
If You Do This, the NSA Will Spy on You - gexos
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/07/if-you-do-nsa-will-spy-you/88054/
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Rangi42
Okay, let's see what behaviors I should avoid...

> Searching for the Tails, operating system, another Windows alternative
> popular among human rights watchers, will also land you on the deep-packet
> inspectee list.

Oops. Too late.

These sort of criteria can't possibly narrow down a set of people enough to
justify spying on them. It's like trying to surveil every adult male after a
shooting because most shooters are adult men: technically true, and you've
eliminated over half of all humans, but most of the people left are still
innocent.

~~~
threatofrain
Much of what we know about these programs are just from leaked presentation
slides from Edward Snowden. That means these are slides made to digest a big
process for management or new people.

The slides indicate that they are aware that "turbulence" can occur, and also
that they are sensitive to issues of overwhelming data volume and bad
signalling. It's also clear that they take multiple factors beyond simple web
behavior, such as if you are a foreign language speaker in a region.

Unfortunately we don't know the specifics of this program. We don't really
know what exclusionary criteria they use, or what strong inclusionary factors
gets somebody tagged for deeper automated surveillance. The factors likely are
likely being tuned all the time by engineers and statisticians, like, for
example, snooping on Google is probably not easy anymore due to routine HTTPS,
so they probably have changed that part of the program.

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dTal
>the XKeystore source code designates the Linux Journal as an “extremist
forum.”

This again? Debunked here: [http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/validating-
xkeyscore-code....](http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/validating-xkeyscore-
code.html)

Y'all are always asking for website ideas. How about a kind of "live Snopes"
that lets people discuss and debunk reporting on current affairs?

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knughit
If this is true then you can help by visiting these sites to trigger
xkeyscore, and sending links to all your friends and family to click too.

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thekevan
I wonder if I have been targeted. I used TOR a few times, once I tried to use
it to look at my craigslist ads because I thought the ads I had had been
flagged by other people selling the same sort of items I was selling, but CL
was altering what I saw based on IP. Turns out CL blocks TOR and it didn't
even help me.

I use Ubuntu as my main operating system, I started that just because I
thought it was neat. I don't recall searching for Tails, but I've tried
probably close to 50 different Linux distros so I wouldn't be surprised if
I've visited the site or at least read articles on it. (I count downloading
the ISO and booting it up as a VM and clicking around for 20 minutes as trying
one.)

~~~
grkvlt
Are you an Islamic terrorist? If not, then no - you haven't been targeted.
It's a pretty simple check, at least for a first-order approximation.

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bobwaycott
It is worth noting this article is from July 2014. Perhaps the title could be
updated to reflect this fact.

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hodgesrm
In the past I was put off by the ads on the Linux Journal. Given the
information this article it's probably time to give it a closer look again.
It's convenient that the NSA provides guidance on interesting web sites.

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banku_brougham
I predict that every atrocity that happens in the US will be have a trail of
suspicious electronic clues leading up to it, which the NSA should have seen.
I don't think their efforts will help us at all.

