----- Forwarded message from Adam Back <a...@cypherspace.org> ----- Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:28:44 +0200 From: Adam Back <a...@cypherspace.org> To: Ethan Heilman <eth...@gmail.com> Cc: Crypto discussion list <cryptogra...@randombit.net>, New Cpunks List <cryptopolit...@randombit.net> Subject: Re: [cryptopolitics] [cryptography] skype backdoor confirmation User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Reply-To: New Cpunks List <cryptopolit...@randombit.net>
(I set the reply to to the cryptopolitics/new cypherpunk list). It seems skype via PRISM/NSA api or intermediate server complying with a FISA order they probably couldnt talk about if they wanted to, is recording pretty much everything in skype channels, maybe narrowed only by bandwidth. It doesnt seem that US citizens are particularly safe either, though not being from the US I'm even less than "51%" assured anyway. Great and 100% full-on analysis for the rest of the world. In fact it seems what is really going on is they record everything to preserve ability for retro-active analysis, US & non-US. According to EFF in NSA terminology data isnt "collected" until its pulled from the NSA data farm and analysed in some way. Obvioulsy to other readers of the English language, collected is when it hits the disk in NSA's Utah exabyte disk farm. So the "51%" assurance I would think is actually that they havent yet analysed your data (for US users), not that they didnt record it. Curiously many journalists and commentators seem to be suffering from repeated extremely naive failure to parse PR-speak. They need to read more from Binney and re-listen to Snowden. You cant expect to reverse engineer the architecture of something from a PR expert who is intentionally lying to you. (Lying is defined as an intent to mislead, and they lied to everyone including the authors of the Patriot act, congress, the oversight committees, etc. Clapper calls it (actual TV interview quote) "least untruthful manner" ie he didnt say anything directly untrue during his previous successful attempts to mislead congress in congressional hearings.) Anyway a small tidbit related to the pre-prism discussion of skype suspected backdooring (and probably thats pretty much conclusive given the PRISM disclosures): This article says skype had handed over web browsing information: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/11/uk-intelligence-requests-microsoft-data "But more than 7,000 British requests resulted in data being shared, including names, addresses and browsing history showing a list of websites visited by a Microsoft customer" So given the context being skype, I am thinking that "we're just checking for malware" URL uploading is actually recorded and subject to supoena for normal law enforcement, and mass storage/retro-active analysis by law enforcement. Probabl along with the rest of the IM stream. Back to the PRISM saga, I think the NSA and echelon partners have overstepped the mark massively and built a MONSTROSITY that may eventually bring down democracy. Its probably more fragile than people think; some european democracies are relatively young, and civil unrest and dangerous political voices seem to gain in times of extreme economic and political stress as in greece (golden dawn neo-nazis). No doubt the prime PRISM motivations were profit (defense contractors with big lobbing influence in the post 9-11 world) plus a bit of national security, chasing the odd bad guy. But for proportionality in cost (the number of people killed by terrorists is a tiny tiny risk for western countries), and erosion of civil liberties (4th amendment to americans) this is an outrage. Many people died historically fighting to rid the world of such facist governments. We should not glibly build the means of democracies downfall. The most dangerous aspect is the secerecy - not only do they want to collect the biggest dossier on everyone ever, they want to do it in secret, with secret courts, secret legal interpretations, and gag orders on those in industry forced to participate. Secret laws are not hallmarks of a democratic process. Adam On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 06:23:16PM -0400, Ethan Heilman wrote: > From the new Washington Post Article > > According to a separate Users Guide for PRISM Skype Collection, that > service can be monitored for audio when one end of the call is a > conventional telephone and for any combination of audio, video, > chat, and file transfers when Skype users connect by computer alone. > Googles offerings include Gmail, voice and video chat, Google Drive > files, photo libraries, and live surveillance of search terms. _______________________________________________ cryptopolitics mailing list cryptopolit...@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptopolitics ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5 -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
