“The biggest danger through PRISM, said Edward Snowden, is getting caught in the sights of the NSA. The NSA will collect data on everything. And everyone. Everywhere. They’ll even transcribe voice communications and index them,” Rixstep writes. “That’s a lot of data. The long term danger is they have the data and won’t be getting rid of it anytime soon. Their Bluffdale complex will hold half the universe.”
“And if they ever get you on the radar, you’ll be cooked whether you think you did anything ‘wrong’ or not,” Rixstep writes. “But first they have to get you on the radar. They have to notice you. There’s just too much data out there otherwise. Of course they have search filters to look for the more common telltale signs – if you’re part of one of the infrequent terrorist groups that pop up.”
“But make no mistake. And don’t listen to charlatans like Eric Schmidt who insist that you have nothing to fear if you’ve done nothing ‘wrong,'” Rixstep writes. “At the end of the day, it’s not about that at all. It’s about the data being out there in the first place. It’s about your privacy. In the US, it’s about abiding by amendments to the constitution.
Rixstep writes, “You have a right to your privacy.”
“Be especially suspicious of Microsoft. Not only is their lack of security legendary, but they’re colluding with the NSA in a very special way – giving the NSA access to your Skype traffic under your encryption layer,” Rixstep writes. “Get Off Windows!
Truer words were never spoken. They’re repeated year after year after year. Almost every concerned white hat security expert in the world has unequivocally condemned Windows – and not just for its current condition, but for its endemic weaknesses, being an ‘ad hoc’ system not built for Internet use and not built with security in mind… It’s much more difficult to attack an OS X box or a Linux box remotely. Apple’s OS X might have its foibles, as Apple’s infamous ‘user experience engineers’ are continually hatcheting away at security in the name of ‘user friendly’, but OS X is still a Unix (a FreeBSD).”
So how do you stay under the radar?
1. Are you on Facebook? GET OFF. NOW.
2. Get a webmail account you can trust.
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: United States Constitution, Amendment IV:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Join The Electronic Frontier Foundation in calling for a full congressional investigation here.
Related articles:
NSA can read email, online chats, track Web browsing without warrant, documents leaked by Edward Snowden show – July 31, 2013
Momentum builds against U.S. government surveillance – July 29, 2013
U.S. House rejects effort to curb NSA surveillance powers, 205-217 – July 24, 2013
Obama administration scrambles to shut down imminent U.S. House vote to defund NSA spying – July 24, 2013
Obama administration demands master encryption keys from firms in order to conduct electronic surveillance against Internet users – July 24, 2013
Apple, Google, dozens of others push Obama administration to disclose U.S. surveillance requests – July 19, 2013
Secret court agrees to allow Yahoo to reveal its fight against U.S. government PRISM requests – July 16, 2013
How Microsoft handed U.S. NSA, FBI, CIA access to users’ encrypted video, audio, and text communications – July 11, 2013
DuckDuckGo search engine surges 33% in wake of PRISM scandal – June 20, 2013
Yahoo: Since December 2012, we have received up to 13,000 U.S. gov’t requests for customer data – June 18, 2013
Apple: Since December 2012, we have received U.S. gov’t requests for customer data for up to 10,000 accounts – June 17, 2013
Nine companies, including Apple, tied to PRISM, Obama to be smacked with class-action lawsuit – June 12, 2013
U.S. lawmakers urge review of ‘Prism’ domestic spying, Patriot Act – June 10, 2013
PRISM: Do Apple, Google, Facebook have an ethical obligation not to spy on users? – June 8, 2013
Plausible deniability: The strange and unbelievable similarities in the Apple, Google, and Facebook PRISM denials – June 7, 2013
Google’s Larry Page on government eavesdropping: ‘We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday’ – June 7, 2013
Seecrypt app lets iPhone, Android users keep voice calls, text messages away from carriers, government eyes and ears – June 7, 2013
Obama administration defends PRISM data-collection as legal anti-terrorism tool – June 7, 2013
Facebook, Google, Yahoo join Apple in sort-of denying PRISM involvement – June 7, 2013
Report: Intelligence program gives U.S. government direct access to customer data on Apple servers; Apple denies – June 6, 2013
“2. Get a webmail account you can trust. ”
Exactly who offers this?
Try your own server on one of those new Mac Pro or those Mac mini servers or get a personal e-mail account at a honorable service like @reagan.com. I use a @mac.com e-mail and a personal corporate e-mail account that I own. I am hoping my mac.com is secure but do not know at this time.
So Tim Cook, is my @mac.com e-mail safe?
Running your own mail server does have its merits. But, it is a centralized place storing all your mail, right on your property, that could be raided. If you’re really paranoid, it might be better to set up your own encrypted virtual server and deploy it to a cloud service – might even be cheaper too.
reagan.com?!? Too funny.
Won’t take long before that get DDoS:ed.
It is not
MDN – Can you please verify this registered user?
TC would not respond to a post on MDN.
This is very true
Verified👀
Lets just add the words, bomb, Mohammad and attack to every email
Remember, PRISM is the program you know about. Avoiding it means you just run into one of the other many surveillance programs out there.
Step number one of not being tracked, do not get a Social Security number. Oh, you already have one? What were you thinking!
It is not really possible to not be tracked in the modern society — though it is unconstitutional, this is our reality — unless you live in the woods.
