
Use of Tor and e-mail crypto could increase chances that NSA keeps your data - guelo
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/use-of-tor-and-e-mail-crypto-could-increase-chances-that-nsa-keeps-your-data/
======
bigiain
Since I (and the majority of global internet users) are not "US persons",
they're claiming they're entitled to intercept and store all my communications
anyway - so my personal reaction to this is going to be to increase the use of
tor and crypto for random everyday stuff. I'll start GPG encrypting email to
anybody I know will be able ro deal with it. I might even start randomly
mailing GPG encrypted mail for no reason except to thwart traffic analysis
(perhaps I'll automate mailing randomly chosen chunks of 1984 and Brave New
World to randomly chosen public keys/emails from public keyservers - perhaps
some faceless NSA analyst might one day have burned countless cpu-years
decrypting my 2048bit GPG mail, only to be Rickrolled with a 70 year old
cautionary tale about themself…)

~~~
dfc
_" I will start GPG encrypting email to anybody I know who will be able to
deal with it"_

As sad as it is to say, lets be honest and admit that this is a fairly small
number. How long do you think it will be till your less committed friends get
tired of decrypting your emails and just ignore what you send? Make sure you
only pick people that use actual email clients because gpg and Gmail is no
fun.

As far as the "Thomas Crowne Affair attack" goes generating effective cover
traffic is not easy and random traffic is definitely a bad idea. Basic traffic
analysis would be able to separate your legit emails from your cover traffic.

Addendum: I noticed you just generated your new gpg key yesterday. Why not go
big and use a 4096 bit key?

~~~
icebraining
It seems someone has written a PGP extension for Chrome/GMail:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mymail-crypt-
for-g...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mymail-crypt-for-
gmail/jcaobjhdnlpmopmjhijplpjhlplfkhba/details)

~~~
joeyo
I've just started using mailvelope, which works with several webmail providers
and also has a firefox extension:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mailvelope/kajibbe...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mailvelope/kajibbejlbohfaggdiogboambcijhkke)

~~~
swombat
It looks like Mailvelope only supports RSA encryption (up to 4096bit), not any
of the other types of algorithms for PGP. It lists RSA/RSA and RSA/ElGamal but
doesn't allow me to select them. Can someone who knows their shit about
encryption chime in as to whether that's sufficient?

------
dfc
If you want to read the documents without having to use that awful viewer or
load js from every social networking site known to man: (increment the p# from
1-9)

Procedures used by NSA to target non-US persons: Exhibit A:
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7166...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/716633/pages/exhibit-
a-p1-large.gif)

Procedures used by NSA to minimize data collection from US persons: Exhibit B:
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7166...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/716634/pages/exhibit-
b-p1-large.gif)

It is amazing how many requests the guardian wants to make to third party
sites.

~~~
mpyne
> It is amazing how many requests the guardian wants to make to third party
> sites.

Maybe they're just trying to make sure every social site knows you're there so
that NSA can figure it out later with PRISM? ;)

------
mfwoods
This shouldn't be a surprise at all. Using Tor hides your location, so they
assume you are foreign unless proven otherwise. If I were to agree with the
law that allows all of the snooping that the NSA does, I'd say this is pretty
reasonable.

As a European, what I find more disturbing about all the news about PRISM and
related programs, is how US centric the reports about it are and how little
other western governments are objecting to all of this. We are always told how
the USA is the EU's biggest ally, yet US politicians try to legitimize
everything by saying it's only non-US citizens they spy on, and say it like
then it's suddenly okay.

I get that some spying is a necessary evil and 100% freedom and privacy is not
feasible, especially if there are nations that are less than friendly towards
you. But that's a whole different thing than recording as much data as
possible, especially from friendly nations.

I don't think many friendships would survive if it turned out your best friend
has been hiring private investigators with the goal to records as much of your
life as possible.

