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0 pointsdmix6y ago0 comments

The key difference is that decrypting something would likely need to be targeted and on a case-by-case basis, as it would take specialized work, as opposed to these sorts of attacks (much like tapping all of the pipes which transit data underseas or elsewhere, which still goes on in every country or working directly with the ISPs and mobile operators which happens in most countries) which allows mass dragnet surveillance.

I think most of us would be fine with the NSA doing what they do if it was targeted, like the police getting warrants to break privacy only in important cases for public safety.

The problem will always be mass interception. Not only domestically either, as there is nothing protecting any foreign communications being intercepted in the US (and I'm sure Five eyes+ bypasses these legal roadblocks whenever needed). Which is why the push for encrypt-everything is so important. But as we've seen repeatedly, even when investigating the president and his people, even the allegedly "significant domestic protections" offered by FISA are a joke and basically rubber-stamp.

WhatsApp and iMessage and other non-SMS communication as well as email providers finally adopting proper transit encryption probably has reduced the amount of this sort of unfiltered "intelligence" gathering by 90%+. But I'm sure there's still tons of mobile apps and websites which aren't doing things properly and are filling up their databases.

0 comments

einpoklum6y ago

> I think most of us would be fine with the NSA doing what they do if it was targeted

You think wrong. That fact that there are opposing world states engaging in this nefarious, oppressive, terrible acts and they're not all aligned doesn't legitimize any of these states' activities.

The NSA should essentially be shut down, or cut down to a small agency operating in public with a much more limited mandate. And no secret FISA courts all of that spy-movie crap. That should just stop, period.

anonsivalley6526y ago

NIST and the NSA should be shunned when it comes to setting crypto standards (apart from setting their own FIPS and such for government users) because they've demonstrated their corruption and efforts to work against the public interest. Instead, an international nonprofit that encourages transparency and academic adversarial due-diligence across the whole lifecycle of standards would be a better vehicle for crypto standards, like an Underwriters Laboratory or similar. (NESSIE-ish but even broader.) It's impossible to remove gamification and attempts to infiltrate standards bodies, but it's important to remove both appearances of condoning their subversion and proactively mitigating all actual infiltration should a fellow, contributor or other affiliate be working on behalf of a foreign government. It's not a "all gubberment bad" thing, but particular parts of government who's culture has infected the integrity of the process to deliver modern, reliable cryptography as a net commonwealth good, but they've chosen instead to create more liabilities and doubt that defeat and outweigh the "benefit" they brought to the table for users outside of government.

mirimir6y ago

I love privacy 'n' stuff, for sure.

But relative to the risk of global nuclear war, and the certainty of global climate disruption, I couldn't care less about the NSA and its adversaries.

And hey, maybe all that spying reduces the risk of overt war.

einpoklum6y ago

Why do you believe NSA spying decreases the risk of nuclear war, or helps stave off climate change?

Also, it's not that we "love privacy", it's that we dislike oppression. And believe you me - most people in my part of the world know very well how the US is oppressing them through military and intelligence means. We don't want to live under the US' boot, and the NSA is part of that boot.

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and_Then_What6y ago

Okay, but these big picture perspectives don't materialize in a vacuum. It's not just this binary do-or-die nuclear deterrence that such a mindset acquiesces to.

The rubber meets the road, and real names are drawn from a hat somewhere along the line. After we shoo away that pesky threat of hypersonic implosion triggered plutonium cores raining down upon our heads, the sun rises on a new day, and we have to put on coffee and make breakfast.

And some people ride in limousines from hotels for brunch, and some people ride the bus to a fast food job at the ass crack of dawn.

And you can bet that whomsoever holds the keys to these cryptosystems that serve as nuclear-proof umbrellas keeping our heads dry from the oh-so-inevitable megatons of explosive fire, they'll never drive a garbage truck, they're kids won't have to worry about flunking out of college, and none of them will ever get cold in the winter, unless they want to on their holiday ski trip.

And it's no accident, the way such things work.

So, maybe this whole nuclear war thing? Maybe it's always been a big shakedown.

Maybe, sometimes you buy a gun with the full knowledge that keeping it clean, safe and ready for reliable use is going to book your Sundays solid from now on, and whoops, the cost of gun ownership, it just so happens, is never attending Sunday mass again.

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garmaine6y ago

And who is creating the risk of global nuclear war, if not those very same governments?

maqp6y ago

Most of it is economic and political espionage, not spying on each others' military secrets. That happens too, sure, but none of the other stuff is necessary to protect us from nuclear war.

ChrisCinelli6y ago

Just watch the "Mission Impossible" franchising. They are obviously dramatized stories but I would not be surprised that the world has been very closed to cease to exist as we know it and the only thing that prevented was that they did their job. Only few people know what they have done, no glory, no prizes, no recognition. What kind of people do that? Heros.

Feel free to down vote me.

I can only guess but I would not be surprised if your very life was saved. Or even if we just look at money, you may have lost a significant amount of what you have in a scam that was avoided.

We do not know what we do not know. But there must be more good than bad in what they do.

dmixOP6y ago

There's plenty of memoirs by actual intelligence agents.

The world is a lot more boring than films and far more complicated and difficult to pull off serious operations. The serious operations often merely being inside information about other nation states. Not saving the world from bad guys.

