having nothing to hide vs the capacity of 10GB -> 10TB. That is where the comment lead me.

While that is not unreasonable, you cannot get to that point of haggling between 10G/10TB unless the 10GB option can physically be accepted. If people take photos and videos, the 10GB option of uploading everything is logically impossible, and must be discarded.

My guess is that that hard part in PRISM is actually building it. You have to have tons of money and cooperation from big powerful companies and government because it's illegal(unless you're NSA).

The blueprints are probably the easy part.

    I have now gotten for myself an email there,
    p.jones at mykolab.com in case anyone wishes
    to contact me over something really important
    and feels squeamish about writing to an email
    address on a server in the US.

PJ could help people understand the real issues if she explained that all plaintext mail is vulnerable. It's not only about the mail host, it's the network itself that's compromised.

Switching to Kolab is false comfort for people who are "squeamish" about sending mail to "a server in the US".

I'd love to see PJ publish her public key and encourage people to learn how to use it.

> I'd love to see PJ publish her public key and encourage people to learn how to use it.

That helps, but it doesn't mask the data groups like the NSA are really after (who is talking to who, and when).

I am in the process of developing a new messaging system to address exactly that issue ( anonymous communication where it is unclear who is talking to who )

The way in which it will work is having all users of the system constantly send encrypted streams to each other ( mostly gibberish ). When you want to send a real message you simply replace the encrypted gibberish with some real content.

It will implement "onion" style repeated encryption to prevent direct links from being statistically analyzed as well.

Look for it in 6 months or so. Details will be up at circleofdistrust.com in about a month or so.

Anybody building such systems today should have a plan for when (not if) they receive a National Security Letter.

Fuck the NSA.

Dear NSA: I can and will be designing a fully anonymous open source distributed messaging system that is entirely secure even if you tap every line in the world. At the very best, you will be able to accuse people just of running the software. If you don't like this, I'd advise you that your only option is to hire me and/or pay be enough money to become disinterested in finishing the creation of the software.

I take it you're not a US citizen?

Or a citizen of any country that is friends with the US, or someone who is ever planning on passing through the airport of one of those countries.

If you succeed in your endeavor, they probably would want to hire you.

I am a U.S. citizen. I still believe in freedom of speech, as well as my right to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of hapiness".

I am also a Libertarian, which means I don't believe in large government, due to the corruption that follows.

So long as my goals and beliefs are for freedom and privacy, the creation of secure anonymous messaging is of little interest to the NSA. Will they "like" if it is intentionally designed in a way that it could be used by criminals? No... But I should have no fear of that.

Just because guns can kill people doesn't mean you should use them for that. Just because atomic theory can be used to make large bombs doesn't mean nuclear energy is wrong. Just because pressure cookers contain heat well at pressure doesn't mean you should use them for anything besides cooking your food.

Trying to blackmail the NSA ? please let us know how it goes, it could be an interesting story.

> If you don't like this, I'd advise you that your only option is to hire me and/or pay be enough money to become disinterested in finishing the creation of the software.

So, I think you just lost my trust. You're coming at this from the wrong angle, instead of coming from a princpled stance you're approaching this as a value proposition.

Too bad, up to there you had my attention.

Check out the mixmaster anonymous remailers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixmaster_anonymous_remailer

The problem with this is that it is basically this "server x supposedly receives stuff and then sends stuff on without linking identities A and B".

What if I don't trust server X to really be doing that?

What if the government contacted owner of server X and altered the software not to do that?

The system I am designing keeps anonymity without any need to trust the server. Hence the name. Don't trust anyone.

The idea of masking real content with gibberish always seems hacky to me, and in security hacky is not a good idea. While I suspect you might be able to make it work, I think a better solution is to go to more of a bitcoin approach.

Essentially, set up a new block-chain that allows transactions to contain 'large' messages (IE. large enough for long plaintext, but probably not enough to embed videos). Then, when you want to send a message, encrypt it using the intended recipients public key, then publish the cipher-text to the blockchain.

Have you heard of bitmessage? It basically does what you suggest.

Bitmessage is essentially a torrent server where everyone gets a copy of everyone elses emails, so you get your email by downloading all emails.

Unfortunately in such a system, you have to download all emails, or request what you want in order to actual get the email you want.

The system either does not scale, or will leak information in order to remove the requirement of getting everyone elses emails.

Also, the government can collect -all- of the encrypted messages easily, and potentially eventually correlate who an anonymous id is based on their knowledge of who received messages on which day.

Basically, it sucks.

I haven't checked Bitmessage's protocals, but that it is not nessasary to identify the intended recipient. If you publish the ciphertext with no meta-data, then everyone can attempt to decrypt it. Only the intended recipient would succeed, but an ease dropper would not be able to identify who successfully decrypted the message. This raises an obvious scalability question, as you need to attempt to decrypt every message that is used in the network (in addition to simply downloading it which you have to do anyway). There are probably ways to mitigate this overhead without compromising security.

If you read the wikipedia entry is says that the destination id is required. I assume these must be created somehow and communicated to the sender before being able to receive anything.

So long as this is occurring, the way the scheme works, unless you download every message, it could be determined which id belongs to whom. Once you determine that it is easy to track originating packets to that destination since it is not an onion system.

Additionally, without side channel communication ( in person or posting that address somewhere publicly ) it is impossible to anonymously communicate to an intended recipient.

I don' t have a list of urls right now, but papers on the lack of anonymity of bitcoin and bitmessage are not hard to find. It is a very difficult problem against NSA level attackers. Masking when content is being exchanged by exchanging something on a fixed schedule seems like one of the few things that can be done to at least mask something.

Edit: OTOH, this this does just mean they attack one or both nodes if they care when content is being sent.

I still can't speak to bitmessage. but anonymity is not part of bitcoin's design goals.

It's definitely a good first step. Iterative development!

Seconded. I hope you read HN PJ!

Thank you, PJ, for the invaluable and remarkable work you have done for the FOSS community and, as a consequence, wider society in general over the years. On a personal note, thank you also for helping me with some research for a paper I was writing a couple of years back even though you were a busy person.

Don't be very optimistic about Russia. Things are even worse here, but local and worldwide ignorance presenting the problem as non-existent.

As for whistleblowers — it's all about politics and “your enemy is my friend” between States and Russan rustlers.

2013 is fast shaping up to be a year of notoriety

Bruce Willis said it best. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD94dVu8lqQ

I really hope that people look not only into the current list of abuses, but also into the whole nature of government that _inevitably_ led to this point.

Band-aids and spin doctors are not going to make these problems go away. At best they'll just make the problems go further underground so that we don't hear about them as often in the news.

Do you think the NSA is looking to cut back its authority or is it looking to prevent public awareness of this kind of thing in the future?

Since like a beginning of the Future History kind of rule. Then good thing is, it will last for only a couple of the decades before people wake up and restore the freedom. At least it was like that in the book.