~~~
jlgreco
> _This shouldn 't be a surprise at all. Using Tor hides your location, so
> they assume you are foreign unless proven otherwise._

That covers Tor, but not the rest...

> _As a European, what I find more disturbing about all the news about PRISM
> and related programs, is how US centric the reports_

Agreed. I worry that the American government has done damage to the cause of
globalisation that will take a very long time to heal. This is a problem for
us all.

~~~
mpyne
Don't take this the wrong way, but you mention the effect on globalization as
if it were obvious that the damage should worry the American government. On
the contrary, the U.S. has vacillated between isolationism and interacting
with other nations before.

I don't know if you've been over to the U.S. but we have a stunningly large
continent of people who feel that it is absolutely treasonous to give foreign
aid _at all_ to other nations (especially ones like Egypt and Pakistan) while
there are still the poor within domestic boundaries.

The people worried about globalization are in large corporations. Even many of
our liberals see "globalization" as a code term for "child labor" and
"sweatshops".

~~~
rayiner
> Even many of our liberals see "globalization" as a code term for "child
> labor" and "sweatshops".

Right. Globalization can be used as a powerful force to subvert or bypass
democracy, and to create a worldwide "race to the bottom."

------
chacham15
I think that the idea that "using crypto will cause the nsa to keep your data
longer" is a hindrance to progress. Everyone should be using crypto and
everyone should have privacy. When we begin to be afraid of what someone will
do if we protect our interests, we start giving up those interests and that is
not something I am prepared to do.

~~~
teeja
Maybe the prospect of someday burning gigawatts to decipher my elliptic-curved
peanut-butter-cookie recipes will alert them to what a charade they're part
of.

We must create boogeymen from a vacuum so that we can burn taxpayer dollars to
further enrich the right people. Unlike biochemicals, encryption, storage and
analysis are benevolent forms of collateral damage as they lead to increases
in computing power and mathematical insights.

------
burke
This is fairly obvious. From the NSA's perspective, people that act like
people who have something to hide are more likely to be hiding something. I'd
be surprised if they didn't take it into account.

~~~
bigiain
And this is why we should (and we should encourage everybody we can to)
regularly do the most mundane of browsing using TOR.

I'm making a personal effort to use TorBrowser whenever I have some trivial
need to use a government website. I suspect I'd stop short of applying for a
visa via TOR, but I'll happily look up my local state or federal politicians
and their websites, or renew my car registration, or any of the other day-to-
day things - in much the same way as I always choose to use BitTorrent for
fully legal purposes when available - sure, we all know that 99% of Torrent
traffic is copyright infringement, but at least _some_ of it is me grabbing
the latest Ubuntu/Raspbian/GameOfThones (no, wait, not that last one...)

~~~
dfc
_And this is why we should (and we should encourage everybody we can to)
regularly do the most mundane of browsing using TOR._

And that's why I encourage everybody I can to run a tor node

[https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-
relay.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en)

~~~
tlrobinson
Also, if you don't want to run a node on your home network/machine
[http://cloud.torproject.org/](http://cloud.torproject.org/) makes it
ridiculously easy to set up one on EC2 (for as little as ~$3/month)

~~~
dfc
_Q: Should I run an exit relay from my home?

A: No. If law enforcement becomes interested in traffic from your exit relay,
it's possible that officers will seize your computer. For that reason, it's
best not to run your exit relay in your home or using your home Internet
connection.

Instead, consider running your exit relay in a commercial facility that is
supportive of Tor. Have a separate IP address for your exit relay, and don't
route your own traffic through it.

Of course, you should avoid keeping any sensitive or personal information on
the computer hosting your exit relay, and you never should use that machine
for any illegal purpose._

[https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-
faq](https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq)

~~~
gizmo686
Its worth pointing out that that is talking specifically about exit nodes.
There is no (legal) problem with running relay nodes out of your own house.

~~~
dfc
What part of "Should I run an exit relay from my home?" was unclear? I am not
trying to discourage people from supporting the tor network, quite the
opposite actually. I want to make sure they are fully informed and support tor
in a manner that is sustainable.