It's mostly just a long series of super paranoid people chasing each other in circles. And in between plenty of useful information being given to leaders, ie before big events to give them an edge or whatnot.

The cold war was the heyday of the outside-the-office spycraft stuff. Today I'm sure it's mostly just countering massive digital campaigns hitting gov agencies, critical infrastructure, and megacorps. Plus the old school agents working within each of those agencies feeding information back to their motherlands.

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jasonwatkinspdx6y ago

The world is far more Mr. Bean than James Bond.

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EthanHeilman6y ago

I only downvoted this comment because the poster wrote:

>"Feel free to down vote me".

ta9999991716y ago

You are the reason the show "24" was rushed through.

maqp6y ago

iMessage is so riddled with problems from using weak RSA key sizes (1280 bits), to using RSA in the first place (thus no forward secrecy), to apple essentially managing the public keys for the user (which allows transparent MITM due to lack of public key fingerprints).

Also, both iMessage and WhatsApp are proprietary, thus it's almost impossible to verify the code you're running is safe. You're right in that E2EE has become more common, but seeing how the intelligence agencies have targeted major vendors like Crypto AG and RSA, we should be extra careful with popular, proprietary systems.

AtlasBarfed6y ago

All it takes is one elected president who could upend the other branches, and the three letters become much more scary.

But thats just a partisan political beliefs, right?

tripzilch6y ago

> I think most of us would be fine with the NSA doing what they do if it was targeted, like the police getting warrants to break privacy only in important cases for public safety.

Except it's not getting a warrant, but simply deciding whether to spend resources. Which is not something that, like a warrant, I would be fine with.

Also there's another difference, technically it'll never really be on a case-by-case basis, because they can store all the encrypted communication (text chats, just store everything, easily). And they can in hindsight decide to decrypt any of that history (depending on ample metadata).

Or maybe they have a tiered system, a first-pass filter that detects a very vague definition of "possibly maybe interesting" (again, metadata) that would never ever pass a warrant request. Then just store everything that passes the filter, forever, and decrypt when needed.

_-___________-_6y ago

> WhatsApp and iMessage

Don't both of these have default/recommended configurations that back up your chats to cloud services?

judge20206y ago

iCloud just recently added Messages in iCloud, but I know a fair amount of people that turn it off since the default iCloud storage space is 5gb.

_-___________-_6y ago

So the messages on your phone are not backed up with the normal iCloud backup?

I know WhatsApp nags to turn on chat backup to the cloud.

1 more reply

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einpoklum6y ago

> I think most of us would be fine with the NSA doing what they do if it was targeted

You think wrong. That fact that there are opposing world states engaging in this nefarious, oppressive, terrible acts and they're not all aligned doesn't legitimize any of these states' activities.

anonsivalley6526y ago

mirimir6y ago

I love privacy 'n' stuff, for sure.

But relative to the risk of global nuclear war, and the certainty of global climate disruption, I couldn't care less about the NSA and its adversaries.

And hey, maybe all that spying reduces the risk of overt war.

einpoklum6y ago

Why do you believe NSA spying decreases the risk of nuclear war, or helps stave off climate change?

3 more replies

and_Then_What6y ago

Okay, but these big picture perspectives don't materialize in a vacuum. It's not just this binary do-or-die nuclear deterrence that such a mindset acquiesces to.

And some people ride in limousines from hotels for brunch, and some people ride the bus to a fast food job at the ass crack of dawn.

And it's no accident, the way such things work.

So, maybe this whole nuclear war thing? Maybe it's always been a big shakedown.

2 more replies

garmaine6y ago

And who is creating the risk of global nuclear war, if not those very same governments?

maqp6y ago

Most of it is economic and political espionage, not spying on each others' military secrets. That happens too, sure, but none of the other stuff is necessary to protect us from nuclear war.

ChrisCinelli6y ago

Feel free to down vote me.

I can only guess but I would not be surprised if your very life was saved. Or even if we just look at money, you may have lost a significant amount of what you have in a scam that was avoided.

We do not know what we do not know. But there must be more good than bad in what they do.

dmixOP6y ago

There's plenty of memoirs by actual intelligence agents.

2 more replies

jasonwatkinspdx6y ago

The world is far more Mr. Bean than James Bond.

3 more replies

EthanHeilman6y ago

I only downvoted this comment because the poster wrote:

>"Feel free to down vote me".

ta9999991716y ago

You are the reason the show "24" was rushed through.

maqp6y ago

AtlasBarfed6y ago

All it takes is one elected president who could upend the other branches, and the three letters become much more scary.

But thats just a partisan political beliefs, right?

tripzilch6y ago

> I think most of us would be fine with the NSA doing what they do if it was targeted, like the police getting warrants to break privacy only in important cases for public safety.

Except it's not getting a warrant, but simply deciding whether to spend resources. Which is not something that, like a warrant, I would be fine with.

_-___________-_6y ago

> WhatsApp and iMessage

Don't both of these have default/recommended configurations that back up your chats to cloud services?

judge20206y ago

iCloud just recently added Messages in iCloud, but I know a fair amount of people that turn it off since the default iCloud storage space is 5gb.

_-___________-_6y ago

So the messages on your phone are not backed up with the normal iCloud backup?

I know WhatsApp nags to turn on chat backup to the cloud.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse