Written By:
lprent - Date published:
9:01 pm, October 13th, 2013 - 30 comments
Categories: accountability, activism, humour, International, john key, Spying, telecommunications, us politics, you couldn't make this shit up -
Tags: GCSB, herald on sunday, nsa
It isn’t that hard to get around the prurient arsehole peekers that populate the NSA and the kiwi puppets – John Key being a prime example.
Hell – even the NZ Herald gets it these days. See this article that they have published anonymously…
From Silicon Valley to the South Pacific, counterattacks to revelations of widespread National Security Agency surveillance are taking shape, from a surge of new encrypted email programs to technology that sprinkles the internet with red flag terms to confuse would-be snoops.
Policy makers, privacy advocates and political leaders around the world have been outraged at the near weekly disclosures from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that expose sweeping US government surveillance programs.
“Until this summer, people didn’t know anything about the NSA,” said Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University co-director Amy Zegart. “Their own secrecy has come back to bite them.”
Activists are fighting back with high-tech civil disobedience, entrepreneurs want to cash in on privacy concerns, internet users want to keep snoops out of their computers and lawmakers want to establish stricter parameters.
The most effective way to make life harder for the paranoid nutters at the GCSB, NSA, and the other pantie-sniffer perverts is to encrypt everything. Preferably in very large quantities and with a diverse range of tools.
Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Parker Higgins in San Francisco has a more direct strategy: by using encrypted email and browsers, he creates more smoke screens for the NSA. “Encryption loses its’ value as an indicator of possible malfeasance if everyone is using it,” he said.
And there are now plenty of encryption programs, many new, and of varying quality.
Encryption capabilities in the net are pretty widely available and most of the people who actually have something to hide use them extensively – especially competent terrorists. Which of course is why the pantie sniffers of the GCSB and NSA are seeking new audiences to perv on.
To a large extent it doesn’t matter what you do to flood the pervert’s computers with. Just make sure that there is a lot of it and that each bit of information you send out is designed to make life as difficult for them as is easy.
So while you’re idling around, go and click on that site with questionable political afflictions. In fact click on a lot of them from all over the spectrum. If your local nutters give you a link to why the chemtrails are all the fault of the NSA, then follow it – besides they provide some excellent comedy if you care to read it (Whaleoil’s obsessive penile displacement on weapons comes to mind). What you are doing is mudding up your digital profile.
And of course hunt around for program to do some of this obsessive crawling for you. The NSA has frigging no idea if it is you or your machine doing stuff. Unless of course it is voice on the ever rarer landline, VOIP line, or the ubiquitous cellphones. Personally I avoid voice – too hard to encrypt at both ends.
Preferably encrypt a lot of stuff – like most of your emails. Sure some encryption protocols have exploitable holes in their technique. But that just means you should use more of it. The perverts will tend to avoid decrypting hard stuff, and will instead try to break the stuff that is easier. Send a mix of highly encrypted stuff, and stuff they can crack to give them something to do. Now that the pantie sniffers no longer have the cold war to obsess about, terrorism is disappearing as basic security is beefed up, and they are forced to the breadline of spying on their own citizens on behalf of Hollywood.
This week, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University released a smartphone app called SafeSlinger they say encrypts text messages so they cannot be read by cell carriers, internet providers, employers “or anyone else.”
CryptoParties are springing up around the world as well. They are small gatherings where hosts teach attendees, who bring their digital devices, how to download and use encrypted email and secure internet browsers.
“Honestly, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you are doing, if the NSA wants to find information, they will,” said organizer Joshua Smith. “But we don’t have to make it easy for them.”
Apparently plenty agree, as encryption providers have seen a surge in interest.
Basically John Key and his merry band of pantie sniffers can get stuffed. If they have a fetish for wallowing in crap, then lets give them a lot of it and hope that they smother themselves in it. It will be amusing.
We really need a few more pathetic paranoid dickheads in the police and other security agencies exposing their group stupidity in believing that a few drunk and doped hoons talking about catapulting buses onto planes is a credible threat…. Or that having orderly protests is intimidation to businesses, and creates a clear and present danger to our democracy… Or indeed their obvious view that *anything* to do with having a working and functional democracy is a danger to their way of making a living. After all it’d help improve the standard of the “news’.