~~~
tlrobinson
Some people might not realize there are different types of nodes you can run.

------
echohack
I think I'll start sending random PGP encrypted messages from my email
address, along with my normal messages. Should be simple with a little Jenkins
job.

Good luck, have fun NSA. You liberty hating anti-American bastards.

------
ChrisAntaki
The title implies the NSA would delete any of it, by their own volition. I
don't believe they would, since any data could retroactively become useful to
them.

------
pavanred
If one uses Tor, the article states that the person will not be treated as a
United States person unless "proven" otherwise. If that's the case, all the
traffic from a Tor exit node will be considered as traffic from non U.S.
persons and all data will be stored. Doesn't make sense to me because if you
are using Tor right, then requests cannot be traced back to you. How does that
help?

~~~
bigiain
It depends on what you mean by "using TOR right" \- and that depends on
who/where you are and what you're trying to protect yourself against.

A Chinese/Egyptian/Turkish dissident might consider it perfectly sensible to
use TOR to access their gmail account - that's a perfectly valid way of hiding
from your local (non-US) government and spy agencies.

~~~
pavanred
What I mean by using Tor right, for instance, is avoiding use of certain
browser plugins that can potentially give away your location.

~~~
bigiain
Yeah - fair enough.

On oft-hear piece of advice is to never use an identity you ever use elsewhere
over TOR - for me, as a "non US person", even if I can trust TOR and TLS/SSL
to ensure the privacy of my data in transit, it doesn't matter if the far end
of my connection through TOR ends up at my
gmail/apple/facebook/linkedin/twitter/dropbox/yahoo/amazon/any-other-US-
affiliated-corporation. Being "non US" and located outside the US means the
bar for any "legal requests" those companies receive is _very_ low.

(Hmmm, I wonder if proxying all my web traffic through a vpn with a
definitely-in-the-US endpoint might be a worthwhile bit of civil protest? I
wonder if tcp connections originating from my Digital Ocean vps in New York
and heading to US datacenters have slightly better legal protection or
"presumtion of domestic provenance" than tcp connections originating here in
Australia? Maybe I should be doing this anyway for all the analytics/ad-
tracking web-bugs...)

~~~
jlgaddis
If they can see the bits coming out of your VPS in NYC and heading to other
data centers, surely they can see the bits coming from .au into your VPS and
correlate them?

------
linuxhansl
That might be the case, but even the NSA will not be able to decrypt a well
encrypted message - or so we think at least.

That all said - and I realize that this might be controversial - I fully agree
with wiretaps as long as there is a warrant (and I mean a real warrant from a
real court on a case-by-case basis).

With its sweeping data collection the NSA is doing itself a disservice as it
will eventually lead to wider use of strong encryption, which will make
wiretaps with warrants much more expensive (or even impossible) to serve.

I think new laws for stricter limitations on exporting cryptography software
or even restricting cryptography itself are likely in the near future. This
will lead to interesting trials where folks might be forced to reveal their
encryption keys; and the inability to prove whether there actually is
encrypted data (good encrypted data is indistinguishable from random data, and
some folks wipe old harddrives with random data before they are discarded, how
would one prove that this is really random data?)

------
gt565k
The NSA operates a Tor exit node at Georgia Tech, and likely at other research
institutes and universities.

The fact of the matter is, people who use Tor are the ones trying to hide from
the government, and it only makes sense for the NSA to run Tor exit nodes and
analyze all traffic passing through them.

You probably have more privacy by not using Tor at all.

~~~
mpyne
It makes sense for the NSA to run exit nodes for the same reason it makes
sense for the U.S. Office of Naval Research to have funded its creation and
for the U.S. State Dept. to heavily fund its upkeep. There is a vested U.S.
national security interest in residents of hostile regimes to be able to
freely access the Internet without being traced, even with the knowledge that
it may be used to make it more difficult for the U.S. itself to meet other
security goals.