But you are right, PRISM is just one program. There are at least eighteen overall, with many using additional ways to secure the same information or additional information — for the sake of wall-to-wall totality.
The true danger here is that future generations will grow up believing that this kind of surveillance is the norm rather than the exception and accept it. It is up to us to ensure that this does not happen. We allow a tiny minority of people to dictate to us what we, as people, can or cannot do all in the dubious name of “security”. True power comes from the people but our attention is constantly diverted by a relentless diet of pap television shows and insipid and highly inaccurate news reportage. If we do not reclaim the governance of our very souls—that’s what at stake, folks—then we shall have only ourselves to blame.
Irrespective of national affiliation, we must educate those future generations in the rights of humanity of all colours and creeds and to reject all those that would seek to crush us under the tyrannical heel of corporate and governmental oppression.
We now return you to your regular scheduled programming.
=:~)
It’s too late: most of the twenty-somethings have grown up posting everything on Facebook, signing up for “loyalty cards” so their favourite shopping venues can track them, and purchase tons through Amazon and the interwebs ignoring all the cookies and databases that track them. Have you see the app from Lowe’s hardware that “tracks your purchases for you”? It’s quite popular… sigh.
Forgot to add: This page itself has at least 14 trackers on it… 😆
‘GOOD little pet consumer. *stroke*stroke* Here’s a sales discount…’
Think For Yourself
TFY
LOL, Derek you’re the best!
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
“People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.”
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”
— Edmund Burke 1729-1797
Another service I would avoid is Ancestry.com. Just imagine how much info they can get from family trees.
They’ll be able to trace your family history back to what kind of monkey you came from.
Quoting the article: “…but they’re colluding with the NSA in a very special way – giving the NSA access to your Skype traffic under your encryption layer.”
Uhm… so is everyone. Blame Congress. They passed a law requiring that telecom companies provide the technical means to allow law enforcement unencrypted access to content under court order.
That Microsoft complied with that requirement is unsurprising.
Ah, yes. Clinton signed CALEA as an update to the 1968 wiretapping law. Then Bush II brought it to the internet. Whodathunk — it’s bipartisan!
I listened to a terrific author, Tony Juniper, on the radio today who made the simple statement that:
“Politicians no longer lead. They follow.”
And who do they follow? The people who pull their strings, who include:
Our Corporate Oligarchy,
Anyone with lots of money,
Political Action Committees,
Israeli Intelligence,
Political ‘think tanks’, aka political manipulation groups,
blahblahblah
What democracy?
Vote for one of these two equally compromised political puppets…
I don’t trust the US gov’t any farther than I can throw them, but the author of this article is a hopeless paranoid. Don’t use Windows, don’t use Apple, get out of the US… I wonder if he thinks a cave in Sri Lanka would be secure enough?
The article linked to also lists Apple as a company you “need to get away from. Get far away”. The full 9 on the list are:
AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo, YouTube
What’s funny is that it’s ignoring your cell provider, landline (if you still have one), ISP and cable/satellite provider.
If you want to live off-grid, don’t have a username for any service. Don’t have an account number, for anything. Don’t ever use a phone or the Internet.
And when they catch you being off-grid, what type of person will they think you are?
This is like people who think Facebook is evil because it’s just absorbing personal information from you and aren’t on Facebook solely for that reason. Facebook only gets the information you (or others) put on there. Not joining Facebook doesn’t prevent others from putting information on there about you, and you can decide for yourself how much personal information you want to post on Facebook. Consider any and all activity on Facebook to be public.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that none of this matters, that only people like terrorists, pedophiles, and other criminals must care about their privacy. And that finding out that you watched “Orange is the New Black” and *liked* it isn’t a problem for them.
However, the problem comes from other things that may be unforeseen. For example, imagine there is a new Disease X. You start Googling information about it using terms like “do I have Disease X”, you join a usergroup “Disease X sufferers”, you buy Disease X books and treatments, etc… Then imagine Obamacare gets overturned and insurance companies can deny all coverage to anyone with Disease X. These insurance companies could then look up this information.
Or imagine someone really hates you (like an ex-spouse) and they get access to one of your accounts, or simply to your Internet connection. They could easily frame you as a terrorist or pedophile by simply engaging in activities (as you) that form those profiles.
And you think spam, junk mail and telemarketers are bad? What until we get smart spam, smart junk mail and smart telemarketing… all targeted to you using very personal information and indistinguishable from otherwise actual and perhaps critical correspondence.
What I’m saying here, is choose wisely with *how* you engage in these companies and what personal information you’re sharing, but most importantly…
Work to get laws changed by voting and holding those running for office accountable.
The Fourth Amendment has been shit canned for a while. DUI checkpoints anyone?
I think Russia did right to give Sniwden visa. Aperently Obama has canceled his meeting with Putin over this and is coming to Sweden instead. I was a fan if Obama but after this NSA scandal where had no backbone to stand up and say, this is wrong… Instead trying to defend the program on live TV in a diplomatic way… Obama has not changed Washington. Washington consumes him and now he is doing their bidding. After all this I as a Swede don’t particular welcome him to Sweden… Of course, Reinfeldt will probably lick his ass… A big world leader is coming to small Sweden… Time to brown nose some. Obama should be ashamed over this… I don’t want him to come here…