😈
Update: I see that Tom Scott has the essential stupidity of the governments recent spying initiatives, including the ones that appear to be in the TPPA for corporate spying.
has it
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
“And there are now plenty of encryption programs, many new, and of varying quality.”
Where do I start? I’d like to encrypt stuff I send over the internet … y’know, just to keep the jobs growing for NSA.
Well a good basic one would be to simply pay for a VPN provider like http://bolehvpn.net/ and come out on to the net from somewhere like Singapore, Berne, or Luxemberg
I should have pointed out that since the pantie sniffers tend to be concentrated in the US so avoid their excessively compliant companies…
Keith Ng has been running a useful series on security tools:
http://publicaddress.net/onpoint/ich-bin-ein-cyberpunk/
http://publicaddress.net/onpoint/btw-the-nz-police-can-use-prism-against-you/
http://publicaddress.net/onpoint/the-gift-that-keeps-on-making-me-barf/
http://publicaddress.net/onpoint/the-big-guns-truecrypt-and-tails/
See also:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/encrypted-e-mail-how-much-annoyance-will-you-tolerate-to-keep-the-nsa-away/
Thanks r0b. I think I should encrypt email etc. But started reading the bottom linked article. At this time of night, it starts getting too technical for a non geek.
I just started thinking, I’ll take the click on all kinds of diversionary whacky sites option.
It’s not so much the technical side as the human interaction side – you’ve got to get your recipients and senders to do the same thing. All of them, or it’s just too hard.
So it’s just too hard.
Yep, that’s always been the problem I’ve had in using encrypted email.
Well, yes, billb. That’s where I started thinking it was getting too complicated.
I was alerted by the headline which grasped my attention, or my attention grasped it.
Well, you could do a little bit by changing ts from http to https
Exactly. I should put this site back to being able to operate on https as a small contribution.
Make it the default?
May as well. Maybe be tonight. I had a technical problem last time and was short of time to deal to it.
sssshhhh…can you hear something…
Scaremail!!.
http://bengrosser.com/projects/scaremail/
Ha, welcome to every junk mail filter in the known universe.
Yup, I think I’ll be sticking with my web accounts.
They’re also handy when you have a system crash and no back up. lol
A nice little summary of several encryption programs and their pros and cons.
http://dottech.org/105656/windows-best-free-encryption-software-review/
I came here hoping to find websites of pantie sniffers. I am disappointed.
On a serious note, it depends what you are doing, whether it matters or not.
* VPNs log all your shit at the other end, so they are hardly reliable. Unless you vpn, over vpn, over vpn, but then you have the tor network. A slow piece of shit.
* PGP has back doors
* browse using SSL if at all possible (google/facebook supports it)
* Email encryption will be a headache, as encryption was an afterthought
* Securemail sites are being shutdown all the time, so I wouldn’t bet on them. Hushmail has backdoors.
You have more to be worried about from malware and rootkits than you do govt spying. Why you might ask? Because you probably don’t even know you have a rootkit installed (AV won’t remove it) and it’s sending your every keystroke overseas.
Encryption is rather pointless when you are being key-logged isn’t it? My point is, if you don’t know how to use any of this stuff, you probably have other issues to sort out first, mainly your PC security.
What I suggest is:
1) Grabbing a copy of combofix and running this on your computer (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/) Run this and let it go nuts. This will remove any malware/rootkits. It is the best tool for removing this. If you know how to run it in safe mode, all the better.
2) Update your machine to the latest versions of service packs/security updates. Most data theft is done through malware/security holes. So make sure that’s sorted.
3) Browse sites using SSL if at all possible
4) Use pass phrases (google it)
5) Make sure your browser is up-to-date
To be honest, that will do more than encryption will for the average joe.
Security program wise, I recommend you have installed:
* Malware Bytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/ (Run a scan once a week)
* Microsoft Security Essentials http://windows.microsoft.com/en-NZ/windows/security-essentials-download
Just don’t be stupid on the internet.
I prefer Avast for Anti Virus, and it has a nifty software updater. http://www.avast.com
I also use Ccleaner to clean up all the crap http://www.piriform.com
And I have Peerblock running too
Apart from that I have a firewall in the modem, But Windows is do dumb that it cant detect it and moans about no firewall luckily win 7 has the sensible option to turn off the moans.
Oh and Backup to an external drive! This is most important!
Windows uses WMI hooks to detect programs using/replacing the firewall… so if it’s complaining, it’s probably not windows that’s the problem, but the software you’ve installed that replaces it.
Thanks infused
Just run the first thing you suggested
encrypting VOIP is actually easy, after all if you have Sky all your TV is encrypted, far more bandwidth – large secret primes are what stop you from watching the rugby without paying – that little card you plug into your sky box has a public key on it, the private one is in a vault back at the sky office, they get it out once a month when you pay your bill.
finding other people who use the same crypto for VOIP is a bit harder though and if your VOIP goes through some central clearing house you’re pretty much screwed – on the other hand if you go peer to peer it’s much harder for the GCSB/NSA and friends to track you down, we know they drop prisms in key fibre points which is great if your tapping client server traffic to google or facebook, not so great if the packets take some other more direct route.
Ah you say peer-to-peer, VOIP – I know I’ll use Skype – it’s pretty much accepted that microsoft have given the NSA a skype back door, remove it from your machine now – it’s probably about time to roll our own
Well it is hard to crypto voip actually. It depends on your supplier. Once your call hits the supplier, it’s just moved to another supplier. Maybe it’s encrypted, maybe it’s not. You’d have no idea.
I’d say it’s not, because it’s huge overhead and rather complex since there are so many different systems out there.
Infused
nothing to hide so nothing to fear assumes competent ethical people are accessing our info.
according to the defence dept bradley manning had a low iq and was mentally unstable yet they let him continue to access private info.
spying systems are only as good or trustworthy as the humans working the system.
Thats where one of the problems with all of this lies.
Infused
thanks for that link. I just cant get my head around the other stuff but your post was helpful
Well if you have any questions, I’m more than happy to answer them.
Combofix is a very brute force method of removing malware/rootkits. It does a very good job.
Lprent .. with respect, are you sure it’s a Tom Scott cartoon ? Not his drawing style at all, and it has Murdoch on right hand side ??? Great humour, fascinating post thx .. but ??
As a non- geek person interested in democracy and NZ’s sovereignty …..thanks for the whole post Lprent.!!!…(good references which i will show a geeky friend…but which i am too much of a tech retard to use)
Lets hope the next Labour /Green govt does a complete overhaul of the illegitimate spying on NZers and exposes the spies and their political and vested interest enablers and collaborator networks….so we can shun them ( also names those NZers who have illegitimately been spied upon in the past)
…… the spies are the ones who should be outed for the public good of all NZers and the sovereignty and economic integrity of OUR country!
….ironically those who really are up to no good will not be using the internet or cellphones….. or they are part of this present oligarchy cabal which is spying on those ordinary NZers who disagree with and would threaten their illegitimate interests.
It is a pity there is not spyware out there which exposes the spies and brings the exposure back to the spyers( “panty sniffers”).
Lets hope Peter Dunne is out the next election ….also John Key!
Nice line. go and click on that site with questionable political afflictions….
We really need a few more pathetic paranoid dickheads in the police and other security agencies exposing their group stupidity in believing that a few drunk and doped hoons talking about catapulting buses onto planes is a credible threat…. Or that having orderly protests is intimidation to businesses, and creates a clear and present danger to our democracy…
And funny that. I was just looking at photos of the 1981 Springbok anti-apartheid protests and the beautifully dressed police with long thick coats, helmets with clear riot shields, and long batons with handles at a right angle, enabling a choice of action as hammer, poker, or hitter. And boots to kick with. And fairly big blokes, milk fed and powerful. No wonder they rushed off to the Ureweras and Dotcom’s mansion, haven’t had such a testosterone-tingling time since 1981.
And pictures of women with blood trickling down their faces. Some of it caused by the milk fed, beefy audience of male jerks who wouldn’t know a principle from a pimple. I have seen them being interviewed in a rehash on tv of the time – they still hold a grudge that they didn’t get to see the game.
Now that is something to undermine democracy and society – very sad that we can get this elaborate tangle of propaganda and excuses for 21st century skullduggery.