~~~
ippisl
If you look at the history of anonymity networks, you'll notice that tor
totally replaced mixing networks. Considering the fact that mixing nets are
more secure against government, with regards to email, it is interesting that
the u.s only invests in and promotes tor.

But in a world where individuals have access to extremely powerfull tech,
something has to be done.

I think the solution for privacy might look like something different. Maybe
the government could read everything, but there would be some good
transparency tools, ensuring proper usage.

~~~
rdl
Mixing networks (especially for email) died for a lot of reasons, not really
fair to blame Tor forthat.

And I agree -- high latency systems are _far_ more secure. Something with 5-10
day latency should be secure under a lot of assumptions. Sadly the old
mixmaster code is lame, and mixminion never really took over.

------
mehrzad
This is somewhat unrelated, but I was listening to "Leo Laporte The Tech Guy"
on the local talk radio with my dad (who is a big fan, but less into tech than
I) and he started describing GPG and PGP to non-tech enthusiasts.

This whole NSA scandal may really push forward the use of encryption of
securer communication methods.

~~~
Amadou
Only if it pushes developers to make the tools dead-simple to use. If it is
harder to use than facebook, 99% of the population will not bother.

~~~
slacka
Exactly this. Even though we had the company policy and Symantec PGP software
installed, the engineers I worked with sill failed to use it regularly. I
remember having to logmein to machine in China to try to figure out why they
couldn't read our emails. This is why PGP never took off.

Until the tools take 5 min to setup. And encryption/decryption is as easy as
clicking a checkbox in your mail client, PGP will never take off. Things like
the public key directory have to handled transparently to the user.

It's too bad Mozilla dropped support for Thunderbird. Tight integration with
GnuPG could have made mainstream PGP a reality.

------
hispeedencrypt
I think this is the saddest aspect of these spying programs and the ensuing
paranoia... it actually might discourage people from using encryption or
anonymizing proxies... for fear it will get them on a watch list.

If you start using PGP for all your email, then you by inference "have
something to hide". Brilliant logic.

What a mess.

~~~
nano111
I think the opposite

------
ewzimm
The only long-term way to hide data is not to use public networks for
communication. Eventually, quantum computers should be able to eat though any
of today's crypto. It will be interesting to see what happens when everyone
running for public office has their entire life on display.

~~~
taway2012
> Eventually, quantum computers should be able to eat though any of today's
> crypto

Probably not. Quoting from [http://blog.agilebits.com/2013/03/09/guess-why-
were-moving-t...](http://blog.agilebits.com/2013/03/09/guess-why-were-moving-
to-256-bit-aes-keys/):

A quantum of bits [Update: March 20, 2013]

I reached out to the cryptographic community for any insight into Molly’s
question about why the NSA insists that TOP SECRET material be encrypted using
256-bit keys. The answer came from Steven Bellovin of Columbia University:

@jpgoldberg @marshray Just heard that during the AES competition, NSA said in
the open meetings it was for defense against quantum computing

Quantum computers, if they are every made practical, will be able to do
amazing things. They will certainly change how we design cryptographic
systems. It’s not that quantum computers will be faster or more powerful.
Indeed, in some very important respects they will be less powerful than
current computers. But there are some things that they will be able to do in
less “time”. I put “time” in scare quotes because it has a different meaning
in this context from the ordinary use of the word. Oh, what a big difference
it is. In this context it means the number of distinct steps an algorithm must
take in performing some computation.

Searching through 2128 keys (on a classical, non-quantum, computer) takes a
number of steps that is proportional to 2128. But for a quantum computer it
takes a number of steps proportional to the square root of that number, 264.
If a quantum computer is ever built capable of performing that task, we don’t
know how the actual speed of each individual step will compare to those of
current computers, but the NSA is taking no chances. Something with the
effective strength of a 64-bit key isn’t strong enough. A 256-bit key against
a quantum brute force attack would have the effective strength of a 128 bit
key against a classical brute force attack.

I very much doubt that we will see a quantum computer actually capable of
handing such things within the next thirty years. But if the past is any
guide, my predictions about the future should be taken with a large grain of
salt.

~~~
ewzimm
Thanks, that's a good read. I'm interested to see how effective it will be.
I'm certainly not saying we'll be able to break non-deterministic crypto, but
there's a lot we should be able to do that's out of our reach right now.

We're so early in development that we don't know how quickly we'll be able to
scale them, but if we solve a few physical problems, we're looking the ability
to scale up resources for linear costs for exponential rewards. With on-demand
cloud pricing models for computing becoming the norm, normal people could do
some pretty amazing things. It's hard to predict how quickly this will come,
but it will definitely come eventually.

------
e3pi
"The document, titled Minimization Procedures Used by the National Security
Agency in Connection with Acquisitions of Foreign Intelligence, is the latest
bombshell leak to be dropped by UK-based newspaper The Guardian."

All good news!

1: The Guardian is still time-releasing, I thought they caved under a IGIC
-sorry, what ever its called over there - gag order.

2: Now we know what to do to backup into the NSA cloud! Another USA world
benefit: a highly secure service for all the world to avail themselves for
free.

3: web app $opportunity$! tor p2p delivery and crypto of your files into free
NSA Cloud, for only $0.99!

~~~
selimthegrim
It's called a D-notice.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DA-Notice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DA-
Notice)

~~~
e3pi
> "....The Ministry of Defence has issued a D notice preventing the UK media
> from 'publish[ing] information that may "jeopardise both national security
> and possibly UK personnel"'.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/defence-d-bbc-
me...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/defence-d-bbc-me...).

------
foxylad
...but that's what they would say, isn't it?

------
joezydeco
How about steganography? We all fire off so many pictures and attachments that
there has to be an avenue here.

~~~
e3pi
Know of any non-obvious stego of 10MB, 100MB, and larger file size?

~~~
nwh
I suppose you need a large carrier for a large message to be hidden. Very high
resolution home movies maybe? I assume you can't use content that is already
public, as then the original can be compared with the modified version to
prove that hidden data exists.

~~~
atondwal
porn. It gets transcoded enough that the stego could fly through as just
another lossy transcoding. Better yet, lossy transcode it to something and
back, then stego, as long as your target has a copy of the same transcoder and
knows what you're using as reference. You should also be careful to strip
metadata as to which transcoder you're using. They're PETABYTES of the stuff
floating around.

And if you're willing to pay a few bucks for private cams, there's no way
anyone else can have a copy of your screencap, so no amount of clever
transcoding will get them a reference copy.

~~~
nwh
Porn is actually quite a good one. It's something that doesn't look out of
place if hidden away, and gives some plausibility to owning the stuff. More so
than having home videos and no family, for example.

------
aspensmonster
I think this is the more interesting aspect:

>"reasonably believed to contain evidence of a crime that has been, is being,
or is about to be committed."

Is this sort of intelligence gathering of domestic signals handed over to
other relevant authorities? I'm sure the DEA would love to have the NSA's
assistance in tracking down drug dealers. I'm just not convinced it has much
of anything to do with national security.

Also, does use of HTTPS constitute "communications that are enciphered?"

------
damaru
That's always what I have though about using tor and other encryption, if you
try to hide clumsily it might have the adverse effect. If you know how to use
all the tools and don't make the error of login to social network, then it can
be useful, but in general I doubt it can protect us. Sending letter might
become the most secure way of communication after all, or book with hidden
glued pages!

------
donniezazen
If you access a known account through Tor or any other identity hiding
protocol could possibly expose you. And I wonder if it is impossible for US
government to break encryption if it is specifically after you.

------
mpyne
I suppose that means the NSA has been keeping my data since 2002 or so.

